Everyone’s all worked up about one of The Try Guys cheating on his wife, me included. Ned Fulmer’s such a nice guy; I didn’t think he was the type. If any of them were, I would have put my money on Eugene. He certainly has the ego for it.
It just goes to show: people are capable of being more than one thing, and there’s more to people than meets the eye (good and bad).
But I’m more surprised that the other boys have booted him out of the company. Online chat indicates it’s the perceived hypocrisy that’s the problem: you can’t build a brand showcasing happy family life when in fact you’re nailing a staff member (who is herself engaged).
The Try Guys are exceptionally talented at word-craft so the terse little statement accompanying the news made clear their moral disgust. They are disgusted by him, it seems. And they are disgusted by his conduct.
But are they entitled to be?
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As a culture, we’ve gotten ourselves into a right old mess when it comes to affairs of the heart.
We lionise love. We’re told we should love our jobs, we should love our lives, and of course we should love the person we’re with. We are entitled to be happy—that is the (suspiciously unilateral) new social contract—and if we’re not, we should do something about it.
Except it’s not that simple. It never is.
Because up against this zeitgeist ideal is the firmly rooted belief that love also means fidelity and loyalty; that the three concepts go hand in hand. If a person loves us enough, they will forsake all others.
Maybe we’ve got that part of the equation completely wrong.
Maybe monogamy is a bourgeois construct which does more harm than good. That, it is rumoured, is the opinion of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is now on his third wife and counting. His view of life is decidedly polyamorous or, to use the modern parlance, “sociosexual”. (Sociosexuality describes your willingness to engage in sexual activity outside a committed relationship.)
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The reasons people are quick to condemn cheaters are well-known and obvious. I’m not being dismissive when I say that.
It’s selfish behaviour. We don’t generally like liars. Cheating is breaking promises and deceiving. It causes an injury from which some never completely heal. It is a violation of intimacy.
These are very significant consequences, and lives are ruined by them, or at least temporarily decimated.
But people do it anyway. Lots of people. Sometimes it feels everyone is at it.
And, as a society, our condemnation is inconsistently applied. Because hard up against that disapproval is a championing of the right of individuals to do as they please. And no one is expected to stay in a relationship which makes them unhappy (and as to what makes them happy, they get to decide).
And the disapproval doesn’t last forever. Most people who leave the family home do so in order to set up shop with somebody else. We’re human beings and we’re not biologically built to be alone, even the introverts amongst us. And after a period of time, these new relationships are welcomed into the fold.
Some relationships which start as affairs do last the course. Some of them are the great love affairs of our times. It is the “love conquers all” argument: everything else, everyone else, is collateral damage.
And, as for those left behind, we allow them time to grieve, we tell them they are better off (“You wake up free of his lies. He wakes up still a liar and a cheat.”). Then we expect them to get on with living life. And is there not the lurking suspicion the fault is partly theirs?
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Relationships which start off as an affair are, however, high risk. Once a cheater, always a cheater? That seems a little harsh, but it does take a certain type, and it does take a certain mindset, and if you’ve known the exotic pleasures of adultery once, maybe it is harder to resist them again as and when the opportunity arises.
Yet more often than not it isn’t a case of “when opportunity comes knocking”. As Adam Levine has reminded us, men tend to seek out opportunity. They’re active, not passive. They’re instigators.
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For some, cheating is just about sex.
But is sex ever just sex?
Ned Fulmer’s antics in a New York City bar remind us that there is usually a prologue to full-on fucking, and it tends to look a whole lot like dating. Or, in Adam Levine’s case, sexting like a teenage boy.
Some people love their partners beyond measure, yet still cheat. This I call the “Tory Grandee” approach to cheating (in the style of Alan Clark and his many, many paramours) or—to internationalise the concept—the “French mistress model”. These men have no intention of leaving their wives. They don’t have a formal arrangement with them; they know their wives know, but they don’t ever talk about it. They just hope their wives are happy to keep playing along.
It is a very practical arrangement, borne out of the knowledge that, for some, love isn’t enough to keep a person from cheating. But it’s fallen out of fashion, and I doubt anyone could get away with it now. The Tory Grandees certainly don’t.
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The reasons people cheat are as numerous and varied as the lies those people tell to cover their tracks.
