sexandsensibilities.com

A video that has made the rounds of YouTube and Facebook seems to be getting a lot of attention.

It is one of a wife who caught her husband in a popular mall with his alleged mistress.

The wife attacked the mistress and chased her down the escalator, pulling her hair and kicking her on the ground while others watched. Another woman, presumably the wife’s friend could be heard telling all those around them that they should be ashamed of the alleged mistress who has the audacity going around with a married man. It certainly was a scene complete with high pitched screaming, hurling of expletives and hair pulling.

It took two security guards and her husband to pull the wife off the alleged mistress.

The video reminded me of a conversation that I had with my friend who is in an open relationship with her boyfriend. For clairty’s sake, and because  of the many different permutations relationships take nowadays, allow me to explain “open relationship”.

M and her boyfriend live together but are free to sleep with other people as long as they are open about it with each other. They even talk about the other people that they sleep with, as other friends would do.

The set-up seems to be working for them, They’ve been together for many years and in each other, have found both a best friend and a lover.

We had a conversation about monogamy and how maybe – just may be — we were setting unrealistic expectations on one another by expecting or demanding monogamy. As humans, we evolve and change and will be attracted to other people throughout our lifetime. Is it then realistic to expect monogamy from one another?

Before your eyebrows shoot up to high heavens, let’s think about where the weakness of the concept monogamy lies.

More than actually sleeping with another person, isn’t the lying, the going behind your back that is more painful? Isn’t the betrayal the act that is more devastating? Isn’t the fact that other other people know (you are the last to know) and you are thus, being made a fool more the source of humiliation?

We talked about the many men we know who cheat on their wives and girlfriends and again tried to examine the various reasons why they do it. We came up with a couple of the more reasons:

1. They feel they are entitled to it:

Boys will be boys. We’ve heard all that before. Some men actually believe it and feel that they are just exercising their right to sow their seed. The reason is usually accompanied by the line, “But it’s you I come home to anyway.”

2. They like putting one over their wife:

Some men enjoy doing dastardly deeds right under their wives’ noses. Both M and I know a number of men who brag about their escapades, some of which involve mutual friends and acquaintances. It gives them a sense of power that they can get away with it.

3. And for the last reason, we thought back to the video

In the video, the wife went straight for and attacked the alleged mistress while the husband just looked on. She and her friend kept on shouting  ”husband stealer” , publicly humiliating the other woman calling her a “kabit” (which in the local vernacular is tantamount to calling you a whore).

The husband intervened, helped his alleged mistress and was pretty much unscathed, In the end (of the video at least), he left his wife high and dry.

Isn’t the husband equally to blame?  He is a consenting adult who should be held accountable for his actions. What does that say about him if he if he cannot be trusted?

We don’t know what actually happened when the guy went home to his wife (as he eventually would have to) and how the tale ended, but if the video were our only basis, then isn’t the other reason why men cheat because women let them?

For every lying, duplicitous husband/boyfriend, there is a blissfully ignorant wife/girlfriend.

Would men be as brazen, as arrogant about cheating if women were to hold them accountable for their actions?