The Business & Consequences of Cheating & Being Cheated

I left the question of "Why are cheating spouses forgiven?" on this blog for 24 hours and I got about 20 responses. See all comments here.

Main themes:

1. Husband is the cheating party.
2. Wife accepts husband's cheating grudgingly because of difficulties in separation (e.g. kids, joint assets, fear of change etc) or husband gets 1 chance.
   

A couple of responses highlighted possible guilt on the wife's part. Such guilt can arise from a Wife who has cheated too. Or Wife is aware that she has not been 'playing wife' fully, e.g. not having enough sex with husband.

My take is that females are equally capable of cheating on their husbands. In other words, the female your husband is cheating with, could well be married to someone else. The reasons could range anything from boredom to pure ego.


However, unlike females, males do not cope well with their spouses' cheating at all. Due to lack of 'social norm of cheating wives' + huge male ego, they refuse to accept that something like that has happened to them. This leads to other externalised complications.

Lemme tell you a story.

Some years ago, I was to take over X's role. There was a lot of stuff that X had to hand over to me. And so, even before I was officially in the job, he had started to pass me the work over email. At first, I thought it was rather weird because government work should not be sent over private email, but since he is the 'senior', I went along with him.

After I got into the role officially, he continued to be helpful and checked on me once in a while. Though I was surprised, I thought he was one of those holy, helpful and sweet people. (X is around 5 years older than me, married, and Catholic).

Then... it started getting weird...

We would be discussing over MSN and the conversation kept leading to this:

X: How are things?

BM: Yo! So far so good.

X: If you need help, just let me know.

BM: Of coz, I will! Thank you very much! Ok... You know about this XYZ issue? It got dug up the other day...

X: Yes.

BM: How come it is blah blah blah... and not blah blah blah? Coz I thought it doesn't make sense to blah blah blah...

X: That one... Historical lah... This happened coz blah blah blah... Then because of blah blah blah... and blah blah blah...

BM: Wah lau! It's ridiculous to ignore the blah blah blah! I would propose to blah blah blah... Still can't believe it! How can XYZ be like that? *fainted*

X: Ohhhh! Fainted? CPR lai lor!!

BM: Huh?

X: CPR lai lor!!! CPR lai lor!!!

He kept going 'CPR lai lor!' whenever he got the chance to.
This went on for a couple of months, until one day, I got rather irritated and told him it was inappropriate.

"Why do you keep saying,'CPR lai lor!'? What are you trying to get at? What will your wife think if she knew you were communicating with another female like that? I don't think 'Good Fren' will like this at all." I said to X.

That when was he told me his sob story about his wife cheating on him... more than a few times... And he was going through a bad patch... probably an impending divorce. That his wife left him because he worked too hard etc. Everything came spilling out.

Later, I found out that he had been telling other people (including the top guy) about his divorce and had been moping around for many months.

While I felt bad for him coz it's quite clear he's unlikely to get hitched again anytime soon, I could not help feeling that his bad patch could not justify making such remarks to a female colleague ever. Is this harrassment? What would happen if I made a formal complaint against him?

Anyway, through this incident and indirectly, I learnt about how the inability to handle one's emotions can lead to unintended and often irreparable consequences. This is especially true for males, because they believe in the myth that wives do not cheat on husbands. But in fact. it seems 'rare' only because few males want to talk about their wives' cheating... mainly due to ego.

Hence, when a male finds himself in such a difficult situation, he is ill-prepared. But he feels the urgent need to react because his ego is wounded. And so, he reacts in rather primal ways... He seeks out other females... Married or not... starting with suggestive remarks... progressing to lunches/dinners... and more...

So, it's better for everyone to talk about their wives' infidelity. This will remove part of the stigma and move towards some kind of resolution... Heck... Let's just stop being hypocritical about this cheating business. It's quite clear some people use the number of conquests (especially younger/sought-after conquests) as a measure of their self-worth. Some people are simply not made for fidelity and do not believe in fidelity. It's not exactly a 'Wrong' or 'Right' issue. (Especially when 'truth-defining' ministers in the Singaporean context associate closely with and speak up for the infidel.)

While there is no 'wrong' or 'right' in the cheating business, it is just plain madness to hope that chaining infidels up with marriage contracts and empty promises may turn them around someday.

(Random thought: The male ego is hilarious... the female ego is vile.)