"Principles only mean something if you stick by them when they are inconvenient." -Laine Hanson
Lifelong fidelity - the promise that gets one too many times broken. The offense that gets no mercy. The betrayal that cheated on trust. The open wound that will bleed all of its love supply away. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. Why do people commit adultery? Why do happy people cheat? Who is to blame? Monogamy or our own selfishness? So many complex questions that don’t come with easy unanimous answers.
The case of infidelity illustrates with utter precision how corruptive we are by nature.On the one hand, we will claim loud and clear that cheating is the cruelest offense. Yet on the other hand, we will participate in the happening of this emotional crime. Perfect example of “Do as I say, not as I do.” Human beings can’t be trusted, and for good reasons.
We are like kids wandering in a candy store. We could pick the most tasty candy there was to be found, and still, the possibility of having picked a different one never entirely left our mind. I’ve had enough of the sour one, I’m up for some sweeter taste now! If only we could stick to our first choice without ever looking back on it. Or perhaps looking away from it.
By cheating on our partner, we cheat on ourselves as well. We have proven to them and to ourselves that we are ruled more by selfishness than we are ruled by selflessness. That we value our desires more than the ones of our partner. That lust and mystery won over comfort and security. Secrecy shattered away by honesty.
Or is infidelity perhaps one of the many symptoms that point to the gut wrenching evidence - the one that we aren’t fit for the monogamous paradigm? Is infidelity, after all, an inevitable outcome? A truth that’d we’d never want to come face to face with - but that will nonetheless keep on chasing us until we come to accept its presence?
The hypotheses are as conflicting as we are by nature. We want to have simultaneously things that can’t coexist together. Novelty and familiarity. Mystery and security. We want to ride the rollercoaster of risk without paying the high price that comes with it. We go on to have affairs as to bring back to life the parts of ourselves that have died in our romantic relationship. The thrill of the forbidden makes us feel dangerously attractive again.
But doesn’t the forbidden fruit loses its appeal when it no longer is forbidden? Is it realistic to think that we will be happier once we will run away with our mistress? The tale of Adam and Eve surely showed the world around how there is always trouble that looms ahead, even in paradise. When fiction meets reality, maybe only then we’ll come to realize that even perfection itself isn't all that our minds make it up to be.
