What is “harmless”?

    There are a lot of definitions of marriage out there.  The meaning of that commitment seems to mean different things to different people, and the details of the contract vary.  I have a first row seat to that truth as a performer – the world of theater, especially of touring theater, seems to be a sort of petri dish for marriage experimentation.  It’s a world in which the line between personal and professional is blurry beyond recognition, where people are extroverted, emotionally driven, and flirtatious, and where being away from one’s spouse is as common (if not more) as being with them.  And I have to admit that the judge and jury in me want to come out sometimes on this issue.  How ok is it to push the boundaries of behavior on the road in the absence of one’s spouse?  Where are the boundaries and what does it mean to push them?  What is actually “harmless”, and what is not only inappropriate, but a dangerous emotional set-up?  Can there be different definitions of what’s ok in marriage, or are there some basic psychological truths about what will and will not work for marital success?

     A strong argument can be made for “harmless flirtations”.  But I guess for me the answer is partly to be found in the question of why we flirt in the first place.  We flirt because it makes us feel good.  It makes us feel attractive, desirable, of interest to someone.  And I can see where, when you have your spouse within reach, this can actually be of some benefit to keeping the fires stoked in marriage – as long as you can always reconnect those feelings to your spouse.  The problem is that we are highly associative creatures.  When we experience certain emotions repeatedly in a certain set of circumstances, or related to a specific person or thing, those emotions become tied tightly to those circumstances, person or thing.  Simply put, having someone other than your spouse be the source of this good feeling is dangerous.  And when your spouse isn’t around to be the ultimate associated release of those feelings, the person with whom you continually act those feelings out, it is exponentially more dangerous.

     I’m trying not to be moralistic about it.  The fact is that moral beliefs have very little power over this very human experience.  It’s hard, though.  For me, I’d love to know that my husband was always behaving in ways I would be comfortable with if I were in the room, and so I try to always use that as a measure of my own behavior – how comfortable would my husband be with my behavior right now if he were able to see me?  This seems right and reasonable to me, and has built into it the idea that different people’s spouses would be comfortable with different things.  In the end, though, I think the more delicate and often overlooked issue isn’t whether our spouses would be ok with what we are doing, but whether we are subjecting ourselves to an unnecessary and painful psychological battle for the sake of feeling good in the moment.