Cheater, Cheater
Every woman loathes the Other Woman…but how does she feel about the Other Man?
WE GATHERED ON A FRIGID WEEKEND at the Embassy Suites in a city nobody visits in winter; four best friends flown in from each of the four compass points to rally around the lovely M. She had caught her husband in an affair.
Watching her approach the check-in desk, we were each seized with loyalty and devotion to this woman we’d loved half our lives. At that moment any of us would have marched out and stabbed the bastard with our butter knives—and we hadn’t even heard her story yet.
We spent the weekend hearing it: his high-stress job, his fetching new colleague, temptation, consummation, secrecy, suspicion, lies. Look-his-wife-in-the-eye-and-deny-it lies. The particulars—where they did it, how they got away with it, what finally tripped them up—were kind of boring: Other people’s lust actually makes pretty dull reading. We’d heard it all before on the Lifetime channel.
But the fact is, we’d all been hearing more about infidelities in real life—and not just the ones cinematically detailed in gubernatorial press conferences and by former presidential candidates’ cancer-riddled wives. That’s being in our 40s, we supposed—the way of things, as marriages ripen and rot in places, and opportunity crooks a winsome finger.
“But, it’s just so…male,” one of us grumbled. “So irritatingly cliché.” Indeed every one of the infidelities that had intruded on our social circles was the doing of the husbands. “Gee, stop the presses,” deadpanned one. “At this point in our lives”—and to what point is she referring? I thought defensively, stealing from the lobby mirror a blurry eyeful of a woman who looked like me, only with crow’s feet and several chins—“we’re all vulnerable. We’re getting older. The Other Woman never gets older.”
Now there’s a happy chew toy for a fortysomething wife with advancing wrinkles and retreating vision to gnaw on a cross-country flight. Until that weekend I hadn’t spent many brain cells on the subject of infidelity; now, I couldn’t stop thinking about M.’s tearful admission that she shifted daily between what ached worst: the emotional betrayal, the sexual betrayal, or the lie.
A week later, still consumed, I brought the subject to my writing group. Like so many women’s circles—book groups, Bible studies, quilting bees—our little assemblage was about its ostensible purpose strictly in the most tangential sense. As in, we never wrote anything.
Instead we ate chocolate ganache cake and talked, secrets spilled in direct proportion to wine swilled. I unfurled the whole spellbinding diorama of my middle-age angst, and then a woman I’ll call S. spoke up. “I think this might be a good time for me to tell you all something,” she said quietly. “Something that can’t leave this room.”
Published: October 2009
I have to say that this article brought up in me as much or more disturbing feelings as you mentioned having when listening to your friend’s tale of betrayal. A lie is a lie, no matter what form it takes or what social justifications we create in our own heads about it. I am a married man with a beautiful daughter and the thought of cheating on my family is the most sickening and painful circumstance I could imagine going through, or putting my family through. This idea that people may have that cheating is a means to ease some minor personal struggle in their lives or fill some emotional void are simply the most selfish people imaginable. S.‘s statement of “But for me, having a lover has made me feel more alive. It’s made me feel sexier. It’s made me feel younger”, says the word “me” four times. I wonder how ’alive, sexy, or young’ her having a lover would make her husband and children feel??
I am not saying that people and S. don’t have a need to feel those things, but I am saying that there A MILLION other ways in this life to achieve those feelings (or any others that you personally feel are lacking) that don’t entail betraying the very foundation of their marriage and family……which SHOULD be built at the very least on honesty. S.’s blasé “hobby lover” idea sounds like she is taking her marriage as serious as going to yoga classes every week, just one more thing to maintain her life.
I personally feel that the most fulfilling parts of my marriage and family is when I am transparent and honest with them about the things I am feeling, and they find out things that I was holding inside for whatever reason. It is amazing how freeing, young, sexy and uplifting THAT can be when the people you are exposing yourself wholeheartedly to are the one’s you actually love, and in turn, truly love you.
This Back Fence article really hit home for me. Having at one time or another been on both sides of the infidelity “fence” I can honestly say that no good will ever come of having an affair. I have never been married or had children so I can’t imagine the devastation that would result in those circumstances. But speaking from my own experience, as hurt and betrayed as I was when I was the one being cheated on (and it was severe), the impact was even greater when I was in the position of being the cheater. I hurt a person I was in love with for nothing but selfish reasons. I lost many longtime friends and have spent years mending relations with my own family. Unless both parties in the relationship are open to the idea of having lovers, someone is going to get hurt. What little you stand to gain cannot be compared to what you could ultimately lose.
Taking a lover without an agreement that the marriage is an open relationship is a guaranteed divorce. An affair might make this woman happy this moment, but only if she ignores all the future unhappiness she will experience when her betrayal comes to light.
The adult way to deal with her unhappiness is to talk to her spouse, explore new ways to enjoy each other, try changes such as toys to find the sexual satisfaction she craves in her marriage, and, if amenable, agree to an open relationship so both sides can take other partners without any betrayal.
Cheating on your spouse might be a selfish thrill in the short-term, but it will lead to disaster in the long-term.
Anonymous is right on this one. Also, I was just bothered by the fact the article pretty much said cheating is okay for women to do, but not for men to do. Not only is it wrong across the board unless there is a concrete ‘open relationship’ policy (which in itself is a bit hairy), but at least those loathesome “Y-chromosomes” are evolutionarily inclined towards it.
I was drawn in by the “when is it okay?” tagline, and thoroughly disappointed to find out the answer is “when women do it.”