[From The Journal of Social Philosophy 25, no. 3 (Winter 1994)]
Adultery has recently entered prominently into evaluations of public figures. Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign was nearly derailed by allegations about a twelve-year extramarital affair. Shortly thereafter England's royal family engaged in extensive damage control as public revelations surfaced about the love trysts of Prince Charles and Lady Diana. Earlier, in 1987, Gary Hart's "womanizing" forced his withdrawal as the leading democratic presidential candidate. About the same time, charges of adultery contributed to the downfall of the leading television evangelist Jim Bakker.1
It is not clear what most upsets (or intrigues) the public in such cases. Is it the adultery per se, the deception used to conceal it (from spouses or the public), the hypocrisy in professing contrary religious beliefs, or the poor judgment in failing to keep it discrete (including the bravado of Gary Hart in baiting the press to uncover his affairs)? Nor is it clear how the adultery itself is pertinent to public service, even if we think the adultery is immoral. Character is not a seamless web, and integrity can be present in one context (public service) and absent in another setting (sexual conduct).2 Many notable leaders had extramarital affairs, including Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr., and public scrutiny of marital intimacy might discourage worthy candidates from seeking public office.
It is clear, however, that adultery is morally complex. Philosophers have devoted little attention to it,3 largely leaving it as a topic for theology, social science, and literature. Certainly novelists have had much to say: "To judge by literature, adultery would seem to be one of the most remarkable of occupations in both Europe and America. Few are the novels that fail to allude to it."4 In any case, whether as moral judges assessing the character of adulterers or as moral agents confronted with making our own decisions about adultery, we often find ourselves immersed in confusions and ambiguities that are both personally and philosophically troublesome.
I will seek a middle ground between conventional absolute prohibitions and trendy permissiveness. A humanistic perspective should embrace a pluralistic moral outlook that affirms a variety of forms of sexual relationships, including many traditional marriages. It can justify a strong presumption against adultery for individuals who embrace traditional marital ideals.
The ethics of adultery divides into two parts: making commitments and keeping them. The ethics of making commitments centers primarily on commitments to love, where love is a value-guided relationship, and secondarily on the promise of sexual exclusivity (the promise to have sex only with one's spouse) which some couples make in order to support the commitment to love. The ethics of keeping commitments has to do with balancing initial marital commitments against other moral considerations.
Making Commitments
What is adultery? Inspired by the New Testament, some people employ a wide definition that applies to any significant sexual interest in someone besides one's spouse: "You have heard that it was said, 'Do not commit adultery.' But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart."5 Other people define adultery narrowly to match their particular scruples: for them extramarital genital intercourse may count as adultery, but not oral sex; or falling in love with someone besides one's spouse may count as adultery but not "merely" having sex.6 Whatever definition we adopt there will always be borderline cases, if only those created by "brinkmanship"-going as far as possible without having intercourse (e.g., lying naked together in bed).7
In this paper, "adultery" refers to married persons having sexual intercourse (of any kind) with someone other than their spouses.8 I am aware that the word "adultery" is not purely descriptive and evokes a range of emotive connotations. Nevertheless, I use the word without implying that adultery is immoral; that is a topic left open for investigation in specific cases. Like "deception," the word "adultery" raises moral questions about possible misconduct but it does not answer them. By contrast, I will use a wider sense of "marriage" that refers to all monogamous (two-spouse) relationships formally established by legal or religious ceremonies and closely analogous moral relationships such as committed relationships between homosexual or heterosexual couples who are not legally married.
A moral understanding of adultery turns on an understanding of morality. If we conceive morality as a set of rules, we will object to adultery insofar as it violates those rules. "Do not commit adultery" is not an irreducible moral principle, but many instances of adultery violate other familiar rules. As Richard Wasserstrom insightfully explained, much adultery violates one or more of these rules: Do not break promises (viz., the wedding vows to abjure outside sex, vows which give one's partner "reasonable expectations" of sexual fidelity); do not deceive (whether by lying, withholding information, or pretending about the affair); do not be unfair (by enjoying outside sex forbidden to one's spouse); and do not cause undeserved harm (to one's spouse who suspects or hears of the affair).9 Wasserstrom points out that all these rules are prima facie: In some situations they are overridden by other moral considerations, thereby justifying some instances of adultery.
