Made this statement on twitter this morning: The structure of marriage, society and human nature ENCOURAGE cheating. To eliminate it, we'll need to change some definitions.
Of course, as is wont to happen, someone asks me to clarify/explain. So, I told them that I couldn’t do it in 140 characters or less.
In today’s society, we have relationships. Commonly, these relationships are legal marriages. However, even when they aren’t, they are, for all intents and purposes, when it comes to ‘cheating.’ Cheating has a lot of definitions, which is a good thing, as it usually is a very personal issue. Still, most definitions boil down to participating in sexual activities with someone who is not your spouse/significant other. It has some pretty unique characteristics in today’s day and age, not the least of which is that, many many people do it, for all sorts of reasons, every single day…but you will be hard pressed to find a single individual who will, on the record, defend it as a positive, acceptable or worthwhile activity. Indeed, it will be condemned by everyone you meet, but still it goes on. My statement above goes as far as to say it is ‘encouraged’. The tweet lists three factors that contribute to this. It is not an exhaustive list but I do think it hits the high points. I’ll address each.
Marriage. Really relationships. They provide the basis for cheating. You have to be in a relationship to cheat. This is because cheating is not a sex crime. Cheating is a crime of dishonesty. The nature and definition of MOST relationships is that sex will be limited to those in the relationship. The participants make this commitment to each other and have an understanding. Even in so-called ‘open’ relationships, there are guidelines and structures of what activities are allowed built into a mutual understanding. When one has sex outside the relationship (or guidelines), they are violating that understanding. This is the betrayal that really hurts the other person, though it is quick and easy to focus on the act, because it is obvious and better defined.
Now, the kicker is, MOST people don’t discuss or define the understanding. They just assume it is there. Each party mentally says, ‘we are together and therefore, we can’t do anything outside us.’ This is the first problem that leads to the encouraging of cheating. There is no mutual understanding. Two people silently saying to themselves, “I am married/taken. I cannot sleep with someone else,” does not constitute understanding or communication. It also does not address the infinite variations of sexual needs and desires a human may have. If one party to the relationship has needs, wants or desires that do not get defined or discussed, they begin to resent the requirements of monogamy and begin to convince themselves that they are justified in seeking an outlet elsewhere. This is not fair, reasonable or logical. But it happens all the time.
I have been a long time advocate of the complete abolishing of marriage, as a concept. One benefit of this is the removal of the predefined and assumed definition of ‘faithful.’ Without this, couples will have to discuss and define their needs and expectations. They will have to make that mutual understanding. It becomes much harder for good, caring people to start to justify activities that have been clearly communicated as hurtful to the other person.
The bigger problem the ‘Marriage’ idea plays is in the interactions with the rest of society. There was a time in our history where, the cheating-based destruction of a marriage/relationship, had enormous negative impacts on the lives and livelihoods of the involved parties. I mean, it could result in various parties to the family not getting enough food to eat…BIG BIG consequences. Further, there was a fundamental imbalance of power between the man and the woman. The woman lacked real recourse via her own power to address the betrayal that cheating offers.
To combat this, we, as a society, developed a set of rules, mores, expectations and definitions that adhere to this day. We learned to vilify the cheating male and force him to take steps, both moral and financial, to minimize/defer the impact to those suffering from his infidelity. We punished him via religion and societal status, as a means of discouraging this activity and creating this ripple effect. We made it very very bad to be a cheater, through the judgment of one’s peers and society as a whole. These attitudes still exist today.
For example, what if I tell you about my 47 year old friend with a wife and three kids, one of whom is only 5, and I tell you how he met a 22 year old co-ed and how the two of them became convinced that they are soul mates, so he moved in with her, after his wife caught them together and now they (my friend and the 22 year old) have an apartment together downtown… Now, stop for a minute. Ask yourself, what do you think of my friend? I mean, I haven’t told you really anything about him..his name, occupation, religion, community involvement, nothing. Just a few facts about his personal relationship life. You don’t like him, do you? At the very least, you have a bad feeling about him, in your gut. That bad feeling is the remnants of society’s judgments.
