The initial reaction to Governor Mark Sanford’s admission of infidelity has been to see it as one more example of the sexual depravity of politicians or perhaps of ambitious, successful men in general. Sanford was initially portrayed as another man who gave into sexual desire because he could, that is because some combination of the opportunities presented to him by women infatuated with power on the one hand, and his self-absorption, on the other, lead him risk his career and his family in pursuit of sexual pleasure.
But, it did not take long for at least some people to see that Sanford is different. He’s no Eliot Spitzer pursuing sex with an expensive call girl. He’s no Jack Kennedy, keeping a few women on his staff for the purpose of satisfying him whenever he got the urge.
No one in pursuit of just sex takes up with a woman thousands of miles away. Sanford, instead, did something that at first look, seems unusual for a politician or an ambitious successful man. He fell in love with another woman, a woman with whom he has had a long and close friendship, a woman he may well still love today and with whom he recently spent a weekend not, to use the word that only appears in newspaper articles on adultery, trysting, but tearfully breaking up.
And he may not be the only politician to fall in love outside his marriage. A recent book, In Search of Bill Clinton, by John D. Gartner, suggests that Bill Clinton’s relationship with Monica Lewinsky was far emotional than either he or is critics have acknowledged.
It’s not hard to understand why politicians who have been caught cheating are eager to portray themselves as having slipped in response to sexual temptation. Most of us believe—and certainly a wife is likely to believe—that a limited sexual relationship is much less of a betrayal of a marriage than a love affair. That’s why politicians like Bill Clinton and John Edwards have been quick to claim that their indiscretions were limited in both time and in any emotional connection.
That we accept what we might call the standard view of political infidelity, however, strikes me as a deep failure to understand sexual and romantic life, one that is encouraged both by ideas that run deep in our culture and by contemporary ideas about sex that are, by and large, a reaction to traditional notions.
In short, we massively overestimate the importance of sexual desire and underestimate the importance of love in adultery.
We do so, in part, because we accept a set of ideas about the anarchic power of sex, ideas that are as old as that of the Greek philosophers of two thousand years ago who saw sexuality as a lower appetite in conflict with our higher powers and as new as evolutionary explanations of why men find monogamy so difficult. This long line of thought leads us to believe that our sexual appetites are fundamentally in conflict with our reason and morality. So it is not hard, on this view, to understand why men whose appetites— for power as well as sex—are particular strong, are likely to find it hard to resist temptation. We can also see why the very same men are likely to think that the power they hold will enable them to escape the consequences of aduitery.
Mark Sanford’s behavior suggests another possibility, one that some research on adultery tends to support as well. Men and women cheat on their spouses for many reasons. Some primarily do seek sexual pleasure. That however is most likely when they and their spouse are sexually incompatible in one way or another.
But far more often, men and women have affairs initially for emotional not sexual reasons—because they are chronically insecure; because they feel unappreciated by their spouse; because they feel unappreciated by others; because they are lonely; because other aspects of their life are not going well…and because they fall in love.
And people are most likely to fall in love with someone they have known for a time; someone to whom they have become close; someone with whom they have felt free to share something of themselves; someone who at some point they discover has touched their soul deeply and in doing so empowered them.
Our usually tendency to put sexual desire first in thinking about adultery forgets just how empowering love is. It forgets that love opens our eyes to beauty, not just in the one we love but in ourselves and the world around us. It forgets that love encourages us to embrace new experiences and ideas. It forgets that love inspires us to think and do things that had seemed beyond us. It forgets that love connects us not just to another person but to the entire universe. It forget that the passion and energy with which we love spills over into our whole life. It forgets that sexual desires gets most of its strength from love and not the other way around.
And it also forgets that love, far more than sexual desire, strains against convention and regularity.
The pleasure of sex relaxes us and brightens our day. Sexual satisfaction lets us move on to other things.
Love, however, seeks experience, both sexual and non-sexual, that is transcendent, that leaves us in a different mood and place. It seeks epiphany, a moment in time when the everyday busyness of our lives stops and we connect to a truth that makes sense of our existence. Love is obsessive and constant, something one revels in, not move on from. And it is potentially dangerous as well. To love deeply is to run the risk that one’s love will be unreturned. And it is to embrace the near certainty that sooner or later one’s love will be lost.
These romantic ideas are hard to credit these days when we obsessively focus on sex and ignore love. That’s true for those who hold the older idea about the anarchic power of sex I discussed above. They believe we need to limit sex so that we can diminish its power.
And, strangely enough, romantic ideas about love are also hard to credit among those who want to bring sex entirely out into the open, with the belief that in doing so we will make sex safe, in all respects. From that point of view, when we make sex safe we will come to pursue sexual pleasure as we do food or entertainment. It will be just one more fun thing to do, which will always go well provided we have the right guidebooks and equipment. Seen this way, monogamy is not necessarily important. In a world in which whatever consenting adults do is to be respected, it is just one lifestyle choice. But it is a choice husbands and wives must make together to have the complete honesty that we take for granted as the essence of a good relationship.
Seeing sex in either of these ways leads us to condemn someone who cheats on his wife in the harshest way. For either he is a sinner who has given into to his lower nature. Or he is an abuser of the trust of his wife, who has no excuse, not even in the power of sexual desire, for seeking his fun and games with someone other than his wife.
Seeing sex as all powerful and seeing it as fun and games leads us to forget why and when sex actually does becomes powerful and potentially anarchic, that is, when sexual desire is the product of a passionate love that fights against all limits and restraints. And from that perspective, while adultery is no less a violation of trust and a real threat to children, it is also something that is understandable product of our human nature as beings who love.
Maybe, if we can get past the urge to mock and jeer, Mark Sanford’s tearful, rambling bearing of his soul the other day will help us remember just what love can mean in our lives. That Sanford cheated out of love is likely to make it much harder for him to reconcile with his wife. But, I’m hoping the rest of us will find Sanford’s adultery less rather than more despicable when we understand that it is a product not of sexual desire alone, whether powerful or playful, but rather of the pursuit of a passion that we should hope to share.