Unrealistic expectations and a rush to judge
Maybe what we need is more honesty in relationships.
What made the affair worse was their reaction. They immediately tried to hide it, in obvious shame. Their colossal stupidity probably didn’t help either. PDAs at the stadium? With cameras and the internet? Sheesh.
They should have tried smiling instead. Own it, you know? Most people wouldn’t have noticed, or known who they were. I mean, I still don’t know anything about these two, beyond “easily shamed and also kinda dumb.” Kiss-cam shots are a dime a dozen. Dare people to cast the first stone instead of inviting opprobrium by immediately assuming the position of the stoning victim.
And sure enough, the internet obliged. Everyone rushed to judge. Look at these two rats, cheating. And to be clear, the memes have been great. But.
I am not here to condone cheating. I hate lying, about relationships or anything. I’m here to say people cheat — or seriously consider cheating — a lot more than they’ll admit, and that includes a great many people who rushed in to judge the CEO and his head of HR.
Maybe people wouldn’t feel the need to cheat and then spend considerable energy hiding their affairs if we somehow had different expectations about what committed loving relationships should be.
Kids come first, obviously. And on that note I’d like to spare a thought for the families of the two individuals in the news this week who must be going through epic shit times right now.
There are good reasons honest about what adults need in relationships, and they all include “fewer nasty surprises on YouTube.” If you have an arrangement with your spouse that you will have another life on the outside, there’s no need to hide anything and everyone gets that discretion is worth protecting to spare the kids until they are old enough to understand. If nobody’s being a rat, why hurt children with stuff they’re not quite ready to handle yet?
Because the truth is, people change. Which is a good thing! Would you want to be as stupid and immature at 54 as you were at 22? Me neither. If you’re fortunate enough to be with a life partner who grows with you, and you’re both remaining loving and close to one another, why are you even here? Go enjoy your blissful life already.
When we set too-high expectations for committed monogamous relationships, straight or not, we ask a lot of ourselves and our partners: To be our everything (and our exclusive everything at that) for many decades. When it works, it’s probably great. I mean, in the rare cases I know of, it looks good from the outside. Most of the time from what I can see. Does it feel as good from the inside? I hope so.
A few months ago, as an experiment, I signed up for a dating app. I did not have any specific desire except to get a sense of who was out there, what they were looking for and — crucially — how they expressed all of that. I think I minimally engaged with one person over a couple of texts and was out of there within days.
I have nothing against casual relationships but this particular app didn’t do anything for me at that time so I left. In the few days I was on it, I was struck by how many people among the ones the algorithm sent my way were into open relationships. Maybe that was a function of what I put in myself, I don’t remember. I think I checked a bunch of options, to get a better sense of what’s out there. And because I am genuinely open to relationships of all kinds with people of all genders and orientations. But anyway, yes, my short experiment was very clear on how prevalent open relationships are on the dating market. I like the honesty in that. People have realistic expectations and I think that’s healthy.
Certainly it saves you a lot of money in divorce lawyers when you accidentally wind up beet-red on the kiss cam…