Could I Commit Adultery? Part 1: Transparency

I'm going to start at the end, because the end is the place where I realized I'd have to compromise myself to get what I desired. It's the place where I decided that what I desired wasn't worth pursuing.

Last Sunday, the middle child was being a twerp in church. My husband was ushering him out of the sanctuary as I was walking in. I took The Boy, and encouraged my husband to continue on in what I had not yet started to engage. The Boy and I sat in the car. He asked if he could listen to music, but was denied because, you don't get to make everyone around you uncomfortable and be rewarded with comfort.

Because we were missing church, I did the rotten mom thing and hauled out the Bible for reading aloud. Not having enough time to get into a whole, contextual, book of the Bible, I employed the quick devotion trick of picking the chapter in Proverbs which matched the date - Proverbs chapter 9, vs13 - 18 were particularly significant: 

A foolish woman is clamorous: she is simple, and knows nothing. For she sits at the door of her house, on a seat in the high places of the city, to call passengers who go right on their ways: Whoso is simple, let him turn in hither: and as for him that wants understanding, she says to him,

Stole waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant. 

But he knows not that the dead are there; and that her guests are in the depths of hell.

I'd read it before, it was not new to me, but because I'd allowed myself the freedom to explore whether or not I could have an affair, the verses hit straight to my heart and resolved the internal turmoil which had intensified the week prior. It anchored me when I was feeling mentally awash.

The chapter starts with personifying wisdom as a woman and ends with a woman as the personification of foolishness. So, while the Scripture uses the concept of sexual immorality to exemplify foolishness, the understanding here is that foolishness sits in high places calling out to all us passengers of life. Foolishness called to me this summer as I was going right in my way.

Note that there are two kinds of passersby:

1. Simple people or, as I like to think, the "basic bitches" among us. They hear foolishness calling, and they walk right into her house and straight into their pit. All you out there living by your every impulse and desire? Those of you who thoughtlessly and uncritically internalize everything you hear and spit it back out into stupid, feel-good memes? You're simple, you're basic, and that's not an achievement of which to boast. I know I am not simple.

2. Those who want understanding. Understanding what is out in the world to understand can be a noble pursuit. It's where I was at when I chose to walk down my road and I tend to surround myself with people who enjoy gaining understanding. The problem is, the pursuit of understanding, with no moral guidance, can, and often does, lead to death - in various ways, not just literal. I was aware of the possibility of death on the other side of my pursuit so, I did not simply respond to her beckoning call.

If you want to be an authority-less wanderer, OK, but I don't respect or take seriously your stories of insight gained if, you're not also honest about the ways in which your pursuits of understanding have sometimes caused a little death in your life. 

Foolishness merely makes an offer to the simple, but she has to compose arguments of reason for those who seek understanding. And, her reasoning is an appeal to our sense of pleasure without giving any of the pitfalls. The adage "Too good to be true" comes to mind. All summer long, I meditated on her reasoning.

1. Stolen waters are sweet: Indeed they are, and I found, of myself, that I don't mind being a thief. There was a real sense in which I do care about the idea of causing pain to someone else's spouse through adultery, I'm not uncompassionate, but I found that compassion found it's limit in the logic of direct interaction. Let me explain:

In order to steal someone else's water, someone, first, had to have bought that water. I found that my empathy stopped short at the fact that an owner of a bottled water, should have been wiser about what brand she bought. If that bottled water had a flashing "drink me" label on it, but she didn't want to share her water, she should have bought a different kind. 

However, it GREATLY mattered to me whether or not my "owner" could be OK with someone else stealing what was his. I found I could justify being a thief, but that I couldn't live with being stolen from the man I love, the man I want to come home to at the end of the day, and the man I want to grow old with. Though note: is it stealing if the owner agrees to share the water? More on that later.

2. Bread eaten in secret is pleasant: Nope. No it's not. Not for me. This is the place, the line, which if crossed, would cause me to lose myself. I can not live a life of secrecy and lies.

For 22 years, since I became a Christian, I've cultivated a life of transparency. That is not a simple character attribute to achieve or maintain. It is built on ideological ground and constructed through a million, small choices of vulnerability. It is a habit of character which protects me and gives me peace, a peace which was so greatly missing in my life, that it was primarily what drove me to Christ. I have a habit of, first, being transparent with God. And, for those of you who can't find validity in that, the translation would be, first, being transparent with yourself. 

Next, my relationship with my husband is built on the intimacy of being deeply transparent with each other. We were best friends before we got married and have been ever since. My temptation to have an affair was not based on a significant shortcoming in our marriage or dissatisfaction with my husband - I love him and have no desire to be apart from him. The temptation was one for me as an individual. I love my husband and wanted to have sex with another man. I wanted my cake and to eat it too. But, I could not have eaten behind my cake's back so, I talked to my cake, and that's why my husband and I talked about whether or not we could both have our cakes and eat them too.

It was amazing to both of us to discover that the idea of the other eating cake - openly, not in secret from one another - was a massive turn-on, and that we both felt the same way: We love each other, want to stay married to each other, but also were intrigued by the idea of wanting to enjoy other people. Consequently, our sex life has been super amazing lately.

We discovered that we're expert level communicators. We can say what we need to and the other can hear it without letting any stinging hurt we might feel (and those barb-like moments were minimal) dictate our responses. And, this is not by chance or just based on personality, it's something we've intentionally cultivated from the start. We're awesome, be like us.

I was being open with my husband, I would not have eaten in secret from him, but I discovered that the reality of other people not being even remotely like us would sometimes force me into a bread's world of secrecy in order to eat, and I found I could not live with that.

My husband found, in the process of considering the road, that he could not steal someone else's water. That would violate who he is. So, the first conclusion we reached about having an open marriage was that we couldn't steal other people's water or eat bread in secret. We would have to be open and transparent. We'd engage with like minded people, or not do it at all.

But, we are a part of communities of people who would shit a brick just knowing that we were exploring the topic, let alone if we acted on it. And, I didn't let that stop me from seeking this understanding, but the action? I'd/We'd need to be prepared to lose our world and, while I could actually conceive losing it, if I decided that I was going to find out my limits in the realm of action, that choice wouldn't just impact us, but also our children. And, the shit got real.

We found ourselves having to deal with the next layer of transparency vs eating my bread in secret. I was transparent with God and my husband, but in order to have my cake and eat it to, for the sake of my children, I'd be back at eating it in secrecy, and I can not do that.

I intellectually worked past the moral aversion to stolen waters, and I walked right up to Foolishness' door, but when she swung it open the stench of death filled my nostrils when I realized I'd have to step over the threshold of secrecy in order to enter in. 

Could I commit adultery? Only if I could do it transparently and that is not a possibility for us at this time so, "No", I could not.