No matter how low moral standards slip, cheating will always deeply hurt the betrayed partner.
Originally designed by God to promote intimacy, security, and companionship, as well as a rearing pen for the next generation, the traditional marriage is dissolving at the more or less the same rate as glaciers.
Among the reasonable causes for the demise of a marriage, nestled somewhere between domestic abuse and incompatibility, lies infidelity, a rather deceitful and cunning mechanism employed by one or both of the partners.
Adultery takes place when a person, already in a committed monogamous relationship with one partner, decides for reasons Darwinian or Freudian or otherwise, to indulge in a sexual or emotional entanglement with a third person.
This entanglement is carried out in secrecy until brought to light and is denied vehemently in the aftermath.
What follows is a gut-wrenching, soul-searing, mind-numbing, and heart-rendering realisation that one hasn’t been thought worthy of fidelity or love.
All the hopes and dreams one has placed on the partner now come crashing down.
We all feel betrayal the same way.
We haven’t as yet developed the carapace required to deal with the pain that’s inevitable in these situations.
Yet, behind all the confusion, the screaming, the tears and the hurt, there’s still that single syllable question that needs to be answered:
Why?
Why did you cheat on me?
Till this day we remain baffled as to why people cheat.
There is, of course, no scientific explanation as yet, and any such explanation would no doubt fail to satisfy questions running in the mind of the betrayed spouse or partner.
No partner wants to hear the statistics on the prevalence of cheating or any new-fangled theory which suggests that unfaithfulness can be good for a relationship.
They aren’t interested in forgiveness. They just want to know how could their “forever” and “constant” be anything but.
Cheating shatters the very foundation of connubial relationships.
Few relationships can tide past an episode of unfaithfulness. Those that do, seldom have the former levels of intimacy or trust. Faith once broken stays broken forever.
The point I am trying to make here is that if being cheated on hurts so badly, even in the 21st century, we haven’t “evolved” as a species to accept a third person in a close committed relationship such as marriage.
It’s almost as if we instinctively rebel against sharing our “constant” or “forever” with another person.
In fact, we spend our teenage years, 20s, and 30s, dreaming of finding “the one”, never of “the ones”.
We inherently crave monogamous loving relationships that will last a lifetime.
The fact that being cheated on hurts like hell is qualitative proof that as human beings we are in fact “one woman” men and “one man” women. Cease the trash talk about us being polygamous primates.
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