While talking about the ethics of “revenge porn,” a.k.a. the intentional release of sexual images of former partners, Coke Talk makes a universal point about relationships.
There are certain things you just don’t do. Ever.
Violating the trust of an intimate partner is right at the top of that list, and yes, for the purposes of those sex tapes, she will always be your intimate partner.
I want you to think back to a time when you were head over heels for her. Remember that woman? No doubt, she was crazy beautiful and wild as fuck. You loved the shit out of her. You shared a level of intimacy you’d never before thought was possible, and there were moments when you were sure you’d spend the rest of your lives together.
Have you got her in your head? Do you see her, the way she used to be? That’s the girl you’ll be betraying if you make those videos public, the one you loved.
Don’t do it, man. You can never get your integrity back.
In this singular instance she’s answering a question from a man and so she answers about a former female lover. The larger point, though, is that yes, exactly, the person you’ve broken up with — the person you betrayed or who betrayed you, the person you just don’t mesh together with anymore, the person you no longer think you recognize, is still the same person you fell in love with.
Even better news? You’re still the person he or she fell in love with.
Yeah, we move on. Yeah, times change. And yeah, “in sickness and in health, for better or worse, as long as ye both shall live” isn’t as realistic in life as it looks in black and white.
That the original question was specifically about “revenge porn” and not any of the other ways, large and small, we take it out on our former partners is pretty much beside the point. You loved them once. If you want to love again you’ll remember loving them. And love them, or at least respect them, for who they were.
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This is not, incidentally, so much woo-woo musing. It’s based on Esther Perel’s perfectly serious, and I think seriously productive, relationship theory: in contemporary partnerships, especially contemporary marriages, love doesn’t “fade,” but instead grows overlain with more and more collateral responsibilities and dependencies. Or, to switch metaphors, as mutual obligation and accommodation accumulates the boats that are our relationships can become dangerously overloaded… in the hardest cases the become so overloaded the partners can scarcely move for fear of capsizing.
If you’re interested, Perel’s book, Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence
