The American counsellor, Mira Kirshenbaum, has written a book called When
Good People Have Affairs. It has caused a huge fuss by daring to suggest
that long term affairs can be the salvation of a relationship. Kirshenbaum's
challenge is that, whatever we say at the altar, there is no finite right or
wrong in relationships, just behaviour that works and behaviour that
doesn't. The question is - whose behaviour? There is a growing belief that
men and women think that they are using the same emotional and ethical
software, when in reality they are operating on completely different
platforms.
Let's take the most obvious split in behaviour that the revelation of an
affair brings out. Men are far more prone to compartmentalise. They file
experiences and relationships in different places with never any reason to
confuse them.
The darker side is at the heart of one of the most intriguing films to appear
in recent years. In Jindabyne, by the Australian director Ray Lawrence, a
group of male friends go on a fishing trip. On the first night they find the
dead, naked body of a young woman in the river. They secure the body with a
line, then carry on with their trip. They tell the police when they get
home. The rest of the film deals with the emotional fall-out as the
townspeople and their own partners turn on the men.
The film is based on a Raymond Carver short story, So Much Water So Close
to Home. The Carver tale turns on an outburst from one of the men,
Stuart: “Goddamn it, why can't people mind their own business? Tell me what
I did wrong and I'll listen!” Let's imagine a snap poll of readers. Hands up
who can tell Stuart what he did wrong? I'm pretty confident that 100 per
cent of females will be able to say what he did. So will a good percentage
of males. But there will be also be many men who share Stuart's bemusement.
Look at the facts. The men in the fishing party did not kill the girl. They
did nothing to the body other than to make it secure. They had a right to
carry on with their trip and it would have made no difference reporting the
death immediately.Stuart's wife watches in silent fury as he tries to
explain: “He gives me what he thinks is a meaningful look. ‘She was dead,'
he says. ‘And I'm as sorry as anyone else. But she was dead'.”
Helen Haste, a visiting professor of psychology at Harvard, analyses the scene
in terms of the different approaches that males and females have to concepts
such as “wrong”. Men are more comfortable with the abstract and the finite.
So Stuart's “right” to continue his trip is inalienable. And if someone is
dead, they self-evidently don't have the same rights as the living. For
Stuart's wife, the issue is just as clear-cut.
Professor Haste says: “Women think in terms of relationships. She wants to
drag out an emotional response. So how did they relate to the dead woman -
and how did they relate to the other men in the group?” Stuart has sex with
his wife before he tells her about the body: it's a dramatic evocation of
men's ability to put experiences into different boxes.
I agree that Stuart did wrong. But I understand why he did: there have been
too many occasions when I have been caught in the kind of tight space that
Carver describes. She wants to know why I didn't say something (about that
trip, that lunch). I say something lame such as it wasn't relevant. The
defence, which is never good enough for any woman, is that I didn't lie. I
just didn't volunteer the information. There's a difference.
As for relating to other men - this is where men are so often a
disappointment. Women like you playing golf with your best mate because it
is a great opportunity to talk, and that is considered A Good Thing. The
truth is, you talk mainly about golf. Male bonding is a phrase that women
like to use, but it doesn't mean much. You go fishing to fish, play football
to play football. Let's not fly to Mars and Venus, or stray into Emotional
Intelligence. Let's go back to this issue of gender and ethics and the
feminist debates that have enlivened academic life. The Ethics of Care is a
phrase associated with the work of the American psychologist, Susan
Gilligan, who worked with the cognitive psychologist, Lawrence Kohlberg. The
two parted company when Gilligan took issue with Kohlberg's studies, which
showed that boys reach a higher level of moral development than girls. She
questioned the very abstractions that the male establishment took for
granted - the so-called Ethics of Justice. Gilligan's alternative ethics,
expressed in her influential work In a Different Voice (1982), put
relationships and community at the centre of women's moral universe.
Gilligan's own research methods have since been questioned, often by more
radical feminists. But the opposing ethical systems that she depicts do give
us a useful lens through which to see the world. Look, most obviously, at
Diana, Princess of Wales. According to the ethics of justice, her sins
(adultery, for example) were no better or worse than her husband's. Where
she put herself beyond the pale was by betraying principles that went far
deeper than an individual's emotional problems. She dared to use the pronoun
“I” in place of the royal “we” or the equally royal “one”.
Yet the public saw a woman with an incredibly strong sense of right and wrong.
The film The Queen shows in beautiful detail what happened when the British
people chose those female values over male stoicism. And it's why Gordon
Brown has to take a direct interest in, say, the Madeleine McCann case.
There's a very useful personality test that you can do, based on the work of
two female Jungian psychologists, Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter,
Isabel Briggs Myers. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator assesses how you are
likely to relate to others based on four dichotomies
(extraversion/introversion; sensing/intuition; thinking/feeling;
judging/perceiving). I've been Myers-Briggsed a few times with senior people
at work, and it's the T/F axis (thinking/feeling) dichotomy that usually
separates the boys from the girls.
Both strive to make rational decisions. But high Fs will think of the effect
that this decision has on people: they are often women. High Ts - almost
always male - will make that decision based on what's logical. Most of us
combine both attributes - I'm a T with strong F tendencies. But I think that
the Ts, the Edwardian writers and the compartmentalisers, do get an unfairly
bad press.
Here's a thought. In this piece, I haven't brought in any personal
experiences. A female writer would probably have been less shy. Why am I?
Self-protection, I suppose. But there's an Edwardian voice in my head saying
that it won't do to bandy a woman's name.
As for keeping information back, sometimes I've done that out of a sense of
chivalry. This old word is behind more quirks of male behaviour than you'd
expect. Sometimes you keep back information from women because you think it
might hurt them. Most say that's the opposite of what they want, that I've
got some misplaced male idea of protecting them. But there are still women
who are all for a little reserve and discretion on the male side.
One, interestingly, is Mira Kirshenbaum. Owning up to an affair, she writes is
totally destructive. “Honesty is all very well, but not when it comes at the
price of your partner's trust and peace of mind.”
Polls showed that women eventually got fed up with Tony Blair empathising with
all and sundry. In Graham Greene's Latin American novels, machismo does not
mean swagger and display but its opposite: taciturnity and forbearance.
Professor Haste believes that we continue to bring up our boys to admire and
adopt that kind of machismo - and this may be a more useful way of
explaining how we see the world differently.
So, blokes: macho, chivalrous or just emotionally constipated and naturally
devious? It's hard to win when you aren't sure of the rules. Just tell us
what we're doing wrong and we will listen.
Do you think more like a male or female?
1 A young intern in a blue dress is attracted to you, and performs what the
tabloid press refer to as “a sex act”. You are questioned as to the nature
of your relationship. Do you:
A: Break down in tears and admit your failings as a husband, father and leader
B: Reply that you “did not have sexual relations with that woman”.
Technically, you are not lying
2 You are a 16th-century king of England and married to a young woman who is
too flirtatious with your courtiers. Do you:
A: Sit her down and gently tell her that her behaviour hurts you and is wrong
B: Shout: “Off with her head!”
3 You are a well-known actress, let’s call you Sarah JP (above), and a
prominent designer has lent you a dress. It transpires that the same dress
was worn by someone else on a previous occasion. Do you:
A: Denounce the fashion designer as “unethical and disappointing”
B: Quietly congratulate yourself for choosing a popular outfit. Fashion can be
such a minefield nowadays
Mostly As: You reason like a female. This may be good for your relationships,
but does it always work?
Mostly Bs: You reason like a male. You may be in the right, but you may not be
very nice.
