Sex and Marriage Aren't Always Siblings.

A female friend said to me once that if a married man has even the slightest inclination to sleep with another woman, it proves there must be something wrong with his marriage. I told her that I regard this as a naïve, simplistic and fundamentally flawed idea because it’s based on a false presumption.

It presumes what our culture, geared as it is to Judaic notions of morality and the family unit, wants us to believe – that sex, romance, love and companionship are inseparable; that they all sit together in the same emotion centre. They don’t, at least not in everybody. I suspect it might be truer in the case of women, but I have known men who feel an irrepressible need to sleep around and maybe use prostitutes, and yet still have a perfectly happy and successful marriage.

Don’t misunderstand me here; I’m not suggesting that a man should behave that way, because his wife has a right to have her feelings taken into account. This isn’t a male-oriented, sexist post. I accept that if a man truly makes a commitment to a woman through the act of marrying her, he is obligated to respect her view on exclusivity. What I’m saying is that the fact that he wants to behave in such a manner doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a flaw in his relationship with his wife. It simply means that his sexual proclivities reside in one emotion centre, while his concept of love and companionship – the basics of a happy marriage - lives in another. They’re not connected. Lots of men – and some women, too, I expect – are simply made that way.

As to where my predilections fit into this issue, I think we’ve had quite enough TMI for one day.