"We ought never to do wrong when people are looking." Mark Twain
The loss experienced when a partner engages in a romantic affair is often described as a loss of resources, such as love, time, attention, sexual energy, and financial resources. The unfaithful person is described as transferring such resources from the spouse to the lover. There are here two empirical assumptions: (a) we have a given amount of mental (and sexual) energy, and (b) having an affair decreases the mental (and sexual) energy directed toward the spouse. It is not evident that these assumptions are always correct.
Rosa, a single mother, based her initial opposition to extramarital affairs on the reason of scarce resource: "I believed that I only have a certain amount of time and energy for romance. So it is best spent with someone that is open to all the various possibilities of its development." After a while, however, Rosa did find the time and energy for such affairs and twice was involved in affairs with married men, claiming that "I love who I love.
Marriage may put restrictions on how I can be with married men, but it doesn't seem to impact how I perceive them and how I experience the fit with me. I still believe I wouldn't pursue a married man... wouldn't let myself open to him knowing he was married. Both these two just snuck in..." (see
In the Name of Love).
There is no doubt that in many circumstances, such loss of resources occurs. However, it is not clear whether the loss of resources, rather than the loss of exclusivity, is the focus of concern. There are situations in which the mate, for reasons of guilt, personal considerations, or a better emotional state in general, lavishes extra attention on a spouse while developing an outside attachment. In these cases, too, the spouse may develop negative emotional attitudes such as jealousy and hostility. This suggests that the value of certain activities is enhanced if people engage in them only with each other, despite the fact that they may reap some benefit in violating such exclusivity. Certain rewards may lose much of their value if they are not exclusive. This is true even when the violation of exclusivity is only imaginary. Jealousy exists also when the spouse is merely sexually interested in someone else, even when this interest does not involve any loss of resources.
In the same vein, a major objection to online extramarital affairs is that such affairs ruin the established relationship by diverting resources from the primary offline relationship to the online affair so that it becomes increasingly difficult to sustain the offline relationship, as someone else is competing for the time and attention of the partner. Thus, cybersex may make offline sexual activity a rarity: the person having the online affair may be less enthusiastic, less energetic, and less responsive to lovemaking with the offline partner, as it is difficult to compete with the novelty and excitement of a new, fantasy partner.
There are, however, cases in which getting involved in cybersex may improve people's comfort with their own sexuality and their offline sexual relationships. This is especially true for people, who are often less comfortable with sexual issues. One woman notes: "I've been happily married for four years, but recently I found an old boyfriend on the Internet. Sometimes we have cybersex and I think it has made my sex life with my husband better. Even though we will never meet in person, doing this makes me feel like I'm cheating." (see Love Online)
Analyzing the postulated exclusivity of the beloved from an economic point of view, we may speak of two seemingly opposed effects. One is the consumer effect, in light of which a product becomes more desirable when perceived as desired by others. The second is the rarity effect, in light of which the rarer the product is the more desirable it becomes. The two effects are compatible in the sense that we do desire more what is desired by others, but for exactly this comparative issue, we value it more if it is ours alone. Thus, a man may desire a woman more if other men desire her as well (and accordingly, demonstrating that others are interested is a good way of increasing the interest of your partner), but this man will value her more if she will remain exclusively his romantic partner. She is a kind of trophy he won while the others did not.
It has been claimed that people should share their sexuality "the way a philanthropist shares her money-because they have a lot of it to share, because it makes them happy to share it, because sharing makes the world a better place" (see Ethical Slut). It is obvious, however, that in many other cases, such sharing reduces sexual desire and activity within the primary relationship, as resources and attention are directed away from the primary partner.
It appears then that the most pressing problem regarding extramarital affairs is not the economic problem of losing resources but the psychological problem of losing exclusivity. Nonexclusive love, which may be accepted on a moral level, is quite painful on the psychological level. Married people having an extramarital affair still feel intense jealousy when suspecting their lovers might be having an additional affair. Thus, Eva says that it so difficult for her to imagine her married lover being in the arms of another woman-the fact that he may be in the arms of his wife did not disturb her as much. She also promised her lover not to let anyone else beside him ever touch her-not referring, of course, to her husband, although indicating that she does not like making love to him.
In the same way that greater resources do not make you necessarily happy, so fewer resources do not make you necessarily miserable. It is rather the issue of exclusiveness which is more crucial when it comes to extramarital affairs. It seems then that although mental and sexual energy is limited, it is not inevitably the case that an extramarital affair decreases it or even decreases the share of the primary partner.
