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[reenka]

I can love both fair and brown;
He whom abundance melts, and he whom want betrays;
He who loves loneness best, and he who masks and plays;
He whom the country form'd, and whom the town;
He who believes, and he who tries;
He who still weeps with spongy eyes,
And he who is dry cork, and never cries.
I can love him, and him, and you, and you;
I can love any, so he be not true.

- John Donne

(I uh... have no excuse for that, except that I came across it in a fic and loved it... and kinda identified with it, so there. Though, um, it's 'her' in the original, ahahahah. Also, the actual -poem- doesn't suit me so well as the snippet; I can't empathize with infidelity as well as I can with loving/enjoying all sorts of people, just... um... platonically, ahahaha.)

Actually, I'm pretty interested in 'infidelity' as a subject in fiction, though it has to be handled a certain way for me to enjoy it. Normally, as in the case of Brian Kinney & Val Toreth (from ms_manna's 'The Administration' series), I go for the type that strays emotionlessly but never strays emotionally... if I can focus on the fact that the character never falls for any of his 'casual fucks', I can forgive it, if not enjoy or empathize with it. When a character 'fucks up' emotionally, for me there's a lot of distancing that immediately goes on with that character, which is why (in QaF), Justin's infidelity made me a lot more uncomfortable & unhappy, and only the knowledge that it was never as important as Brian made it 'okay' in the end to wish them to get back together.

I mean, obviously, as Donne says, it's not men's nature to be 'true'-- no more than it is women's. It's more that I think it's possible & desirable to go against nature in some things, or rather -for- some things, because inexplicably, it is -also- in our nature to desire fidelity from our lovers, generally, and that isn't going away anymore than infidelity. I think it's also human nature to strive to please our lovers, to become truer to our emotions than to our baser instincts, or at least to somehow reconcile these two urges and be true to both, not having to choose the biological urge to fuck over the emotional urge not to hurt one's partner or not to touch someone who won't satisfy one emotionally.

That's why I've always had no patience with infidelity in romance fics, partly-- I guess I'm so confident & certain of my feeling on the issue that no fic, no matter how brilliant, will make me really ignore it. If there is infidelity, even if it's justified & later worked out, it will have the effect of lessening my personal attachment to the characters' relationship-- meaning, the characters may end up okay, but my own emotional investment as a -reader- will be compromised significantly. I won't -care- as much as a defense against dissolving into anger and recrimination which would just stop me from reading at all. Literally the one and only loophole is the 'casual fuck' clause where it just has no meaning; meaning = emotional weight and emotional weight = distancing, to me in this case.

Neither am I interested being 'played' with, as a reader-- having fake or almost-infidelity, drawn-out triangles, that sort of thing. I know it's everywhere, and I -tolerate- it up to a point, but I've never enjoyed the game. Possibly because it's an issue I never faced myself? Not that I've never quite strayed or been tempted, and not even that my partner never strayed-- it's just that feeling that it was unimportant. If it was -important-, it would mean the relationship was over. And while I understand polyamory in concept, and emotionally go so far as to love a number of people-- even sexual love, of sorts-- in practice, it doesn't work in my head just because I suppose I'm a possessive person. Or maybe merely a romantic :>

Comments

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

i'm totally surprised you'd compare val and brian...to me brian's a dead ringer for toreth!! (with the commitment phobia and the unawareness that they're already committed after all and the mild psychopathic streak...actually i tend to put keller in the mix...and krycek on my better days :-)

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Ahaha, now you see what happens when I'm totally half-asleep and unadvisedly writing entries. :> *facepalm* Of course I meant Toreth, that's why I said 'Val', as in 'Val Toreth', ahahaha. They're definitely rather similar :>