Monogamy is a demanding discipline.

It was a marriage of 30 years. They have two grown up sons. She is 56 and he is 54. They were both working in the civil service. 

She was 18 when she joined and she was working as a technician. It was reported that “throughout the years, her career had remained stagnant so that her husband’s could thrive, noted the judge. Her promotions were delayed because she had to care for the family.”

In 2017, she filed for divorce. It was on his unreasonable behaviour. “Such behaviour included the husband requesting the wife to accept his mistress into the family and into the matrimonial home which the wife agreed to,” noted the Judge. 

Yes, you read it right. It is not that uncommon. Some spouses bring their mistresses back home. Some are done in secret; others in the open. Still others ask for some permanent arrangement of blissful co-existence. While marriage covenants are exclusive, adultery (in some cases) is inclusive yet often unilateral in favour of the dominant spouse, that is, the husband usually gets the final say in such arrangement. 

Mind you, I have done divorces where, in a small 3-room HDB flat, the husband and his mistress(es) conducted their trysts in the master bedroom while his wedded wife and kids are squeezed into the other available room. I could still remember what the wife told me, quite nonchalantly: “they are very inconsiderate...sometimes at night they are noisy and my kids just can’t sleep.”

Alas, in most cases, the matrimonial bed is the bellwether of the health or the future of the marriage. It is supposed to be exclusive, and that is what the marriage vows have delineated for the couple before a crowd of witnesses. It seemed believable enough then.

But, in practice, especially when one party ages over time and the other party starts to wonder whether he has gotten the short end of the marital stick in a world so full of enticing options and endless opportunities for self-gratification, a sheen of cold wax soon starts to form around the edges of one’s restless heart. A marriage whose heart is unguarded often takes off at the slightest agitation of lust and self-devotion. 

The husband in that case was said to be confounded with the wife’s application for divorce. “The husband claimed in these proceedings that the wife was happy with this arrangement and was surprised she had cited this as a reason for the divorce,” observed the judge. 

In a bid to have his bed and sleep on it, the husband sought his wife’s consent in 2014. Well, she reluctantly agreed. 

But honestly, I too am confounded. I wonder, why do you bother pursuing an agreement when it is wholly one-sided? If there ought to be mutuality in agreements, would the husband readily accept it if the table is reversed? Indeed, some agreements are so devoid of self-awareness that it makes a mockery of a gentleman’s handshake. 

In any event, I am sure it is a conscience pact, one in which the husband gets to do what he wanted without keeping it under wraps. Somehow, the pleasure derived from lust under the covers is nowhere near the pleasure arrived at when such liaison is held in the open with a conscience naively mollified. 

The forbidden fruit may yield a juicy bite when taken in sheer darkness, but over time, it is the borrowed light of self-righteousness that holds a greater draw. And like the lust of a man’s heart, legitimacy in whatever form that one can secure compels him to a pact of betrayal under the guise of forced approval. 

At times, it goes beyond self-righteousness to a marital schemer manipulating the terms he wants, almost akin to an agreement that is secured under duress. 

Let me end with this inconvenient truth. In a sexually exclusive union, I have no delusions about the ideal as spelt out in the marriage vows. We are human after all, enfleshed in our own wayward desires. For whose mind in the course of marriage doesn’t wander to uncharted territory where the juiciest fruit are laid bare for the plucking? 

Monogamy is a demanding discipline, of the mind, of the soul and of the heart. When two souls intertwine, when they make a promise to each other before loved ones, the integrity of the union comes not from some ideal floating in the air. No, it instead comes from a lifelong discipline to subject one’s freedom to choose to advance only one’s pleasure for the freedom to choose to fortify what is the pleasure of a lifetime covenant.

That pleasure is beyond the lusts of one’s desires. It is beyond a momentary fling. It is a pleasure that does not outgrow the promise of the union. It in fact nurtures it. It grows stronger with age because it draws its resilience from time. And it comes with a price. It’s the price of enduring love. 

Not all can afford to pay it though. Or want to.