Wednesday, June 18, 2008 Literatus: Dangerous intimacy By Zosimo T. Literatus, R.M.T. Breakthroughs
“Who would not shudder to think of the misery that may be caused by a single dangerous intimacy?” wrote French politician Pierre Choderlos de Laclos in his book Les Liaisons Dangereuses (The Dangerous Liaisons). “And how much suffering could be avoided if it were more often thought of!”
Think of it as you may, but perceptions of infidelity can be as dangerous as actual infidelity itself.
A recent study, published in the February issue of Personality and Individual Differences, show that perception of infidelity can cause men to coerce their intimate partners through various forms of subtle manipulations or forcible sex. Authors of the study—psychologists Valerie Starratt, Danielle Popp, and Todd Shackelford of the Department of Psychology at Florida Atlantic University in Davie, Florida—observed that the most coercive male partners favored violent forms.
“Men’s perception of their partner’s infidelity are positively related to men’s sexual coercion only in those relationships in which the man perceives that he is of equal desirability to his partner,” noted Starratt.
“Men who perceive themselves as more desirable than their mate are less likely to coerce their partners,” continued Starratt.
“Men who often failed to perceive female infidelity and never resort to sexual coercion are those who perceive themselves
as less desirable than their partners.”
Apparently, the perception of female infidelity and the male use of violent or sexual coercion are measures of control stemming from a man’s level of self-esteem as they also indicate profit and loss considerations for that relationship. Low self-esteem and a sense of serious personal loss (e.g. the the loss of mate) can either create a sense of panic forcing a man to be sexually coercive to his mate or to go exactly the opposite way of denying even factual infidelity.
To keep a level head, a man needs a healthy dose of positive self-image to see himself as a more desirable mate. This allows him to see coercion as unnecessary in taking control of a relationship.
In fact, such a mental frame frees him to not even desire control at all. A relationship becomes a voluntary emotional and social transaction that both mates commit themselves into with all the freedom to stay or not to stay should the relationship take a destructive turn. Negative emotions start to appear once that sense of freedom is thwarted by control.
Barbara Castle captured this spirit of free love: “I never doubted I couldn’t enter into any marriage that denied me my career.
But equally I never doubted that my husband was of very great importance to me. My femininity is big enough to embrace everything. That’s to me the richness of life.”
The richness of a man’s masculinity, of course, is to be able to love without having to control.
