Modern Romance (23 page)

Let’s take the “best case” cheating scenario. Your partner of ten or more years has had a one-night stand with someone they will never see again, they regret it, it didn’t mean anything, and they would never do it again.

According to Match.com’s nationally representative survey, 80 percent of men and 76 percent of women would prefer that their partner “confess their mistake . . . and suffer the consequences,” rather than just “take their secret to the grave.”

I asked a lot of people in the focus groups how they’d feel about their partner having a one-night stand with someone else. Their discomfort seemed to be less about their partner hooking up with someone else—in practical terms, it wouldn’t change much about the relationship—and more about knowing that their partner had been unfaithful.

“In theory I’d be okay with it,” said Melissa, twenty-six. “But actually knowing it happened? I don’t think I could handle that.”

As we all saw in the hit film
Indecent Proposal
, just because Woody Harrelson
thinks
he’ll be cool with something doesn’t mean he will be when it actually happens.

Others were not at all accepting of the hypothetical situation. For many it would be an immediate relationship ender. One woman we met recalled a night when she told friends, a couple with a new baby, about an extramarital relationship that she’d had.

The wife turned to her husband and said, “If you ever cheat on me, I am divorcing you and taking the baby,” then got up and went to bed. And he said, “Sounds good to me. Sayonara, lady!”

Okay, the latter part of that exchange didn’t happen, but there definitely were those who had zero tolerance for infidelity, and also marriages that have ended with someone angrily leaving a room and shouting, “Sayonara, lady!”

FRANCE:

MONOGAMY AND MISTRESSES

In the United States there
’s an optimistic expectation that most people will remain faithful to their partner, but actual data show great numbers of people will not.
As we’ve seen, when it comes to sex and relationships, what we believe in theory does not line up with what we do in practice.

When the
New York Times
opinion writer Pamela Druckerman conducted interviews for
Lust in Translation
, her book on infidelity around the world, cheaters in the United States seemed to try to distance themselves from their act. “A lot of people I interviewed started off by telling me, ‘I’m not the kind of person who would have an affair,’” she explained. “And I’d always think,
Of course, you are exactly
the kind of person who would have an affair, because there isn’t one kind
.”

According to a recent survey of attitudes about extramarital affairs in forty different nations, 84 percent of people in the United States said infidelity was “morally unacceptable.”
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Another poll, from Gallup, found that infidelity is more universally disapproved of than polygamy, animal cloning, and suicide.
11

So if there were two guys at a bar, one cheating on his wife and another with a cloned pig named Bootsie, it would be the cheater, not Bootsie the pig, getting more disapproving looks.

When you compare this level of disapproval with the data on the actual prevalence of cheating, it paints a strange picture. Do we really believe that all these masses of people who engage in affairs are immoral monsters? That’s quite a lot of monsters. It seems that we often reluctantly accept the act of cheating in our own lives while still condemning the practice at large.

Not all cultures condemn infidelity so fiercely.

The country that has by far the highest tolerance for extramarital affairs is—no surprise here—France, where only 47 percent of people surveyed found such activity morally unacceptable. That’s good, because France is the country with the highest rates of infidelity: 55 percent for men and 32 percent for women, according to the latest data.
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The second-most-tolerant nation is Germany, with 60 percent considering extramarital affairs morally unacceptable. Several other European nations, including Spain and Italy, are in that range.

In contrast, the countries that rank close to the United States are mainly in Latin America and Africa, places like Ghana, Bolivia, and Brazil. Those where disapproval rates are highest, in the ninetieth percentile, are mainly traditional Islamic nations in the Middle East.

Seizing an opportunity to eat amazing food in Paris, I decided to travel to France and try to learn about their romantic culture.

Now, granted, everyone knows France is famously tolerant of infidelity. But there’s a difference between reading a number from a survey of attitudes and talking to real people about their experiences with something as messy as having affairs. We went to France not to verify that people cheat and feel differently about it from how we do but to find out how their more open attitudes about monogamy affect their relationships, their families, and their lives. We didn’t romanticize the way they do things there, but we wondered what, if anything, people in more conservative places could learn from the more lenient French approach.

During our interviews and focus groups, most of the French people I met said it’s natural, if not inevitable, to seek sexual novelty and excitement. They’d still get angry about cheating, but not in the same way we do in the States. They don’t judge the transgression so harshly.

