Anglo-Saxon Western nations are just fucked up when it comes to marital infidelity. Is it awesome? No. Is it human? Yes. Is it worth destroying your partnership and your children’s lives over?
Fuck No!
Monogamy means you are married to one person. You hunt about for a bit, find a suitable candidate whom you love (presumably) and who loves you in return and you get married. Full fucking stop. You build a family, build your wealth and enjoy each other as much as possible.
Infidelity has nothing to do with monogamy. Infidelity means one of you fucked someone who wasn’t the other. Big fucking deal. There are different types of infidelity, too. When your husband goes on conference to Budapest and pays some Ukrainian hooker to blow him, that’s NOT infidelity. It’s entertainment. It has nothing to do with you at all. She was there, it was fun, who fucking cares? And when you head to Cuba for a week with the girls, all freshly waxed and let the pool boy explore your depths with his tongue, that isn’t infidelity either. It’s payment for not punching the aesthetician when she covered your pubes in hot wax and ripped them out by the roots! Motherfucker! You totally deserve a hot Latin 20 year old!
A more worrisome infidelity is an affair of the heart, but that shouldn’t be a deal breaker, either. Are you an accountant? Do you love numbers and order and neat columns of figures that all add up? Is your husband a jazz musician? Does he love chaos and improvisation and the wildness of the wind section? It’s okay. You love him for the balance he brings to your life. He helps you stop and see the sunlight streaming through the clouds. You help him by making sure the fucker gets paid jesus someone has to pay the utility bill! You are lost without each other. Sigh. So romantic.
So one night he hooks up with a fellow musician and they just get each other. He can talk to her about stuff that would make you wonder how bad, really, could it be, to leap off the 23rd floor? He fucks her. Every week. For five years. Her insanity makes him come home to you, grateful for your stability and strength and knowledge of internet banking. With her, he is wild and crazy and free and open and creative. And with you, he lives. Breathes. Exists.
And then when you are off at a GAAP conference, you meet a tall handsome stranger who debates regulations with you fiercely. Fuck he’s hot. One WTO draft agreement later and he is naked with his head between your legs and you are suddenly pretty excited about the next conference. After an exhausting 72 hours of mind-blowing orgasms and detailed analyses of the Lehman restructuring, you get home to your husband and he plays you your favourite song and you can’t believe how much you missed him.
And when he picks up your phone (by accident) and reads those texts, and when you decide to surprise him after the set wearing a trench coat and a smile and you both discover what the other has been up to, there will be tears. Yes, it will hurt.
Here’s the thing: no one single person will ever be able to fulfil every part of you that needs filling. Not Going. To. Happen.
But you don’t throw away years of love and commitment and affection and sharing because you have a need your partner can’t meet. You don’t own him. He doesn’t own you. You exist separately of one another. And finding some small corner of the world to add to the love in your life is not just reasonable, it’s beautiful.
You don’t destroy your life because he fucked someone else. Or even because he loved someone else, once a week for an hour. And he shouldn’t punish you, either. And if you have children together, then this is doubly, triply, infinitely more true. You do not get to destroy their lives because you can’t be a fucking grown up and understand some basic truths about human beings.
Divorce destroys children. Rips them apart. I’m even NOT going to debate it. Google it yourself! Do I look like a fucking librarian?
Here’s what you do when your partner cheats: you ask yourself: can I meet this need? HE HAS A RIGHT TO HAVE NEEDS. And to have them met. And if you ain’t gonna do it, then bitch please, move aside. Just a little. And when you find yourself eyeing up that gorgeous actuarial in the gingham shirt, ask yourself: can the man at home meet this need? Because you have a right to have needs too. And to have them met.
One thing though: DON’T HUMILIATE YOUR PARTNER! Keep it on the down low. Parade your fuckbuddy in front of the neighbors and you will officially suck it hard! And for the love of fucking god, do not destroy your children because you’re having a tantrum. Suck it up. Get over it. You don’t own him. Show him he doesn’t own you either. Revenge is a dish best served on the naked abdomen of a poolboy!
with love, JB
judgybitch 
” HE HAS A RIGHT TO HAVE NEEDS. And to have them met.”
I disagree. If he has a right to have his “needs” (wants, really) met, then so does she. You’re right that no one partner can completely “fulfill” anybody, but that’s not an excuse for infidelity. NOBODY has a God given right to be “fulfilled.” Women expecting to be “fulfilled” by their husbands, is one of the reasons why modern marriage is in the toilet. How many marriages end because she’s not Haaaaapy? This goes both ways.
