The Two Degrees of Infidelity.

       

                           

“Brief Encounter”, the allegorical story of Dr Alex Harvey and Mrs Laura Jessup, is well known to devotees of director David Lean and classic British cinematic drama. 

It is likely that many of the millions of people who have seen the 1945 movie, based on Noel Coward’s masterpiece “Still Life”, felt a sense of great sadness at its ending. 
Indeed, it has been described as a “heartbreaking tale of forbidden love” – the story of a chance meeting of two people (both married with children), their intense mutual attraction, their inevitable journey toward intimacy, their very British resistance to consummation, and their sad parting.
              

However, before reaching for the Kleenex, defer your sobs of anguish and consider the subtext of the classic 1994 Gerard Corbiau film “Farinelli, il Castrato". 

It is the story of the 18^th century Italian opera singer, Carlo Broschi. 
Carlo, a boy with "the voice of an angel", is drugged and castrated by his brother, Riccardo, to preserve Carlo's voice before it has changed with puberty.
(This at a time when male soprano castrati became superstars in Italian Opera, earning "enormous fees and hysterical public adulation".)

  

Later, as Carlo’s fame and fortune grew, the inseparable brothers became a formidable sexual double act. 

Carlo, the beautiful, epicene soprano, perfected the art of seduction, leaving Riccardo to consummate the physical business of intercourse. 

                                              Tag-team rooting.

Which brother received the psychological self-affirmation of these transactions? Which brother felt gratification at the acknowledgement of his own desirability? Not the grubby Riccardo. 
His role could have been filled by the average fox terrier.

From the point of view of Dr Alex Harvey, Carlo Broschi has got it right. 

The allure of illicit romance comes from the surprising acknowledgement of one’s own attractiveness, the acquiescence to and acceptance of offered love and the ultimate implied granting of permission for intimacy - the endpoint of the overwhelming fever of mutual attraction - not from the sweaty, fleeting, transient moment of the carnality of consummation.                                                                                                               

Or the tsunami of shame, remorse and regret that follows betrayal of the commitment to one’s wife and family. 
All that misery, just for an orgasm.

Simply knowing that our attraction to another has been acknowledged, accepted and returned brings satisfaction. 
The associated erotic itch will subside to a warm glow of acceptance, fulfillment and self-respect if ignored.

Infidelity, like cruelty, is simply evidence of a lack of imagination. 

The inability to put ourselves in the position of the victims of our self-absorbed actions. 

The inability of being able to imagine the misery of an abandoned wife, sitting by herself in a bus shelter on a cold grey day; dowdy, defeated, lonely, waiting for a bus that will never come.