blame it on your lying-cheating-cold-dead-two-timing-double-dealing-mean-mistreating-heart

For the Record

I was just accused of cheating, perhaps not for the first time, but certainly for the first time in a long time. Now, however the stakes are pretty high, how high you ask? True love high ...so i reckoned i better find out exactly what cheating was to mount a proper defense capable of swaying the hardened heart of a mistrustful and stubborn man.

I thought i would start with wikipedia. For your information Wikipedia lists definitions for several kinds of cheating: education, sport, gambling, personal relationships, video games and ecological relationships...in that order. Their conclusion on personal relationships: Many people consider cheating to be any violation of the mutually agreed-upon rules or boundaries of a relationship, which may or may not include sexual monogamy. Since i am completely incapable of abstract thought this means very little to me.

What i could get behind was the definition of ecological cheating : Between organisms of different species, cheating often refers an individual of a species not upholding its end of a cooperative bargain. For example, nectar robbers are birds and insects that are often related to or mimic pollinating species; however, nectar robbers take nectar from a flower without actually engaging in pollination. - Now that's fucked up... although it does seem to metaphorically resemble protected sex.

(I digress is a disturbingly neo con Christian direction)

Our friend the Bumble bee - a nectar robber!

I once had an anthropology professor convincingly argue that the the biological injustice at the root of the oppression of women was that since the dawn of man, women know who their offspring are and men must go on faith. Since the bottom line human imperative is to perpetuate your genes, the primordial fear that a man could be feeding and protecting a child not his own is one theory as to why men have more or less always had the instinct to keep their women under lock and key.

German Chastity Belt

So what happens if you cheat?

The stories of Tristan and Isolde and Camelot and heaps of others all attest to the downfall that "cheating" can incur when women cuckold their husbands. Essentially entire peaceful kingdoms crumble. Then there were the many mortal women coveted by Zeus who had to pay the Greek-style price for cheating: bestiality! Since the philandering god took the shape of bulls, swans, even money to avoid the prying and omniscient eyes of Hera. Moral: even the innocent suffer. We are taught that cheating - of any

kind- rapidly eats at the tenuous moral fiber of human relations, and our most fragile periscope to the public: trust.

There is also the question of revenge. Once suspicions are confirmed, or even validated by a third party, or even validated by four cocktails, there is no telling what insane lengths people will go to when they feel they have been betrayed. No email account, bank account, piece of personal property, dark secret, favorite pet, gun cabinet, friendship, job or public image is totally safe. Although I suppose once in awhile some wanky moral high-grounder will abstain, i wouldn't count on it.

So Why Cheat?

Wiki says that cheating is employed to create an unfair advantage, usually in one's own interest and often at the expense of others. But I think that romantically people are motivated to cheat out of fear and general malaise with themselves. When i asked a man who cheated on me why he did it, he spoke the only truth that i ever knew to issue from his stinking maw: " You can never be new to me again, you will never again satisfy my need to feel i have conquered a woman, the feeling of ultimate power when she acquiesces and says yes". But that was Europe, so why do people cheat in Richmond? They're drunk! Still i am sure the same forces are at work; power, desirability, fear of the hold a partner has on you, boredom, general misery, yada yada. I have to say for the record, though, it's never really worth it. It doesn't fix what's broken and there will be a inevitable and gruesome slippage between how important it was to you (probably not very) and how earth-shattering it will be to the betrayed party (they will never get over it, forgive you, or trust again).

My Own Cheating

My own cheating! are you fucking kidding me! I'm in love in a small town, it's impossible! I just got accused of having an affair with a person in Florida, where I haven't been since I as 6, when my infirm aunt and her ex-husband took me to Disney World and fought the entire time, buying me an incredibly life-like green parrot to assuage their guilt . I'm accused of cheating with a person I met once! a person I wouldn't recognize on the street if I passed him! Did I mention the person in question is in Florida! Further investigation revealed that the accused is " 19, jobless, and has an aversion to baths" in the words of on expert. This is the most preposterous notion, you're out of your god- dammed mind and you better believe team Carmen San Diego is getting to the bottom of this fishy rumour, even if we have to go all the way to the sunshine state and crack some skulls.