I wonder about all those ‘disorders’
Rose City Girl contributes a guest post on Baggage Reclaim, ‘I married a serial cheater‘. The story is common enough. She intercepted an ‘I Love You’ note a year into the message, a couple of suggestive messages a couple years later. Then at eight years of marriage tracked back phone records, found a number of ladies, several admitted sleeping with the guy. She did divorce then, and move on.
It was apparent he had a fundamental personality problem
I think the betrayal of the lady’s ex-husband was fundamental, was wrong, and a problem to the home and to each other. The fact that people tend to repeat behaviors, that learning tends to project existing habits and values rather than change them, is an explanation, not an excuse.
There have always been couples that engaged in ’swinging’, ‘open’ relationships, where both engaged in relationships beyond their primary home relationship. Some such arrangements appear to have lasted for extended periods. Is the problem for Rose City Girl’s ex that he didn’t find the right companion to share his multiple-partner lifestyle?
But there is still the deceit. And the cover up. We routinely work in workplaces where the employer expects certain details to be kept within the workplace, from details about customers and cash flow to concepts or existence of projects. So is there a fundamental difference between an employer concealing business details, a husband protecting his family’s privacy, and a cheater concealing his/her affairs?
I think the distinction for Rose City Girl and for me comes down to values and character. We have examples of adults committing adultery, or cohabiting, or casually intimate, examples in media, literature, and neighborhood gossip. We many commercial messages about how we can be more exciting to ‘the opposite sex’, or ’spice up’ our ‘love life’. And relatively fewer examples of contentment with a partner. What might be surprising is the number of people still believing that fidelity is a reasonable and fulfilling lifestyle choice.