A More than One-Dimensional Review of Cheating

For some reason, this is how a train of thought starts these days — I get miffed.

Since this happened multiple times this week, I had to ignore the fact that I'm supposed to write the most boring essay about the structure of Bladdeley's working memory model, and instead release my thoughts on an outlet.

It all started with reading an article about cheating featured on one of the popular online magazines whose content declined since I subscribed to it a couple of years ago. The article was a simple description of an account of a woman's dating life until she settled down. However as following the narrative of Cosmo it had to be educational as well. Therefore it was about how if you cheat on a person that means you do not love that person anymore, and if you say you do, you're lying or you do not care enough.

So, from a scientific point of view — which is the name of the glasses I've grown to love to wear in my two years of psychology studies — a personal account is one of the weakest type of empirical evidence one can base any sort of event or behavioural pattern on. It was a shock to me as well, how, we humans, are walking biases, and very little things that we say or do can be generalised — because they are so goddamn biased. Let's not mention the other contributing factors as to why the causes of some behaviours and other phenomena are largely debated.

Obviously her account and her strongly worded, often CAPITALISED, statements were what people who have been cheated on wanted to hear. It very well perhaps could be what people who have never been cheated on wanted to hear too. She did what these, quite frankly, meaningless, empty magazines do; instead of relevant content with original ideas, pray God backed up with some roots in reality or scientific observations, she filled it with popular personal opinions. The simpler the better, because people can relate to it more. It is the tried recipe of authors using nameless characters or common nouns so that more people can identify with the story. We all know the one example that turned into a world-wide hysteria about supernatural love and cardboard figurines and the glorification of mediocrity (looking at you, Bella).

I know this is the algorithm for success, more views etc., and I should go read something else if I don't like it — but I have an eleven-year-old sister. Day by day she brings home these misconceptions that all the other 'knowledgeable' youths spread, without anyone correcting them.

In one feeble moment of mine I thought for one second, I could stop being a bad person and do something noble.

I will have an articulate opinion. Radical.

Unfortunately, in the middle of trying to hate each other more and more, and accentuating the differences between the genders, in the middle of pointing all the gnarly, witchy fingers we have to point, we forgot that relationships are about two people.

The topic of cheating, when discussed, can be especially one-sided. I'm part of a group — despite my own disinterest to join, I just got added and the drama is indeed entertaining, sue me — where girls/women keep trashing men, how they're horrible, how they cheat all the time, how the same thing always happens to them. One of them asked who, if anyone, has been abused physically or verbally in a past relationship. The affirmative answers were an appalling number and I could not help but wonder why.

This just demonstrates again how blame is so decisively directed at men. Or the other half of any gender. Where the lack of self-reflections derives from, I cannot fathom. However this unquestioning accusation shows how dimensional thinking about anything that happens in a relationship is not promoted in any way or form. Cheaters are liars, once a cheater always a cheater, men cheat more than women, let's crucify them all. There, done. This is all that is advertised, all that is promoted in mainstream forms. This is what people adapt to because it's easy, it's black and white, you don't have to think about it, it's already decided for you.

I have met very, very few people who would have shared my opinion on this topic so I know they are keepers, and I experienced first hand that intelligent people just can't accommodate this idea of greyness, this idea of shared responsibility in every other aspect of a relationship not just in the event of cheating.

My own boyfriend is one who does not agree with me at all. He was cheated on. Twice.

While I concur it isn't a morally acceptable or good thing to do to a person you care about, I am not going to overlook the fact that my boyfriend is not the easiest person to be in a relationship with. Neither am I. We have the same crazies; it works.

Because of having experience being with him, I can see where these previous women would have had the leeway and felt like they could cheat. Sure they may not have taken the relationship as seriously as he had, but that does not mean I blame him for any of this. All I'm saying is that it's two people who make it work. It's not a relationship if it's only one of you who's tirelessly mends all that glitches — it's not a relationship. Responsibilities to keep the machine running are shared. To what degree that depends.

I can imagine that his lack of good communication skills (a sign of the Y chromosome in general, bless the ones that have been taught it's okay to talk about feelings, pent up anguish kills y'all) or that he wanted a girlfriend for the wrong reasons or that he wasn't in good relations with himself, somehow enabled these women to do this to him. It's not something he consciously did. These two exes in his eyes have wronged him who did nothing to deserve this. Well, exactly. That was all he needed to do, nothing.

We had a lengthy talk once after I watched an episode of Call the Midwife. The episode had a very pregnant woman (news flash), who did not want to give birth to the child at all. It turned out that the pregnancy was the product of a single drunken night...with a Black man. Since the show is set in post-WWII. Britain, the lady and the lady's husband were both White people, unfortunately the situation was risqué.

