I believe we all used to fancy the idea of marriage, marrying our one true love who we would face all our trials and tribulations with. That most of us were taught to desire a relationship with someone who could be considered as our other half, our missing rib, someone who we’ll live happily ever after with.
Or at least that was what Disney had us believing, from the stories of Cinderella to Snow White, to sleeping beauty— they even had us believing in mermaids falling in love with humans. So when it came to love and marriage our younger self had it all figured out. We would grow up and marry our Prince Charming/damsel.
But growing up we realized the difficulties in marriage, the difficulty in finding someone of a different background and training to entangle with ours, someone who can accept our baggage and we can accept theirs. We realized the difficult in avoiding temptation and trusting our partner to do the same. We also realized that love alone cannot keep a marriage.
Yes, love might be the foundation, love might be the stepping stone, but you need pillars of trust, rods of acceptance and forgiveness, bricks of finances, windows of wisdom and understanding, rooms of mistakes and moving on, and a roof of efforts. What most people seem to forget is that small damages, especially over time, can cause the home of marriage to crumble, we also seem to forget that the efforts cannot come from one party alone.
Infidelity according to Merriam-Webster, is the act or fact of having a romantic or sexual relationship with someone other than one’s husband, wife, or partner.
I am aware that the chaos of infidelity does not come from the male gender alone, women are also deep rooted in this chaos. We’ve read stories of men finding out the children they believed to be theirs ended up not being so. And it’s painful naming, grooming and loving someone wholeheartedly and then finding out that a pillar of trust has been cracked.
Today I’m concerned about the high rising number of infidelity cases are becoming alarming or maybe the era of social media has become a means of bringing all these into light.
Women are groomed to understand that we are nurturers, caretakers, we hold the family together. Yes, all true but effort does not come from just one party in this case just the woman, it has to come from both. A family cannot be a family when just the woman is playing her own part.
But because of this grooming, women have learned to settle, learned to understand, you see women supporting cheating by saying men are polygamous in nature.
Now it’s one thing if before the marriage it has already been discussed and understood by both parties that there would be an increase in spouses in the coming years. Because, some cultures and religions accept polygamy. But in a case where there wasn’t an agreement and new woman is brought home, or is being taken care of outside because of the baby mama title, do we still give them the excuse that; “Men are polygamous in nature.”
And you see the men nodding in agreement, dropping comments like women should learn to accept it. I’ve seen comments that say the earlier women accept that all men cheat the earlier they achieve peace of mind. When I read comments like this I am filled with so much disdain and disgust, I can’t help but wonder if it’s just me feeling this way or if other women/men feel the same way. I also can’t help but wonder if I am the one who does not understand.
A case study, a national actor, married to beautiful wife of over 10 years, with 3 kids, got a girl on set pregnant, now instead of being remorseful and discussing this with his wife, he went ahead to marry her without the knowledge of his wife. A man with no religious or cultural background of polygamy. His wife found out about the marriage on instagram, when blogs uncovered the story.
Sometimes, I try to put myself in her shoes to understand how she felt, how she was able to keep her cool on social media. She handled the situation with no drama on her social media, she only made a post about it to simply put it out there that her religion and person does not accept polygamy.
This man lost not just his family but his fans and some part of his careers. But still he had supporters, who hailed him and bashed his wife for deciding the protect herself and children.
Now I do not want to believe that those guilty of infidelity do not know the pain and scar they cause to their partners. It’s important to understand how hurtful and deep rooted the pain of infidelity causes.
Some days I really can’t help but question society as to how we’ve normalized such abnormality, how we’ve been pushed to understand that men always cheat, are there really loyal men out there? Is there really someone for just you? Stereotypes like that are harmful to everyone.
—
This post was previously published on medium.com.
***
All Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS. Need more info? A complete list of benefits is here.
 |
 |
 |
 |
—–
Photo credit: Sandy Millar on Unsplash
