As I said, I really don't understand why people have affairs. But what boggles my mind further is why people of advanced ages do it. Note one of the opening paragraphs in the linked article:
A few weeks ago we learned friends of ours who had been married for 32 years were heading to divorce court; he was having an affair with his secretary and his wife had no idea.
I just don't get it. Some guy in his mid to late 50s had an affair with his secretary? Why would you do that at this point in your life? More importantly, what led the secretary to look at this 50-something married doofus and think, "Yeah, gotta get me some of that". She obviously envisioned some kind of end-game, but damned if I can figure out what it might be.
When you get married, it's supposed to be forever. I know sometimes events transpire that can affect things, but all else equal, you're supposed to be in it for the long haul. People complain about celebrity "marriages" and goofy relationships, but as with politics, what we see simply represents the extreme edge of what the general population has brewing in it.
I could never have an affair. Even if my rule of thumb above didn't trump all, at the bare minimum I lack the necessary legerdemain to pull it off. At the end of most days, I'm lucky if I can remember what I actually did. The thought of maintaining both an actual and virtual life, each with its own itinerary and cast of characters to keep straight and separate, gives me a facial tic.
Besides, as I noted above, what's the end-game of an affair? If it's meaningless sex, there's no point. You're banging around with no purpose, and neither your state-sanctioned relationship nor its illicit counterpart will grow in any meaningful way. It's like masturbation with a partner.
If it's meaningful sex, that creates a skiff full of problems all its own. Do you think your fellow conspirator is going to leave the marriage for you? Forget the myriad complications of doing that in the first place, why do you want to hitch your wagon to a person who is that much of a shit? Why go through all that only to end up on the other side of the coin in a couple years?
There are a fair share of people who shouldn't get married in the first place. If you like sowing your wild oats, better to rent yourself out to the field owners than waste everyone's time and money buying the property. Marriage these days is viewed as a commodity, something to be "had" rather than something to be embraced. Witness all the ridiculous weddings out there, the trappings of which get more mind-boggling by the year. If you're thinking more about the checkbook than anything else, you're doing it wrong, and that's how you end up getting Kardashianed.
That's why I don't have a big problem with people who choose to cohabit. Marriage is something you need to be serious about, and if for whatever reason it doesn't work for you, no worries. Shoehorning yourself into one to satisfy someone else's weird notion of propriety does no one any favors.
So if you are married, and you either are stepping out or are thinking about it, pull your head out of your ass. You stood up and took vows. Strap up and take them seriously. If you're being stepped out on, you have my sympathies, along with the promise if I'm on your jury, I'll never vote to convict.
No comments:
Post a Comment