When you commit to creating a family, you commit to making sacrifices. “Anything goes” is for single without children. Not every affair should result in divorce, but infidelity is one of the very few legitimate reasons for divorce. Is it really in a child’s best interests to be raised by parents who refuse to make sacrifices and who don’t honor their commitments? A dented and dinged marriage is not necessarily a bad environment for a child, but a truly broken one is. Infidelity thoroughly breaks almost any marriage, whether divorce follows or not.
Men tend to crave sexual variety, which often leads to affairs, but they should be able to get that variety at home. Indeed they should demand it of their wives – before they tie the knot.
Hypergamy is real. Women’s ever-present attraction to higher-status men (along with the safety net of no-fault divorce) often leads THEM to cheat. Just as a wife has a duty to provide variety to her husband, an husband has a duty to display attractive “high value” to his wife. Not every minute of every day, but enough to keep a reasonable and responsible woman from getting bored with him and seeking excitement elsewhere.
I won’t even go into the bio-physical mechanics of pair-bonding, which can be easily and permanently destroyed by infidelity. Infidelity IS NOT acceptable, unless it is agreed upon, with no duress, by both parties. It might be forgivable in some circumstances, but only if forgiveness is exchanged for a real commitment.
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Agree with driversuz,
I think your advice fits for some people, but I wouldn’t recommend this to everyone.
“You don’t own him. He doesn’t own you.” – I think this is the thing. Of course you don’t own each other, but I have this rule: “You can do whatever you want, but you can’t do whatever you want WITH ME”. Whenever someone tells me I’m being selfish asserting some requirement, I tell them I don’t own them and they can do whatever they want, with somebody else. They’re free to go. And that is completely fair.
I know some people stayed together for the children, after an infidelity. I would say it works if true forgiveness takes place, and no more cheating (or at least no more getting caught…). Couples who try to forget about it, but slowly boil inside and resent, are toxic. I’ve been the kid where parents are fuming and charging everything with negativity (not due to cheating, but effect was the same). I’m glad they divorced.
Maybe if you tell the man that you’ll tear the whole family into pieces through divorce in case of infidelity, he’ll think twice before cheating. Or think twice before marrying you, if sexual variety in women is that important to him. I think consistently cheating men often settle with women who tolerate it. Good way to filter them out, no?
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Agree. Everyone is required to be a grown-up. That means get the fuck over it. If you can’t, then move on.
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You’re quite brave to come out with enlightened shit like this. No wonder people don’t get it. They have to protect their egos with whatever is necessary, like extra hard hamstering. They have to create explanations why it is not okay to be understanding or forgiving, to accept our human shortcomings, to look for love and happiness where it can be found instead of placing impossible demands on both your partner and yourself. Nooo, we can’t have freedom, love and compassion because at heart we’re all jealous, petty little fuckers who feel bad when facing our own imperfection.
How dare you find happiness outside of me? I should be the only source of joy for you, even if I can’t satisfy all your needs – not that I want to, mind you. If you find happiness outside of me it means I’m incomplete, and my subconscious can’t stand the thought of being incomplete – it’s like being incompetent. Those needs of yours I don’t want to satisfy hurt me deeply, so if you love me you’ll forget about your needs altogether and care only about mine, which are so much more important anyways.
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suz isn’t talking about happiness, she’s talking about FUCKING someone outside of marriage.
yes, you are welcome to look elsewhere, to enjoy the company of others, to look for fullfillment. But that welcome ends when it comes to sticking your dick into someone else, or letting them stick it into you.
There are a million ways to find happiness, and demanding that sex with a stranger is one of those ways is just displaying a blatant lack of self-control, commitment, and respect for your partner. I know this is not what people want to hear, but if you really want to explore sex outside of your marriage, you can either wait for the kids to leave and separate, or turn to porn. cheating is just plain disrespectful.
to soften the blow, of course, I could point out that if you are with someone, and she or they get hot pants for someone else, there ARE respectful ways to deal with it… I have (on rare occasions) played shut-eye sentry for my pet, and she rewarded me by bringing home an EXTREMELY sweet young thing to play with. We have the videos to prove it (and enjoy together later). But if she actually CHEATED on me, especially with someone beneath my admittedly high standards, I would be quite put out, and probably exchange her for a newer, more respectful model.
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Would I leave my daughter’s Father and partner if he cheated on me? No because it’s not worth breaking up my family over, but I would not be pleased about it. I am pretty good a repressing some of my needs to the point where I don’t feel them any more and I think that it’s something that everyone should practise. It makes life a lot easier.
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This. Yes.
