If that happened once, then my desired type of partner would want to avoid that in the future, and would avoid drinking any alcohol at future parties, and would learn to cut off interaction—rudely if necessary—if someone is making serious progress at seducing her; and if that was her response, then I’d be fine staying with her. If she didn’t change her behavior and acted like that event was fine and she wouldn’t mind if it recurred, then I wouldn’t want to be with her anymore.
I know that @ymeskhout disagreed with this, but it seems basically right to me. For a marriage of (hopefully) many decades, I don’t necessarily expect perfection at all times, but I expect significant and honest commitment. So, I wouldn’t consider one mistake in several decades to be a dealbreaker, if all parties agreed it was a mistake and made active attempts to do better. IDK how long @ymeskhout has been with their partner—maybe their perspective could change over time? I have been (monogamously) married for 11 years FWIW.
I’ve only been married two months, so I can’t stake any longevity experience. As I wrote here in response to a further comment, it’s really difficult to imagine how exactly I would react when a hypothetical scenario requires me to fill in so many assumption gaps. For one, I would find it alarming if my non-drinking wife got that intoxicated. I was previously in a relationship with someone who had a history of severe manic episodes, and it was deeply unsettling to always have to scrutinize her behavior through the lens of “does she really want this or is this a sign of burgeoning mania?”
Yeah, it would be alarming! It might lead you to wonder, in addition to “should we break up”, additional things like “does she have an undiagnosed brain tumor or hormone disorder”, “did someone drug her”, etc. I think I ultimately agree with you that it would be highly uncharacteristic behavior, and in some ways the fact that it’s highly uncharacteristic is the ultimate metric we are shooting for, and the actual behavior is just an imperfect proxy for that. And then you would have to figure out what the cause of the highly uncharacteristic behavior was.
It seems that the thing you guys are describing is that what you expect from your partner is “She is running a ‘monogamy’ module in her head.” A monogamy module says things like “I’m monogamous”, “My partner has to be monogamous”, and “Monogamous people don’t have sex with anyone other than their partner.” These tend to lead to observable behaviors and characteristics.
It seems as though you might care more about the monogamy module itself, than about the behavior it’s ostensibly about guaranteeing. Like, if I read the above a certain way, it suggests that if there was a situation in which your wife cheated, you would be more worried about the implications—that either (a) she no longer has that module or (b) there’s something wrong with her—than you would be bothered about the behavior itself. Is that right?
Speaking only for myself, yes that’s basically right. Non-monogamous behavior is evidence in favor of several bad hypotheses, but only some of which would make me mad or want to break up. Split and Commit. Things that it would be evidence of:
Dealbreaker:
She doesn’t want to be committed to me any more
Mad but not necessarily a dealbreaker over a long marriage if we can work it out:
She wants to remain committed to me but is having some problem with our sex life and is too scared/embarrassed/confused to talk to me about it
She wants to remain committed to me but has developed serious issues estimating and/or controlling her voluntary alcohol (or other drug) use
We had a serious miscommunication and she honestly but unreasonably thought I had told her I was OK with whatever she did
Not mad:
She’s suffering from some kind of medical condition that causes her to act uncharacteristically or be otherwise unable to control her behavior
She was the victim of some severe psychological or chemical manipulation
She was suffering from physical duress/threat
We had a serious miscommunication and, on reflection, I think it’s my fault—the most reasonable interpretation of my words/acts in retrospect was that I had told her I was OK with whatever she did, even though that’s not what I meant
She didn’t actually cheat at all but circumstances conspired to nonetheless lead to strong appearances in favor of a cheat hypothesis
So if I were to get some strong evidence that my wife cheated, I would want to try to collect some more evidence that would differentiate which of these nine realms (or are there others?) that we are in.
Would you say that the ultimate purpose of wanting monogamy is still for the object-level “because I don’t want my partner to behave in that way”? Or has it transcended that completely? Perhaps “Well, this is just how relationships work, to my mind, and I don’t want to change that; and meanwhile, given that this is how my current relationship works, that is a framework by which I’ll judge my partner’s behavior”? Perhaps even “I don’t care about the behavior itself at all anymore [apart from direct causal effects like STDs], but people with the monogamy module usually have better self-control, maturity, and other desirable qualities, so I’m happy to stick with it and consciously endorse that strategy”?
