Question I never loved my wife, but I married her. We have a child. I’ve been in Love with another woman for the past year, but now I’m moving soon and will lose her. Would it be wrong to have an affair? Doesn’t Love, by nature irrational, transcend my duty to my wife? What is right: to be true to my promise of fidelity, or to be true to myself, my heart, to love? I want to be an authentic person. Recently I read Soren Kierkegaard’s telling of Abraham sacrificing Isaac in his _Fear and Trembling_. He demonstrates that confrontation with the religious can, and often does, go beyond the ethical, the rational. All I know is that it feels right with this other woman, and time is short. It's not just about sex, I love her soul. I don’t know where it will lead. Is adultery always wrong?

Accepted:
October 10, 2007

Comments

You ask: "Doesn't love, by nature irrational, transcend my duty to my wife?" I answer: "Huh?"

You say you want to be an authentic person. I'd suggest that reading Fear and Trembling as a source of rationalizations for infidelity isn't a good recipe for authenticity. I'd also suggest that being a person of integrity is worth more worry than being "authentic," by which you seem to mean "doing what I most want to do."

You have a wife; you tell us you never loved her. How do you feel about your child? You say that you don't know where this potential affair might lead. Is one possible answer that it will lead to some harm and pain? If so, is it worth it? Is it the best thing all things considered?

That's not a rhetorical question. I don't know anything about your situation beyond what you've said. Perhaps you and your wife should divorce. Perhaps you should stay together for your child's sake. Perhaps you could even come to love your wife. (And I'd add: love isn't just an "irrational" passion, let alone a warm feeling in the groin.) Maybe you really do love this other woman's soul; maybe you're just in a state of unfulfilled infatuation. I'm in no position to say.

I don't know how your life should be sorted out. What I don't detect in what you've written is any wrestling with the hard stuff. And pseudo-philosophical abstractions about "Love" with a capital "L" are just a way of putting that off.