Now, I go on to tell you that the wife divorced him and he pays $7500 a month in child support and alimony. His teenage kids won’t talk to him and the 5 year old is depressed because she WANTS to see him but her mother and the courts will not allow it. His extended family and most of his friends do not associate with him, except for a few male friends who do not tell their wives they still see him. Further, I tell you that he is happy with the 22 year old, despite all of this. Now, how do you feel about this? I suspect you feel that this is a proper outcome. I’d say that, probably you do not believe that he is really happy…that you suspect that this is just him covering up for his strong regret at his poor choices and irreparable mistake. Do you see how society has shaped the perceptions of this scenario?
What options did my friend really have? Assume for a second that the 22 year old really truly IS his soul mate. He cheated and that was not right. No one will defend that. But, did he have an honorable and socially acceptable course of action? If he had taken his wife aside, told her he loved her and the kids and apologized for the hurt, but still left to be with the other woman, would we judge him less harshly? I submit that he would be just as vilified and the outcome would have largely been the same, save for the fact that the courts might not keep the young child from him. You see…my friend couldn’t have won.
Well, knowing all this at the outset, before he ever did anything more than have lunch with the 22 year old, my friend considered his options. He wanted to be with this other woman but how could he be? No matter how he played it, he ends up the douche. He doesn’t want to be ‘the douche’ to his family, friends, children and the mother of his children. But he doesn’t want to deny the joy in his soul. ( I do recognize that, in 99.999% of the cases, the dude in my friend’s situation has less joy in his soul than burning in his loins, but it was different for my friend, ok?) What can my friend do? Well…he can cheat. I mean, it occurs to him that, if he plays it JUST RIGHT, he can be with his soul mate and not lose his house, family and wealth. All he has to do is not get caught, right? This is the last encouraging aspect, human nature.
Human nature plays into this a number of ways. In the interest of brevity, I’ll try to just list them and not elaborate too much. J First, there is the desire and excitement of getting away with something. The search for and acquisition of the forbidden fruit. And the continued mistaken belief that it is possible to have one’s cake and eat it too. This is the stuff that got my friend and gets so many guys, the belief that they can get away with something. There is also the ‘grass is greener on the other side of the fence effect’ that causes men to think that the other woman, who doesn’t nag him about the water bill and picking up his dirty socks, is someone more attractive than his wife, who puts up with all his crap. (Sadly, this can even override the importance of physical appearance, which is why you’ll bafflingly see dudes hooking up with chicks clearly less physically impressive than their wives/girlfriends.) There is the biological aspect, which runs clearly and obviously counter to monogamy. (Never an excuse, as we overcome so many biological imperatives on a daily basis, but, nevertheless, a factor.) The whole monogamous marriage/relationship is a round hole and we are square pegs in it.
In the end, my original, >140 character point was…cheating is not going to go away until we address it at the true root of the problem. We need to create a mechanism for participants in a relationship to be able to discuss and communicate their wants and needs so that they can pair up with compatible partners. (So, I guess we need to have all relationships not involve any men. *rimshot*) We need to eliminate marriage and the social stigma associated with the changes that humans naturally experience over time. (Thankfully, technology and the advent of equality, has balanced most of the NEED for the social stigma.) If you give a person an honorable way out of their relationship, they’ll be more apt to take it. And we need to educate people to understand how human nature affects them and their view of the world. If someone bothered to really show dudes how the next chick is just 3 months away from bitching about the water bill and dirty socks, they would see how good they’ve already got it.
Disclaimer: This is not to say that relationships are bad. Marriage is bad. Relationships are good. Relationships are very very good for everyone involved. When two people work together to create a lifelong relationship, it is a major win for all. Heck, even when two people do a half-assed job working on a relationship, it still can be a win for a lot of the involved parties. The problem is that, it is work. It is hard hard hard work. No one wants to do hard hard hard work. And every day, we make it just a little easier to bail out and run, rather than do the hard hard hard work. Cheating is but one small symptom of a much much larger problem. The erosion of the modern family. That is the real shame…much more than someone sleeping around.
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