Why Men Cheat: Courtesy of Esquire Magazine
Posted by Dewan Gibson | Filed under Hip-Hop
I’m a sucker for quality writing that explores the complexities of the male psyche. And the piece below is the best I’ve read since “The Dying Animal” by Philip Roth. My favorite passage is: “She tells me not to cheat on her. But I do, and I do not let her in on it. I’ve fucked lesbians in Paris, hotel clerks on cots, and soldiers in uniform. All while I was married. I wish the list were longer. Sometimes it is banal, other times epic.” Unfortunately the author is anonymous. I’ve pasted a portion of the article here and the rest can be read at Esquire.com. Enjoy.
Dewan W. Gibson: Author of The Imperfect Enjoyment
I’ll tell you why I cheat. I need to. Infidelity makes me remember things. The details that expand to fill my life (my upcoming performance reviews, the aches and pains of training, the recovery of my 401(k) ) and the ones that deaden it (my guilt, my smug self-satisfaction, my fake epiphanies about my progress in this life) —all of that drops away when I look down at the naked spine of an unfamiliar woman, twisting slightly in the late-afternoon sunlight streaming onto the sheets of a Hampton Inn in some nameless suburb. This is the most absolute choice I can make. I am there on my own. Against every code, rule, and set of mores I pretend to obey. Against better judgment, against every lesson of hindsight and every shard of wisdom that comes with age, I have no regrets in that moment, because I am naked, or without pants, and I have chosen to be there. I have voted by my presence, declared it, and I feel the blood moving in me again. So it’s the blood. That’s who I am. That’s why men cheat.
People always say men cheat because they can. It’s easy to cheat, that part is true. There’s so little evidence left behind. The checklists are easy —you have to wash here and there, you have to enlist the sympathy of the woman you are fucking, you have to control your time and select your venue. But by and large, infidelity is remarkably easy to hide. More often than not —more often than any man will admit —there is absolutely no consequence. So yes, that freedom exists. A man can.
But men don’t cheat because they can. Men cheat because they must, because they need to. This is the male struggle. Need compels us to try again. Because copulation is not in any way about fate. It is not about two individuals destined to meet on some dark night. It’s about random collisions.
If you cheat, you must believe this much: that fated love is a lie, and monogamous love a deception. If you cheat, these two sentiments are your guiding light. Doesn’t mean you’re incapable of love, doesn’t mean you don’t want what love —or even marriage —can offer. It’s just a paradox. You have what you believe, and it is never the lie. You train your sentiment to fit inside the lie. Your rules fit right inside that sentiment.
You have to have rules. You should always fuck someone who has as much at risk as you do. The phrase You do not shit where you eat makes more sense once you’ve fucked someone you work with. You never say the word love, except in reference to fucking. You don’t fuck anyone too young, or schizophrenics. Fuck a famous person and you tell no one. You stay away from the wives of your friends. If you have a girlfriend in a foreign city, you never travel there just for the fucking. These are rules learned the hard way. And there are more. I cheat without reservation. In part this is my age. In part it’s a matter of where I cheat. I do not cheat in the city where I live, or even in the region. This is my rule.
At home, I am attentive to the needs of my marriage. It is a kind of test, and men need tests. Fidelity is a test that pits a man against his own instincts, urges him to ignore his opportunities, to muffle any sense of expansion. Getting married rotates the average guy away from everything he has known about himself up to that point. And some guys pass the test. They do. And I love listening to their shit.
Consider the “I love my wife” routine, which certain moralistic nimrods unspool in front of me over cocktails again and again. I never jump in. I do not bite. You don’t fight men over stuff like this. I love my wife, too, but it’s nobody’s business how I deal with that love. And most of the time, this comes from guys who pop into strip clubs on the way home, jerk off to YouPorn in their offices, or prowl Craigslist looking for a goose in their transgression quota. I don’t do any of that. My local life is clean. I am more focused than they are. Stronger and better suited to what is near me —my family, my wife, my job. In some ways, that’s because I don’t hesitate to cheat.
7 Responses to “Why Men Cheat: Courtesy of Esquire Magazine”
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Maria R. Says:
March 23rd, 2010 at 9:42 amSomeone needs to find his wife and warn her now! Probably some fat ass old man
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Don Diablo Says:
March 23rd, 2010 at 10:55 amBitches are just as bad.
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The Bol B Says:
March 25th, 2010 at 6:01 amYo, this couldn’t be any more on point. & Yes Don D…Bitches are bad…idk it’s hard man.
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Dewan Gibson Says:
March 25th, 2010 at 2:51 pmJust make sure you know how to cover your tracks. Dudes bringing mistresses back to their places. Nah man!
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Abena Clara Says:
March 26th, 2010 at 12:31 pm“A man can lie (every once in a while), fall down on the housework, and the child rearing, get alittle lax in the income department, pay more attention to his homies and his mother than he does his wife, and slip into mediocre category when it comes to the boudoir-even say the Lord’s name in vain while walking with his wife to yet another church service alone…BUT let a man step out on his woman, and watch the earth move…dat’s my way of saying that women will put up with a lot of thing…CHEATING is NOT one of them”…//:)
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Air Jordan Says:
April 7th, 2010 at 7:59 pmIt just shows that experience in writing brings such depth and meaning to readers. Thanks for sharing.
Air Jordan -
Dmoney Says:
October 19th, 2011 at 3:28 amBetcha anything his wife is getting a little willie on the side or a closeted lesbo.
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