The value of commitment, fidelity and realism in relationships.
Remembering the brilliant marriage therapist, the late Dr Frank Pittman.
I was sad to discover recently that the acclaimed American psychiatrist, family therapist and author, Dr Frank Pittman, passed away last year, after a lengthy and distinguished career that began in 1962.
Dr Pittman's writing was a major influence on my own thinking about the ideal nature of marriage, the value of marriage, and the value of fidelity and commitment in marriage.
The extremely destructive nature of infidelity was a central theme of Dr. Pittman's work. In a 1993 article for Psychology Today, he wrote:
"Day after day in my office I see men and women who have been messing around. They lead secret lives, as they hide themselves from their marriages. They go through wrenching divorces, inflicting pain on their children and their children's children. Or they make desperate, tearful, sweaty efforts at holding on to the shreds of a life they've betrayed. They tell me they have gone through all of this for a quick thrill or a furtive moment of romance. Sometimes they tell me they don't remember making the decision that tore apart their life: 'It just happened.' Sometimes they don't even know they are being unfaithful. (I tell them: 'If you don't know whether what you are doing is an infidelity or not, ask your spouse.') From the outside looking in, it is insane. How could anyone risk everything in life on the turn of a screw?"Dr. Pittman expressed his view of "growing up" in a 2000 interview:
"But growing up does mean that while your feelings are very interesting, they're not the only thing that's going on in the universe today. And however lovely your feelings are, and however fascinating your complicated state of mind, there are things that need to be done. And if you're going to take on a partner, there are responsibilities there. If you're going to have children, there are responsibilities there. And you can't really run out on those responsibilities and maintain much of a sense of honor and integrity. You can't run out on those responsibilities and really grow up in a way that makes you proud of your life's choices in the second half of your life."Dr Pittman's books seemed to me to be a call to realism, a call to recognition of the personal responsibility that comes with human maturity, a call to the abandonment of unrealistic ideals of perfection and to the rejection of temptations that could easily lead to the devastation of a precious soul-mate relationship that will never recover from the trauma of betrayal.
I wish that anyone thinking about having an affair would put their intention on hold for at least as long as it takes to read his outstanding books Private Lies and Grow Up!; and I would also recommend that anyone who has been the victim of infidelity in a relationship (and yes, I certainly belong to that club) also read both these books. They certainly helped me to work out what had happened in my own relationship, and what seems to be happening in society in general where, unfortunately, the concepts of commitment and fidelity in relationships have increasingly come to be regarded as ridiculously old-fashioned.
In addition to the longer quotations above, Dr Pittman's Wikipedia Page includes the following short "notable quotations" that might provide a taster of the ideas his works explore in more detail:
- "Marriage isn't supposed to make you happy - it's supposed to make you married."
- "Marriage, like a submarine, is only safe if you get all the way inside."
- "Bad marriages don't cause infidelity; infidelity causes bad marriages."
- "...in the end, there is nothing a man can do that a woman can’t, except be a father."
- "For most people, a life lived alone, with passing strangers or passing lovers, is incoherent and ultimately unbearable. Someone must be there to know what we have done for those we love."
Dr Frank Pittman's work informed much of what I wrote in my recent article for Pink News, where I expressed my hope that the legalisation of marriage for same-sex couples might herald a return to a more conservative attitude towards relationships, personal values and social values in the gay and lesbian community.
© Gary Powell, 2013
