I got a note from a former student of mine last week. Sophrosyne writes:
I know it has been a while since I’ve spoke to you, but I am going to lose my mind or at least it feels like it. I have been dating this man for seven months and two weeks ago I made the mistake of driving drunk. This is an extremely sensitive issue for him because three years ago he lost a girlfriend (she got hit by a drunk driver while driving) and a best friend (similar scenario). I know it was a terrible mistake to make, it was something I’d never done before and am quite sure I will never, ever do again. I didn’t get caught or into an accident, and that is a miracle. But my boyfriend found out anyway.
Ever since the incident he has been very upset with me. He has remained in the relationship, but I feel that he is being very disrespectful. He has been hanging out with past lovers and ex-girlfriends, spending lots of time with them on the phone and in-person (something he had agreed not to do when we got together.) I don’t know what to do or think. He tells me he loves me, but I feel like I am being punished. I made the decision to give him one month as of February 1st to either try to forgive me and move forward or I will walk away from him.
I feel like a fool for tolerating his behavior, but at the same time I did make a mistake. In his mind, he feels that driving drunk is worse than cheating. I need advice…I am having difficulty sleeping, eating, studying, just functioning. I don’t know what to do.
Soph gets that she made a mistake, one that could have had deadly consequences. Since she gives her word it was a one-off, I don’t know that there’s much more that can be said about her drink driving incident.
Many years ago, when I was much younger and far more willful than I am now, I behaved similarly with a girlfriend of mine. “Ethel” and I had met in a sober living house, and despite warnings from those who knew our fragile state better than we, we embarked on an instant and intense relationship. We ended up spending eighteen months together on and off, moving into our own place when we were both thrown out of the sober living situation. As it turned out, I had an easier time getting sober than she did (though this was long before my last relapse in 1998). While I began to put weeks and months together, Ethel had a hard time staying clean for more than a few days at a time. For the first time in my life, I found myself in a co-dependent relationship with an addict whose disease was, at least in its obvious manifestations, worse than my own. I drove home from school each day, my stomach in knots, wondering if Ethel would be sober — and if not, in what condition she and our little apartment would be.
Eventually, I started cheating on Ethel. My rationalization was much the same as that of Soph’s boyfriend: I was giving myself some emotional protection from hurt by seeking consolation with others. Ethel found out (when it came to covering up my infidelities, I was about as subtle as a kibbutznik at a D.A.R. convention). We had volcanic arguments. I justified my cheating by pointing to her drinking, suggesting that if she wanted me to be faithful, she needed to be sober. I insisted that I was entitled to a quid pro quo relationship (I remember that even as I made it, the argument sounded false, ugly, and hollow.) Ethel pointed out that the thought of me sleeping around was hardly an encouragement to get sober. And on it went, month after month. I “cheated at” Ethel; she “drank at” me. It was one of the more painful relationships of my life, both because I was (despite my inability to live up to any sort of commitment) desperately in love with Ethel, and because I was choking on my own sense of fraudulence and narcissism.
Soph and her boyfriend aren’t quite where Ethel and I were. But it seems clear that he too is using the “quid pro quo” argument; he too is “cheating at” his girlfriend. Soph is not chronically drink-driving (something Ethel did with alarming regularity, even after her license was suspended), but she is being punished just the same. Of course, her boyfriend’s fears are powerful, linked as they are to his own painful memories of loss. Many of us respond to fear by trying to anesthetize ourselves, which is one reason why I so regularly cheated on Ethel. Flirtation and intrigue with others outside of our primary relationship, even if physical sex doesn’t take place, is a powerful prophylaxis against getting hurt — it is a marvelously passive-aggressive response. On some level, Soph’s boyfriend probably knows that he is dodging the issue and taking the easy way out, and I suspect that stings him.
Fidelity, for the umpteenth time, is not just a promise to a partner. It’s a promise to ourselves: a promise that we are not the sort of person who will quickly turn into a liar or a cheat. Obviously, if a relationship comes to a clear and final end, then the expectation of fidelity ends with it. But while a monogamous relationship continues, part of being a grown-up is not making one’s fidelity contingent on the other person’s day-to-day behavior. If my wife is cross with me, or annoys me in some way, I am not justified in seeking sexual or romantic solace with someone who will, ahem, “understand.” The whole “I’ll show you!” aspect of conditional monogamy is not only juvenile and reflective of an incomplete understanding of what a relationship requires, it is clear and incontrovertible evidence of fear and the inability to self-soothe. Soph’s boyfriend is entitled to be angry that she drove while drunk. He is entitled to share with her his own particular reasons for reacting so strongly to the incident. And she does owe him a promise that it won’t happen again.
