All I gotta say is that any person who decides to have an affair and decides to be a home wrecker and family wrecker deserves to have the pain thrice returned upon them. I have a friend going through some serious trauma as his family is breaking apart due to the woman having an affair. While I have never cheated on a partner, I have stolen away a partner from someone else (fortunately there were no kids or property involved) . My relationship recently ended, and frankly, I think karma deserved to kick me in the ass and make me a better person for it. But I now can say I will never do it again, and by that token, I hope the person who is screwing my friend goes down the same road I went…temporary happiness…followed by bitter pain returned upon them.
…if you have the capacity for guilt and regret which, with all the long-term infidelity and relationship-hopping I’ve seen throughout my life, is not nearly as prevalent as one would hope.
What I don’t understand is all the women I know who are just shrugging and walking away from their marriages, with no affair involved. I guess the fabled Midlife Crisis hits both genders. And they can’t just restore an old VW bug or take up homebrewing like the guys I know.
Seriously, I have three female friends who walked out in the last year, and when you ask them why, just shrug and say “I don’t know…”
Men are often clueless about this. I dunno. We have friends who, according to the man, the wife “just walked away, no clue why.” Yet I and almost all her friends know exactly why. Because her husband was always putting her down–or at any rate doing things she interpreted as putting her down. When she asked him to stop, he denied he was doing it.
Example: She’s out of work for three days because of the flu. He says, “Well, it was just a bad cold. I don’t think she really had the flu. I think if she really had the flu she’d have been a lot sicker.” This was kind of a weird thing–he’s not a doctor. He doesn’t get to decide whether she had a bad cold or the flu. He just wanted to diminish her experience, whatever it was.
Example: She was having a really rough go at her job. She pretty much hated everything about it. She wanted to change jobs, and found another one but needed a car to get to it, but they had a car, and he usually took the bus to his job. He suddenly decided he needed to take the car rather than the bus, and told her the new job didn’t pay enough for her to get another car and she should just quit.
Example: She ordered some slippers online. She ordered them in a small so her feet wouldn’t slop around in them. He went online and changed her order to get a medium. Because he thought slippers should fit loose.
These were things aired in public or at least among their friends. I have to assume his behavior in private was worse. Anyway it was not much of a surprise to me that she left but he seemed really flummoxed and goes around saying he’s such a nice guy, why did she treat him like that? Hint: He’s not a nice guy.
He is blaming “the other guy” but as far as I can tell, the other guy was drafted as an excuse for her to leave. Maybe a bit of a confidence-builder, too.
I guess he could also say his wife was so shallow that she left him because he changed her slipper order, but that would mean it was his fault. Better to blame the other guy, right?
I won’t challenge your anecdote since you know the couple and I don’t, but you really present it in a “I have an anecdote therefore digs is totally wrong” kind of a way. This may not have been your intention, but it is troublesome in how it follows the trope of “no matter who leaves who, it is always the man’s fault.”
Personally, I think there’s something to dig’s midlife crisis theory. If we’re throwing anecdotes around: I know a couple that broke up over the summer (and by the way, I’ve always known the wife better than the husband, so this isn’t a “she hurt my buddy!” kind of a thing, in fact I have NEVER heard the husband’s side of the story).
When they were in their twenties and she was looking to the future wanting a family, she married a guy with a good stable job. He was no older than she was, but he worked his ass off from the moment he stepped out of high school. He had a good paying job with benefits and it was dependable for a long future. Also, he wanted a family. He was excited about having kids and raising them. They had two children. Her husband’s job didn’t go anywhere, in fact he was rewarded with regular advancement over the years.
When he wasn’t working he wanted to be with his wife and kids. They always had family dinners all seated at the table together. He was happiest when his Saturdays and Sundays were spent as all four of them together. He loved Friday and Saturday nights on the couch with his kids and his wife watching Disney movies. His wife loved this too . . . for a time.
Now, in her forties, she wants to party. Everything that made her husband “Greatest Husband and Dad in the World” now just makes him boring. She decides her life is boring. She wants an exciting life. Now that the kids are grown up they don’t need her so much anymore (Note: a 16 year old and a 14 year old are NOT grown up, and certainly DO need a mother).
She has only ever worked part-time and only in recent years, but though it is only a part time job it is a job that she would regularly have to travel for. She meets an “exciting” guy on a business trip, he likes to party, they have amazing sex and start up a long term affair.
The minute her older child hits age 18, she decides she is officially no longer needed as a mother. She breaks up with her husband and moves to Hawaii to live with the amazing sex exciting party guy.
Her younger daughter, always one of the most cheerful children you could ever meet, is at age 16 depressed for the first time ever. Her daughter has been a star athelete her entire life and always at peak physical form, now is anorexic. Party Mom in Hawaii gets regular phone calls from other mom friends concerned about the daughter. Hawaii Party Mom, who can apparently much better diagnose the situation from across an expanse of ocean, invariably becomes angry “She’s just lost a little weight, stop making such a huge fucking deal about it!” After all, at age 16 the girl is “grown up” and no longer needs her mother.
