You're right, Aunty, cheating sux.
If you're the cheatER, you have a lot of guilt to live with, whether you're sprung or not or own up to it, and you have to expend all that effort covering up your tracks, losing sleep worrying and berating yourself. If you're the cheatEE, you can feel humiliated, rejected, inadequate, unloved and unlovable, and a whole host of other none-too-pleasant things. If you're the OTHER man/woman, you might feel anything from surprise or remorse to malicious glee at your involvement. Cheating is most definitely NOT cool.
However, I do feel that I have to take issue with your recent article on infidelity. For a start, I think you probably could have acknowledged that 'cheating' means very different things to different people. Some of my friends, for example, feel betrayed if their partner so much as notices that someboby else is attractive. Others of my friends have no qualms about their Significant Other getting a little intimate with a friend or stranger on the dancefloor, so long as that is where it ends. Still others have no objection if their partner beds someone else, though they usually have mutually agreed-upon rules about how, with whom and when that can happen, and whether they talk about it or not.
I totally agree with you, Aunty, that at the root of the problem is a basic lack of communication, that people simply don't tell their partner(s) how they are feeling, what they want at whatever point of their relationship they're in, and what they're frustrated or dissatisfied with. We don't automatically assume these days that our partner will want to marry us, that he or she wants kids, or even necessarily that they expect the relationship to last for the rest of their life. Maybe it's time monogamy was added to that list of negotiable points.
I flat-out disagree with your assumption that if a man or a woman is looking elsewhere, there's something fundamentally wrong with the relationship he or she is in. That assertion smacks of an underlying preconception that there is in fact some universal way that a relationship SHOULD be. And in an age where the mother of a man's child is not necessarily his wife, where the different marriage practices of different cultures are recognised and very often respected, where some women and men choose multiple or serial relationships, isn't that view a little simplistic?
A relationship, ultimately, is up to the people in it. If they agree that they want lifelong monogamy and a cottage by the sea complete with white picket fence, two kids and a puppy, that is their prerogative. If two or three or however many people decide they want to all live in one home together or separately in several households, dividing their time and emotional energy between themselves, that too is for them to work out amongst themselves. The point though, is that these things need to be discussed.
A lot of the heartaches and recriminations tied up with infidelity are ultimately caused by people not knowing what the rules between themselves and their partner(s) are, having never expected to be in the situation where they are committed to one person but find themselves drawn to another person as well. It's something we don't really talk about in our society, and that needs to change. Yes, there are selfish fuckwits out there who simply don't care what their partner feels or what risks they are exposing their partner to, so I'm not disagreeing with you completely. You very rightly stress the need for honesty and respect for one's partner, and I applaud that. But non-monogamy does not automatically equal dishonesty or relationship dissatisfaction. In sum, to make informed choices, people need to know their options.
That's enough from me. Keep up the good work, Aunty, I look forward to reading more from you!
Polyamorously yours,
DannyR
Here's Aunty's reply:
ReplyDeleteHi Danny,
Thanks for the email, I enjoyed reading your thoughts on the column. I completely agree with you that there are many different definitions to cheating, I just didn't have the space to fit it all in. I have been thinking of doing another column on cheating, this time talking about the various definitions of cheating and what it means to different people. Hearing from you, I probably will do that.
When I wrote that cheating signified a fundamental wrongness in a relationship, I was writing from my experiences as a therapist. When I had couples in for counseling, there was always a wrongness in the relationship that lead to the cheating. I do not think it is a simplistic view, it's something that I have seen over and over again, no matter the differences in the relationship (i.e. if the mother of a man's child was not his wife, etc).
And a lot of people do believe that there is a universal way of what a relationship should be, which it why they are seeking counseling. It may not be the same belief couple-to-couple, but all felt that their relationship should be a certain way, and when that was violated, they sought help to return it to the way they felt it should be.
In my experience, most couples have preconceived notions of how their relationship should be, and while they may be different from another couple's belief, when that does not happen they believe it is because of something fundamentally wrong in the relationship.
I agree that non-monogamy does not always mean dishonesty and relationship dissatisfaction, but to the majority of people who will read this column, it does mean those things. When I write a column, I am aiming more for the general consensus, and when there are views that are found in the minority, I plan to address it in a separate column.
I already have plans to write a column on swingers, focusing on how they believe that non-monogamy leads to a better and healthier relationship. I only have so much space to write at one time.
I hope this addresses the disagreements you had with my column, and I appreciate you sharing your thoughts and beliefs. Thanks for reading!
Aunty
And here's my response to her response to my response:
ReplyDeleteHi there!!
Thanks for writing back! I think we're kind of arguing the same thing, to some extent, that 'cheating' is the breaking of an agreement, spoken or unspoken, and that there is a wrongness in the relationship underneath the behaviour - lack of trust, communication, dissatisfaction with the relationship or whatever.
>> When I wrote that cheating signified a fundamental wrongness in a relationship, I was writing from my experiences as a therapist. When I had couples in for counseling, there was always a wrongness in the relationship that lead to the cheating. I do not think it is a simplistic view, it's something that I have seen over and over again, no matter the differences in the relationship (i.e. if the mother of a man's child was not his wife, etc).
<< I'm certainly not disagreeing with that
>> And a lot of people do believe that there is a universal way of what a relationship should be, which it why they are seeking counseling. It may not be the same belief couple-to-couple, but all felt that their relationship should be a certain way, and when that was violated, they sought help to return it to the way they felt it should be. In my experience, most couples have preconceived notions of how their relationship should be, and while they may be different from another couple's belief, when that does not happen they believe it is because of something fundamentally wrong in the relationship.
<< THAT's what I'm getting at -- I'm saying that in many cases the two people IN THE COUPLE have different ideas about what their relationship should be, and that too often there is a failure on the part of both parties to communicate around this. That's where my point about your article comes in -- you don't mention that cheating means different things to different people, and I'm saying that while most people do have some ideas about how their relationship should be, people don't actually discuss what is and isn't ok, regardless of what they actually want.
And as for Polyamory/Swingers/Open Relationships, in your article, you actually use the phrase 'If a person were truly happy, they would not stray.' Now, if by 'stray' you mean 'break an agreement,' then your following point, that they may claim to be happy in their relationships but are usually just cheating to gratify a need for more attention or to feel better about themselves or whatever, then you may have a very good point, but throughout the article you leave 'cheating' completely undefined, and that is my problem with it. Earlier in the piece you confess that you had been a cheater but had never actually slept with someone other than your partner. Most people would be scratching their heads at that.
(I gave up at this point ;D )