#Blogfest: The Other Woman

#Blogfest 2:0, Day 11 – #30dayscountdownto2016

Truth be told, affairs are probably as old as monogamy, arguably because the natural state of being for humans is polygamous. This is not a license to run rampage around the city, the reason we have the power of choice and consciousness is to enable us escape our animal instincts to establish a civil society. But before I go into a sermon, let me get back on topic.

Most people are of the idea that cheating is bad, an affair, almost unforgivable. Yet, somehow, the average marriage will suffer from an affair at some point. Some run their course and never get exposed, others…well, sometimes people forget to clean the oil from their lips. Now, I will love to get on my high horse and tell you that I will never ever participate in such an act of betrayal, but I think I am wise enough to know that even the most well intentioned of men/women can find themselves in an affair given certain circumstances. One can only try to do the best they can to keep to their vows.

However, the strange nature of affairs is that the emotional buzz people get from it is rooted in the fact that it is taboo and the other person is always out of our complete reach. A lot of times people have this idea that maybe if their spouse somehow left the picture, they could replace them with the person they are having an affair with and live happily every after. No chance….most of the time. Once a man or woman makes her partner in an affair, their full time partner, the person ceases to be an object of desire to be longed for. Now you have to contemplate all the not-so-glamorous parts of partnership, like who has to wash the dishes, clean the house, and other such tedious tasks that actually take up the majority of our dating lives when a relationship is consolidated into a life partnership. Now this person we used to miss when we were at home is in our face 24/7, and aspects of their nature that never got to show itself when we only met them for a quick rendezvous, start to emerge, and before you know it, we feel exactly the same way we felt about our spouse with them. There is no excitement, no fire, we get bored, and start looking for yet, another object of desire outside our relationship.

Of course, I have no rank in this field, but from the little I know from my not-so-illustrious dating career, I have found that it is better to reinvent our present relationships instead of going outside to build another one. Unfortunately, sometimes our own partner can even be the reason why we cannot spice things up because they have defined us in a way that makes no room for change. For example, a woman can decide all of a sudden that she wants to be sexually a bit more experimental. Instead of the man to cooperate with the program he will say something like ‘Helen, you are not this type of woman, are you going through a mid-life crisis?’ Now Helen has to go elsewhere to try out something she suggested to try at home and got put down. The subject for making room for our partners to grow is subject for another post.

What do you guys think of affairs and is there really anyway to prevent them? And what is the appropriate response to one? A deal breaker or an opportunity to mend broken pieces of our relationships? The floor is yours…