So far, we’ve seen him refuse to a) give you the love you need, b) modify his behavior, c) say one nice thing to you, and d) make a commitment. But wait, there’s more. The last bomb on the heartbreak minefield has yet to explode. Brace yourself—many consider it to be the most combustible of them all. The Big Dread One. Its hideous name: infidelity.
Now before we continue, let’s banish any sexist stereotypes. Men aren’t the only ones who stray; low-fidelity is an equal-opportunity vice. In some cases, yes, it’s the man who is lying, cheating, and sliming his filthy alley-cat way all over town. In other cases, however, it’s the woman who’s having a quiet, tasteful, and totally justifiable little indiscretion. We just wanted to make that clear.
Ursula, twenty-five, and Peter were a textbook infidelity case. After three years, the relationship had become rocky; he had already begun to distance her (remember that old trick?) in various ways. But the straw that broke the relationship‘s back was yet to come.
“I was living in Boston, taking graduate classes at Harvard,” Ursula says. “I had moved there after college to be with Peter. I had just finished my midterm exams. I had one free weekend between semesters, and I assumed that Peter and I would spend it together. Instead, he told me that he had made plans to visit his friend Sam in Philadelphia. I protested; I thought it was strange because he had been visiting Sam a lot.
“When he came back home after that weekend, he called me up and told me that the real reason he went to Philly was to take a girl from the University of Pennsylvania to some dance. He had seen her several times before, on previous weekends. He said he slept with her but they didn‘t have sex. Right. It didn‘t matter anyway; it wasn’t the sex, it was the deceit. I felt like a fool. I was so hurt. I said, that’s it, I’m not dealing with this. He drove me to it, though. And although he didn‘t sound really happy that I was ending it, he didn‘t object vociferously, either.”
If you’ve never cheated or been cheated on, it’s possible that you’ll read this story and think, what’s the big deal? How can a few misplaced push-ups diffuse the power of true love? This Peter guy didn‘t even have sex with that girl—what’s Ursula‘s problem?
If you have, however, had a brush with cuckolding—or maybe you just have a friend who has—you can empathize with Ursula completely. Because you know that cheating isn‘t just about sex, it’s about deception and cunning and calculation. It’s about betrayal. And that’s the kind of stuff that can bring a relationship to its figurative knees.
Which is not to say that a relationship can never survive such a problem. In particular, one-night stands can often be forgiven (but not forgotten, dammit) because they’re isolated affairs as opposed to extended indiscretions. In the case of the one-night stand, both parties can often come to an understanding because they recognize that maybe THAT NIGHT was a cry for help or a symptom of fear and confusion. They agree to overlook THAT NIGHT because it occurred due to extenuating circumstances such as blind rage or extreme intoxication.
Or maybe, just maybe, THAT NIGHT isn‘t discussed at all because the perpetrator never got caught.
O0000h, we have chills. We’re going to disregard that last possibility. We’re also going to acknowledge the fact that people do not have a fixed capacity for feeling: Just because someone is with a second person doesn’t mean he or she loves the first person any less. It does mean, however, that he or she loves the first person in a different way. And it also implies that the unfaithful one is looking for something that he or she isn‘t getting from the relationship. That the relationship isn‘t a satisfactory or happy or productive one. And that there’s a good chance that said relationship will end.
Dr. Sills believes that people are unfaithful for four reasons: lust (the temptation was beyond his resistance— would you kick Cindy Crawford out of bed?), ego/insecurity (he’d been feeling so ugly lately), a need for freedom (he felt trapped, tense—that trip around the world didn‘t quite take the pressure off), and anger (you called him an idiot in front of his boss; what else did you expect?). Often, the reasons can mix and match.
