Couples who couple, menages who manage

Couples who couple, menages who manage
Elizabeth Nickson. The Globe and Mail. Toronto, Ont.: Jul 26, 2008. pg. D.3
Abstract (Summary)
There is no weakness, dependence or imbalance of power, and certainly no grim reality, in Block's ultra-cool world. There isn't intimacy of any sort that I would recognize, either, because no one seems anything but busy, competent and shallow. Mostly, Block's argument centres on that amazing new idea that the human animal needs sex, lots of it, and with a lot of people, and hey, guess what? You can still be married, and welcome any partner into that marriage.

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OPEN

Love, Sex, and Life in an Open Marriage

By Jenny Block

Seal Press, 275 pages, $27.50

WHEN GOOD PEOPLE

HAVE AFFAIRS

By Mira Kirshenbaum

St. Martin's, 255 pages, $27.95

Warning: Reading these two books together will make your head explode. The one, Open , by Jenny Block, is seemingly drawn straight from the set of that estrogenic heaven, The L Word . Everyone is beautiful, young, headstrong and down with polyamorousness. When Good People Have Affairs , by Mira Kirshenbaum, addresses head-on that perennial problem, cheating.

Block, an attractive Southern thirtysomething who writes for obscure magazines, websites and blogs, has the über-solution to that nasty state of affairs. Her three-year open marriage has been temporarily limited to her complaisant husband, who doesn't want sex as much as Block, and her 23-year-old girlfriend. Yes, there's a child in the house, but as Block points out to her daughter, she has sleepovers and so does Mummy, with her best friend. Before the girlfriend's appearance, the couple had worked out acceptable solutions to finding appropriate pals and dealing with jealousy. Lots of honesty, if I read right.

There is no weakness, dependence or imbalance of power, and certainly no grim reality, in Block's ultra-cool world. There isn't intimacy of any sort that I would recognize, either, because no one seems anything but busy, competent and shallow. Mostly, Block's argument centres on that amazing new idea that the human animal needs sex, lots of it, and with a lot of people, and hey, guess what? You can still be married, and welcome any partner into that marriage. You can have that elusive butterfly of the 1970s, the open marriage. There's a lot of it around, claims Block, who details her process and cites a handful of websites and organizations that will help you create your own healthy, happy hybrid.

Popular culture has already dipped an entire foot into the multiple-marriage pond, with Big Love on basic cable and Swingtown in CBS prime time, not to mention CNN's revel in the latest wacko cult of 16-year-olds dressed in full-length aprons and sleeping with Gramps. It was predictable, I suppose, after the debate on gay marriage, and the subsequent opening up of the millennia-old institution upon which human civilization is built.

It would have sounded like excellent stuff to me in my 20s. Certainly, I was way into polyandry before I did something, what was it, oh yeah, grew up . The idea of two men focused entirely on my precious self was a very cool thing to my mind, especially if they were competing for my love. I could play them off against each other, torment them subtly until I was completely in command, not to mention the fact that if one bored me, I'd just walk down the hall to the other bedroom. Vulnerable? Needy? Not me, baby, and not them, either, if they knew what was good for them.

Block spends a good 40 per cent of the book arguing with people like me (the grown-up me), charging us with being uptight, sexually fearful and suburban; half of that 40 per cent is spent dissing suburbia, filled as it is, in that eternal trope of the left-wing mind, with limited white people who only care about themselves, shiny cars, big-box stores and big lawns, and not cool new ideas.

Block often cites Laura Kipnis, whose Against Love: A Polemic plowed pretty much the same field (sorry) by stating unequivocally that marriage was for the dust heap, and one should simply get on with delicious new permutations of rutting. Block insists that in an enlightened interpretation of history, people had all kinds of arrangements. Excepting religious polygamy and some adventurous aristos, precisely from which history she draws this "fact" is a mystery. Possibly Atlantis or Lemuria.

But I digress. Right into the other book, which actually has some value. It's not the kind of book you would expect Globe readers to pack around, except if involved in some desperate scenario where they are in love with two people who would not fit into The L Word or enjoy each other fully, if you catch my drift. When Good People Have Affairs is a nuts-and-bolts analysis of the 17 types of affairs, what each signifies, which type is serious and which isn't.

Kirshenbaum is carefully clear about what to do if you go back to your former husband or wife and make the marriage work, and under which circumstances you should probably leave. Then she tells you exactly how to do it, puts the words in your mouth, and counsels your inevitable confusion and self-hatred, all of which is sheer genius for the average adulterer. Or so I would imagine.

Kirshenbaum's book is much less judgmental than Block's, and written with (a very little) more grace than Block's clunky prosecution of traditional marriage. But annoyingly, it seems to be written for dummies who need section headings and bullet points. You could argue that someone involved in an affair has probably lost a good 15 points off his or her IQ, and therefore needs simple easy directions. Kirshenbaum, a couples' therapist, knows her human animal.

She claims that happiness in marriage has been increasing steadily every decade as divorce becomes more common. That rings true for me. She also proffers some very sane advice about what to do with the children, how to earn back your spouse's trust - apparently much like carrying bowling balls endlessly up a stairwell - and how to cure yourself of that delicious, impossible love.

Of course, Block would have you revelling in that delicious love. Would it be as delicious, though, if it were just the human animal rutting away? Doubt it. A committed marriage carries enormous sweetness with it; for us, sophisticated as we think we are, it surrounds us with a necessary softness in the guarantee that even if we're sick or mad or broke or fired, the other will be there, and not likely to cast us off for the fetching junior offering uncomplicated sex.

Perhaps that's unfair to Block, but I read recently that the most refined pleasure is found in performing our duty, and for that reason alone, I suspect traditional marriage will survive the assaults of Block and her polyamorous comrades. One holds pity for those who succumb.