ເປັນຫຍັງຜູ້ຊາຍ Cheat: Anonymous Confession

Why am I changing? Because infidelity sharpens memory. Everything fades into the background when I look at the naked back of an unfamiliar woman, slightly bending on the sheets in the rays of the evening sun in a country hotel room. This is the most honest choice I can make. I’m here alone in defiance of all the codes and rules that I pretend to obey. Contrary to common sense, hindsight and the wisdom of years, at this moment I do not regret anything. I want to be here. I voted it up, announced it, and I can feel the blood running through my veins. I’m alive. I am equal to myself.

It is believed that men are unfaithful because they have such an opportunity. It’s true, it’s easy to change. We leave almost no evidence. The checklist doesn’t require much—wash here and there, enlist the sympathy of the woman you’re sleeping with, choose the right meeting place, and keep track of the time. But by and large, infidelity is very easy to hide. More often than any man is able to admit, she has no consequences.

But men cheat not because they can, but because they must, they need it. This is a man’s need. She makes us change again and again. Because sex should not be predetermined and planned. This is not a story about two individuals who are destined to meet in a dark night, this is a matter of chance.

You probably know that love for life is a lie, and monogamous love is a scam. If you are changing, these ideas will guide you. This does not mean that you are incapable of love. This doesn’t mean you don’t want what love or even marriage has to offer. Paradox. You live according to your beliefs and do not deceive yourself. But you have to conform to the common lie.

And you have to follow the rules. You should only sleep with those who have the same risks. The phrase «You don’t shit where you eat» makes sense when you have an office romance. You never use the word love, even in the context of making love. You don’t have sex with people who are too young to fall in love with you or schizophrenics. Don’t brag about your association with a celebrity. You stay away from the wives of your friends. If you have a mistress in another city, then you do not visit it just for sex. These rules are the fruits of hard experience, and there are many more. I change spontaneously.

At home, I am attentive to family responsibilities. It’s like a test, and men need tests. Loyalty is a test that confronts a man with his own instincts, forces him to ignore his abilities, drowns out any feeling of victory. Marriage takes the average guy away from everything he once knew about himself. And some guys pass this test. They succeed. And I like to listen to their nonsense. All those «I love my wife so much» conversations that moralistic assholes have over cocktails. I don’t interfere, I don’t touch them. Men don’t fight over such things.

I love my wife too, but that’s nobody’s business. And as a rule, this nonsense is carried by people who drop in on the way home to a strip club, watch porn in their offices and periodically visit dating sites, cheating according to the quota allocated to them. I don’t do anything like that. My home life is clean. I’m better focused on her than they are. I fit better with what surrounds me — my family, my wife, my work. In a way, this is true because I’m not afraid to change.

You learn a lot when you cheat, and you also laugh a lot. Sometimes you open up more with a woman you’ve spent 45 minutes with than with someone you’ve lived with for 45 years. You are not required to change, you are free to choose. It worries. Because more than anything, betrayal is when the body asserts its superiority over the soul, the triumph of the genetic need, the victory of the desired over the obligatory.

This does not mean that cheating is good or that I am promoting infidelity. I don’t care how you live. I’m just explaining why men cheat. It’s the mathematics of their reproductive system, a by-product of longer life, exhausting work, high overload. This is the consequence of an instinctive refusal to sacrifice one’s own needs in the name of a flawed and outdated marriage apparatus.