cheating

I just watched “It’s Complicated”—great movie. In it Meryl Streep’s character admits the divorce wasn’t entirely “his fault”. (Sadly, this is full of irony in and of itself. But more about that later.) Then she says “but I didn’t have to admit it because you cheated”.

This is one I have heard over and over—people are getting a divorce because “he cheated” with an occasional “she cheated.”

It’s actually fairly hard to suss out how many ways this belief system-–this shibboleth—makes me crazy.

Let’s see if I can pull apart the tangled threads:

1. 99% of these people had multiple partners before marriage—and sex before marriage.
2. Studies show a HUGE number if partners ADMIT to having additional sexual partners after marriage.
3. Many scientific studies sow that it is built into both man and, yes, women, to have multiple sexual partners.
4. It is IMPOSSIBLE that in ANY of these cases no other betrayals of any sort had taken place.