Seventeenth date 4, Fidelity and infidelity

We talked about sex and fidelity. D has a very close friendship with one of her colleagues, Rog, a young and handsome man who is new to the school this year. She describes their friendship as a kind of mentorship, but it means that the two of them often dine together and sit up long into the night over bottles of wine talking. Naturally I have sometimes wondered if that’s all they were doing. And sometimes I have told myself that it is best to assume they might be fucking too, so that I won’t be taken by surprise if it ever turns out to be true. But other people have noticed that this friendship seems really deep, and really intense. D’s next-door neighbor, who is in his eighties and dearly wants her in his bed, is outrageously jealous of Rog. Then there is another woman on the faculty who is clearly in love with Rog, and she has stopped speaking to D. When D tells Rog that maybe they should withdraw just a bit, Rog says the idea that anyone could misunderstand their friendship as sexual is absurd. But D can tell that when Rog socializes with other faculty members (and especially the woman who is in love with him), he seriously downplays the time he spends with D or the depth of their long talks.

So what is the reality? Are D and Rog really lovers? Alas, no. D also told me, rather wistfully, about jokes Rog has made about some of the other faculty members, indicating that he thinks the idea of sex among old people is just disgusting. How old is “old”? Well, Rog is the same age as D’s son, the younger of her two children. D is, quite literally, old enough to be his mother. To be sure, she keeps herself in remarkably good shape. She is exquisitely beautiful for a woman in her late fifties. And as you all know she is a remarkable sexual dynamo. But still … she could be his mother. Old enough? Yeah, ‘fraid so.

Well what about this question of fidelity? D was reading a long essay by Wendell Berry that discussed sexual fidelity in the context of the story of Odysseus’s return home to Penelope. What kind of fidelity did each of them show? Penelope rejected the advances of all the suitors; so far as we are told, she lived a sexless life in the twenty years between her husband’s departure for Troy and his return. Odysseus couldn’t quite say the same thing. The nymph Calypso held him trapped on her island for seven years; and while he spent every day weeping and longing for home, he spent his nights – Homer is quite clear about this – in Calypso’s bed. And yet, in the end he rejects her offer of immortality and eternal bliss, choosing instead of return to his own little island, his hearth and home, and mortality. And in this he shows a kind of fidelity to Penelope, regardless whom he was fucking in the meantime.

I’m not sure I followed what D said about the Wendell Berry essay, but I picked up this theme of fidelity to hearth and home. I pointed out to D that her affair with me does not fundamentally betray her home or her husband … he no longer wants sex with her anyway, and she would never wish him harm. What she has with him and what she has with me do not conflict in any meaningful way. By contrast, my Wife’s infidelities were more destructive; in the case of every single lover she planned, at one point or other, to leave me and run away with him (or her). Every single lover was an excuse to attack me, to denigrate me, to vilify me, to make plans (to my detriment) behind my back. And in the end, I suppose you could say that my affair with D has similarly betrayed Wife, insofar as she has given me the ability to imagine a life beyond my marriage, and the desire to get free of it. (All I can say in my own defense was that by the time I fell together with D, the marriage had suffered enough damage to be terminal.)

So I told D that I thought this concept of fidelity to the relationship was critical. A new love who makes you abandon the old love (or war against him) – as Aegisthus conspired with Clytemnestra to butcher Agamemnon – is a betrayal. That is infidelity. But a new love who inspires no such abandonment – Calypso with Odysseus, as over against Penelope – is no betrayal, and no breach of the fundamental fidelity to your common love for each other.

Why raise the subject at all? Neither of us has a new love on the horizon. Heaven knows D won’t be getting lewd suggestions from Rog any time soon … or any time ever. Well, I told her, we can never predict the future. Sometimes surprising things happen. And if she ever finds a beautiful opportunity drop into her lap (so to speak), vows of fidelity to me would leave her only two choices: pass it up, or lie to me about it afterwards. I told her that both of those choices seem bad to me, and I want her to be free to accept such a delight without having to lie to me.

You know, she reminded me, I am in my fifties. That kind of offer isn’t likely to come along very often at this point.

I know, I told her. But let’s not rule out the possibility of a happy miracle. And so I want you to know where I stand, and that I want love and joy for you … just in case.

D smiled, and thanked me. We embraced. And then, after a pause, she said “Likewise.”

It’s a change from the intense jealousy on which she earlier prided herself, and I think it is for the good.