This is a great idea
I think this is an excellent idea! ing is a form of betrayal and it’s a violation of trust and it’s a breach of a commitment that we all take seriously and that’s why it hurts so much
It’s interesting that extra-relational affairs inspire so much pearl-clutching, when they’re incredibly common. Estimates suggest that around 25 percent of married men and 15 percent of married women have cheated, and experts believe that the stigma around cheating suppresses the number of people who self-report. At the same time, cheating is universally condemned with most studies showing that 80 percent or more of people believe that it is always or almost always wrong for a married person to have sex with someone besides their spouse. These moral feelings have consequences for folks in the public eye, as Bill Clinton, Adam Levine of Maroon 5, and the Try Guy have learned.
Now let’s be clear: of course cheating is harmful to your partner in a number of ways and these dudes messed up and should probably log some time out in the privacy of their own homes. But the public outrage rings a bit odd at a time when non-monogamy has become increasingly mainstream. Hinge added non-monogamous as a preset option, and one study found that 43% of Millennials say that their ideal relationship would have some amount of non-monogamy.
So if cheating is so common and monogamy is no longer the default, why are we shocked when a celebrity falls short? The GMA3 co-anchors are allegedly having an affair. We seem to reserve a special type of condemnation for people who cheat romantically or sexually, setting it apart from other wrongs like cheating on your taxes, doing large-scale economic exploitation, or in the case of Dick Cheney, being the architect of 9/11. But why is that?
From one vantage point, modern outrage about cheating is easy to explain: cheating is a form of betrayal and it’s a violation of trust and it’s a breach of a commitment that we all take seriously, and that’s why it hurts so much.
This video is brought to you by BetterHelp. A couple of months ago, for a few oddly magical days, the most famous people on the planet were the Try Guys. Now, the Try Guys built a huge brand by being guys that try stuff, but what made them both the internet’s main character and the subject of an SNL sketch was the earth-shattering news that one of the guys cheated on his wife. It’s worth noting that he did cheat on his wife with someone who worked for him, which is not good.
Now, as fans of Mad Men we’ve long understood that men in power have a proclivity for adultery, and as people who exist in the real world, we know that relationships and especially marriages can be messy. So why did people lose their minds when one dude who most of us had never heard of cheated on his wife? What makes cheating such an intensely moral absolute and is our society’s demonization of cheating a symptom of Old World morality? And if so, is there a healthier way for us to treat it? Let’s find out in this Wisecrack Edition why we hate cheaters.
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