Is Overwhelming Passion Ever A Good Enough Excuse? What About Love, Then?

As a romance writer, I’ve made a career out of overwhelming passion and love, and I adore those moments when the hero is brought to his knees by the realization that despite everything, he loves her, dammit.  (And even, lately; he loves him, goddamit to hell!)

But real life isn’t nearly as romantic, and love at times can be very callous, inconvenient and downright crude.

On the other hand, it can also be so incredibly romantic, it can bring you to your knees with deep emotion and genuine heart-felt sentiment.

It can also be wildly corny and clichéd, too.  You have to have a huge sense of humour to study romance in real life.

Lately, though, I’ve had my nose rubbed in the less attractive side of sex and love.  We’ve all seen the feet of clay of more high-profile public figures such as Tiger Woods.  I’ve also seen the seamier side of friends’ and relatives’ relationships, too.  There must be something in the air right now, because I’ve suddenly been surrounded with a rash of separations, divorces and relationship difficulties, and observed and listened to people agonize their way through personal hell, as well as watch the more famous people suffer their way through public Hades.

Infidelity is a horrible situation for anyone to be involved in.  I don’t care which of the three roles you happen to be dubbed with, if you’ve got anything like a conscience at all, it’s a terrible time to go through.   The fallout and consequences are so major they scar not just the three major players, but family members, friends, colleagues, jobs, co-workers, employees, potential customers…  Depending on how acrimonious the fallout, and if divorce is part of the proceedings, the consequences will echo and resound for years and years.

But that’s not the point of my post.
<h3>What Happened <em>Before</em> The Infidelity Took Place?</h3>
I’m sure every cheated-upon person in history has asked this question.  I’m sure it’s almost the first question in their minds, if not their lips.  <em>Why?</em>

I’m almost as certain that there are as many reasons given as there have been adulterers and infidelities.  Boredom, revenge, rage, <em>ennui</em>, “we were on a break,” whatever.

The one that interests me the most, however, is the one that I am sure scares most women.  As the majority of cases of infidelity are instigated by men, I’m going to pick on them for this example, but it would work just as well for women, too. There’s lots of different versions of it, but a nicely generic version would run something like:  “I couldn’t help myself.  She was beautiful.  Passionate.  I had to have her.  <em>I was overwhelmed</em>.”  The added kicker, to really make you feel like you want to throw up would be:  “I fell in love almost at first sight.”

It sounds like something out of a romance novel, and that’s the scary part, because this same person was supposed to be in a stable, mature, committed relationship with <em>you</em>.

I’ve heard two versions of this excuse in the last few weeks, and in both cases, the men involved knew the woman they were obsessing about was off limits for a number of reasons.  One of the men was married.  The other was older than the woman he was interested in and in a position of trust.  Yet they couldn’t stay away from these women, and they couldn’t stop obsessing about them.  The man in the position of trust went ahead and…well, I guess you’d call it ‘dating.’  He had sex with the younger woman.  In this particular case, they were both technically single, but it would be a fine line between dating and taking advantage of his position, although she certainly knew what she was doing, too.  They’re no longer dating.

As for the married man…well, the jury is still out on that one.
<h3>Is overwhelming lust and passion for someone ever an excuse?</h3>
I’ve had this discussion with a few people lately.  In romance novels, it sounds wonderfully grand:  a blaze of passion that sweeps the pair off their feet and into the bedroom for an uplifting night of sexual splendour that stops clocks and pulses in their tracks.  To deny such a fervour sends both parties into agonies that leaves them unable to function, half-crazed with desire, absent-minded at best, willing to die for the other at the extreme, and able to leap tall buildings, smash through mountains and halt tsunamis in order to reach their beloved in the meantime.

Such is the power of love and sexual obsession in romance novels, where the two are often intertwined.

