There’s a concerted effort underway to regulate through legislation how we all conduct ourselves in our personal relationships.
People generally used to think it no business of the state what people got up to in the privacy of their own homes. Those days are long gone.
As a cultural movement, it is undoubtedly well-intentioned, but I do worry about where it takes us in the longer term.
People are people, and affairs of the heart have always been messy.
Labelling an ex-partner a “manipulative narcissist” or “emotionally abusive” might make those on the receiving end of such behaviour feel a bit better about themselves, but in the absence of professional diagnostic tools, a lot of it is just name-calling or the calling card of someone who has been profoundly hurt.
It has the potential to make our dealings with one another more brittle and more suspicious. Is that where we want to end up as a collective? There are better (and I would argue) more effective ways to achieve the same longer term outcomes.
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It is, however, understandable that people in seemingly such large numbers are starting to think along these lines. It forms part of a wider movement to “better” society and its people at a micro level. Historically, such attempts usually backfire (there’s only so much people will take before they start to feel condemned simply for existing in their natural state) but it is, if nothing else, an interesting chapter to live through and to witness firsthand.
The simple fact of the matters is that relationships do terrible things to us all. No one survives them completely unscathed. Part of the problem is that the stakes are so high. Another part of the problem is there is no instruction manual. And the rules of acceptability are always changing, and markedly culturally different all around the globe.
It is conceptually surprising, given this hinterland, how little is said in the context of acceptable relationship behaviours about the devastating consequences of cheating. It’s all very well to say we shouldn’t shout at our partners or throw the occasional plate at them, but that is small-fry compared to the devastation of returning home of an evening to be told by your partner of many years standing that the relationship is over, that they have met someone else, that they are leaving that night.
But as a behaviour, it is commonplace. Some people do it multiple times, over and over again, their trail of destruction ever longer.
Do such people feel guilty about it? Not really, is the brutal truth. Oftentimes, what they feel for their former partner is something close to contempt. Psychologically, it is fascinating emotional response, and most likely a subconscious coping mechanism.
And it takes a specific sort of person to waltz off into the sunset with their new love — often shouting from the rooftops they’ve never been so happy — when the person they leave behind (and sometimes their children) are blindsided and broken, all versions of their future viscerally altered.
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The prevailing viewpoint is that such personal conduct, whilst perhaps regrettable, is just a fact of life. Certainly, it has always gone on. Ultimately, people must have the right to choose, and the entire premise of modern relationships is that “love wins”. The heart wants what the heart wants, and you can’t make someone love you who won’t.
Indeed, the “no fault” divorce makes it easier than ever to sever matrimonial bonds in order to start the whole process again with someone else.
It’s a slightly perverse byproduct of (again well-intentioned) legislation. Divorce is the root cause of many a mental breakdown, and no wonder. As an experience, it is almost totally negative: allegations and counter-allegations, legal strategies to secure “equitable distribution of assets”, custody battles. So much hatred and antipathy, all of it an expensive exercise of diminishing returns.
The “no fault” divorce seeks to plot an alternate path through the quagmire.
But in the process, it incentivises a certain type of individual to leave rather than to stay. And it means that loyalty, and sticking the course, and weathering the bad as well as enjoying the good, become less prominently celebrated behaviours in our culture.
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It wasn’t always like this. We were once quite condemnatory about people (usually men, but not always) who upped sticks from the family home in order to live their “best life” with someone else.
It wasn’t necessarily about monogamy. Many a successful marriage has involved turning the occasional blind eye to extra-marital hook-ups, sometimes even affairs. To desire others is human and healthy and monogamy, from certain angles, looks quite cruel.
But there is a meaningful difference between “extra-curricular activities” and leaving the family home entirely.
It’s the betrayal that destroys people in the end. That’s what hurts the most, and there is something terribly unjust about the “victim” of the situation also being the person who is “punished”.
“He’s not feeling this way, that’s for sure.” That’s what people used to say to me when I entered month twelve of grieving a relationship which he ended in order to focus on his relationship with someone else. “Do you think he thinks of me, sometimes?” I would ask them, hopefully. “Why would he start now?” was their reply.
This is why the cheater who leaves always wins. They’re not around to pick up the pieces, or to live the consequences of what they have done. They are moving forward, building something new, likely feeling better than ever, and sort of blind to their own disgrace. It’s galling, but there’s not much we can do about it other than to try and avoid such people in the first place. I’m certainly not advocating a legislative intervention.
That’s the paradox of all these formalised rules about relationship conduct. The one rule that would make life so considerably better for so many — don’t cheat! — is the very one we can’t ever have.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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