Moreover, adultery is not even prima facie wrong when spouses have an "open marriage" in which they give each other permission to have extramarital affairs. In this connection Wasserstrom raises questions about the reasonableness of traditional marital promises of sexual exclusivity. Wouldn't it be wiser to break the conventional ties between sex and love, so that the pleasures of adultery can be enjoyed along with those of marriage? Alternatively, should we maintain the connection between sex and love but break the exclusive tie between sexual love and one's spouse, thus tolerating multiple simultaneous loves for one's spouse and for additional partners? No doubt the linking of love, sex, and exclusivity has an instrumental role in promoting marriages, but so would the patently unreasonable practice of allowing people to eat decent meals (beyond bread and water) only with their spouses.
In my view, a rule-oriented approach to morality lacks the resources needed to answer the important questions Wasserstrom raises. We need an expanded conception of morality as encompassing ideals and virtues, in particular the moral ideals of love which provide the point of marital commitments and the virtues manifested in pursuing those ideals. The ethics of adultery centers on the moral ideals of and commitments to love-which include ideals of constancy (or faithfulness), honesty, trust, and fairness-that make possible special ways of caring for persons. The ideals are morally optional in that no one is obligated to embrace them. Nevertheless, strong obligations to avoid adultery arise for those couples who embrace the ideals as a basis for making traditional marital commitments. The primary commitment is to love each other, while the commitment of sexual exclusivity is secondary and supportive. This can be seen by focusing on three ideas that Wasserstrom devotes little attention to: love, commitments to love, and trust.
1. What is love? Let us set aside the purely descriptive (value-neutral) senses in which "love" refers to (a) a strong positive attraction or emotion10 or (b) a complex attitude involving many emotions-not only strong affection, but also excitement, joy, pride, hope, fear, jealousy, anger, and so on.11 Let us focus instead on the normative (value-laden) sense in which we speak of "true love" or "the real thing." Cogent disputes arise concerning the values defining true love, though ultimately individuals have a wide area of personal discretion in the ideals they pursue in relationships of erotic love.
In its value-laded senses, "love" refers to special ways of valuing persons.12 As an attitude, love is valuing the beloved, cherishing her or him as unique. Erotic love includes sexual valuing, but the valuing is focused on the person as a unity, not just a body. As a relationship, love is defined by reciprocal attitudes of mutual valuing. The precise nature of this valuing turns on the ideals one accepts, and hence those ideals are part of the very meaning of "love."
2. According to the traditional ideal (or set of ideals) of interest here, marriage is based on a commitment to love: "to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part." This is not a commitment to have continuous feelings of strong affection-feelings which are beyond our immediate voluntary control. Instead, it is a commitment to create and sustain a relationship conducive to those feelings, as well as conducive to the happiness and fulfillment of both partners. Spouses assume responsibility for maintaining conditions for mutual caring which in turn foster recurring emotions of deep affection, delight, shared enthusiasm, and joy. The commitment to love is not a promise uttered once during a wedding ceremony; it is an ongoing willingness to assume responsibility for a value-guided relationship.
The commitment to love implies a web of values and virtues. It is a commitment to create a lifelong relationship of deep caring that promises happiness through shared activities (including sexual ones) and through joining interests in mutually supportive ways involving shared decision-making, honesty, trust, emotional intimacy, reciprocity, and (at least in modern versions) fair and equal opportunities for self-expression and personal growth. This traditional ideal shapes how spouses value each other, both symbolically and substantively. Commitments to love throughout a lifetime show that partners value each other as having paramount importance and also value them as a unity, as personsliving-throughout-a-lifetime. Time-limited commitments, such as to remain together only while in college, express at most a limited affirmation of the importance of the other person in one's life.
Valuing each other is manifested in a willingness to make accommodations and sacrifices to support the marriage. For most couples, some of those sacrifices are sexual. The promise of sexual exclusivity is a distinct wedding vow whose supportive status is symbolized by being mentioned in a subordinate clause, "and, forsaking all others, keep thee only unto her/him." Hopefully, couples who make the vow of sexual exclusivity are not under romantic illusions that their present sexual preoccupation with each other will magically abolish sexual interests in other people and temptations to have extramarital affairs. They commit themselves to sexual exclusivity as an expression of their love and with the aim of protecting that love.