But Sophrosyne doesn’t owe her beau her patience while he displaces his anger and anxiety into flirtations, intrigues, or worse with his exes. Her mistake is not a justification for his abrogation of his commitment to put all of his romantic and sexual energy into her. And despite her serious error, she has not lost her right to demand that he not only bring her all of that energy, but bring her his pain and fear and his truth as well.
I have a theory, rooted in my years of observation, that men rarely leave a long-term-relationship unless they have a relationship, or at least a reasonable prospect, waiting in the wings. In fact, I have never seen a case in which a man initiated leaving his partner in which he did not already have her replacement picked out. Women will leave just because they are unhappy, without necessarily having an exemplar of anticipated greater happiness. Guys are statistically less likely to end the relationship directly, although many will engage in passive aggressive behavior designed to make the woman want to leave. But if they do take the initiative, they seem to need believe that the grass will be greener before they can make for the gate.
I have a theory that this is why men react so badly when cuckolded or otherwise betrayed in a surprising manner; they have not had a chance to create a fall-back position.
I would tell Soph that her boyfriend is making sure that he has a fall-back position. It may be that once his anxiety has been assuaged, he will settle down and rededicate himself to the relationship.
I would tell you to forgive yourself for your infidelity to Ethel and to consider it a valuable lesson. You were in an admittedly damaging relationship and you needed to leave. But for whatever reason, you could not bring yourself to end the relationship without bringing a third party into it. The moral of this story is to leave while you can still respect yourself.
The bottom line for Soph, for you and for all of us is that what matters in a relationship is not how much we love the other person, but rather how much we like ourselves when we are in it. By the time a relationship has created in us the need, not a passing fancy, for infidelity, it is long past being due for an overhaul or termination. In other words, the moral of the story is not to keep our hormones in check, but rather that we owe it to ourselves and to our partners to engage in scrupulous relationship-maintenance
Sophrosyne required her boyfriend to give up all his friends he’d been involved with romantically/sexually as a condition of their relationship. If he’s a My wife is my only friend friend kind of guy, dealing with perceived or real betrayal by his partner is going to be extremely challenging for him, and it wouldn’t be surprising if he turned to people who he’d previously been able to have intimate/emotional conversations with to try and deal with it, rather than just doing it to get revenge on Sophrosyne. (And if his girlfriend requires that he drop all his ex-girlfriends as friends, he probably is that sort of guy.)
If what’s-his-face feels betrayed (and it certainly seems like he has adequate cause to), it isn’t unreasonable that merely being told it won’t happen again is insufficient to totally mollify him. Requiring that he come to her to process his feelings of betrayal, and subsequent stuff, isn’t only unreasonable, it seems exceedingly unlikely to work out successfully anyways. Betrayal by a significant other on an issue of importance to them isn’t a trivial thing.
Brian, he doesn’t need to do all his processing with her — he can go to Al-Anon if he likes. But if he can only be emotionally intimate with folks with whom he has previously been physically intimate, that’s a classically male defect of character that needs to be overcome lickety-split.
And yes, NotSoSure, forgiveness is key. I’m not the man I was in the first Clinton Administration, and I have asked forgiveness — and forgiven myself — for who I was and what I did.
Yes Brian, but no matter what, that does not give him an excuse to hurt Soph by flirting and talking to his exes, ESPECIALLY in front of her. And he does need to turn to her and work it out or end it. And honestly, with only one exception, I don’t think you can be an honest friends with your exes while you are in a committed relationship. That leads to too much temptation.
Another thing– his girlfriends shouldn’t be the only person he has an emotional relationship with. I think men need to build an emotional support system outside of just their partner. That is too much burden on one person and you wonder why things don’t end well.
Also, I completely agree with NotSoSure. That exact type of behavior has happened to me.
Good article Hugo!
