There has never been an age of mankind when adultery was not there. However as Society is moving towards the individualistic Age and with the new found freedom, means of travel and communication as well as a more open social outlook, its possibility and recognition has become more common. It has nothing to do with the imperfection of matter, – can’t blame the poor fellow for everything, but everything to do with the evolutionary emergence of man out of the animal nature, though even in animals there are few that are strictly monogamous. It seems like an early attempt of Nature to preserve a type of species. Generally it is blamed on the irrepresibility of the sexual instinct that is perhaps the strongest of all instincts given its role in prolonging the play of Nature. Human beings have tried various means to address it such as prostitution (being the oldest profession), the nautch girl (in the culturally developed), nagarvadhu, acceptance of polygamy as well as polyandry, child marriage, marriage strictly within caste, confinement of women behind the veil and the house, to harsh and cruel punishments for the same. None really worked perhaps because despite being near universal it has not been understood. Repression, punishment, legalization, nothing has helped.
To understand and address it we need to look at it not from a male-centric moralistic point of view but go deeper than associating it with the sexual impulse alone. No doubt the sexual impulse plays a role in it when man is not developed beyond the first animal wants. But if this were all then one cannot explain developed human beings, including yogis and seers like Yajnavalkya having more than one wife. With kings and chieftains, it was the norm rather than an exception. All could not be explained on the sexual basis alone. There is in many instances a strong emotional dissatisfaction, a real or perceived incompatibility that shows up over the years after marriage, a growing complexity of nature needing different companions and complimentary natures for the different, strong and almost independent elements of one’s personalities, most of all the insatiable search for the Ideal partner with whom one can connect, walk together and join at all the different levels of one’s being. This last is driven by an intuition that perhaps there is such a complimentary soul meant for each other. This attraction even has its deeper justification, in the dual play of Purusha and Prakriti that Nature tries to replicate in some way through the Man Woman relationship. In such instances where the closeness is driven by more idealistic or deeper psychic emotions sexuality may intervene, often does given that human nature is not cut in different parts acting independent of each other but is not the main reason. Though technically adultery, it cannot be put at par with the frivolous kind attracted towards outer things alone. In fact if we look into the mental and emotional atmosphere of people then hardly anybody could be considered non-adulturous.
Among the solutions, I find the ancient Hindu Society the closest to the ideal possibility. They had a healthy acceptance of more than one person in life if the closeness was moved by mutual genuine feelings arising in two persons out of the deep ocean of love. They were bold enough to accept all truth of feelings and wise enough to discern between passions arising due to attraction and emotions that rose from some deeper self. Refinement is certainly better than rigid repression, sublimation better than either licentiousness or legal suppression as it changes nothing much except whitewashing the surfaces. I suppose the right solution lies in the emergence of psychic love and the dropping off of the animal instincts, finally with the transformation of the sexual instinct raising this too from its crude animal beginnings to the divine complimentarity of kindred souls coming together for a divine purpose.
Affectionately,
Alok Da