Some cheat because they are stuck in an unhappy marriage. Because they are unsatisfied. Because they’re bored. Bored of their partner, bored of themselves. Some cheat because they enjoy the attention. It’s flattering. It’s distracting. It’s a respite from the mundane everyday. Some cheat because they long for something they don’t have and desperately want. Sometimes the “want” is romance. Sometimes the “want” is purely physical, because that boy you met in the garden centre is just so hot. Sometimes the “want” is emotional connection, a deep exchange, honesty at the core of the deceit. Sometimes the “want” is an escape from moral rectitude and all the other stuff which constricts us like a boa. Some people cheat because they settled down too young. They cheat because they’re inexperienced in how to be a good partner. Because they can’t decide whether to stay or to go. Some cheat because they have low self-esteem and someone’s attention is better than no attention at all. And there’s a level of empowerment in getting “I miss you” texts from a man who’s with another woman. For others, they just like the drama. The sexy, stolen moments, trysts and espionage. It’s hot, and has an exhilaration day-to-day married life (especially married life with kids) simply does not.
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These days, we don’t as a society criticise people who choose to end a relationship. It’s their right to do so—oftentimes, their decision is actively celebrated and we use the language of emancipation and self-betterment to articulate our support—and if that means making other people unhappy, then whilst that is unfortunate, that’s just the way it is. For every winner there will be a loer.
But if a relationship ends because of an affair, that we do criticise, at least for a period. Increasingly I wonder: are we making an arbitrary distinction?
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Perhaps we’re so moralistic about cheating because we fear adultery decimating the whole business of modern love.
Relationships are in many ways a transaction, and transactions require good faith. And if we validate behaviour which erodes trust, dating becomes a whole lot more difficult.
Cheating is a choice, of course, and it’s the age-old tactic of the puritan to criticise those who give in to temptation as weak. The answer, according to this line of thinking, is mastery of self: discipline, integrity, self-respect. It’s about the standard to which the individual holds themselves.
We all subscribe to this argument to some degree: life is a test of character, and it makes us or it breaks us.
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What we have to come to terms with, however, is that cheating makes sense in the context of the modern love paradigm. Individual need rules. Love rules. And we have stripped out of the equation (probably by accident) all the other trappings: loyalty, commitment, the joy of operating as a unit, the joy of building a life together and watching the seasons go by.
A lot of people, when told of marriages which lasted fifty plus years (once upon a time not all that uncommon) respond — those people were likely trapped. In modern times (because we are so much more sophisticated, is the implication) they would have divorced as soon as the seven year break clause permitted.
With choice comes consequence.
As a people, we’re really into punishment at the moment. We like to see wrongdoing punished.
And sometimes, it doesn’t work out all that well for a cheat. They lose their wife, they lose their family, they lose the paramour who thought she was a girlfriend, and he loses the respect of the friends who knew what was going on.
But sometimes—more often than not, in fact—the cheat actively benefits: off into the distance he goes, his new partner by his side, all the detritus of his former life but a speck in the rearview mirror.
In the long run, some believe it hurts the guy who cheats too, though I’m not so sure about that.
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There’s a lot of poe-faced talk about the importance of honesty in relationships.
It’s fair enough as far as it goes, but relationships have always been full of lies. Not least because we all have a habit of lying to ourselves.
With the growing acceptance of polyamory and open relationships, it’s sometimes said there’s very little reason anymore for anyone to be monogamous against their will.
I’m not so sure about that either. Where’s the thrill of it if you already have permission?
I would be very hesitant about starting a relationship with someone with a history of cheating, but it’s not the sort of information people tend to volunteer, especially those who are relatively accomplished at lying.
Why? Because if they lied to their ex, they’re perfectly capable of lying to me too. And even if he did break up with him for me, he would only move on from cheating on him to cheating on me.
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And so: back to The Try Guys.
How people respond to the behaviour of others is sometimes as interesting as the behaviour itself.
What if Ned had simply left his wife, then a few weeks later announced he was in a new relationship (otherwise known as doing a John Mulaney)?Would he have been given the sack for that?
Remember when KellyAnne Conway was asked if President Trump’s behaviour was “presidential”? Remember her magnificent answer? “Of course his behaviour is presidential. He’s the President.”
And so it goes with Ned. He was a happily married family guy. Perhaps he still is. It’s just that he’s a happily married family guy who couldn’t keep it in his pants. That, for many, is a commonplace experience. That, for many, is what modern love looks like.
So getting rid of him is, in my view, the wrong way to go. The moral thinking which led to that decision is confused, and in business terms, it’s a missed opportunity. Why people cheat (and especially why men cheat) is one of the headline topics of our lives and times. People want to know the answer. Ned Fulmer can tell us, and I’d be genuinely interested in what he has to say.
The Try Guys Try Cheating? Now that is an episode I would want to watch.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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