“In France, you can be a good guy and still have affairs,” a young Parisian named Lukas told us.

“I don’t think you can be faithful all your life,” said Irene, twenty-three. “It’s unreasonable to think you wouldn’t be attracted to someone else. If I was married and we had kids, I wouldn’t give that all up if he slept with someone else.”

“You know pretty much everyone has strayed, so there’s more understanding when it happens,” said George, a twenty-five-year-old who’d lived in France and in Austria. “In the subconscious of French people is an idea that everyone cheats, even though in fact not everyone does.”

In France most people have come to expect that their political leaders will have affairs, at minimum, and often an entire second family too. When François Mitterrand was president, his mistress Anne Pingeot, and their daughter, Mazarine Pingeot, would often visit him at the Élysée Palace, despite the fact that he had a wife and children. At Mitterrand’s funeral in 1996, his second family sat alongside his first family.

Politicians aren’t the only ones who do this kind of thing. The focus group participants shared tales of other arrangements French couples have that would be hard to fathom in the United States. One woman told us that her uncle used to quietly take the bones from his wife’s meat dishes to feed the dog of his mistress, and eventually her aunt, annoyed by the charade, simply started bagging the bones for her husband’s mistress herself.

When I interviewed the dog about this situation, he told me, “It’s weird, but hey, I’m not complaining.
Double the bones,
man!
”

Another woman told us that in her family an older relative would vacation with both his wife and his mistress, together, taking separate rooms but otherwise doing a surprising amount of stuff together.

The mistress thing was very widespread. The most jarring fact I learned was that on Valentine’s Day the flower shops advertise with the slogan “Don’t forget your mistress!”

As I left the final focus group, I ran into that dog on the sidewalk. He said:

I don’t know, man. I get it in a sense. Their expectations of romantic fidelity are more realistic, but the mistress shit?

Seems like men are taking advantage of the women’s goodwill and they are resigned to this demeaning situation.

It’s a bummer, minus that whole double bones thing, ya know?

I admire the French for embracing honesty and their sexual nature, but there must be a middle ground between unrealistic monogamous expectations and full-on second families.

Hey, you don’t happen to have a plastic bag on you, do ya? Why? No reason . . .

I
’ve never been a “relationship guy.” My first serious relationship happened when I was around twenty-three and lasted three years. It began when I was living in New York, but at the three-year mark I had to move to Los Angeles. I was twenty-five. The girl was ready to move with me to L.A., but it just seemed too much for me to live with another person at that age and especially to have her move cross-country. We eventually ended things after a year and change of trying to do the long-distance thing.

I enjoyed being in that relationship, but I was also very happy being mostly single between the ages of twenty-six and thirty-one. Earlier we discussed how having lots of options makes it difficult to settle on the right person. That’s a real problem, but there’s also an upside: With all these options, being single can be a shitload of fun!

I also had a lifestyle that was pretty bad for maintaining a serious relationship anyway. I was constantly shuffling between New York and L.A. for work and was unsure where my future career would take me.

I had a great time in the casual dating scene, but at a certain point I got tired of the work that went into maintaining a fun single life. Like others we interviewed in the book, the single world had worn me out.

At one point I was the hopeful romantic who would stay out till 4:00
A.M.
every morning, worried that if I went home, I’d miss that magical, amazing woman who showed up at the bar at 3:35
A.M.
After many late nights and brutal mornings, though, I realized that most amazing, magical women don’t walk into a bar at 3:35
A.M.
They’re usually in bed by that hour. Usually the men and women who are going out this hard are less the “amazing/magical” sort and more the “nightmare/train wreck” variety.

As I hit thirty, I started to despise the bar scene. I had experienced every single version of those nights. I knew all the possible outcomes, and I knew the probabilities of those outcomes. When you hit that point, you realize how fruitless trying to find love by barhopping can be; you have enough data to know that statistically the smartest thing for you to do when you walk into a bar is go to the bathroom, jerk off, and leave.

I also started losing single friends. One day I stood alone at a barbecue at my house and saw nothing but couples around me. It seemed like I was the only single dude in the mix. Everyone else was splitting their racks of ribs into halves and sharing. Meanwhile, I had to eat a whole rack by myself like some kind of lonely fatso. I felt like it was time for a change. It was time to settle down a bit.