How does sexual exclusivity express and protect love? In two ways. First, many spouses place adultery at the top of the list of actions which threaten their marriage. They are concerned, often with full justification, that adultery might lead to another love that would damage or destroy their relationship. They fear that the affection, time, attention, and energy (not to mention money) given to an extramarital partner would lessen the resources they devote to sustaining their marriage. They also fear the potential for jealousy to disrupt the relationship.13 As long as it does not become excessive, jealousy is a healthy reaction of anger, fear, and hurt in response to a perceived loss of an important good.14 Indeed, if a spouse feels no jealousy whatsoever, the question is raised (though not answered) about the depth of love.
Second, sexual exclusivity is one way to establish the symbolism that "making love" is a singular affirmation of the partner. The love expressed is not just strong affection, but a deep valuing of each other in the ways defined by the ideals embedded in the marriage. Sex is especially well-suited (far more than eating) to express that love because of its extraordinary physical and emotional intimacy, tenderness, and pleasure. The symbolic meaning involved is not sentimental fluff; it makes possible forms of expression that enter into the substance of love.
In our culture sex has no uniform meaning, but couples are free to give it personal meanings. Janet Z. Giele notes two extremes: "On the one hand, the body may be viewed as the most important thing the person has to give, and sexual intercourse therefore becomes the symbol of the deepest and most farreaching commitment, which is to be strictly limited to one pair-bond. On the other hand, participants may define sexual activity as merely a physical expression that, since it does not importantly envelop the whole personality nor commit the pair beyond the pleasures of the moment, may be regulated more permissively."15 Between the two extremes lie many variations in the personal symbolism that couples give to sex, and here we are exploring only those variations found in traditional marital vows.
3. Trust is present at the time when couples undertake commitments to love, and in turn those commitments provide a framework for sustaining trust. Trust implies but is not reducible to Wasserstrom's "reasonable expectations" about a partner's conduct. Expectations are epistemic attitudes, whereas trust is a moral attitude of relying on others to act responsibly, with goodwill, and (in marriage) with love and support.16 We have a reasonable expectation that the earth will continue to orbit the sun throughout our lifetime, but no moral relationship of trust is involved. As a way of giving support to others, underwriting their endeavors, and showing the importance of their lives to us, trust and trustworthiness is a key ingredient in caring.
To be sure, trust is not always good. It is valuable when it contributes to valuable relationships, in particular to worthwhile marriages.17 Marital trust is confidence in and dependence upon a spouse's morally responsible love. As such, it provides a basis for ongoing intimacy and mutual support. It helps spouses undergo the vulnerabilities and risks (emotional, financial, physical) inherent in intimate relationships.
The trust of marital partners is broad-scoped. Spouses trust each other to actively support the marriage and to avoid doing things that might pull them away from it. They trust each other to maintain the conditions for preserving intimacy and mutual happiness. Violating marital trust does more than upset expectations and cause pain. It violates trust, honesty, fairness, caring, and the other moral ideals defining the relationship. It betrays one's spouse. And it betrays one's integrity as someone committed to these ideals.
To sum up, I have avoided Wasserstrom's narrow preoccupation with the promise of sexual exclusivity. Commitments of sexual exclusivity find their rationale in wider commitments to love each other if a couple decides that exclusivity will support their commitments to love and where love is understood as a special way to value persons within lasting relationships based on mutual caring, honesty, and trust. Accordingly, marital faithfulness (or constancy) in loving is the primary virtue; sexual fidelity is a supporting virtue. And sexual fidelity must be understood in terms of the particular commitments and understandings that couples establish.
I have also avoided saying that sexual exclusivity is intrinsically valuable or a feature of all genuine love, unlike Bonnie Steinbock: "[sexual] exclusivity seems to be an intrinsic part of 'true love.' Imagine Romeo pouring out his heart to both Juliet and Rosaline! In our ideal of romantic love, one chooses to forgo pleasure with other partners in order to have a unique relationship with one's beloved."18 In my view, the intrinsic good lies in fulfilling love relationships, rather than sexual exclusivity per se, thereby recognizing that some couples sustain genuine love without sexual exclusivity. For some couples sexual exclusivity does contribute to the goods found in traditional relationships, but other couples achieve comparable goods through nontraditional relationships, for example open marriages that tolerate outside sex without love.19 We can recognize the value of traditional relationships while also recognizing the value of alternative relationships, as chosen autonomously by couples.20
Keeping Commitments
A complete ethics of keeping commitments of exclusivity would focus on the virtues of responsibility, faithfulness, and self-control. Here, however, I wish to defend Wasserstrom's view that even in traditional relationships the prohibition against adultery is prima facie. However strong the presumption against adultery in traditional relationships, it does not yield an exceptionless, all-thingsconsidered judgment about wrongdoing and blameworthiness in specific cases. I will discuss four of many complicating factors.21 What if partners wish to change their commitments? What happens when love comes to an end? What if one spouse falls in love with an additional partner? And what about the sometimes extraordinary self-affirmation extramarital affairs may bring?