Yes, forgiveness is key. But it seems equally important to be able to place the behavior of oneself and others in a compassionate and helpful context. Not all affairs are created equally. Some are far more destructive than others and the destruction caused my some is necessary and others’ is gratuitous.
I would also like to say thanks for the inspiration. You keep me thinking and writing.
If he doesn’t have the skills to be emotionally intimate with anyone else, going to Al-Anon won’t allow him to do any processing. Saying it’s a defect of character that needs to be overcome is reasonable, expecting him to do it “lickety-split” in the midst of an emotional crisis having just been betrayed by his main source of emotional support is unrealistic; whether he tries to or not, it won’t happen in the next fortnight. (Or the four days after that.)
No, he won’t overcome the whole set of issues in a day — but he can break off contact with his exes (if he’s using them in the way it seems clear he is) and start the process of doing the work to open up. Stopping an unhealthy behavior can be done in an instant; learning to develop new skills does indeed take time. But the latter requires the former be done first.
Phynixx
It’s only Hugo’s supposition that he’s flirted with them; Sophrosyne only says he talks to them, and that he spends time with them. I see no reason to make the same supposition as Hugo; my guess is that it’s unlikely he has done so. Many people are successfully friends with ex-boy/girlfriends without issue. For what it’s worth, that he’s barred from contact with his ex-girlfriends sets off a lot of alarm bells for me that their relationship is unhealthy, or has unhealthy elements.
If the guy needs emotional support beyond what he gets from himself/his current girlfriend, yes, that’s a skill he needs to develop. But saying “Oh, I need to develop this skill” doesn’t grant you that skill, and developing it to a usable point for someone without it may take a very long time; demanding that he develop it this week and use it to full effect next week simply isn’t a realistic expectation of anyone.
On these lines, I have a category for exes, and recommend in particular this post.
“I have a theory, rooted in my years of observation, that men rarely leave a long-term-relationship unless they have a relationship, or at least a reasonable prospect, waiting in the wings.”
I’ve barely gotten into the comments, but I gotta disagree with this one. It isn’t a universal trait in men by any means. There is a whole subset of people, regardless of gender, who feel they M-U-S-T overlap; they’re called “codependent.” Met several examples of both genders, and have also dated several men who weren’t like that.
And that is one interesting thing about being in a relationship with someone who is codependent vs. being in a relationship with someone who is not (I’ve done both). Codependent people really can’t still have any but the most superficial contact with previous exes while in a relationship, because given the slightest encouragement from those exes, they simply can’t be trusted. People who are not codependent can have great, close, lifelong relationships with multiple exes and be utterly trustworthy. Sad but true.
I have to agree with NotSoSure, but I think that it takes on a deeper dynamic than that. Seeking out some sort of attachment outside the relationship can be a reserve of strength when things are bad in the primary relationship, and also tends to serve as an “anchor” on which someone can use to pull away from their primary relationship if it is collapsing. Oftentimes, I think that infidelity or even the possibility thereof is a sign that, in the eyes of the unfaithful partner, the other one has gone back into a “probationary” status as a partner and the unfaithful one is reevaluating their options.
Too often though, the cheated-on partner will express anger or indignation, often to an unreasonable degree considering that they are likely to have themselves been significantly in the wrong as well, as is the case here. A vicious cycle then often starts as the primary relationship becomes even less desirable and hospitable for the cheater, and they put more and more energy and time into their second relationship(s) and less into their primary one until the secondary becomes the primary and the primary relationship ends.
A major problem I think that contributes to this sort of situation is that many of us are often unwilling to earnestly face up to and accept responsibility for the wrongs we have done to our partners in a relationship. That leaves them the only option of seeking satisfaction for themselves of their grievances against us by the only means they have available when we cannot offer it of ourselves to them. In this case, I think that both partners owe each other a significant measure of atonement, but I get the sense, from the tone of the message, that both of them are using each others’ behavior as an excuse not to do so and to minimize what they did. Sophrosyne’s boyfriend definitely seems not to be over her “one-off” decision to repeat a behavior that she knew took away two people he loved (and, from the sound of it, that she tried unsuccessfully to hide from him and now recoils at any suggestion that she deserves to be “punished”). She is obviously twisting in the wind here as he silently engages in a behavior that he knows is a violation of the terms of their relationship, rather than either accepting a sincere apology and offer to atone and moving on or else cleanly and quickly ending the relationship.