I decided I wanted to at least try having a relationship. It’d been so long. I started thinking about the advantages. I’d have someone whom I really cared about, who also cared about me. No more texting-back-and-forth nonsense. We wouldn’t flake on each other. I’d always have someone to see a movie with, or go to a new restaurant with, or, as I would describe my dream at the time, “stay home, cook food, and do nothing” with.

It was fun being single, but I had reached what I will describe as a “point of exhaustion.” I had experienced this personally, but when I did interviews for the book, I realized it is quite universal.

At a certain point the cost of the work needed to maintain a fun single lifestyle outweighs the benefits. The nights when you have amazing casual sex start getting outweighed by the times you wander home alone wasted and wake up hungover with a half-eaten burrito sitting on your chest.

The endless string of first dates where you just say the same shit over and over again in the same places starts getting tiresome. The casual scene was fun, but in between the fun, a lot of times there was emptiness.

Settling down offers the chance to fill that void with the dependable, deeper, intimate love of a committed relationship.

Now I had to find the right person. When I was out, I tried to keep an eye out for someone who could be relationship material. At first I had no luck, but then I had lunch with a friend who put it in perspective.

“I want to settle down, but I don’t ever meet anyone I really like,” I said.

“Well, where are you meeting these girls?” he asked.

“Bars and clubs,” I replied.

“So you’re going to horrible places and meeting horrible people and you’re complaining about it? Live your life like a decent person. Go to the grocery store, buy your own food, take care of yourself. If you live a responsible life, you’ll run into responsible people,” he said.

It made sense. I was staying out like a lunatic and complaining that I only met lunatics. I realized if I was going to try to find someone to settle down with, I had to change the way I was going about my search. Instead of bars and clubs, I’d do things that I’d want a theoretical girlfriend to be into. I went to more museums, more food events, more low-key/interesting bars at earlier times, and things got better.

I made more of an effort to date friends of friends and began accepting setups, in the hope of meeting better people who were filtered through my existing social framework. I also decided to really get to know the girls I was dating. As I noted in chapter 4, instead of trying to lock down so many first dates, I tried to go on more fifth or sixth dates.

A few months later I ran into an amazing woman whom I had met years earlier. I had liked her then, but she had been in a relationship at the time. She was beautiful, funny, and a chef!!! If you’ve counted all the food references in this book, you realize what a great thing this is for me. We started dating. Pretty soon we were staying home, cooking food, and doing nothing all the time. It was great.

After a few weeks it started getting serious and I was faced with the decision of whether to truly settle down. Did I
really
want a girlfriend? Did I
really
want to give up the single life?

I thought for sure that I wanted a relationship, but when this amazing woman found her way to me, I was still scared. Settling down seemed like a frightening proposition.

I’ve explained how this is the era of the most romantic options and how, when you get in a relationship, you are closing the door on all of them.

Being single is a lot of work, but so are relationships. There were the inconveniences of my touring schedule and the giant hurdle of long distance (I was going back to L.A. and she lived in New York).

Eventually I decided to dive in.

Today we live together in L.A. and cook food and do nothing on a regular basis. She’s amazing and I’m very happy in my relationship, but making the decision to dive in was tough. And it’s tough for many singles out there.

FEAR OF SETTLING DOWN, FEAR OF SETTLING

When the opportunity to settle down presents itself, the
glamour of the single life and all the potential options
loom over our heads.
The continuing fear many singles expressed in our interviews was that by getting into a serious relationship, they weren’t settling down but settling.

In today’s romantic climate, many people are plagued by what we will call “the upgrade problem.” Singles constantly wonder whether there is a better match, an upgrade.

This was especially prevalent in larger cities. In walking cities like Chicago and Boston, people described how it was hard to settle down because every time they turned a corner, they saw more attractive and hypothetically interesting people.

As one woman told us, “For guys and girls equally . . . there’s just so many people. And there’s someone around the corner or uptown or downtown who you might like just a fraction better than the person who’s across from you right now.”