(i) Changing Commitments. Some spouses who begin with traditional commitments later revise them. Buoyed by the exuberance of romance, most couples feel confident they will not engage in adultery (much less be among the fifty percent of couples who divorce). Later they may decide to renegotiate the guidelines for their marriage in light of changing attitudes and circumstances, though still within the framework of their commitments to love each other.22 One study suggests that 90% of couples believe sexual exclusivity to be essential when they marry, but only 60% maintain this belief after several years of marriage (with the changes occurring primarily among those who had at least one affair).23
Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson provide an illuminating if unusual example. They married with the usual sexual attraction to each other and for several years were sexually compatible. As that changed, they gave each other permission to pursue extramarital affairs, primarily homosexual ones. Yet their original commitment to love each other remained intact. Indeed, for forty-nine years, until Vita died in 1962, their happy marriage was a model of mutual caring, deep affection, and trust: "What mattered most was that each should trust the other absolutely. 'Trust,' in most marriages means [sexual] fidelity. In theirs it meant that they would always tell each other of their infidelities, give warning of approaching emotional crises, and, whatever happened, return to their common center in the end."24 Throughout much of their marriage they lived apart on weekdays, thereby accommodating both their work and their outside sexual liaisons. On weekends they would reunite as devoted companions, "berthed like sister ships."25
Just as we respect the mutual autonomy of couples in forming their initial understanding about their relationship, we should also respect their autonomy in renegotiating that understanding. The account I have offered allows us to distinguish between the primary commitment to love and the secondary commitment of sexual exclusivity. The secondary commitment is made in order to support the primary one, and if a couple agrees that it no longer is needed they are free to revoke it. Renegotiations can also proceed in the reverse directions: Spouses who initially agree on an open marriage may find that allowing extramarital affairs creates unbearable strains on their relationship, leading them to make commitments of exclusivity.
Changing commitments raise two major difficulties. First, couples are sometimes less than explicit about the sexual rules for their relationship. One or both partners may sense that their understandings have changed over the years but fail to engage in discussions that establish explicit new understandings. As a result, one spouse may believe that something is acceptable to the other spouse when in fact it is not. For example, Philip Blumstein and Pepper Schwartz interviewed a couple who, "when it came to a shared understanding about extra marital sex, . . . seemed not to be in the same marriage."26 The man reported to them, "Sure we have an understanding. It's: 'You do what you want. Never go back to the same one [extramarital partner],' " presumably since that would threaten the relationship. By contrast, the wife reports: "We've never spoken about cheating, but neither of us believe in it. I don't think I'd ever forgive him [if he cheated on me]." Lack of shared understanding generates moral vagueness and ambiguity concerning adultery, whereas periodic forthright communication helps establish clear moral boundaries.27
Second, what happens when only one partner wants to renegotiate an original understanding? The mere desire to renegotiate does not constitute a betrayal, nor does it by itself justify adultery if one's spouse refuses to rescind the initial vow of sexual exclusivity. In such cases the original presumption against adultery continues but with an increased risk that the partner wishing to change it may feel adultery is more excusable. Such conflicts may or may not be resolved in a spirit of caring and compromise that enables good relationships to continue. Lacking such resolution, the moral status of adultery may become less clear-cut.
(ii) Lost Love. Couples who make traditional commitments sometimes fall out of love, singly or together, or for other reasons find themselves unwilling to continue in a marriage. Sometimes the cause is adultery, and sometimes adultery is a symptom of irresponsibility and poor judgment that erodes the relationship in additional ways.28 But other times there is little or no fault involved. Lasting love is a creation of responsible conduct and luck.29 No amount of conscientiousness can replace the good fortune of emotional compatibility and conducive circumstances.
