Quotes About Commitment

When I ask her if her open marriage isn't painful, she answers, "Sometimes it is. Sometimes it's not. But monogamy—which we never negotiated, by the way—was painful, too.

For these couples, fidelity is defined not by sexual exclusivity but by the strength of their commitment.

I got rid of my motorcycle when Jimmy was born. I'm not allowed to die in a bike crash anymore.

If you trade passion for stability, you basically trade one fiction for another. Both are products of our imagination.

trust is also a leap of faith—"a risk masquerading as a promise,"7 as Adam Phillips writes.

despite its widespread denunciation, infidelity has a tenacity that marriage can only envy.

She says, "I am so sick of the excuses

When you pick a partner, you pick a story, and then you find yourself in a play you never auditioned for. And that is when the narratives clash.

Today we have sex because we're in the mood, we feel like it—hopefully, with each other; preferably, at the same time; and ideally, with unflagging passion for decades on end.

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—all the anchoring experiences. And we want that very same person to supply awe, mystery, adventure, and risk. Give me comfort and give me edge. Give me familiarity and give me novelty. Give me continuity and give me surprise. Lovers today seek to bring under one roof desires that have forever had separate dwellings.

Falling in love, as Francesco Alberoni writes, "rearranges all our priorities, throws the superfluous overboard, projects a glaring light onto what is superficial and instantly discards it.

As children we have the opportunity to play at other roles; as adults we often find ourselves confined by the ones we've been assigned or the ones we have chosen. When we select a partner, we commit to a story. Yet we remain forever curious: What other stories could we have been part of? Affairs offer us a window into those other lives, a peek at the stranger within. Adultery is often the revenge of the deserted possibilities.

At its best monogamy may be the wish to find someone to die with; at its worst it is a cure for the terrors of aliveness. They are easily confused. —Adam Phillips, Monogamy

Affairs have a lot to teach us about relationships—what we expect, what we think we want, and what we feel entitled to. They offer a unique window into our personal and cultural attitudes about love, lust, and commitment.

Yet despite its widespread denunciation, infidelity has a tenacity that marriage can only envy.

Infidelity happens in good marriages, in bad marriages, and even when adultery is punishable by death. It happens in open relationships where extramarital sex is carefully negotiated beforehand. And the freedom to leave or divorce has not made cheating obsolete.

First, the institutionalization of relationships—a passage from freedom and independence to commitment and responsibility. Second, the overfamiliarity that develops when intimacy and closeness replace individuality and mystery. And lastly, the desexualizing nature of certain roles—mother, wife, and house manager all promote the de-eroticization of the self.

For those affairs that do stay alive past the altar, there is the pressure to "make it seem worth the cost

monogamy should be an "opt-in." If people were given more opportunity to choose, he offers, maybe some of them wouldn't have opted in and then they wouldn't be in trouble for adultery. Rather than penalize those who fail monogamy's standardized test, we should recognize that the test is disproportionately difficult.

You need two things in a marriage," she told me. "You need the will to make it work and you need to be able to make compromises. It's not hard to be right, but then you are right and alone.

Today in the West most of us are going to have two or three significant long-term relationships or marriages. And some of us are going to do it with the same person. When a couple comes to me in the aftermath of an affair, I often tell them this: Your first marriage is over. Would you like to create a second one together?

Often, when one partner insists that they don't yet feel acknowledged, even as the one who hurt them insists they feel terrible, it is because the response is still more shame than guilt, and therefore self-focused. In the aftermath of betrayal, authentic guilt, leading to remorse, is an essential repair tool. A sincere apology signals a care for and commitment to the relationship, a sharing of the burden of suffering

It is no longer a sin against God, a breaking of a family alliance, a muddying of the bloodline, or a dispersion of resources and inheritances. At the core of betrayal today is a violation of trust: We expect our partner to act according to our shared set of assumptions, and we base our own behavior on that.

When we select a partner, we commit to a story. Yet we remain forever curious: what other stories could we have been part of? Affairs offer us a window into those other lives, a peek at the stranger within. Adultery is often the revenge of the deserted possibilities.