Lisa KS: Perhaps I am wrong, but I have run this past a lot of my friends and colleagues, and none of us knows a man who left without having at least a likely prospect. I have a friend who is a divorce attorney in a state which still uses “fault” to assign assets. He tells me that he will not take a male client who initiating the divorce if the client insists he did not have any kind of outside relationship. The phenomenon is so predictable that my friend assumes the man must be lying.
Then again, men are not usually the ones who end a marriage, at least not directly. They may create a situation in which no self-respecting woman could stay, but they are far less likely to actually do the leaving. Witness Mark Sanford; he did not leave the marriage but he made damned sure that Jenny would need to.
I know women who have ended a marriage due to sheer misery, without having anyone waiting. But as I say, I don’t know any men, or even known of any men, who have done the same.
I don’t offer this as a judgment of men. In fact, quite the opposite. I think that many men still have a sense of duty, of honor, which compels them to stay long past the time when they should have left.
Codependent is not a term used in my field, so I am not sure that I completely understand the concept. But I assume you mean people who are engaged in ongoing caretaking of an addict or who will take a bad relationship over no relationship. I am sure that you are right, that they are likely to experience relationship-overlap and that they might be untrustworthy in relationships with exes.
Tom: I like what you said about putting a partner back on probationary status. There is a significant power-imbalance that is created when one person is identified as the offender and the other as a victim. At some point, that power balance has to be corrected if the relationship can continue.
I was in a relationship in which my partner committed a grave offense, one which warranted my leaving him. What worked for us in that situation was that I set a date by which time I would have made a decision to leave or not to leave. I was clear that either he would need to come back as a partner in good standing or not at all. I would not have a relationship with one of us as the long-suffering martyr and the other as the “bad-boy.”
When that date came, I made the choice to stay. That choice was a recommitting to the relationship and it ended my partner’s probationary status. I could not use it against him and he could not use it as an excuse to re-offend.
*chuckles* In my family, we learned good “grudge husbandry”. When I’m wronged, I want to see genuine tears before I let it go. After that, I’m satisfied.
I’ve definitely ended relationships with and without transition figures waiting in the wings. Not all of my previous break-ups were initiated by me, but of those that were, it was about a 50/50 split between “someone waitin’ on the back burner” and “into the ether, alone”…
Hugo, were those long-term, committed relationships? If so, I am glad to hear this. I like it when my ideas are challenged.
Yes, two of them were.
Certainly we can strike it out on our own, but I’d bet that a lot of us all too often are too chicken to.
Tom, you are right, but I think that we too often overlook the utter necessity of these break-ups and the fact that an affair might be merciful to both parties. I will be eternally grateful to my ex-husband for having an affair and leaving me. He put our marriage out of its (and my) misery. I would never have left, the Evangelical beliefs I held at the time would never have let me. And his affair ended it with a finality that was merciful.
NotSoSure, just to let you know–my second husband ended the marriage with his first wife without having anyone waiting in the wings. So there’s another example.
Codependency and having a new partner waiting in the wings is solely a male thing? Tell that to my female best friend, who’s been doing it since she started dating in high school. She hasn’t been single since she was 14 because of this very pattern. At the end of each relationship, she says she wants to be by herself for a while, but fear and low self-esteem lead to her picking whoever happens to be standing nearby to fall in love with and jump to before the prior relationship is officially over.
My advice to Soph would be to apologize sincerely, making sure that it’s clear that the guy knows she understands about his past traumas and she knows how this hurt him. But then she has to ask him to let the topic drop, if he really trusts her not to repeat the incident. And along with that, she could say that as she sees it, the relationship is in danger of breaking down (not “he’s ruining the relationship”–avoid blame).
There’s something here for Christians as well as feminists; the idea that there is sin but there is also forgiveness of sin. And ultimately, to refuse to forgive is a pretty bad sin in itself. To claim payment, or the right to commit sins of one’s own in exchange, isn’t true forgiveness, it’s extortion.
By the way, another male here who’s ended a relationship without another to take its place. Twice, actually. And once when yes, there was someone else.
