Can there be committment without fidelity?
What about those gay men who are in “open” relationships, the men whose profiles and somewhat whorish pictures you see on the big gay internet dating sites with words like, “committed but play”? Does that work? No. Because the decision to have an open relationship is always taken under the guise of reason; left out are the emotional consequences of the act. But those consequences don’t go away. Sexual infidelity inevitably opens the door to emotional infidelity. And that emotional infidelity inevitably drives a stake into the heart of the relationship. Gay couples may survive the ensuing emotional trauma. But the couple which emerges from that ordeal is not the same as that which entered it. For nothing can ever erase the knowledge of a partner’s emotional disloyalty. And the doubt thus created can never be fully expunged. For it makes both men skeptical about the future of the relationship and leads them to wonder whether it was worthwhile to begin with. Only a sexually exclusive rela
