PARTISAN REVIEW
629
His treatment of extramarital sex is in a sense even less satisfactory. In
this instance his statistical findings are probably accurate, but the interpreta–
tion he imposes on them represents an exercise in wishful thinking. In effect
he permits his marital and romantic prejudices to blind him to both the
current reality and the likely shape of things to come.
His general conclusion, as noted, is that extramarital intercourse has
increased only insignificantly over the past twenty years. He admits, however,
that the statistics on young persons tell a different story. Among men under
25 the incidence of infidelity is up by almost a quarter, and among women in
the same age group it has exactly trebled. Hunt maintains, with some reason ,
that the latter statistic signifies a rejection not so much of monogamy as of the
double standard. Still the trend among the young suggests that monogamy
may be in serious trouble.
Hunt does his best to minimize the changes that have occurred, and he
also draws repeated attention to the hazards of extramarital sex. Nearly all of
his interview subjects admit that they have had unfaithful impulses. But those
that acted on them usually report that their marriages suffered as a result,
while those that resisted them say they did so precisely because of the threat
such impulses posed to the emotional stability of their marriages. On both
sides, in other words, infidelity is found incompatible with the romantic val–
ues that, according to Hunt, remain the basis of even our revolutionized
sexual order.
What he fails to elicit from his subjects is any acknowledgment of the
liabilities of fidelity . I strongly suspect that the faithful among his subjects, if
their feelings were accurately probed, would confess that they resented their
lost opportunities for sexual adventure. And as extramarital sex is more
openly discussed and tolerated, that resentment will doubtless become in–
creasingly poisonous. Hunt seems to hope that the need for variety can be met
through sexual experimentation and inventiveness within marriage. He is, I
think, mistaken, in both his judgment and his expectation . The rewards of
sexual variety are too substantial and the burdens of monogamy too onerous
for the old system to weather the current critique unscathed. Instead the
coming decades will probably see an effort to find some compromise between
the claims of companionship and adventure. For many, perhaps even the
majority, such a compromise may not exist, and for practically no one will it
come easily. But I would be very surprised if the statistics on extramarital sex
hold as firm during the next twenty years as they apparently have in the last.
Paul A. Robinson
