Love and Betrayal

The object of this investigation is the meanings given to fidelity and infidelity in romantic relationships, concerning contents, relationships between contents and meaning constellations. Scientific literature is usually focused on infidelity, with an intense moral connotation and with little conceptual differentiation. It was detected an absence of agreement between authors, concerning the construct “infidelity”, which has implications such as the inconsistency of published results. The empirical study had the goal of understanding people’s own conceptions about the matter. An open exploratory approach was then adopted, combining qualitative and quantitative methodologies: (a) written questionnaires were administered, mostly with open questions, to 226 adults; data was submitted to a statistic non parametric analysis, a content analysis and automatic analysis of textual information; (b) a deep approach to the meanings associated to fidelity and infidelity was carried through the content analysis of 29 individual oral semi-structured interviews. These analyses allowed observing a great diversity of contents: thus, it was proposed a multidimensional approach to fidelity and infidelity. Contents and relationships between them were associated in discursive patterns (“To be betrayed”, “To be unfaithful”, “Rational moralist”, “Pro-relational”, “I am always faithful” and “I am faithful to values”). These discourses were interpreted as meaning constellations, which coexist and switch in the same person (meta-meanings). A metaphorical relationship presented the extradiadic involvement as a significant of several signified meanings. It was proposed that this sign association emerges in the interaction of psychological needs (union, self value, security, discovery, sexual pleasure, among others) and social contexts that convey scripts about what a relationship ought to be (such as patriarchal, romantic, hedonic). It was observed that infidelity did not oppose symmetrically to fidelity, which means that we can’t deduce the first one through the second. Rather, they are better understood in a dialectical perspective, as inseparables and complementary, such as figure and landscape.

Este estudo procurou compreender significados associados à fidelidade e à infidelidade nas relações amorosas. 226 pessoas responderam a um questionário, construído para o efeito, com perguntas abertas e fechadas. Os dados foram tratados através de análise automática de dados textuais, que os agrupou em seis classes, interpretadas como padrões discursivos. Três discursos associaram-se, reflectindo o posicionamento do sujeito face a uma situação de infidelidade: "Ser infiel", "Ser traído" e "Moralista racional" (uma perspectiva externa face à infidelidade). Quanto à fidelidade, observou-se um discurso "Pró-relacional", rico na diversidade de significados relacionais, e, em contraste, dois discursos sucintos e centrados na afirmação e nos motivos de ser fiel ("Sou sempre fiel." e "Sou fiel aos valores"). Estes discursos diversos estiveram, tendencialmente, presentes no interior da mesma pessoa, como múltiplos "seres" dentro de nós.

There is little to say to conclude this study. We detailed it a lot to give as many examples and instances as possible of this style that is typical of Shakespeare’s plays. A lot more could have been said, and any reader must now get into the text and try to find more of those phenomena. When we get to that kind of commerce with this text, we think the pleasure is tremendously increased because we understand it is not haphazard language, but finely chiselled and wrought music at so many levels of the language that we can nearly get lost into it. This music multiplies the meaning and the meanings of the play.

Riconciliarsi con qualcuno non è facile, soprattutto quando si ha a che fare con desideri che spingono in senso inverso. Un modo per capire più a fondo la dinamica liberante della riconciliazione è osservare da vicino la vicenda di Gesù al momento della sua passione. Proporremo una riflessione a partire dal brano del tradimento di Giuda, così come questo viene presentato dall’evangelista Giovanni (Gv 13,21-30).

Silas, and amateur astronomer and romantic bachelor suddenly inherits 100 acres of land and an old mansion in rural Missouri. He goes to live there.  Silas calls the property "his Hundred." However, a ghostly legend about the property, told by the locals, identifies the property otherwise as "Old Sachem Hill." This living legend holds that an ancient shaman-chief named "Walks-At-Night" haunts the property." Silas ignores the legend and its implications.

Soon after arrives in Missouri, he meets, courts and marries, another stranger to town. Her name is Dominique. She soon proves to be a poor choice for a wife. After a failed honeymoon, Silas begins to sink, confused and depressed into second thoughts about his new wife. Meanwhile, she grows uneasy on the Hundred. In particular, she has no interest whatsoever in sharing the "profound" learning experience Silas’s offers her by building a large stargazing platform atop their roof above their bedroom. She refuses to even visit it. Instead, she opts to preoccupy herself with real estate stratagems and to conduct her own business in town. 

No sooner do the newlyweds move into the old mansion then Dominique begins to experience phantasmagoric encounters while exploring alone the unfamiliar property. These apparitions (if that is what they are?) -- grow increasingly intense and frightening for her. Initially, Silas cannot even begin to comprehend the weird encounters that Dominique claims to be experiencing during her perambulations here and there within "The Hundred."

One evening, near dusk, Dominique carelessly wanders into the heart of the Hundred. There she finds herself alone near an abandoned ice house, and at the threshold of treacherous steep ravine on the property. Oblivious to her danger, she descends within the ravine and stumbles upon the macabre ivory head of a half-buried and dismembered ceramic child's doll! An omen? A curse? She panics! She is unable to rapidly claw her way upward along the steep, slippery bank of the dark ravine. Gripped by her terror of the unknown, she freezes in her tracks. She glimpses above her, close at hand, to discern the inky cloak of a ghostly, silent figure. Suddenly, a feral cat -- a grimalkin --materializes out nowhere! With a final burst of desperation, Dominique leaps, then trips, to tumble down deeper into the wilderness thicket below, continuing to follow after the scampering cat, and flailing forward, blindly  ... ... .