In reality, sexual obsession is more mundane and can be far more hurtful when it happens outside an established relationship, or between two people who are inappropriate for each other. How it happens…well, that could be the topic for an entire book, and I don’t have space for it here in this post.  But let’s assume it has happened.  Two people, a man and a woman (to simplify this discussion) have met.  He’s married, she’s single, they’re in a bar at a conference, and they’ve had a few to drink.  She thinks he’s sexy and letting him know it with her eyes and voice and body language.  Naturally, he responds to the flattery.  His ego is getting stroked.  Who wouldn’t respond positively?  And she’s absolutely gorgeous, too.  Tall, a blue-eyed blonde, slender.  She’s single and has no dependants, so she has time to take care of her appearance, and the income to dress well, unlike his wife, who is stuck at home all day with three pre-school kids.  And she likes <em>him</em>.  She’s laughing at his dumb jokes.  Stroking his arm.  Leaning into him in a way his wife stopped doing years ago.  And she smells heavenly.  He’s already half-aroused and she hasn’t done more than brush his arm.

A few rounds later, some hot wings, and the conversation is definitely getting risqué.  And finally, when the barman says last call, she presses her shoulder up against him and suggests they buy a bottle of wine and share it in her room.  The indirect question.

The guy has reached a decision point then.  An in-the-face decision point.  But the fact is, he’s been making subtle and subconscious decisions all evening.  At any point in the evening he could have finished up his drink, called it a night and headed back to his room.  He knew exactly what was going on.  He knew the situation was a risk.  This is a classic red-light situation, a typical pick-up scenario.  All his mental lights and sirens should have been screaming at him to get out! get out!  So why didn’t he?  Unfortunately, this particularly scenario is one I made up, but for every <em>real</em> version of this that has ever happened, the man or woman in question will have their reasons for why they didn’t just go back to their room when they figured out what was happening.  They subconsciously made a decision to stay on the stool and keep playing the game.

Then they reached the in-your-face decision point.  Go back to her room?  Actually indulge in an affair?  A one night stand?

A lot of married people tend to bale at this point.  It’s too much of a deliberate decision and the consequences are too ugly to bear.  So our married man regretfully declines the pretty blonde’s invitation and picks up his hotel key and goes to head upstairs to his lonely bed.  But the blonde, as she’s heading across to the elevators, staggers and trips, and almost sprawls across the foyer tiles.  She’s pretty drunk, and clearly in no shape to get to her room by herself.  He helps her back to her feet and to her hotel room, her arm over his shoulder.  At her room, he unlocks the door and hands her the key, and she slides her arms around his neck, plants her lips against his, and leans her body against his.

It only takes a few seconds of this before he picks her up and carries her into the room and shuts the door behind him.

Now, where in all that did he actually make a decision?

It doesn’t seem like he did, but there must have been a point somewhere between picking up his hotel key and shutting her hotel room door when he mentally decided he would either a) live with whatever consequences would come from having sex with the blonde or b) most likely, he thought he would not get caught.  He’s away from home, no one in the city knows him, and it’s late.  No one saw them go up to her floor, and its her hotel room, not his.

It’s a pity that so many infidelities are consequence-free, because our married guy has some justification for thinking he might very well get away with it.  He’d already thought through the consequences once that evening already.  He knew what he was getting into.
<h3>In Conclusion</h3>
I don’t believe there’s such a thing as true overwhelming passion — not the sort that unhinges your sense of judgement and decision-making powers to the point where you can be called incapable of making decisions.  If that were true, then the law would recognize such a state, and render adults incapable of driving or signing legal documents when they were in such a state.  Clearly, they have not legislated such a condition.

And as I have tried to demonstrate with my example, even the most caught-unprepared-by-lust situation still involves choices to be involved and decisions to go forward every step of the way.   Love springs from an initial attraction, usually lust or passion, so even falling in love involves an initial decision to get close to that person, to get to know them more intimately that one usually would of non-romantic friends or colleagues.   And it’s rarely a single decision.  There’s lots of minor and major decisions along the way, always decisions to continue forward, connecting yourself to this building relationship that is going to ruin the one you’re currently committed to.  At any time you could have pulled the plug, but you chose not to.

As much as I love the idea of overwhelming passion in romance books, I refuse to accept it in real life.  It’s too much of a handy excuse for people who should accept the consequences of their own decisions and live with them. I suspect many people trot it out for those occassions when they finally get caught, because it seems like a half-way human excuse…and it’s probably a close resemblance to what really happened.  But it’s not the truth.

And no infidelity should be penalty-free.  Everyone should be caught, exposed and pay the consequences…but I could also wish for world peace, too. :)
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