In saying that traditional commitments to love are intended to be lifelong, we need not view them as unconditional."30 Typically they are based on tacit conditions. One condition is embedded in the wedding ceremony in which mutual vows are exchanged, namely, that one's spouse will take the marital vows seriously. Others are presupposed as background conditions, for example, that the spouse will not turn into a murderer, rapist, spouse-beater, child-abuser, or psychopathic monster. Usually there are more specific tacit assumptions that evolve before the marriage, for example, that the spouses will support each other's careers. Above all, there is the background hope that with sincere effort the relationship will contribute to the overall happiness of both partners. All these conditions remain largely tacit, as a matter of faith. When that faith proves illfounded or just unlucky, the ethics of adultery becomes complicated.
As relationships deteriorate, adultery may serve as a transition to new and perhaps better relationships. In an ideal world, marriages would be ended cleanly before new relationships begin. But then, in an ideal world people would be sufficiently prescient not to make traditional commitments that are unlikely to succeed. Contemplating adultery is an occasion for much self-deception, but at least sometimes there may be good reasons for pursuing alternative relationships before officially ending a bad marriage.31
(iii) New Loves. Some persons claim to (erotically) love both their spouse and an additional lover. They may be mistaken, as they later confess to themselves, but is it impossible to love two (or more) people simultaneously? "Impossible" in what sense?
Perhaps for some people it is a psychological impossibility, but, again, other individuals report a capacity to love more than one person at a time. For many persons it is a practical impossibility, given the demands of time, attention, and affection required in genuine loving. But that would seem to allow that resourceful individuals can finesse (psychologically, logistically, financially, and so forth) multiple simultaneous relationships. I believe that the impossibility is moral and conceptual-if one embraces traditional ideals that define marital love as a singular affirmation of one's spouse and if a couple establishes sex as a symbolic and substantive way to convey that exclusive love.32 Obviously people can experience additional romantic attractions after they make traditional vows, but it is morally impossible for them to actively engage in loving relationships with additional partners without violating the love defined by their initial commitments.
Richard Taylor disagrees in Having Love Affairs, a book-length defense of adultery. No doubt this book is helpful for couples planning open marriages, but Taylor concentrates on situations where traditional vows have been made and then searches for ways to minimize the harm to spouses that results from extramarital love affairs.33 In that regard his book is morally subversive in that it systematically presents only one side of the story. Here are five examples of this one-sidedness.
First, with considerable panache Taylor develops a long list of rules for nonadulterous partners who should be tolerant of their partner's affairs. (a) "Do not spy or pry," since that is self-degrading and shows a lack of trust in one's spouse. (But is a commitment-breaking spouse trustworthy?) (b) "Do not confront or entrap," because that would humiliate the spouse. (But what about being humiliated oneself?) (c) "Stay out of it," since good marriages survive adultery. (No empirical support is offered for that generalization!) (d) "Stop being jealous," since jealousy disrupts marriages. (But what about the case for not provoking jealousy in the first place?)
Taylor also offers rules for the spouse having the affair: Maintain fidelity with one's lover, be honest with one's lover, be discrete rather than boasting about the affair, and do not betray or abandon the lover. In discussing these rules Taylor is oblivious to the infidelity, betrayal of trust, and failure to value one's spouse in the way called for by traditional commitments and the shared understanding between spouses.
Second, Taylor defines infidelity as "a betrayal of the promise to love" and faithfulness as "a state of one's heart and mind," rather than "mere outward conformity to rules." Infidelity can be shown in ways unrelated to adultery, such as in neglecting the spouse's sexual needs, selfishly using shared financial resources, and failing to be caring and supportive.34 It is true that infidelity takes other forms, but what about the infidelity in violating marital vows and understandings? Moreover, the only place we are reminded that "inner states" of faithfulness are manifested in outward conduct is when Taylor condemns infidelity toward an extramarital lover, not one's spouse.
Third, love affairs are natural and avoiding them is unhealthy. "A man, by nature, desires many sexual partners"; "The suppression of the polygamous impulse in a man is ... bought at a great price" of frustrated and rueful longing for outside love affairs.35 Granted, most people (male and female) have desires for multiple sexual partners. Yet many people also have monogamous impulses, as shown in their decisions to enter into traditional marriages. The resulting conflicts make sexual exclusivity notoriously difficult, but they need not result in frustration; often they contribute greatly to overall sexual satisfaction within secure and trusting relationships.