I don’t think codependency and having a new partner waiting in the wings is limited to males either. A sister-in-law has a pattern of immediately jumping into relationships. The family always blames the men she is with. She has zero responsibility and accountability for anything–ever. The favorite lament is that she can’t find suitable men. At least one male relative says, “She’s so pretty men just won’t leave her alone.” And so the saga continues with a bevy of unstable relationships. She’s also quite practiced in quoting relationships books and sounds intelligent, but she doesn’t practice the lessons in her own life.
I also agree with this insightful observation from Tom, “A major problem I think that contributes to this sort of situation is that many of us are often unwilling to earnestly face up to and accept responsibility for the wrongs we have done to our partners in a relationship. That leaves them the only option of seeking satisfaction for themselves of their grievances against us by the only means they have available when we cannot offer it of ourselves to them.”
Lack of accepting personal responsibility and the lack and willingness to offer a sincere apology eventually kill emotional intimacy and will undermine the relationship. You can’t build a relationship or maintain one without trust and respect and engaging in behaviors that will suck out all the emotional intimacy. The relationship will become hollow.
I agree with this observation too, “In this case, I think that both partners owe each other a significant measure of atonement, but I get the sense, from the tone of the message, that both of them are using each others’ behavior as an excuse not to do so and to minimize what they did.”
It also sounds like the guy needs to be able to cultivate greater emotional support preferably not from or just limited to ex-girlfriends.
“There’s something here for Christians as well as feminists; the idea that there is sin but there is also forgiveness of sin. And ultimately, to refuse to forgive is a pretty bad sin in itself. To claim payment, or the right to commit sins of one’s own in exchange, isn’t true forgiveness, it’s extortion.”
Interesting…In my experience “forgiveness” is most often conveniently used as a means to silence the aggrieved as well as to shame and extort compliant behaviors. The concept of atonement is much different.
NotSoSure — i left my wife without another relationship in the wings. Not that I waited long after leaving before embarking on a new one. Maybe you see the latter and mistake it for the former sometimes. I know my ex has trouble believing that there was no overlap, since the lag between leaving her and finding my new love was short.
Indeed, I’m a little puzzled at the suggestion that men’ll only leave a relationship when they’ve got another option lined up. I’ve only one data point of ending a long term relationship to add, but no, I had no prospective relationships lined up (and it was roughly five months until I dated again.)
Indeed, the idea of having options waiting strikes me as the kind thing I’d associate with being a woman. (Though like almost every gendered description, that probably tells very little about how things actually play out, and very much about how ideas of gender play out in my mind. And now that I articulate that, it’s obvious where the “Men’ll only leave a long term relationship when they’ve got someone lined up” idea comes from.)
Well, no, Hugo, they’re way past where you and Ethel were and into emotionally abusive territory. I get the impression you were too enamored of rhapsodizing about “gosh, that was just like me!” to notice.
The difference is that you and Ethel had ongoing bad behaviors. However dysfunctional it was to say “I won’t stop until you stop” – and that’s pretty dysfunctional – it was something the two of you were continuing to do. Whereas Sophrosyne’s bad behavior has happened. It’s over, she can’t undo it, she can’t say “I have stopped driving drunk so you can stop the infidelity”. She can’t go back and time and un-happen it.
So her boyfriend is using it as an excuse to punish her and to do what he really wanted to do anyway. Because “I’ll stop if you stop” puts a definite end to things – as soon as you stop doing X, I will stop doing Y – whereas “I’ll stop when I deem you sufficiently punished” goes on exactly as long as the punisher wants with absolutely no input from the other person.
It’s also clear that the boyfriend is using “I hate drunk driving” as an excuse because fooling around has absolutely nothing to do with drunk driving. He’s not insisting that she go to AA, or refusing to get in a car with her. In parenting terms, this is not a ‘logical consequence’. If I come home and find that my husband fooled around on the computer all day and didn’t do dishes, a logical consequence is “I’m not going to make that cheesecake you were looking forward to, because you didn’t wash the dishes.” An emotionally-abusive, selfish pretense of a consequence would be “Fine, I’m going to go out and party with my friends all night because you blew off work.”
