So if you cheat on your partner does that mean that you deserve to be cheated on?
Fergie recently said that she used to be the cheater in her relationships before her relationship with actor Josh Duhamel, and with the way the tabloids make it sound, it seems to legitimize the fact that there was infidelity present in relationships.
Relationships were made to be a lot of things, they were made to be honest, to be enriching, to be inspiring, but they were not made for disloyalty. It is not okay to cheat regardless of whether your relationship is polygamous, monogamous, red, yellow, horizontal or vertical, it is not okay to cheat and no one ever deserves to be cheated on.
Though there are things that cause a partner to cheat, I believe (and I am sure this is standard opinion) that you should be loyal in a relationship.
If you feel like you’re even close to being unfaithful it is a clear sign that you need to either:
1. Re-think how to rekindle the romance with your partner and figure out how to better fulfill each other’s needs or
2. Leave the relationship.
Everyone knows that when one is cheated on it’s a really painful experience to go through, so why would it ever be okay to do that to someone else? Especially if it’s just a petty, hypocritical act of revenge.
I have seen so many people do this, they seem to believe that it’s better to “get even” than just to rise above the wrongs that another person has done to you. No matter how deeply a person has hurt you, you can never legitimize hurting them back.
Even if you do “manage” to do that, you still end up looking like a bit of a fool at the end of it.
There is so much focus in society on how people should be faithful, and shouldn’t stray from their partners in relationships. The message we are conditioned to receive from childhood by the media is that if a person cheats in a relationship that means it’s automatically over (which shouldn’t always be the case, but that’s another article in itself).
Look at Tiger Woods and what’s-his-face-Jesse James, they cheated on their wives and society slaughtered them with a slew of insults and condemnation. Not only does society condemn cheating, but they condemn people who choose to stay in the relationship once they have been cheated on the act of infidelity is taken that seriously.
So why would a society which is always harping on about the importance of fidelity ever develop a mentality that infidelity was ever called for in any circumstance? People need to assess their own personal standards of behavior before they go out pointing the finger at other people. Not to say that you shouldn’t call someone on the fact that they’re doing something wrong, but also you should recognize when you’re doing something wrong.
I don’t tend to use the Bible as a reference but it does say in there that love is not vengeful and keeps no record of wrong, therefore it’s a terrible thing for us to bring vengeance and bitterness into any relationship and believe that it’s going to make for a better view on the world. There’s a lot of pain that goes with cheating, a lot of hurt, anger and betrayal but we must remember this:
Cheating is never legitimate.
Your partner could have been the Michael Jordan of cheaters, that doesn’t mean that you should cheat on them. The usual legitimization for this is “I’m teaching them a lesson,” but ask yourself this—why bother teaching somebody a lesson when it doesn’t make you a better person? Even if you do “teach them a lesson” when does this vicious cycle end?
If one should learn anything from life it’s that inflicting negativity on the world never brings positivity back to you, it only brings more of the negative.
Gandhi once said “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind,” so let’s stop poking each other’s eyes out for a change please?
Philippa Hatendi can be reached at phatendi@ut.edu.