“Life is short, have an affair”, is the motto you see if you visit the Ashley Madison Agency’s website. The website is a dating site that helps married men and women cheat without their partners finding out.
Websites like these make you wonder: where has the word monogamy gone? Wedding vows aren’t taken seriously, as proven by Ashley Madison Agency’s over 4 million members.
An age old question that may never be answered is: what causes a person to cheat? Is it a physical attraction or the love of another’s conversation or company? Or maybe it’s the need for attention to justify that they still got ‘it’?
It could be that a person isn’t sexually fulfilled in the relationship they’re in and some studies even show that it may be genetic, but that’s a whole different story. Some say power, wealth and fame are well-known aphrodisiacs. That can be especially true for industry wives who have to deal with countless groupies who lust after their husbands.
It could be all of these things or none of these. Who knows what causes a person to become unfaithful? But the bigger question is: why are so many people are open to being unfaithful and why monogamy is so hard to come by?
While reading the CNN article “Mate Debate: Is monogamy realistic” by A. Pawlowski, I was left with an unanswered question: what’s the point of being in a relationship if you’re just going to cheat? If one feels the need to cheat, then just be single or at least be in a consenting “open relationship”.
The whole idea of claiming someone as your significant other is saying that you only want to be with that person, not just he/she is mine now, but tomorrow I belong to someone else.
There are too many people who get into relationships knowing they aren’t ready to settle down or commit to that single word—monogamy.
Monogamy almost seems to be a thing of the past and cheating is the new lifestyle when those who are not interested in infidelity are looked at like they’re odd and somehow need to get with the program.
There was a time when people would straight up lie about being in a relationship, thinking that if they admit to having someone, potential new mates might be scared off.
Now, many people are openly willing to having sexual relations with someone who is already taken. Because of it, alternative lifestyles such as polyamory (more than one partner /relationship at a time), polygamy, and swinging have become popular.
Such lifestyles can be disrespectful and a turn-off to some and cause hurt and betrayal to those unknowingly involved. Many families’ and peoples’ lives and careers have been destroyed by infidelity in relationships, such as in David Letterman’s case, as well as other public figures in the media.
I was having a conversation with a widowed mother of two in her 40s about relationships and cheating. I discovered something that I realized was far too common but not unheard of and happens far too often. She says to me with a laugh:“Oh, I could have had many women’s husbands but I was just being courteous.”
It was an arrogant and shameless thing to say. Of course, the conversation was immediately over. The sad part was, after I walked away from her I realized she was serious.
The fact that it was nothing to her to sleep with someone else’s man and she was somehow doing the women a favor by not obliging in the affair disgusted me. It was then I realized age doesn’t matter when it comes to infidelity.
A lot of people think it’s something that someone who is immature does in hopes that they’ll grow out of it, but there are many adults who fool around, ones who should know better.
It can be selfish to want the cake and eat it too, to want someone when the “jump off” isn’t cooperating, or if they’re out of town or if they’re just tired of them.
“Jump off” is one of the many terms people use for the person they meet up with just to have sexual relations, like “friend with benefits”.
“This isn’t about having affairs, it’s really about being open and loving,” a man named Mark said in Mate Debate. Mark lives in Springfield, Missouri and practices polyamory. Studies have found that Americans view infidelity harsher than any other country in the world.
“Americans are too surprised by infidelity when it happens. I think we go into marriage with perhaps unrealistically high expectations about human nature,” Pamela Druckerman, who is the author of “Lust in Translation,” said in Mate Debate.
In the world of the faithful, there is a positive outlook, though. Though many Americans are unfaithful, there are also many who strive for committed relationships, ones who should know that there’s nothing wrong with expecting monogamy.
Nadine Kaslow, a professor at Emory University School of Medicine who specializes in couples and families, believes most people still prefer to be in a monogamous relationship.
“There are a lot of reasons why sexual monogamy is in a peoples interest,” psychiatrist Judith Eve Lipton said in Mate Debate. “Because whether it’s raising children or avoiding emotional chaos and drama, there are a lot of reasons that two people who cooperate are better that one person alone or one person who is a cheat.”
Everybody may have their reasons why they choose to cheat or not cheat or live an alternative lifestyle, but monogamy can be achieved and can be realistic as long as both partners strive for commitment in the relationship and are strong against outside temptation and distractions.
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