They say all is fair in love and war, though certainly for different reasons. War is hell, and all sorts of morals are ignored when things escalate to its atrocious state.
And anyway all isn’t really fair in war, as the Geneva accords and international court will tell you. Perhaps more accurately more unfairness is tolerated in war, not that it should be.
Love’s a different story. Love at least today is largely recreational. We’re increasingly tolerant of people getting together and breaking up and with whom they please.
And all is not fair in love really either. It’s fair for you to break up if you decide that’s best for you. But it’s not fair to pretend that you’re available for relationships when you aren’t. For example, it’s not fair to claim love you don’t feel just so you can get into someone’s pants or wallet. It’s not fair to pretend your unmarried or single when you aren’t.
We don’t owe each other romantic commitment, but we do owe each other clear signals.
We don’t always have clear signals to share. Maybe that’s what’s meant by all’s fair in love. In love you place your bets you take your chances. Your bet may be uncertain: “If this continues to work as well as it has so far, I’ll want to stay in it,” or “I don’t know yet, but I’d like to go on another date.”
Your bet is bound to be uncertain at first. You can’t commit tell you’ve given it a full test; you can’t give it a full test until you’ve voiced willingness to commit. How can you tell for sure that you want to sleep with someone until you’ve slept with him or her?
It’s an unfair misinterpretation of love’s gamble if you cry foul when you chose to sleep with someone and they decide not to sleep with you again. You can’t honestly say, “But you said you wanted to sleep with me!” Love starts with testing the waters. It is inherently risky.
But that shouldn’t let us off the hook on clear signaling. When you begin to doubt your commitment, you should start to feel fairness’s requirement that you let your partner know. Don’t hide behind “It would hurt them.” In the short run, yes, but in the long run they’ll be better off if they knew where you stood.
Of course choosing when to signal is hard. You don’t want or need to signal reduced interest with every dip in your enthusiasm. One of the challenges of partnership is that neither partner wants to be in deeper than the other. When you signal ambivalence it’s likely to make your partner back off too. It’s hard to even give love a try when two people are both hair-trigger and signaling their every ambivalence. So it’s a tough judgment call as to when you should signal a change in personal direction. But out of basic respect for fairness and for the people we date, we should feel the burden to signal, not to bite our tongues, out of supposed respect for them or more callously to keep our options open.
And out of basic respect for fairness and our dates, we should make room for such signaling. Don’t shame your partner into silence about his or her intentions. Don’t turn commitment into a moral issue. It isn’t one. No one owes us partnership. Face the fact that partnership is a delicate dance, a bid for something extremely intimate and risky.
Any of us who value our lives are going to want to enter it gingerly, carefully, cautiously, and to back out if it looks like it’s going to derail us from our values and priorities. To that extent, enter courtship aware that all is fair in love, including that our partners get to vote with their feet.