On Being Asked the Fidelity Question after Watching Bridget Jones 2
OK, first up, I want to get something straight: I went to see Bridget Jones for my girlfriend. Not because I had any urge whatsoever to immerse myself in that shit. I only used it as a way to try and win some emotional points. Especially because, that particular weekend, I felt like I was in heavy debt.*
Glad that's clear.
There's a point in Bridget Jones where she asks Colin Firth something like, "Is there another woman in your life?"
To which he replies, "I won't dignify that question with an answer."
This comes straight by a sequence where Bridget sits with her friends and they tell her, "Any man who refuses to answer that question is probably cheating and not worth going out with." On the strength of her stupid, ignorant bastard friends, Bridget dumps Colin.
"Silly, stupid bint," I say, at the risk of sounding like JiB.
So, there I was, a week or so later, being asked the same question. "Is there someone else you've been thinking about? Someone else you fancy?"
What constitutes fidelity? Not fucking someone else? Not kissing someone else? Not (as someone said here recently) going out for a drink with someeone else?
Is physical devotion even that relevant? Would fucking a prostitute constitute betrayal of my love for her, if there's no emotional attachment to the whore?
Does she want complete psychological devotion? Should I be careful about who I sit next to on the bus? Does she expect me to have total control over my eyes and thoughts? This, even after years of conditioning to stare at every arse in a pair of tight jeans that walks past me, or flashes up on TV?
I suppose you 'know' if you've been unfaithful. It feels wrong, your moral indicators kick in. But is fancying someone you know personally any different to fancying that chick off The Bachelor, when you know, in your heart and head, that you'd never act on it?
Back to Bridget-christing-Jones. Colin, when asked if he'd cheated on Bridget, was faced with that age-old, arse-fiddle calamity of not knowing what constituted betrayal. He's a gentleman! He's got an umbrella stuffed up his arse with, "Property of the British Empire" written on it. He chaperones women to restaurants and frowns at lewd behaviour and loose morals. He doesn't wank!
Except that he does undress women with his eyes, he does think about them when he's alone with a box of Kleenex and he clearly thought about taking Rebecca on the boardroom table. But he can't 'dignify' that question with an answer. It's not possible to remain a dignified gentleman AND admit to your lover that you've finger-shuffled over someone else.
So what are the parameters for fidelity? Does loyalty include being taken to the edge of sleeping with someone and saying, "Right, cheers for the petit-fours, sweetheart, I'd better get back home to the wife and kids"? Is a snog and a grope in a pub toilet permissible? Or should you have an invisible chastity belt wrapped around your brains?
*It failed.
Glad that's clear.
There's a point in Bridget Jones where she asks Colin Firth something like, "Is there another woman in your life?"
To which he replies, "I won't dignify that question with an answer."
This comes straight by a sequence where Bridget sits with her friends and they tell her, "Any man who refuses to answer that question is probably cheating and not worth going out with." On the strength of her stupid, ignorant bastard friends, Bridget dumps Colin.
"Silly, stupid bint," I say, at the risk of sounding like JiB.
So, there I was, a week or so later, being asked the same question. "Is there someone else you've been thinking about? Someone else you fancy?"
What constitutes fidelity? Not fucking someone else? Not kissing someone else? Not (as someone said here recently) going out for a drink with someeone else?
Is physical devotion even that relevant? Would fucking a prostitute constitute betrayal of my love for her, if there's no emotional attachment to the whore?
Does she want complete psychological devotion? Should I be careful about who I sit next to on the bus? Does she expect me to have total control over my eyes and thoughts? This, even after years of conditioning to stare at every arse in a pair of tight jeans that walks past me, or flashes up on TV?
I suppose you 'know' if you've been unfaithful. It feels wrong, your moral indicators kick in. But is fancying someone you know personally any different to fancying that chick off The Bachelor, when you know, in your heart and head, that you'd never act on it?
Back to Bridget-christing-Jones. Colin, when asked if he'd cheated on Bridget, was faced with that age-old, arse-fiddle calamity of not knowing what constituted betrayal. He's a gentleman! He's got an umbrella stuffed up his arse with, "Property of the British Empire" written on it. He chaperones women to restaurants and frowns at lewd behaviour and loose morals. He doesn't wank!
Except that he does undress women with his eyes, he does think about them when he's alone with a box of Kleenex and he clearly thought about taking Rebecca on the boardroom table. But he can't 'dignify' that question with an answer. It's not possible to remain a dignified gentleman AND admit to your lover that you've finger-shuffled over someone else.
So what are the parameters for fidelity? Does loyalty include being taken to the edge of sleeping with someone and saying, "Right, cheers for the petit-fours, sweetheart, I'd better get back home to the wife and kids"? Is a snog and a grope in a pub toilet permissible? Or should you have an invisible chastity belt wrapped around your brains?
*It failed.
posted by Anonymous | 7:39 pm
This post is fantastic. The age-old fuckery of where the fidelity line is... Personally, I think it's nowhere - it's a red herring. The real fuckery is in ourselves - our possessiveness and jealousy and insecurity.
I'm being pretty fucking obtuse there, but rest assured I will post on the subject of open relationships shortly.
I agree absolutely. I'd prefer my girlfriend to cheat on me by coming quite hard at the expense of some poor bloke's tireless efforts, then to act as an oral spunk-receptacle for some pug-nosed prick that's reclining and eating grapes.
Ditto, for her to be vaginally stimulated through the correct spots for pure sexual gratification, than to live out her mental fantasies of having some faceless cock shoved up her backside.
I think it comes down to the fact that it's preferable to be cheated on in a *purely* sexual way, than a way which ties in her mental, emotional and physical gratification. That lessens us. We also don't want our partner to be used, as that lessens her and therefore your relationship and everything that comes with it.
We're talking about the nicest evils here, though, and any form of cheating is a soiled, dripping cunt of formiddable size.