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Chapter 16 Learning Objectives
Upon reading this chapter, the student should be able to:
- Discuss the concept of commitment and the ethical priorities commitments involve and require.
Watch this video or scan the QR code to see learn more about loving two people at the same time.
I have no doubt that most people, if not all, could fall in love with and be loved by any of a number of different people. One is deluding oneself to think his or her spouse is the only person he or she could have been happily married to. Otherwise, it would be miraculous ever to find one’s love anywhere among the billions of people on the planet, let alone in the same neighborhood, church, classroom, office, bar, or party. Of course, in some anxious cases it seems difficult to find any sort of even pleasant date let alone ideal mate, but for the most part, one probably meets a number of people throughout one’s lifetime to whom one could be satisfactorily or well- married.
Unfortunately, sometimes one finds such other people, and is mutually attracted to them, while one is in another relationship and having some difficulty in it. The temptation then is sometimes to end the first relationship and begin a new one. Almost any relationship where time is spent together, whether it is at work, at college in a roommate situation, or whatever, can develop friction or problems in it, particularly where people are living together (whether married or not), since living together does not always give the breathing room or time for both preparation for and recuperation from being together that dating or more infrequently meeting gives. There can easily arise the temptation to look for greener pastures and begin anew with someone with whom one does not seem to have any problems. …Yet.
In terms of love relationships, commitment demands that the “committed to” relationship take precedence over the other, new and potentially loving relationship. If one does not understand or appreciate commitment, one could be continually moving from relationship to relationship without ever making progress beyond certain troubling places.
Commitment or promise does not mean keeping a relationship that is an irreparably bad one; it means trying to work things out in one that has some problems instead of immediately abandoning it. This is easier to do when one realizes all (or almost all) relationships will have some problems, so there is more point to solving the present problem in an already established and growing relationship than in abandoning it for a relationship that will likely also have some sort of problems, and which does not yet have the value, basis or foundation the first has.
In his last movie, Clark Gable has a line where just after his wife or lover has left him, where he is asked by a buddy to go out with him to meet some new girls. His reply is, no thanks, since he doesn’t want to have to start from scratch all over again and go through all that. There is something repetitive about