"I think it's wonderful that your married. I think it's just delicate! I mean I wouldn't be lying on floor in the middle of the night in some man's apartment drinking champagne if he wasn't married!"
I've been happily married for seven years. For most of those seven years I have tried to take the "Pence approach" modeled on the Billy Graham rule:
"We all knew of evangelists who had fallen into immorality while separated from their families by travel. We pledged among ourselves to avoid any situation that would have even the appearance of compromise or suspicion. From that day on, I did not travel, meet or eat alone with a woman other than my wife. We determined that the Apostle Paul’s mandate to the young pastor Timothy would be ours as well: “Flee . . . youthful lusts” (2 Timothy 1:22)
Pence got a lot of flack for his "demonizing" women with this approach, seeing them "only as an object of temptation" and taking extreme measures to avoid being alone with his staff members. But for the Christian concerned with sexual integrity, this was common sense stuff. Sometimes I forget that most women really don't know what it's like to be a man, but men intuitively know what we are capable of, especially when resolves are weakened by alcohol, distance from home, or marital struggles. Sometimes circumstances would necessitate me traveling with a member of the opposite sex (carpooling), but for the most part the Pence Approach has been a good rule of thumb to minimize the potential to find oneself in a compromising situation.
You can't always have your cake and eat it too, either. A few years ago I had a good friend that I reconnected with, though I can't remember the circumstances. We had worked together in the city years before, and she was a Christian. I knew her husband. We would text and email every now and then, nothing that I wouldn't show my wife if I asked, mostly conversations about faith and Christian living. I so desperately wanted Christian friends to connect with during times when I felt under siege in a pagan culture that I was willing to be somewhat gender-blind.
Still...I had a feeling I was on a slope that was a little slick. What if things got hard with my wife and I turned to this other person who seemed to understand my spiritual struggles? We had plans to get together with our kids at a park or something when she was in town one time a few years ago, but I thought better of it and said that while innocent enough, it probably wasn't a good idea. She mentioned she was relieved I had called off the meeting for similar reasons. While there was never any explicit attraction, the potential was there, and I think both of us, sensing it, distanced ourselves and eventually fell out of touch.
I've never been a good lier, or even tempted by it. As a kid I would get so anxious and sick to my stomach at the prospect of having to keep stories straight under pressure that I just vowed to never get caught in a lie by never telling one. I did have a couple friends who dated compulsive liers, which wasn't apparent right away (they was that good). There's something psychologically off about someone who lies about even little things that don't matter in order to maintain a web of untruths. I just figured, in my adult life, it was just easier to always tell the truth.
So, my wife knows I can't really lie, and that I won't really try. If I do something wrong, I fess up to it pretty much right away, for my selfish sake as well as hers.
But adultery isn't just "something wrong" that one does, like saying you took out the garbage when you really didn't. No; adultery is a complete and utter betrayal. It breaks vows, it rends hearts, it destroys families. While forgiveness is possible, some marriages never recover from such a blow, with trust never getting restored. It is such a serious threat that I don't think being a little extra cautious, a little extra 'extreme', is unwarranted.
My litmus is if I catch myself looking over my shoulder, or feeling like there is something I need to hide from my wife, that's a red flag. I have plenty of platonic friendships with members of the opposite sex, but as a general rule I don't "hang out" or get together without including her. I also will hand over my phone or email if she asks to see it (she rarely does), and because I have yielded authority of my body to my wife (1 Cor 7:4), I use her feelings as a gauge. She is a reasonable person and a sensible woman: if she's uncomfortable with something, it's for good reason, and I need to pay attention to and respect that. I can also be gullible and naive, not unlike Marilyn Monroe in the apartment scene, so she is a good point of defense in the event I am missing something.
I was reading an article in the Atlantic ("Why Happy People Cheat") this afternoon about a woman who was having an affair. She had a great marriage to a wonderful, devoted husband, fulfilled with her kids, overall a great life. And yet she was cheating. Why? Seemed to undermine the "I'm not happy in my marriage so I'll look outside it for fulfillment" theory. She was happy in her marriage, and loved her husband dearly. So what would possess someone to be unfaithful when they seem to have everything going for them? The author made an interesting point about the nature of the allure:
"Affairs are by definition precarious, elusive, and ambiguous. The indeterminacy, the uncertainty, the not knowing when we’ll see each other again—feelings we would never tolerate in our primary relationship—become kindling for anticipation in a hidden romance. Because we cannot have our lover, we keep wanting. It is this just-out-of-reach quality that lends affairs their erotic mystique and keeps the flame of desire burning. Reinforcing this segregation of the affair from reality is the fact that many, like Priya, choose lovers who either could not or would not become a life partner. By falling for someone from a very different class, culture, or generation, we play with possibilities that we would not entertain as actualities."
She goes on to describe how our view of modern marriage as a modal of self-fulfillment opens the door so easily to infidelity:
"Never before have our expectations of marriage taken on such epic proportions. We still want everything the traditional family was meant to provide—security, respectability, property, and children—but now we also want our partner to love us, to desire us, to be interested in us. We should be best friends and trusted confidants, and passionate lovers to boot.
Contained within the small circle of the wedding band are vastly contradictory ideals. We want our chosen one to offer stability, safety, predictability, and dependability. And we want that very same person to supply awe, mystery, adventure, and risk. We expect comfort and edge, familiarity and novelty, continuity and surprise. We have conjured up a new Olympus, where love will remain unconditional, intimacy enthralling, and sex oh so exciting, with one person, for the long haul. And the long haul keeps getting longer."
For Christian men and women, there are practical steps one can take to safeguard one's marriage. But beyond the nuts and bolts, there is a philosophical underpinning that needs to be addressed, and that is marriage is not ultimately about being happy. Happiness can emerge as a pleasant by-product, but when pursued for its own sake, it is elusive. Like a Chinese finger trap, the more we serve ourselves and our own needs, the more we struggle. Marriage is best served in a spirit of submission, which is why Paul encourages men to love their wives "as Christ loved the Church and handed himself over to her" (Eph 5:25). In the same way a man may grow to love virtue because it becomes sweet, so serving one's wife does not have the bitter aftertaste that self-fulfillment does.
Marriage is a lot of little things that build on big things. The big things are love, faithfulness, devotion, faith, etc. But the little things are important too, because they gain weight over time, like dust on a ledge. There is a little practice I have come to do as a reminder of this, just a stupid little thing, but helpful: every time I serve dinner, I always give my wife the plate I would want to eat myself--the one with the bigger porkchop or the nicer salad. It's a daily habit that gets reinforced over time and, I hope, is a way of practicing self-forgetting.
We can't completely shield ourselves from the danger of unfaithfulness. But there are common-sense things we can do to protect our marriages. Why is it important? Because, as Cardinal Raymond Burke relays, “There is no greater force against evil in the world than the love of a man and woman in marriage.”
Great post. Yes, Cardinal Burke's quote says it all. “There is no greater force against evil in the world than the love of a man and woman in marriage.”
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