Fourth, "No one can tell another person what is and is not permissible with respect to whom he or she will love.... However inadvisable it may be to seek love outside the conventional restraints, the right to do so is about as clear as any right can be."36 Taylor is equivocating of "right," which can mean (1) that others are obligated to leave one alone or (2) that one's conduct is all right. Having a right not to be interfered with by society as one engages in adultery does not imply that one's conduct is "all right" or morally permissible. Indeed, couples who make traditional commitments waive some rights in relation to each other; in particular they waive the right to engage in adultery which violates their marital agreements.
Fifth, and most important, Taylor praises love affairs as inherently good and even the highest good: "the joys of illicit and passionate love, which include but go far beyond the mere joys of sex, are incomparably good."37 On the same page he says, "This does not mean that love affairs are better than marriage, for they seldom are. Love between married persons can, in the long run, be so vastly more fulfilling" than affairs. I find it difficult to reconcile these claims: Those marriages which are vastly more fulfilling would thereby seem to provide the incomparable goods, not extramarital affairs which violate the commitments defining the marriage. Of course many people find joy in extramarital sex, and for some the joy may be the greatest they find in life. But Taylor provides no basis for saying that happy traditional marriages never produce comparable joys. Nor does he ever explain how extramarital joys are morally permissible for individuals who make traditional marriage vows.
Bonnie Steinbock affirms an opposite view. She suggests that to fall in love with someone other than one's spouse is already a betrayal: "Sexual infidelity has significance as a sign of a deeper betrayal-falling in love with someone else. It may be objected that we cannot control the way we feel, only the way we behave; that we should not be blamed for falling in love, but only for acting on the feeling. While we may not have direct control over our feelings, however, we are responsible for getting ourselves into situations in which certain feelings naturally arise."38 I agree that spouses who make traditional vows are responsible for avoiding situations that they know (or should know) foster extramarital love.39 Nevertheless, deeply committed people occasionally do fall in love with third parties without being blameworthy for getting into situations that spark that love. Experiencing a strong romantic attraction is not by itself an infidelity, and questions of betrayal may arise only when a person moves in the direction of acting on the love in ways that violate commitments to one's spouse.
Having said all this, I know of no argument that absolutely condemns all love-inspired adultery as immoral, all things considered and in all respects, even within traditional relationships. Nonetheless, as I have been concerned to emphasize, there is a serious betrayal of one's spouse. But to say that ends the matter would make the commitment to love one's spouse a moral absolute, with no exceptions whatsoever. Tragic dilemmas overthrow such absolutes, and we need to set aside both sweeping condemnations and wholesale defenses of loveinspired adultery.
To mention just one type of case, when marriages are profoundly unfulfilling, and when constricting circumstances prevent other ways of meeting important needs, there is a serious question whether love-inspired adultery is sometimes justifiable or at least excusable-witness The Scarlet Letter, Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, Lady Chatterly's Lover, and The Awakening. Moreover, our deep ambivalence about some cases of love-inspired adultery reflect how there is some good and some bad involved in conduct that we cannot fully justify nor fully condemn.
(iv) Sex and Self-Esteem. Extramarital affairs are often grounded in attractions less grand than love. Affection, friendship, or simple respect may be mixed with a desire for exciting sex and the enhanced self-esteem from being found sexually desirable. The sense of risk may add to the pleasure that one is so desirable that a lover will take added risks. Are sex and self-esteem enough to justify violating marital vows? It would seem not. The obligations created through marital commitments are moral requirements, whereas sex and self-esteem pertain to one's self-interest. Doesn't morality trump self-interest?
But things are not so simple. Morality includes rights and responsibilities to ourselves to pursue our happiness and self-fulfillment. Some marriages are sexually frustrating or damaging in other ways to self-respect. Even when marriages are basically fulfilling, more than a few individuals report their extramarital affairs were liberating and transforming, whether or not grounded in love. For example, many women make the following report about their extramarital affair: "It's given me a whole new way of looking at myself ... I felt attractive again. I hadn't felt that way in years, really. It made me very, very confident."40
In addition, the sense of personal enhancement may have secondary benefits. Occasionally it strengthens marriages, especially after the extramarital affair ends, and some artists report an increase in creative activity. These considerations do not automatically outweigh the dishonesty and betrayal that may be involved in adultery, and full honesty may never be restored when spouses decide against confessing an affair to their partners.41 But nor are considerations of enhanced self-esteem and its secondary benefits irrelevant.