But you’re right Hilarity N. Suze. Even my anecdote does not qualify as a “no clue why” break up. Yes, “all her friends know exactly why”. They were a couple who came to be at odds with what kind of a lifestyle they wanted to live. She wanted excitement, he wanted a quiet home life. If he would only have partied with her more, if he had only taken her on exciting weekend trips to stay in fancy hotels, then maybe, just maybe, he could have saved their marriage.
Fact is, their is always a “why” when a relationship breaks up. Still, sometimes one of the partners is completely blindsided when it happens. digs alludes to knowing of couples whose breakup comes as a complete shock to the man- to which you respond “Men are often clueless about this.”
Are you also so completely dismissive of “clueless” women who are blindsided by the news that their husband and father of their children is going to up and move out to be with someone new?
Uh, sure they can, if they want to. Last I checked, homebrewing and classic car restoration were legal activities for women. However, a nice hobby can’t always fix an unhappy marriage.
If a woman leaves a man after many years of marriage with no affair involved, generally speaking it’s because she just doesn’t want to be married to that man any more, or perhaps just doesn’t want to be married at all any more. (And, of course, the same for men who walk out under the same circumstances.) As Hilarity notes, sometimes a formerly loved spouse ends up being somebody you just no longer like being around.
On the other hand, just because they’re not telling you doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t know.
Then this doesn’t really count as one of those marriages where the wife “inexplicably” walks away with no affair involved, which is what digs and Hilarity were talking about.
My ex went on prozac and fell out of love.
There were other problems, much too little communication and a deliberate deception about her mother living with us, and we both wanted something different out of our relationship. But the prozac was the last straw.
In Hilarity’s own example there was an affair. But the affair was one of those acceptable kinds of affairs because it served to “help” the woman leave a relationship she didn’t want to be in anyway.
The point is that “inexplicable” walk-outs pretty much never happen. There is always a “why”. The fact is that even though there is always a “why” it is still entirely possible for the breakup to come as a complete shock to the partner being left.
In these situations, to the partner being left (and to everyone who wasn’t a confidant of the partner doing the leaving) it seems like an out of the blue “for no reason” walk-out.
Hilarity N. Suze opened by dismissing “clueless” men who are blindsided by being left.
I offered an anecdote of one such “clueless” man. When his marriage ended from his perspective it came out of nowhere and for no reason. For him and for anyone who only got his side of the story, this was an “inexplicable” walk-out. Hilarity was right to point out that there is always a reason.
However, she chose not to make her point in a gender neutral kind of a way. Her opening was completely dismissive of “clueless” men. Again, I do not challenge the facts of her particular anecdote- I don’t know the couple involved- but her presentation of the anecdote adressed “men” in general. Her presentation was too closely in step with a tiresome hurtful trope that when a man is left it is his fault.
Her presentation might not have been ideal, but regarding the anecdote itself, it addressed the issue that this particular man was told over and over what was wrong, and he denied it was a problem. So she gave him a “real” reason to be mad over as she left. Result? ‘I always looked out for her, and she goes and does this to me.’
And what was said to digs - just because the woman doesn’t give you a reason doesn’t mean there wasn’t one. I really don’t think that there are (many) people who go through the time, insane effort, and crazy upheaval of a divorce just because “I don’t know.”
I think the point here is that while having an affair is really, really shitty, it’s not uniquely shitty. It’s not in a category all by itself, somehow above and beyond all the other terrible things one person could do to another. I’d rather my husband cheat on me than develop a gambling habit, lie to me about it, and run us into catastrophic debt. I’d rather him cheat on me than hit me, or destroy my stuff in a rage. I’d rather him cheat on me than commit a white-collar crime and end up in jail. I think I’d rather him cheat on me than simply develop a low-level distaste for me that manifests itself in petty meanness, sexual withdrawal, and emotional distance.
I’ve never cheated, been with a cheater, nor been cheated on. I am not trying to justify anything or excuse anything. Cheating is awful. It’s one of many ways people can be awful. One type of awfulness doesn’t make another more acceptable.
And I said in both my above posts that I do not challenge the specifics of the anecdote she presented, but tone does count for something in these kinds of discussions and she chose to open with:
Perhaps just a poor presentation on her part but nonetheless this discussion is not happening in a vacuum. There’s an entirely disfunctional and detrimental longstanding social attitude that no empathy be shown to men who are hurt by women.
There’s another disfunctional and detrimental longstanding social attitude that it is expected that a man be angry at a woman who has “done him worng” and this attitude goes hand in hand with the shameful tradition of slut shaming.
The tendency to show understanding empathy for a woman who cheats is no doubt a matter of push back for the centuries of women being expected to do the husband’s bidding and suffer quietly, suppressing their own pursuit of happiness. And I think we as a society should push back against centuries of such misogyny. However, we’re doing no great service to anyone if we are to enforce the detrimental attitude that men are allowed to be angry but are not allowed to be hurt.
IMO, no of course – lack of mens rea to configure the crime. But then people will tell you s/he is morally compelled to then repudiate the other person if or when s/he finds out that was the case, no matter how much later.
But the way a lot of people use it is rather a later-day pop redefinition, as a way for people who do not believe in Hell to say some Higher Power will punish miscreants.
