Question Is there such a thing as "emotional infidelity"?

Accepted:
February 23, 2011

Comments

If one means by 'emotional infidelity' feeling attracted to another person than the one to whom is committed, or to feeling enmity or having bad thoughts towards someone towards to whom one is committed in friendship, than the phenomenon seems very possible indeed. Consider the following case, which I think is not idiosyncratic: something bad happens to a friend, and instead of sympathizing with that person--at least in one's thoughts--one takes pleasure in that friend's misfortune. (In German, this is called 'Schadenfreude'.) In taking pleasure in the misfortune of a friend, one is being emotionally unfaithful to that friendship--which, I think, in principle requires in principle that one sympathize and commiserate with the misfortunes of one's friend. The deep question, however, is why, if cases such as these are indeed correctly characterized as cases of emotional infidelity, why such emotional infidelity is as common as I think it is: one explanation, deriving from Christianity, is that human beings are Fallen, or, to put it in terms that Kant employs in Religion Within the Limits of Mere Reason, that human beings are 'radically evil'. Regardless of whether the Fall is actual historical event--as certain Christians are inclined to think--I myself am inclined to think that there is something deeply correct about this explanation, and that human beings may well, in virtue of being fundamentally self-absorbed and self-interested, always liable to violate the demands of friendship and love, even if only in thought and not in deed. (Perhaps this is too gloomy a view of human nature; nevertheless introspection and the observation of others seem, sadly, to lend it considerable evidential support.)

Question Is there such a thing as "emotional infidelity"? Accepted:February 23, 2011

Question Is there such a thing as "emotional infidelity"?

Accepted:
February 23, 2011