Fairy Bail Romance

I'm a 66-year-old man. I got married in my mid-20s. I was totally faithful, but my wife left me after 10 years (I think for another woman). I was with the next woman for 20 years. Again, I was faithful, but she left me, too. Is being faithful overrated? I thought it was the way to secure a relationship.

--Failed Relationships

Keeping a marriage together by being faithful is important -- but it's also a step above keeping a marriage together by not being dead. (Note that the marriage ceremony has a little more text to it than "Keep it in your pants, mkay?") Still, it isn't a surprise that you'd go, "Wait...faithful to the first one, faithful to the next one; must've been why these relationships tanked!" This leap you're making probably comes out of how uncomfortable our minds are with uncertainty (stemming from ambiguous situations, unanswered questions, and other mental untidiness). According to research by cognitive neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga, a mechanism in our brain's left hemisphere that he calls "the interpreter" steps in to fill in the blanks, to save us from the cognitive chaos by coming up with an explanation. Unfortunately, it's like the world's sloppiest detective. It quickly scans for any patterns or vaguely plausible meanings and then just goes with them -- creating a narrative that seems to make sense of our experience (and never mind the tedious snore of weighing whether it actually does). Accordingly, though it's easier on the ego to see your being faithful as some sort of common denominator, a more productive take would be accepting that relationships end and considering whether there's anything you might have done better, both in picking partners and in being one. You might also reconsider the notion that you had "failed relationships." The reality is, partners change and grow apart. They come to want conflicting things (like a wife perhaps wanting a wife of her own). Or they just get bored with each other. As I see it, a 10- or 20-year relationship is a feat to celebrate -- not only making a relationship work for a whole lot of years but refraining from bludgeoning your mate for the horrible, psyche-scraping sounds they make when they chew. ... For pages and pages of "science-help" from me, buy my latest book, "Unf*ckology: A Field Guide to Living with Guts and Confidence." It lays out the PROCESS of transforming to live w/confidence.