I...am honestly not sure. Probably mix of all? But i see the “probably not a dealbreaker” category as in the nature of “we all sometimes hurt each other, this hurts a lot, but it doesn’t necessarily outweigh all the good years and forgiveness is possible”—not like it doesn’t matter
I know that @ymeskhout disagreed with this, but it seems basically right to me. For a marriage of (hopefully) many decades, I don’t necessarily expect perfection at all times, but I expect significant and honest commitment. So, I wouldn’t consider one mistake in several decades to be a dealbreaker, if all parties agreed it was a mistake and made active attempts to do better. IDK how long @ymeskhout has been with their partner—maybe their perspective could change over time? I have been (monogamously) married for 11 years FWIW.
I’ve only been married two months, so I can’t stake any longevity experience. As I wrote here in response to a further comment, it’s really difficult to imagine how exactly I would react when a hypothetical scenario requires me to fill in so many assumption gaps. For one, I would find it alarming if my non-drinking wife got that intoxicated. I was previously in a relationship with someone who had a history of severe manic episodes, and it was deeply unsettling to always have to scrutinize her behavior through the lens of “does she really want this or is this a sign of burgeoning mania?”
Yeah, it would be alarming! It might lead you to wonder, in addition to “should we break up”, additional things like “does she have an undiagnosed brain tumor or hormone disorder”, “did someone drug her”, etc. I think I ultimately agree with you that it would be highly uncharacteristic behavior, and in some ways the fact that it’s highly uncharacteristic is the ultimate metric we are shooting for, and the actual behavior is just an imperfect proxy for that. And then you would have to figure out what the cause of the highly uncharacteristic behavior was.
It seems that the thing you guys are describing is that what you expect from your partner is “She is running a ‘monogamy’ module in her head.” A monogamy module says things like “I’m monogamous”, “My partner has to be monogamous”, and “Monogamous people don’t have sex with anyone other than their partner.” These tend to lead to observable behaviors and characteristics.
It seems as though you might care more about the monogamy module itself, than about the behavior it’s ostensibly about guaranteeing. Like, if I read the above a certain way, it suggests that if there was a situation in which your wife cheated, you would be more worried about the implications—that either (a) she no longer has that module or (b) there’s something wrong with her—than you would be bothered about the behavior itself. Is that right?
Speaking only for myself, yes that’s basically right. Non-monogamous behavior is evidence in favor of several bad hypotheses, but only some of which would make me mad or want to break up. Split and Commit. Things that it would be evidence of:
Dealbreaker:
She doesn’t want to be committed to me any more
Mad but not necessarily a dealbreaker over a long marriage if we can work it out:
She wants to remain committed to me but is having some problem with our sex life and is too scared/embarrassed/confused to talk to me about it
She wants to remain committed to me but has developed serious issues estimating and/or controlling her voluntary alcohol (or other drug) use
We had a serious miscommunication and she honestly but unreasonably thought I had told her I was OK with whatever she did
Not mad:
She’s suffering from some kind of medical condition that causes her to act uncharacteristically or be otherwise unable to control her behavior
She was the victim of some severe psychological or chemical manipulation
She was suffering from physical duress/threat
We had a serious miscommunication and, on reflection, I think it’s my fault—the most reasonable interpretation of my words/acts in retrospect was that I had told her I was OK with whatever she did, even though that’s not what I meant
She didn’t actually cheat at all but circumstances conspired to nonetheless lead to strong appearances in favor of a cheat hypothesis
So if I were to get some strong evidence that my wife cheated, I would want to try to collect some more evidence that would differentiate which of these nine realms (or are there others?) that we are in.
I see, that makes sense.
Would you say that the ultimate purpose of wanting monogamy is still for the object-level “because I don’t want my partner to behave in that way”? Or has it transcended that completely? Perhaps “Well, this is just how relationships work, to my mind, and I don’t want to change that; and meanwhile, given that this is how my current relationship works, that is a framework by which I’ll judge my partner’s behavior”? Perhaps even “I don’t care about the behavior itself at all anymore [apart from direct causal effects like STDs], but people with the monogamy module usually have better self-control, maturity, and other desirable qualities, so I’m happy to stick with it and consciously endorse that strategy”?
I...am honestly not sure. Probably mix of all? But i see the “probably not a dealbreaker” category as in the nature of “we all sometimes hurt each other, this hurts a lot, but it doesn’t necessarily outweigh all the good years and forgiveness is possible”—not like it doesn’t matter
This is an excellent breakdown of what I tried to articulate regarding “filling in assumptions in a hypothetical”