In yesterday’s Good Weekend magazine, Fairfax newspapers asked this question: ‘Could infidelity save your marriage?’ The shock headline pointed to an excerpt from a new book by controversial marriage therapist Esther Perel, who suggests that a third person—either real or imagined—can re-boost flagging desire in a relationship.

Perel argues that monogamy was, historically, a patriarchal system concerned with lineage and property; it was about whose children got what when the father died. Fidelity back then had nothing to do with love, she argues; that’s something we’ve more recently attached to it.

In the excerpt, Perel talks about couples who have decided not to fight the temptation of an affair, but embrace it—either by talking together about their feelings for other people, or by inviting the third person into their relationship. She includes stories of ‘open’ marriages, as they’re called, where each partner is free to experiment sexually elsewhere. For these relationships, Perel says, ‘fidelity is defined not by sexual exclusivity but by the strength of their commitment. The boundaries aren’t physical but emotional.’

I have a number of concerns with Perel’s arguments. Firstly, to say that fidelity originally had nothing to do with love is misguided. Monogamy for love is not a new concept at all. The Song of Songs is a document from antiquity—three-thousand years old in fact—and it speaks about passionate marital fidelity. Secondly, the mathematics of ‘open’ relationships is flawed. These couples don’t allow a ‘third’ person in, but a ‘fourth’ too—if the sexual freedom is equal for both husband and wife. Thirdly, there’s no mention of the affect these extra people might have on any children involved. And fourthly, to say that a couple can have emotional boundaries around their relationship without physical ones is to falsely separate body and spirit. We’re whole beings; what affects one affects the other.

What was interesting about the article was that all the ‘open’ couples admitted feeling intense pain and jealousy over their partner’s affairs. Might not this suggest that, deep down, the human being longs for a relationship of greater devotion and stability? A love that includes desire, but also devotion when desire naturally fluctuates?

I’m out of the habit at the moment, but during my final years in Perth I got into a routine of doing laps at the local public pool three or four mornings a week. At 7am on a weekday, the majority of clients at the Terry Tyzack Aquatic Centre in Inglewood are elderly. I’ll never forget the nice old dear who’d flash her big white dentures at me every morning before diving in to do four laps without taking a rest. Or the two Italian ladies who persisted in walking their laps in the fast lane while they loudly traded family stories.

I often got to witness the morning ritual of one particular couple, probably in their 80s. She’d always be in the pool by the time I arrived—in the slow lane, paddling carefully with a kickboard. Then she’d walk some laps—slowly and methodically. All the while her husband sat in a plastic chair by the side of the pool. He didn’t read the paper, or listen to a radio, he just watched her. Finally, as wife completed her last lap, husband would get up from his chair and hobble to the side of the pool holding her towel and walking stick. The electric chairlift brought her out of the water and he’d steady her as she swung out of the seat. Then they’d hobble along to the change rooms, she leaning on his arm and he walking bow-legged beside her. Their beauty and stamina had gone; all they had now was cellulite, fading eyesight and back problems.

And each other.

You know, we’re rapidly becoming a generation addicted to Eros. Our teenagers have all seen porn by the time they’re 15 and authors like Esther Perel advocate extra-marital affairs to maintain sexual thrill. But that elderly man reflected Divine love to his wife—a love that acts in devotion when desire is gone. God loved Nicky Cruz when there was nothing left in him to like. He loves you and me in our ugliest moments too. And it’s my conviction that our relationships will flourish best when they include not just desire, but devotion.

© 2007 Sheridan Voysey is a writer, speaker, broadcaster and author of Unseen Footprints: Encountering the divine along the journey of life (Scripture Union, 2005). www.thethoughtfactory.net