When I'm seeing someone new there are two ideas I use to torture myself about the other person. The first is that I imagine that the woman I'm seeing used to be a man and is secretly waiting for an opportune time to spring this sensitive bit of post-op information on me. The second, much more common way, is thinking that they're off sleeping with someone else on nights when we can't be together. I don't take either very seriously; both ideas pop up and evaporate again fairly quickly after they've bubbled into my brain. The sex change notion is admittedly ridiculous. So is the fear of being cheated on, at the end of the day, but it seems to strike a much deeper chord.
I have never cheated on anyone. To the best of my knowledge, I've never been cheated on either. I'm also not all that concerned with the idea of being cheated on. It's a superficial insecurity I have when I'm seeing someone. The idea pops into my head when a call gets forwarded to voicemail some night I was hoping to come over: of course she can't answer the phone, she's busy thumping some random bartender from the corner dive. And he's probably got better abs than me, a bigger cock, and can hold out all night without coming.
The fear that your partner is cheating on you is almost always self-reflexive. It's a subconscious way to lacerate yourself with your private insecurities and the extent to which you take it seriously can be a real danger sign that you've got less invested in your partner as a person than as salve for all of those psychic weak spots. Sex is a powerful and intimate thing, but it's also a body function driven by wants that are frequently beyond our ability to rationalize. For all of its ascendant potential, its still a base and animalistic act, no more important than a glass of water as the Leninism goes.
There's a certain evolutionary logic to the fear of infidelity. I'm sure proto-man's worst fear was the idea of someone else laying seed in his partner because it represented a direct threat to his ability to carry on his lineage. I don't think I could ever begrudge a partner the fulfilling of some basic physical satisfaction. At the same time, we're not cave people anymore and the choice to enter into a monogamous relationship with someone and then double back on that promise is almost always an indicator of something amiss. We're complex, psychological creatures now.
I remember when I separated from the last woman I was seeing I couldn't even bring myself to masturbate for a month after she left. When I finally did I barely even felt the orgasm. I looked down at the opening on the tip of my penis as I was coming and it seemed like a sad little mouth wailing forth some fluid version of a whale song, mourning. The body, the form, and the function remain, but the special purpose had gone away. That's why the notion of cheating has never seriously occurred to me when I've been seeing someone I loved. I definitely register interest and attraction in other people, but there's such a gap between the gratification of a good fuck with a stranger and the kind of ecstatic experience of having sex with someone you love that it's not seriously comparable. If the form and function supercede the intimate purpose of the act, than there's probably a huge impass in the way you relate to your partner.
Then again, I'm thirty-one. Thinking about the kinds of statistics that Peggy Vaughn popularized (60% of married men wind up having extra-marital sex, 40% of married women) I wonder what happens to that high-minded ideology after twenty years with the same person? Does sex with a long-term partner inevitably return to being a basic body function, the proverbial glass of water? If it does, should it matter if your partner gets their water from a different faucet from time to time?
Previous Posts:
Date Night: The 45-Minute Walkout
Date Night Redux: H's Version of Our Night Out
Celebrity Confession: Who is Lauren Cohan and Why is She Hitting on Me?
Sex Machine: My First Muff Dive
Crying in Public: Remember the Cheerleaders
Sex Machine: Masturbating Upside Down
Date Night: Two Women in One Night
Date Machine: Kissing on the First Date
Hooksexup Confessions: Rate My Penis Size
Crying In Public: The Sichuan Night Train
Love machine: How I Date On The Internet
Sex Machine: Zeitgeisty's Ass Bangin'
Sex Machine: Rate My Blowjobs
Crying in Public: My Cubicle