I have mentioned some possible justifications or excuses for specific instances of adultery after traditional commitments are made. I conclude with a caveat. Specific instances are one thing; general attitudes about adultery are another. Individuals who make traditional commitments and who are fortunate enough to establish fulfilling relationships based on those commitments ought to maintain a general attitude that for them to engage in adultery would be immoral (as well as stupid). The "ought" is stringent, as stringent as the commitment to sexual exclusivity. Rationalizing envisioned adultery with anecdotes about the joys of extramarital sex or statistics about the sometimes beneficial effects of adultery is a form of moral duplicity. It is also inconsistent with the virtues of both sexual fidelity and faithfulness in sustaining commitments to love.
Notes
1. Charles E. Shepard, Forgiven: The Rise and Fall of Jim Bakker and the PTL Ministry (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1989).
2. Cf. Owen Flanagan, Varieties of Moral Personality (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991).
3. R. J. Connelly, "Philosophy and Adultery," in Philip E. Lampe, ed., Adultery in the United States (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1987), pp. 131-64.
4. Denis de Rougemont, Love in the Western World, rev. ed., trans. Montgomery Belgion (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), p. 16. Two illuminating literary critics are Tony Tanner, Adultery in the Novel: Contract and Transgression (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979) and Donald J. Greiner, Adultery in the American Novel: Updike, James, and Hawthorne (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1985).
5. Matthew 5:27-28, New International Version. In targeting males, this scripture presupposes that husbands are the primary adulterers. That presupposition is not surprising given a long history of indulging profligate husbands while severely punishing wayward wives, based in part on the view that wives are their husbands' property, duty-bound to maintain male lines of progeny, and in part on the view that women are chaste creatures who can be held to a higher standard than males. Today, husbands continue to lead in adultery statistics-well over half of them have extramarital affairs-although women are catching up. Annette Lawson cautiously estimates that somewhere between 25 percent and 50 percent of women have at least one extramarital lover during any given marriage, and 50-65 percent of husbands engage in adultery by the age of forty. Adultery: An Analysis of Love and Betrayal (New York: Basic Books, 1988), p. 75. A humanistic approach regards male and female adultery as on a par and also proceeds without invoking religious beliefs that condemn all adultery as sinful.
6. Morton Hunt, The Affair (New York: The World Publishing Company, 1969), p. 9.
7. This is not an imaginary case. See ibid., p. 80.
8. Michael J. Wreen plausibly widens the term "adultery" to apply to nonmarried persons who have sex with married persons, but since my focus is spouses, I will not widen the definition. "What's Really Wrong with Adultery?" Journal of Applied Philosophy 3 (1986): 45-49.
9. Richard Wasserstrom, "Is Adultery Immoral?" Philosophical Forum 5 (1974): 513-28. Wasserstrom's preoccupation with rules explains why the most interesting part of his essay-the discussion of the connections between sex, love, and sexually exclusive loving relationships-is approached so indirectly, in terms of "deeper deceptions" that violate the rule against deception, rather than directly in terms of violating moral ideals embedded in love.
10. Wasserstrom sometimes uses "love" this way, as on p. 518. But on p. 522 he hints at the value-laden meaning of "love": "the issues are conceptual, empirical, and normative all at once: What is love? How could it be different? Would it be a good thing or a bad thing if it were different?" These questions, which are posed but not pursued, adumbrate my approach.
11. Cf. Annette Baier, "Unsafe Loves," in The Philosophy of (Erotic) Love, ed. Robert C. Solomon and Kathleen M. Higgins (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1991), pp. 444 and 449, n. 29.
12. Irving Singer, The Nature of Love, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), I, pp. 3ff. In the third volume of this work, Singer sets forth a subjectivist view of the worth of persons. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), III, p. 403. I share the more objectivist view of the unique worth of persons defended by Jeffrey Blustein in Care and Commitment (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 203-16.
13. Roger Scruton, Sexual Desire (New York: Free Press, 1986), p. 339.
14. For an illuminating historical study of changing attitudes see Peter N. Steams, Jealousy (New York: New York University Press, 1989).
15. Janet Z. Giele, as quoted by Philip E. Lampe, "The Many Dimensions of Adultery," in Adultery in the United States, p. 56.
16. Cf. H. J. N. Horsburgh, "The Ethics of Trust," The Philosophical Quarterly 10 (1960): 343-54; Annette Baier, "Trust and Antitrust," Ethics 96 (1986): 231-60; Lawrence Thomas, "Trust, Affirmation, and Moral Character. A Critique of Kantian Morality," in Identity, Character, and Morality: Essays in Moral Psychology (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990), pp. 235-57; and Mike W. Martin, "Honesty in Love," The Journal of Value Inquiry (1993).
