So Mark Souder is the latest politician to fall by the wayside after a sex scandal. There’s no end to the long, long list of fellas on either side of the aisle who haven’t seemed to have good control over the Little Politician residing in their pants. I have to say, at least when the Dems get caught in a cheating scandal, they typically haven’t been out there on a public soapbox defending “traditional family values” and screaming about how gays are ruining America. The sheer hypocrisy of the guys who are working so hard to pass legislation to make sure only heterosexuals can get married and ranting and raving about the “sexual depravity” of our GLBT citizens only to then be photographed heading off to Europe with their rented houseboy makes me want to vomit. Personally, I think what happens between consenting adults is private, and I'm not less likely to vote for someone because of they got cheating. Now, if there was taxpayer fraud or other illegal activity involved, that's a different story. But I don't think cheating in and of itself makes a person unfit for public office. The government would be positively decimated if that were the case.
It’s an interesting question to me, as we watch marriage after marriage fail. Even those who seemed from the outside to have “perfect” relationships (John and Liz Edwards come to mind) aren’t immune to cheating. I often wonder if the
When Brad left Jen for Angelina, a lot of women I know (me included) looked at their less-than perfect bodies and faces and thought to themselves “Good God, if a man can cheat on her then what chance do I have??”
I sometimes wonder whether human beings are actually capable of being truly monogamous. Even people of faith don’t seem to have cheating-proof relationships. And it's not just celebrities and famous folks who do it. I know personally a couple of married men who are frankly impressive in their apparent ability to separate their devition to their spouse from the need of their penis to explore every available vagina. They *seem* to be happily married. But hell, what do I know? I don’t live in their houses. We’re all different people behind our closed front door than we are at work or out with our friends. Maybe they have understandings too. Some of the cheating I’ve seen has been so blatant that one would think there’s no way in hell that the spouse can’t see it. They HAVE to know.
And what if they do know? Do they have agreements between them that it’s OK to be with other people? Do they mind? Do they worry about STDs? Do they have rules?
What’s even worse to me is wondering what if they
I’ve been through it personally on both sides of the fence. I don’t want to be with someone who needs to sleep with other people and lie to me about it. I want to be in the kind of relationship where when the other person decides they need to move on, they tell me, we end things, and go our separate ways. I've been the person who cheated on my significant other, many years ago when I was young. I knew it was wrong, and when I finally told the guy I was involved with what had happened, it was horrible to see how much it hurt him, how angry he was. I deserved his anger. He deserved my honesty. Disregarding issues of religion and conventional morality, what I did was wrong. Wrong in the sense that if you have a truly honest relationship with someone you love, I think you owe it to the both of you to be up front. If the relationship is over for you, it’s over. Unless you have agreed with your partner that its ok to bring other people into your bed, the right thing to do is to end your current relationship before you move on. I think I've learned from my experience and I never want to put myself or anyone else in that position again.
When I was the person who was cheated on I was so hurt and angry that I never really got over it. Maybe I deserved it after having done it to someone else, I don't know. But it was awful. I felt like I could not move or breathe, like my skin was on fire and like everything that I believed was true about my life and my relationship was a lie. I'm as angry about it today as I was the day I found out about it. I think I was angrier at being lied to than anything else. That’s what really gets me about cheating. The fundamental dishonesty that is at the root of it. I was miserable when I was being dishonest, and I was enraged when someone was being dishonest with me.
Is it really possible to have an honest relationship? To have monogamy, to be able to tell your partner if you’re unhappy, to be able to hear your partner tell you they want to move on, and be healthy enough to say “You know, I really care about you and it makes me really sad that you want to move on, but it would be wrong for me to try and make you stay if this isn’t where you want to be.” Can people really DO that? Can people own up to wanting to move on from a relationship and make a clean break before they start sleeping with somebody else? Or do the people that cheat really still want to be with their partner, but feel the only way they can stay is to find another way to get something they are missing in the relationship?
Do you think human beings are truly capable of monogamy? Why do you think people cheat? Is it because we are with the wrong people to begin with? Or are we wired that way? What do you think? I really want to know.