On the issue of seeing ex-girlfriends, that’s a problem but how it is a problem depends on things not in the post. If Soph simply can’t handle the idea of an SO ever talking to a woman he’s ever dated, that’s a security issue she needs to deal with. But – and given the boyfriend’s behavior this wouldn’t surprise me – it may be that he is one of those people who likes having exes around because they’re still interested in him and that’s flattering, or because he likes to keep his options open, or because doing so makes his current SO jealous and insecure. The fact that she casts the issue as ‘spending lots of time with them’ rather than simply making contact with them suggests that the exes aren’t simply platonic buddies.
Whatever the case is, she shouldn’t be bothering to give him time. Seven months is not a lot to walk away from, particularly from a person who is eagerly awaiting your mistakes as an excuse to do what they wanted to do anyway.
The guy I dated before my husband was killed by being run over by a drunk driver. It was the most miserable experience of my life. Joel, my husband, knew that about me practically from day one, and if I’d found out, seven months into the relationship, that he’d been drunk driving, even just once, I’d have been out the door. I wouldn’t have given him a second chance; it would have been too painful to live with. To me, personally, drunk driving would be a worse betrayal than cheating.
That doesn’t, of course, mean that it would be a betrayal that would justify cheating. I’d have left, not shopped for another partner. And if he drank and drove at a point where it was no longer so easy for me to walk away (say, now, after we’ve been married for more than twenty years), what I’d be demanding would be harsh, but in the form of a logical consequence: You turn over your keys to both cars and accept me being your driver. I drive you to a professional who can evaluate why your behavior has undergone this sudden change (in his case, if he did this suddenly after more than twenty years, I’d worry that such drastically uncharacteristic behavior might indicate a medical issue – for other couples, I’d imagine a demand to go to AA would be the equivalent). We don’t return your driving privileges until I’m able to be satisfied you’ve taken care of whatever issue made you drink and drive.
On the matter of who has someone waiting in the wings when leaving, I’ve both been broken up with and broken up, in heterosexual relationships, without the person breaking up having someone waiting in the wings, and I’ve known people of both sexes who left very long term relationships without someone waiting. I’ve also known people who never leave without someone waiting. Sometimes it’s because they’re openly poly, and simply aren’t ever seeing only one person at a time, but other times, the escape hatch is lined up, in a formerly monogamous relationship, before the break up. I wouldn’t be surprised if men do this more often (given that women initiate more divorces, it’s possible men find it harder to just walk away), but I’d be surprised if such a difference is as lopsided as NotSoSure says.
It sounds to me as if this particular relationship isn’t long for this world, and Soph might well be best off getting the break up over with, learning what she can from it, and hoping to do better next time.
i am interested in thoughts from anyone, knowing that neither me nor anyone else, will know the answer for sure.
a couple i know in their 40′s married for several years resulted in the husband leaving apparently quite suddenly, with refusal to seek councelling. within 6 weeks of his leaving, his new partner – who lives several hundred miles away but was known to him at least by e-mail for a few months prior to that, announced her divorce on a blog. within 10 weeks of him leaving, she blogged about what seemed to be a well developed new love relationship in her life.
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does this sound to anyone like this could be the kind of things where he/she was ‘waiting in the wings’ for the other – even if there had been no sexual affair.
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it also does not appear that he is taking any repsonsibility for the marriage breakdown but apparently ‘could not take it anymore’.
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although it can never be proven, it seems like the sort of thing where each were ‘waiting in the wings’. usually, it seems , being aviaible for truely healty relationship means that someone has taken time to reflect and take ownership. over long distance over a fairly short time relative to leaving, does suggest to me that this bonding did not start only after he left.
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perhaps i am just cynical?
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thoughts?
questioning,
Yes, it’s possible and does sound like it could be that they were “waiting in the wings”. It’s hard to know. Perhaps I’m just cynical too. Someone who suddenly decides to leave without warning and who refuses counseling sounds like they left the marriage some time ago and they don’t want to own it or to take any measure of responsibility. If someone walks away like that there’s really nothing that the other person can do, because you cannot control people.
For the record, I tend to agree that to truely be emotionally available in a healthy relationship one needs time for self-introspection and to take ownership. The actions that you describe sounds like that of a narcissist, and unfortunately the majority of people characterized as narcissists have little interest in changing their style and will most often choose to abandon someone if they seem to be demanding something they are unwilling to give. They’ll just move on to their next target. Those are my thoughts…