It is difficult to define the permissive marriage precisely. While swinging represents a distinct social movement, permissive marriages represent individual accommodations worked out by individual pairs of husbands and wives. Perhaps we can best approach a definition by first looking at some marriages which do not fit this category.
“Am I married? Let me put it this way. My wife is married. She knows I have to be able to live my own life. I don’t throw it up at her all the time, but she knows I get around on my own.”
JWW: This, in one form or another, has been for years the pattern of standard American adultery. The husband engages in extramarital affairs to whatever extent he wishes, veiling his activities from his wife and from the friends they have in common. If questioned, he will explain that he and his wife have an understanding, that she is aware of his extramarital activity but prefers to ignore it. He may add that his wife is equally free to express herself sexually outside of marriage. The less likely it appears to him that she will ever do so, the more likely he is to be magnanimous in this regard.
This sort of unilateral “understanding” may or may not exist to the extent the husband implies. Often he merely assumes that his wife knows of and tolerates his infidelities, with such an assumption greatly diminishing his own guilt. In other instances the understanding is pure fabrication; the husband knows that his wife has no knowledge of his infidelities, knows too that she would disapprove violently, but has found that other women are less reluctant to have an affair with a married man if they are led to believe such an understanding exists.
In still other cases, the understanding may be real enough. It will usually have been arrived at after a marital crisis in which the wife learns of her husband’s penchant for casual adultery. He convinces her that this need for extramarital sex does not impinge in any way on his love for her, and that it does not constitute a threat to their marriage; she at once forgives the infidelities of the past and facilitates the infidelities of the future by ignoring such evidence of his affairs as may later come to her attention. The understanding, such as it is, consists of her recognizing the need to overlook what she cannot accept, and of his exercising due caution to avoid her being presented with anything too vivid to be easily overlooked.
The understanding is almost always unilateral. It is almost always the wife who understands, the husband who behaves in a manner which must be understood. This fact surely reflects the double standard, but it is simplistic to argue that this sort of husband would invariably be appalled if his wife behaved as he does. Most men insist that they would grant their wives the same degree of freedom they demand for themselves. Certainly some of them are insincere, but I believe the majority are honest in this regard. Some actively wish their wives would have affairs, not merely to alleviate their own guilt, but out of the feeling that extramarital sex would be for their wives, as it is for them, a source of pleasure and satisfaction.
Why, then, is the understanding so one-sided? Two factors have traditionally helped make it so. The wife, her world centered upon home and family, simply has less opportunity for extramarital involvement. While her husband meets interesting women through his work, she sees only those men who come to her house, and unless she is capable of enjoying the cliché of casual sex with an appliance repairman or a door-to-door salesman, she has no chance for a real extramarital relationship. In addition, women have long been taught, whether socially or biologically, that they can enjoy sex only in the context of an emotional relationship. Even when the opportunity for such a relationship presents itself, they are more apt to feel that it will pose a threat to their marriage.
(All of this is changing, with more and more women leading lives extending beyond the boundaries of kitchen, children, and church, and with that redefinition of female roles which at once feeds and feeds upon the women’s liberation movement, I suspect that we will see an increasing number of women who, like Sue in the chapter on living together, take their sex like a man. I would doubt, though, that all of the differences between male and female sexual attitudes will abruptly wither away.)
The understanding, then, does not fit the definition of the permissive marriage which we are trying to formulate. It represents a compromise. The wife agrees, probably by closing her eyes, to live with her husband’s unfaithfulness. The husband also compromises by keeping his affairs under wraps. Whether the compromise is ultimately successful depends on a number of things. The wife may suffer extreme ego damage, may retreat into neurotic behavior, may turn to alcohol or drugs, may fall out of love with her husband. The husband may find that a long-term pattern of casual deception makes him cease to love and respect his wife. He may become more seriously involved in an affair than he had intended, to the point where he wishes to divorce his wife for the sake of his mistress. Or, on the other hand, the understanding may endure throughout the course of the marriage, and may represent the best possible accommodation for all parties concerned.
“We have a marriage in name only. We haven’t been in love with each other for years. We’re only staying together because of the children/for religious reasons/because we can’t get a divorce (choose one). We care about each other and don’t want to make each other unhappy, but we have to have outlets outside of marriage. Hell, I’m not a priest, and I haven’t been in the same bed with her for years.”
JWW: Like the understanding, the marriage in name only may or may not actually be as it is described. Often it represents a conscious exaggeration designed to lessen the guilt of a prospective extramarital partner. One is less apt to experience anxiety at the prospect of breaking up a marriage if the marriage is perceived as a legal fiction.
Discounting those cases in which the statement quoted above is an out-and-out lie, there remain many cases in which it is at least an improvement on the truth. It is only natural for a person discussing his marriage with his mistress to emphasize all of the marriage’s weaknesses and minimize all of its strengths. This is partly a matter of telling one’s mistress what she wants to hear, certainly, but it may also come about with no ulterior motive; a man’s marriage honestly seems far less significant to him when he is in bed with another woman, and takes on far greater significance when he is sitting in front of his own hearth, digesting a good dinner and playing with his children.
Nevertheless, the marriage in name only certainly does exist. It has probably become less common than it was in years past, because such marriages are far more likely now to end in divorce. The bars to divorce have given way greatly, and the legal dissolution of marriage has become easier to obtain and carries less social stigma in almost all strata of society.
But people still do stay together “for the sake of the children.” (Whether children are better off under such circumstances is a moot point. The obvious answer is that they are not, that a broken home is preferable to a loveless one, that parental honesty is superior to parental deception. Obvious as this may be, I am by no means certain that this is true, as there is an indisputable correlation of parental divorce and emotional difficulties. The world could do with a sound study of this subject.)
An interesting result of maintaining marriage for the sake of children is the phenomenon of divorce after twenty or thirty years of marriage. The union is preserved for the children’s benefit; the children grow up, complete their education, and marry; and the parents are finally free to dissolve their unsuccessful marriage. Just a week or so ago I read a rather startling letter in “Dear Abby.” The writer reported attending a large party to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of a couple she had known intimately for many years. At the height of the festivities the husband called for silence. Then, with his beaming wife at his side, he announced that he and his wife were taking this opportunity to let all their friends know that they were about to get divorced. Their children were grown and married, he explained, and there was no longer any need for them to live a marital lie. Thus they were going to go their separate ways while they still had time to enjoy life. And while the guests stood gaping, the band played the “Anniversary Waltz” and the prospective ex-spouses danced together.