17. Michael Slote, Goods and Virtues (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), pp. 49, 65.
18. Bonnie Steinbock, "Adultery," in Alan Soble (ed.), The Philosophy of Sex (Savage, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1991), p. 191.
19. See Russell Vannoy, Sex Without Love (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1980).
20. 1 am assuming that the consent involved in agreements between couples is fully voluntary and that a dominant partner does not exert pressures that make consent "intellectual" rather than emotionally wholehearted. Cf. J. F. M. Hunter, Sex and Love (Toronto: Macmillan, 1980), p. 42. To be sure, autonomy is not the sole value governing the making of marital commitments. There are reasons which need to be weighed in deciding what kind of commitments to make. Are partners being realistic in choosing between an exclusive relationship (with its element of sexual restriction) or an open relationship (with its risks of jealousy and new loves) as the best way to promote their happiness and love each other? And would permitting extramarital affairs negatively affect third parties (perhaps children)?
21. These are not the only factors-a book would be needed to discuss all relevant factors. For example, what about the effects on third parties, not just children and other family, but the extramarital lover? Ellen Glasgow describes the joys of her affair with a married man as "miraculous" in The Woman Within (New York: Hill and Wang 1980), p. 156. Again, there are factors about how affairs are conducted, including the risk of contracting AIDS and giving it to one's spouse.
22. The mutual renegotiation of relationships is a central aspect of marital equality, as argued by Robert C. Solomon, About Love (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1980), pp. 283-300.
23. Lawson, Adultery, pp. 72-73.
24. Nigel Nicolson, Portrait of a Marriage (New York: Atheneum, 1973), p. 188.
25. Ibid., p. 231.
26. Philip Blumstein and Pepper Schwartz, American Couples (New York. William Morrow, 1983), pp. 286-87.
27. Cf. J. E. and Mary Ann Barnhart, "Marital Faithfulness and Unfaithfulness," Journal of Social Philosophy 4 (April 1973): 10-15.
28. E.g., Herbert S. Strean, The Extramarital Affair (New York: Free Press, 1980); and Frank Pittman, Private Lies: Infidelity and the Betrayal of Intimacy (New York: W. W. Norton, 1989).
29. Cf. Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness (New York. Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp. 259-362.
30. Contrary to Susan Mendus, "Marital Faithfulness," Philosophy 59 (1984): 246. For criticisms of Mendus, see Alan Soble, The Structure of Love (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1990), p. 166; and Mike W. Martin, "Love's Constancy," Philosophy 68 (1993): 63-77.
31. An interesting example of deciding against adultery is the subject of Lotte Hamburger and Joseph Hamburger, Contemplating Adultery (New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1991).
32. Robert Nozick develops a slightly different argument based on the intimate mutual identification involved in forming a couple or a "'we." See The Examined Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), pp. 82, 84.
33. Richard Taylor, Having Love Affairs (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1982), pp. 67-68.
34. Ibid., pp. 59-60.
35. Ibid., pp. 70, 72-73. The possible frustrations of monogamy are discussed by Edmund Leites in his illuminating book, The Puritan Conscience and Modern Sexuality (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986).
36. Ibid, p. 48. For these and other ambiguities of "rights" see Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977), pp. 188-89.
37. Ibid., p. 12.
38. Bonnie Steinbock, "Adultery," in Alan Soble, ed., The Philosophy of Sex, p. 192.
39. For an interesting example, see Janice Rosenberg, "Fidelity," in Laurie Abraham et al., Reinventing Love (New York: Plume, 1993), pp. 101-106.
40. Lynn Atwater, The Extramarital Connection (New York: Irvington Publishers, 1982), p. 143. The same theme is developed in Dalma Heyn, The Erotic Silence of the American Wife (New York: Signet, 1993).
41. Dalma Heyn (ibid.) urges that not confessing adultery to one's spouse is especially justified for women whose adultery is likely to provoke physical abuse or a divorce that would leave them and their children impoverished. Others argue that even when the adultery is immoral that confession wreaks more harm than the benefits of restoring full honesty in the relationship. (E.g., Laura Green, "Never Confess," in Reinventing Love, pp. 192-97.) The case for promoting honesty by confessing to one's spouse an infidelity is made by Frank Pittman in Private Lies.