All this Ashley Madison drama has me thinking. There are potentially more than 30 million spouses that could find out that their mate has cheated on them in the very near future. What is the appropriate reaction to discovering that you have been cheated on? If you are in love, if you are in a committed relationship, if you have given your heart and your life to one person, what is the appropriate response to finding out your partner/spouse has betrayed your trust? I'm going to assume that you aren't also cheating on your mate. Then, the only appropriate, mature response is to walk away, no hard feelings on either person's behalf.
But what if you are faithful and your partner cheats, how should you react? The cheater always assumes that the person cheated on should take the high road, they always act as if the person betrayed should just suck it up and walk away and they shouldn't show any emotion, they shouldn't show any anger, they shouldn't try to get revenge. Society in general is always quick to say that the betrayed shouldn't waste their energy on any sort of revenge, any sort of willful intention to hurt the person back.
But, is that really reasonable? If you have made love to someone, if you have shared your body, your secrets, your dreams, your fears with someone, if you have truly given your heart to someone, if your heart has been broken and your trust betrayed, even the most sane, reasonable person should be expected to feel extreme rage and anger when you discover that the person you were building a life with has decided that your feelings, that you mean nothing to them. In my mind, only an insane person would react with no reaction at all. That, to me, indicates, being so out of touch with your emotions that you are incapable of processing them.
Clearly, you shouldn't physically harm anyone but isn't that asking a lot of the human heart to not seek any sort of salve for your pain? I can think of no greater pain than being betrayed by your life partner. I think society's insistence that injured party just suck it up and hold their head up high with dignity . . . I'm pretty convinced that's extremely unhealthy. We are sentient beings and we are supposed to process our emotions, we are supposed to feel. The concept of letting an individual who has inflicted tremendous personal pain on their mate just walk away, not having learned a painful lesson, seems delusional to me. One of the reasons I think we are so unhealthy as a society is that we have this obsessive need to present fake images of perfection, facades of one-dimensional pictures that aren't realistic.
So, is burning all your mate's clothing acceptable? Is a lost wardrobe really that detrimental for the crime committed? Is going to his or her job and embarrassing them okay? If your cheating spouse is embarrassed, if they are humiliated by co-workers, is that something they won't be able to rebound from? Is outing them as a cheater to their friends and family acceptable? What about doing something to the person your partner was cheating with? Should they escape your wrath because it's socially unacceptable? Cheating, lying, betrayal should be unacceptable but it seems as if society is telling the victims of adultery that they should just suck it up and be the better person and their their perpetrators walk away with their own guilt as their only punishment. Where is the line? What is the appropriate, acceptable response when someone rips your heart out and steps on it?
Are we as a society so obsessed with pretending to be perfect that we've lost perspective of the fact that for every action, there must be an equal and opposite reaction?
2 comments:
Here's my final word on cheating for a while. I've offended quite a few cheaters with my commentary in the past couple of days. For this, I'm quite glad. I am morally superior to cheaters. I don't cheat. I have never cheated. I am far too emotionally mature and unselfish to cheat. Cheating is reprehensible. Are cheaters bad people? Not necessarily. A great many are. Cheating is selfish, immature, and hurtful. People who willfully do it are shitty people. You choose to put your own needs above those of your partner and your relationship so that doesn't make you a good person for sure.
When I'm in a relationship, if I'm happy, I will not look at or entertain situations where I'm flirting with or engaging with someone of the opposite sex where my partner's feelings could be hurt. My self-esteem is not that low that I need compliments or someone's superficial romance to make me feel better about myself or to give me a thrill. I'm ever amazed at the lengths cheaters go to in order to rationalize, continue, justify, and obscure their illicit behavior. The fact that we live in a society where you can hurt someone and not come clean, apologize, and truly repent shows how morally bankrupt we are as a people.
If my partner is not fulfilling my emotional or sexual needs, I'm going to talk to them about it BEFORE I cheat. Long before I get to the point where I even want to cheat in fact. If I'm in love with a person, I owe it to them to work on our relationship harder than I work at anything else in my life. I have their heart in my hands. Cheaters love to use the excuse that they met someone and they couldn't help being attracted to that person they worked with or they could talk to the stranger online better than they could their spouse. That's ridiculous. If you have greater communication with someone you don't know than you do your own spouse, you should have ended the relationship with your spouse a long time ago. If you cheat for sexual thrills, you are disgusting. If you married your spouse and they didn't fulfill you sexually, you should have ended the relationship if sex was that important to you so you could sleep with anyone and everyone you wanted without betraying your spouse's trust.
Cheating is not like forgetting to buy milk at the grocery store, it's not a mistake. It's not an accident like running a stop sign or rear-ending a car. It's a conscious choice to be self-centered, deceitful, and evil. Cheaters are by their very nature narcissistic so they don't like being told that they are low-life scum. But, cheating is very common. There are more people cheating than not, who have cheated (although, I learned the very painful lesson that once a cheater, always a cheater). Ashley Madison, Facebook, craigslist, Backpage, Adult Friend Finder, conferences at work, church, school, riding the commuter train to work in the morning, high school reunions . . . there are an endless source of places people can find opportunities to cheat. Choosing not to be a liar or a fraud, choosing not to betray your spouse's feelings, choosing to be upstanding and morally superior is a sign of excellence, integrity, and character. I simply choose to be the latter. I can look down my nose at cheaters because they are inferior to me.
To the cheaters who are offended by my commentary . . . You've got to be fucking kidding me. You are betraying your spouse, your girlfriend or boyfriend, your lover, your mate and you have the audacity to be offended that I'm calling your behavior exactly what it is, FOUL? That's rich. It's delusional and sick but it's rich.
I change my mind. Not my final word on the subject matter. How much is my heart worth? It's worth more than $5K, $100K, it's worth more than $10 Million dollars. So, I say, if someone betrays my trust, I'm going to seek revenge in the most creative, way that will cost them dearly. They will lose property, income, they will lose everything they own, value, and love if I have any say about it. Not only them, but their person they they cheat with as well because they are just as complicit. I'm not saying this as some sort of craze psycho mentally ill person. I'm saying that if I trust you with my heart and you betray it, I will seek revenge that will be commensurate with my pain. That's only fair. I let the two people who broke my heart get away with it unscathed. I wrote a letter and I made some angry threats but I didn't do anything to really hurt them the way they hurt me. I cried, I ached, I felt empty and damaged for months and both of them moved on with their lives like they did nothing wrong.
Now, I'm not going to enter into a relationship with any more sociopaths because I know the signs now. I'm only going to be in one relationship for the rest of my life and he will not be a cheater. He will love me in a way that is transcendent, divine, healthy and whole. BUT, I said all of that to say this. If you are committed to forming a new relationship, tell your potential mate up front, in the very beginning that there will be consequences, extreme, ugly, and expensive consequences to them cheating on you. You tell them before you decide to take the relationship to a committed level that if they decide to cheat, that they can EXPECT you to sanely, creatively, and intentionally DESTROY their life and punishment for them cheating. I bet they will think twice before doing it. And, if they do cheat, follow through. Don't let them get away with it. Don't make the threat and not keep it. If they cheat on you and they lose their job and car and clothes. Make sure they threaten to take you to court so you can put ON RECORD for all the world to see what a disgusting, lying, cheating, asshole they are. And make sure they tell the person that they are cheating with to expect the same thing. That will make a lot of people think twice. They won't do that shit again if you follow through. It will be the last time they cheat, that's for sure.
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