Even without being in a walking city, we all see way more faces in the digital world. And in a strange way, all the faces we see in the world or even on social media feel like real options that we are closing the door on when we settle down. Have you ever aimlessly browsed around on Instagram? It can be like going down a rabbit hole: clicking on friends, friends of friends, people who’ve liked those friends’ photos. You see photos of all these beautiful people. You take a look at a few photos of someone’s feed and you can begin to get a sense of who they are. You start to wonder,
Wow, what if this person and I connected?

In a world where you sit around all day in your pajamas and swipe right on the faces of your dreams, the options problem rears its ugly head, making settling down seem so damn limiting. Yes, you have someone great, but are you sure they’re the greatest?

But even for those who overcome this hurdle and commit to settling down, more challenges lie ahead.

PASSIONATE LOVE AND COMPANIONATE LOVE

Common wisdom says that in every relationship there are two phases.
There’s the beginning, where you fall in love and everything is new and magical. Then, after a certain point, maybe a few years, things get less exciting and more routine. There’s still love, but it’s just not like the magic you had in the beginning. As Woody Allen says in
Annie Hall
, “Love fades.”

“Not in my relationship! Everything is great. We peaked and then that peak turned into a plateau and now we’ve been peaking ever since!”

Okay, why are you even reading this book about relationships? So you can see what mistakes sad, lonely people are making to cause them to have so much shittier lives than you? You know, why don’t you just put this book down and go have sex with your partner you’re so into, you asshole?

But wait, hold on a second—science says you are possibly lying. Yeah, I’m talking brain scans and shit. BRAIN SCANS.

Researchers have actually identified two distinct kinds of love: passionate love and companionate love.

In the first stage of a relationship you have passionate love. This is where you and your partner are just going ape shit for each other. Every smile makes your heart flutter. Every night is more magical than the last.

During this phase your brain gets especially active and starts releasing all kinds of pleasurable, stimulating neurotransmitters. Your brain floods your neural synapses with dopamine, the same neurotransmitter that gets released when you do cocaine.

“Carol, I can’t describe how you make me feel. Wait, no, I can—you make my mind release pleasure-inducing neurotransmitters and you’ve flooded my mind with dopamine. If the experience of snorting cocaine and getting so high out of my mind that I want to climb a telephone pole with my bare hands just to see if I can do it were a person, it would be you.”

Like all drugs, though, this high wears off. Scientists estimate that this phase usually lasts about twelve to eighteen months. At a certain point the brain rebalances itself. It stops pumping out adrenaline and dopamine and you start feeling like you did before you fell in love. The passion you first felt starts to fade. Your brain is like,
ALL RIGHT!! We get it, we get it. She’s great, blah, blah, blah.

What happens then? Well, in good relationships, as passionate love fades, a second kind of love arises to take its place: companionate love.

Companionate love is neurologically different from passionate love. Passionate love always spikes early, then fades away, while companionate love is less intense but grows over time. And, whereas passionate love lights up the brain’s pleasure centers, companionate love is associated with the regions having to do with long-term bonding and relationships. Anthropologist Helen Fisher, the author of
Anatomy of Love
and one of the most cited scholars in the study of sex and attraction, was part of a research team that gathered and took brain scans of then-middle-aged people who’d been married an average of twenty-one years while they looked at a photograph of their spouse, and compared them with brain scans of younger people looking at their new partners. What they discovered, she writes, is that: “Among the older lovers, brain regions associated with anxiety were no longer active; instead, there was activity in the areas associated with calmness.”
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Neurologically it’s similar to the kind of love you feel for an old friend or a family member.

So love goes from feeling like I’m doing cocaine to feeling how I feel about my uncle? I don’t want to make companionate love sound like a bummer. It is love, just less intense and more stable. There is still passion, but it’s balanced with trust, stability, and an understanding of each other’s flaws. If passionate love is the coke of love, companionate love is like having a glass of wine or smoking a few hits of some mild weed. That makes it sound a little better than the uncle thing, right? We all like booze and weed more than we like our relatives, right? Great.

It also makes sense that passionate love shouldn’t last. If we could all have lifelong passionate love, the world would collapse. We’d stay in our apartments lovingly staring at our partners while the streets filled with large animals and homeless children eating out of the garbage.

This transition from passionate love to companionate love can be tricky. In his book
The Happiness Hypothesis
, NYU social psychologist Jonathan Haidt identifies two danger points in every romantic relationship.