Over the years I've seen a lot of relationships spontaneously combust because of infidelity. I have some weird opinions about human relationships, like I really don't think most human beings are cut out for total monogamy. But the thing that I want to rant incoherently about today is the blame habits we have over infidelities.
Because almost without exception every situation I've seen, the blame doesn't reach everyone it should.
Let's get to some examples.
A man, let's call him Piece of Crap A or PoCA for short, has a naughty little habit of fooling around just a little bit at parties. He doesn't really cheat, just a little bit of fun. But somehow when he gets found out, it was all the girls fault. She was throwing herself at him. He honestly tried to get her to leave him alone. And ridiculously the girlfriend buys it. Awww poor PoCA, those skanky women just won't leave him alone. And apparently he's too weak and feeble to stop them from kissing him.
But let's take this story a little further. Because I talked to PoCA, because I wanted to know what the fuck was going on his head. And he told me about stress in his life that his girlfriend wasn't very sympathetic with. He talked about confusion in his relationship. That his girlfriend didn't want to deal with. He talked about the terrible guilt he felt over the small slips he made.
Now where does the blame go? What the hell point is there in blame? Talk about what happened and why. Fix things where you can, move on where you can't. There is almost always blame enough for everyone. But almost always there is someone who only looks at their wounds. Standing there saying why? But not actually interested in hearing the answers to that. Because no one wants to hear that maybe just a little bit, they took part in their own betrayal.
Let's move on to insecure crazy bloody madwoman. I only made it that complicated so it would abbreviate to ICBM. Small things amuse small minds. She gets obsessive about things. People. So when she sees this guy that she really likes the look of she becomes very predatory in her efforts to catch him. This guy has a girlfriend, but ICBM doesn't really like her and tells herself that the girlfriend is a horribly manipulative user. And upgrades her pursuit. She does actually care about the guy, it isn't just a hunt-thing. Probably more of a hunt thing than she imagined though. She catches the guy, he leaves his girlfriend.
As with the first case, there are 3 people in this story. ICBM has actively stolen this boy from his girlfriend so definitely some blame there. The guy? Well it takes 2 to cheat. At least 2. The girlfriend? You know this time I'm really not sure, because as much as I know what I saw. That she seemed to be a reasonably happy person most of the time, but that whenever the boyfriend came into the room a kind of fake looking sadness would come over her. She was always telling him to go off and do his own thing while looking miserable about it. So he would stay with her. So again, 3 people who all have some blame they could take. But I'm pretty certain only 2 of them did.
And moving on again, to denial equals reinterpretation person, because Derp is a fantastic name for this guy. This guy has what appears to be a great relationship with a fantastic woman who seems to be crazy about him. And the lucky bastard has an open marriage. Within reason. But things aren't as perfect as they seem. Because while they're open about sexual matters, they rarely talk seriously about anything else. Things that are wrong in the relationship fester because they don't want to talk about them. So Derp begins to spend more time with other people - the communication that is missing in his relationship, he starts to find with other people. And the less he talks with his partner the less he cares for her.
And when it falls apart? Everyone is angry with Derp for cheating. Angry with the other woman for getting in the middle of a relationship. And once again, no one really learns anything.
People are generally either unwilling to blame themselves, or too willing to. To the exclusion of the other participants, who certainly had a role. PoCA's girlfriend merrily blames external forces while blithely ignoring the possibility of an actual problem within their relationship. While PoCA feels guilty for messing about a little, but doesn't deal with the problems he knows are behind it.
ICBM & the jilted girlfriend blame themselves and each other while ignoring the cocknozzle in the middle. Unwilling to see fault in the thing they fought for. While guy in the middle thinks these things happen, and doesn't think much further than that.
And Derp blames his ex, while his ex blames him and neither of them expose the faults in their own behaviour. The new girl thinks she can smile all the way to the bank, but when you get into a relationship by cheating can you really ever believe it might not happen again?
Actually I've seen many a human do exactly that - and been that idiot myself. I don't think once a cheater, always a cheater is necessarily true - people do sometimes learn from their mistakes, but I do think that a relationship that starts in broken trusts is guaranteed to be a lot harder to make work in the long run.
Human beings are animals, we have instincts. That are occasionally at odds with socially acceptable behaviour. we have the capacity to overcome our baser instincts, each and every one of us. Denying we have them is foolish, acting against them to do the 'right' thing, sublime.
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