In the beginning of a new romance, the skeptics dismiss our feelings. We hear that we’re ‘just’ infatuated, that we’re in lust, that it is not real, it is hormones (or pheromones).

The message I get, from all of that, is that in the beginning it is sex. Lust. And the lustiness and the sexytimes are somehow not ‘real’.

I disagree.

I disagree because I think that what we’re actually talking about when we talk about the insane torturous obsessive bliss of a growing new connection is the romantic drive, not the sex drive. My imaginary girlfriend, Helen Fisher, writes that nobody is going to throw themselves off a bridge if someone rejects their sexual advances. But people kill themselves – and others – when their love is spurned. My imaginary lovers, the polyamorists, call this amazing, compelling force (the romance, the bliss, the growth, not the spurning) “New Relationship Energy” or NRE.

I really, truly, madly deeply get this. I think new love is generative; I think it is inspiring; I think the sun shines brighter and flowers lean toward you seeking your touch as you brush by. I think this is the stuff of life and that we should approach it a little more fearlessly and trust that we can pick up the pieces if it all goes to hell.

And yet. Despite the fact that I’ve written that I’m bored with dating and tepid, safe, therapized approaches to love, there is something that gives me pause. Something that makes me suspicious of any new man in my life (I try, oh how I try, not to punish the New Man for the sins of those who came before), and something that makes me feel around in the hot, sexy, scary dark for the hand-brake.

And that something is married men.

Online dating stats say that one in three online daters is married. As in actually, substantively married, not separated, not waiting for the ink to dry on the papers, MARRIED.

Umm, why?

I suspect that the answer is Hallmark/harlequin romance/chick flick depictions of love (The Notebook, I’m a-talking to you). The problem might be a cultural narrative of swept-off-the-feet, things-left-unsaid, and tragic-misunderstandings-R-Us love. We think that romance and love just happen, that we don’t need to talk about it and that our lovers will just magically know our heart’s desires and satisfy them. Then we pillory them and harbour crushing disappointment and resentment when that is not the case.

Romantic disappointment is a disease and an epidemic and it must be prevented. It is killing us and killing our families and our marriages and relationships. And the only solution is to talk your way out. Revealing your desires and boundaries and needs is challenging. Negotiation can be exhilirating. Admitting vulnerability and being allowed to see it in your lover is intoxicating.

[Maybe I believe this because I'm a talkative woman. Words are my foreplay. You literally can talk me into bed and I wish you would.]

Back to my point: I’ve been struggling with this married-man-seeking-other-relationship thing. Not because I am going to judge the relationships or the sexualities of other people – intellectually I fall in the polyamorist camp although emotionally I probably need monogamy – but because I just do not understand the deception, and what is motivating the deception.

Dear Married Man:

Ok, I nominally get why you lie to your wife. You two have struck a monogamous deal; and you’re over it. Yet you don’t want to lose your love, your family, your house and half your net worth. You don’t want to take apart your life and sacrifice your friends and social respect. You need something (we’ll talk about what that something is, in a minute), and you’re determined to have it; you think you’re entitled to it, even if you have to lead a double life to get it. I get that.

This is what I don’t get: you’re already lying to your wife. That has to be exhausting. It can’t be good for the soul. The word I’m thinking of is ‘taxing’. You must just want to relax into confidence, to tell someone, let someone know the secrets of your heart and your mind and your life. Don’t you want to be known?

So why lie to the ‘other’ woman and tell her that you are single, and available?

Sincerely want to know,
Kelly

This is an urgent, unresolved question that shadows me relentlessly. Early in the year I met a man who is a pilot and flight instructor. He worked unconventional and long hours. Still, he worked hard to see me, carving out time before and after work, weeknights, whenever he could. We spent hours on the phone late in the night, talking about everything, solving the problems of misguided humanity, and plotting our imminent world-wide coup.

And then his wife called me.

She didn’t yell at me. She didn’t call me names. She was strong; she wanted to know the whole story so she could understand exactly what she was dealing with; she didn’t blame me. She even offered me sympathy for his deception. She said that he said I was a wonderful person. They were both of the opinion that he had done me wrong and that I deserved better.

I was shocked. I did not see this coming. I had not connected his unavailability with ‘married’; I had accepted at face value that his career consumed most of his time. I even respected his passion and commitment to his work.

I was soul-sick; I cried my stupid eyes out – not for him – because honestly, I had been talking myself into him – but for her. And her two year old child. To be the cause of pain for another woman, to put her in a situation where she had to reevaluate her marriage and her life and the life she wanted to give her daughter – this was an abyss. Abysmal. Wrong.

And inexplicable. Leaving aside the question of betraying your wife, the person you have pledged your heart and your soul and your life to – why lie to a single woman who wants a ‘real’ relationship, when there are legions of people who don’t mind that you’re married and will sleep with you knowing that you are married?

Because there are lots of women who specialize in married men. So why lie to a woman about being married? There’s really no need.

The pessimistic part of me thinks it is power. Withholding information, being in the know while others are not, getting one over on the women who try to pin you down – maybe that’s where the friction is. Maybe that’s the heat.

The optimistic part of me says it is the romantic drive, the thirst for the New Relationship Energy. Maybe it is not just sex – we like to condemn married people’s affairs by reducing them to sex – maybe it is the communion, the caring, the friendship, the passion. And the hot sex. Of course. But maybe it is a hunger for romance and the desire to see yourself reflected without disappointment in the eyes of a new love. And maybe we think that romance cannot be negotiated; that admitting to an older, more established relationship hollows the new relationship of possibilities and frission; that connection has to happen like a soul’s thunder clap, immediate and without warning; and maybe our culture narrative about love and romance is so impoverished that we think that unless ‘forever’ and ‘I’m yours, and only yours’ is on the table, it can’t be real.

I can’t know of course; I’m not a married man. But these are the things I wonder. If you wonder, or you know, let me know. The comments are all for you, baby.

kelly at kellydiels dot com