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I’ve always thought monogamy was a slightly silly tradition, like a ‘better than nothing’ solution. You are absolutely right that no one person is going to meet all your needs. As to whether you have a right to have those needs met, I say yes, but I also think it’s a moot point. People are gonna do what they wanna do, and you go against that at your peril. Not saying discipline has no place in maturity, but it will always be an inferior solution to meeting your need (in a healthy manner, obviously).
As I see it, there is nothing wrong with some sort of arrangement involving multiple people, of varying levels of commitment and closeness, as long as you observe the cardinal rule of relationships:
Value and respect your partner(s), and do not take them or your history with them for granted.
As a gay man, I see a lot of open relationships that work just fine, because they recognize that sexual desire and emotional commitment are not the same thing. The comment above about fragile egos is priceless, because that’s exactly what it is. People want to be thought of as perfect by their partners, but in their heart of hearts they know they’re not, and infidelity exposes that. In politics and relationships, nothing gets elicits banshee shrieking like exposing truths deliberately hidden.
I think one more element of this though is emotional independence. I rely on my partner to satisfy some of my emotional needs, because that’s the point of a relationship, but there’s a limit to what I’ll place on him. At the end of the day, every one of my problems is MY problem. Get help when and how you can, but I only see chaos resulting from placing the full burden of your emotional well-being on someone else.
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Thank you 🙂
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Dear JB,
i have been on a marathon reading your blog for the past 30 hours, because i wanted to soak up every bit of ammunition i could to destroy feminism and their cronies in my country. but this is the post that tempted me to post my opinion because i feel very strongly about this topic. may be because i am an indian( thats india for you white people, not native americans!!). in my country the traditions around marriage centre to be around the mythological extreme. you can easily find women who killed themselves rather than be raped etc… and yu can also find women in mythology who cheated ( very rare) and were punished brutally for it.
my point being , you put a lot of emphasis in all your posts on how biology trumps emotional conditioning. the same counts here. the human mating system is inherently asymmetric and unfair. sometimes to the men, some to the women. men got themselves tied down only on the complete assurance of paternity by strict enforcement of sexual control on the women , to control the men into not becoming nomads or bands of marauders.
just like you get tunnel vision if you are choked , even if you know the guy strangling you is not going to kill you, you still get it. the same for a man’s reaction. the biologically, prudent and natural reaction of a man discovering his mate cheating was to throw her out and deprive her of resources necessary for survival not only from himself, but from anyone of his beneficiaries. its unfair if you look at it from the woman’s perspective, but a man and woman do not bring the same things tothe table. the goal here is to lower fraudulent investmen t risk.( i. e. cuckoldry by women) . for a woman the goal is to take away the drain on a man’s resources that could potentially go to her children.
so a man’s reaction to infidelity is not the same as a woman , and yet it is perfectly justified. you can not ask him to get over it anymore than ask him to forget AND FORGO HIS EGO. which why i dont buy your argument about revenge cheating and ‘gettingover it’ especially for men.
contrary to popular belief , love does conquer everything, except sex. sex is primal , the passion and the desire have more to do with the subconscious than the conscious. so when a man says he forgives his wife cheating, he actually has relegated it to his subconscious.
a woman has a better chance of getting over it , esp a case of an affair of the body.
i think you have an amazing blog, and on many things you are spot on, but in this case i think you are hopelessly off the mark. thats alright. i still like you anyway. coz you are awesome.
my advice for when a man cheats, confront him to his face, in private. tell him you are angry, pissed and want to see him dead. but also tell him you wont divorce him, or revenge cheat on him, but make his life miserable. watch the magic happen .
you will have a secure alpha, eating out of your hand and feel good. its called elevation by submission in philosophy. its not being a doormat, just someone who knows how male minds work,and takes advantage of that to make sure it never happens.
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Nice piece. Man is selfish. You set out to achieve for self importance and gratification. Realizing, utmost results aren’t achievable by self, we associate (relations) with fellow beings.
Change in course comes at wiast: happiness, pain, loss….but most importantly responsibility. Wi th partner, spouse, projects (kids and wealth) comes a compromise (sacrifice as a cost) with self importances and trials.
If one sets out for the self-gratification path, there’s a cost (if caught). Excuses with no excuses
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“How dare you find happiness outside of me? I should be the only source of joy for you, even if I can’t satisfy all your needs ”
Yeah, that sounds like the whine of every 17 year old I’ve ever heard rant about why they really can’t be faithful. “The only source of joy” ? You get there are other means to joy beyond sex, yes?
In any case, I’ve never heard anyone rant and insult like this when they were sure of their ground.
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