To add to the plot-line the lady in question married a man who had no children, who was of advanced age as well (50 at least). He yearned for a child of his own his whole life and was so happy about his wife's pregnancy he basically worshipped her.

Now the baby had to be born, they had to let the husband in, the lady apologised between waterfalls of tears to the husband that it was just one night, she regretted it, she didn't mean it, she never wanted to hurt him...

Anticipation filled the room as he took the scene in. The midwifes held their breathe, the lady was shaking with the little baby in her arms.

The husband finally asked if he could hold his son.

Relief flooded everyone. My mum and I probably cried.

When I gave account to my boyfriend saying how noble he was and how it was such a rare portrayal of human nature, the only thing he saw were the crimes of the mother.

I could not make him understand how beautiful it was to me, that this man was so incredible. And what a brilliant conclusion it was to the situation. Not only did he realise that despite the bit of obvious mis-step, he gained what he's longed for at last but that he would not only punish the mother by rejecting her but the infant too.

Quite an extreme example, I'm aware. It's so rare to find representations of emotionally intelligent men on television or on the screen. Not in this nature anyway.

One of my favourite movies, The Painted Veil, especially its '00s adaptation with Edward Norton and Naomi Watts, has a similar scene that is close to my heart. Kitty (Watts), the vivacious socialite, has an affair with another men while married to Walter (Norton), the bookish microbiologist. The affair results in a pregnancy. Walter, as it turns out, loves children and would not mind having one. However Kitty has no idea who the father is.

The scene is simply where she confesses; you see how happy he is and she tells him she can't be sure that the child is his.

All he says is that it doesn't matter.

If the aforementioned does not demonstrate how the crime of cheating is forgivable, I do not know what does. I know in both cases there was a baby involved. However in the latter example Walter and Kitty make up before the news. Silk, if I remember correctly, the movie with Micheal Pitt and Keira Knightley, portrays the man as the cheater and the woman as the faithful suffering wife who only after her death told him, she knew. There was no child involved.

The author of the article that made me upset and began this spiral of thought; clearly, not unlike my boyfriend, she has not loved anything so damn much in life that all sins could be overlooked, forgiven, and if not, then maybe bridged. She had not loved anything so indescribably, so irrevocably, above all else that all problems could be solved if need be for the sake of maintaining it.

Cheating should be portrayed as a delicate matter, which in reality it is. It's often not simple, it's nuanced and intricate. While blaming satisfies the wounded party, it teaches people nothing. Everyone can nod in unison. We are already conditioned to do that.

The article also details the woman's past dating life, flying from one penis to another while remorselessly keeping the 'boyfriend-material' for bread-winning and couch-cuddling at home. Not unlike the mating strategies of the Blue Tits, mind you. Random fact of the day. The more you know...

While I could relate to some degree with the aviary acrobatics from one male reproductive organ to another from my days of debauchery, I can calmly say I was never this relentless. I only ever proposed boyfriendship to one person. Before that was no-strings-attached and every player knew the rules.

As she described, my promiscuous nature ebbed, then dissolved somewhat once I fell in love too. I am quite flirty by nature but that does not mean more than that. Ever. However with the waves of relationships, I can tell you, there were times when I myself felt inclined to get a little validation elsewhere. And not because I power-cut, suddenly ceased to love him. It is because my self-respect, you can call it pride, would not let him treat me the way he did. I, as a person, out of the love and respect I felt for myself, thought I needed this. I can therefore relate to a feeling when a person is so lonely in a relationship that it overrules the normal hierarchy, that suddenly puts the needs of the self first.

Humans are still animals, and as such don't like to be caged either.

I do not think that anyone who is escaping a relationship to flee for just temporarily from loneliness is to be condemned.

I know marriages have been saved by cheating, by either party feeling valued again, like they were wanted, cared for, treated right. To expect those basic aspects of human bondage that have evaporated from an individual's daily life is not too much to ask for, is it?

I know the right way is to leave if you start fantasising about other people or how amazing it would be to feel the spark of newness again, to explore the adventure another person holds, or when you no longer are satisfied, feel like you have exhausted the time spent together.

For some, this is an option. For some, there are costs and benefits that have to be considered, whether it would do more good or more harm, whether they can compromise for a common goal.

Having said all of this I'd like to point out that I have never experienced the pain that is being cheated on. I hope I can be as rational and open-minded if or when it happens as I am now. For now I would just love if a more versatile view of human relationships could be adapted and spread and instead of finding a culprit we would choose the more difficult path.

As an end-note, a person who abandons, neglects, and chases another into loneliness within the confines of a relationship, in my eyes, commits a more serious crime than having rubbed his or her genitals on someone else's.

Morci