Her Cheating Boyfriend

This is hardly the first time I have heard a story like this. A woman engaged in a committed long-term relationship discovers that for every minute of every day of the relationship her paramour has been seeking and finding sex outside of their couple. And, he has been lying about it.

The author of the Guardian article explains how she discovered this and that she was completely shattered by the revelation: she had been living a lie; whatever she imagined was going on between the two of them was not the truth. Not even close to the truth.

That she would have been better off not knowing does cross one’s mind, though apparently not hers. Her story raises a philosophical or even a diagnostic question, is her compulsive cheater of a boy friend a sex addict, a man who is suffering from a psychiatric condition or is he simply a bounder who does not want to own up to his moral dereliction?

Most readers will think at this time that she must have known. Surely, I have known women who swore that they never knew or suspected anything until that momentous moment when they forced their men to fess up.

Believe what you will, but consider, for instance the couple’s sex life, or better their non-existent sex life. The issue is not whether or not he was telling the truth about his sex addiction, such as it was, but it is about whatever was going on between them. Apparently, not very much:

We would sometimes go weeks, months even, without having sex; at times it felt more like a friendship than anything else. I blamed myself, and as time went on I lost confidence in myself and my body. One day, as summer approached during the first lockdown, he had forwarded me an email about a sexual awakening course and told me to go on it. I paid £150 for weekly sessions and meditations on how to reconnect with my sexuality. But things between us remained the same and, trapped in self-doubt, I felt the fault was mine. He did nothing to help me think otherwise. And whenever I thought about leaving him, he would shower me with adoration and I’d find a way to forget my hurt.

Having a relationship that is basically sexless is a clue, a rather flagrant one, at that. The author does not explain what happened between her and her paramour after she took this course. One imagines, not very much. For all we know they were together for reasons that had nothing do with attraction.

One also understands that the couple in question was not married.

Keep in mind, the author explains to us that her lover brought women home to their home to have sex and that he was sexting other women while he was in bed with her. Most women would not be quite so easily duped. They will tell you that we are dealing here with wilful blindness. 

In another situation, reported by the anonymous author, a woman would wake up to find her husband masturbating to porn in her bed. Hint? 

The woman in question decided to ignore it all. Surely, she was monumentally insecure, at the least. But, she did suspect that there was more to it than his porn addiction. 

So, we might, graciously avoid the larger question of whether these men are sex addicts or moral degenerates. The one does not preclude the other. And we might ask ourselves, based on the flimsiest of evidence, about the inner workings of their relationships. Obviously, we do not want to generalize from a specific case.

About their relationship, we only get a small glimpse. Consider this scene, the scene that led to his confession:

Just moments earlier, I was arguing with my partner about the division of household labour. Frustratingly, I have fallen into a stereotype – vacuuming around him while he’s on his phone. But this morning is different. He asks me to sit with him on the sofa; he wants to tell me something big, something personal. I leave the vacuum cleaner on the floor.

You might, if you were of an especially churlish temperament, that the relationship in question was defined by mindless nagging about who is going to vacuum what. In short, she was a good feminist and was politicizing her personal life. Why could anyone imagine that she was making a constructive contribution to her relationship is beyond me.

I will add that we do not know what he did for a living. We do not know what she did for a living. We know nothing about their lives in the real world. 

Being a good feminist she blames his behavior on toxic masculinity. Hmmm. It’s a strange use of all of the feminist ranting against men.

Besides, if she did not feel sorry for him she would feel angry for being betrayed, and also disappointed that she had completely missed the signs. But then, when you live in an ideologically driven fiction you are more likely to blind yourself to reality:

I feel sorry for him. The word “addiction” instantly makes me think of struggle and suffering. Indeed, my initial reaction is one of empathy – that perhaps he has simply suffered in a society that has forced on him a disconnected understanding of sex and masculinity. It’s so unfair that he’s experiencing this, I tell him. What makes him feel like his relationship with pornography is out of control?

In brief, she sounds like a pathetic young therapist. Sad to say, she has no sense of the meaning of moral responsibility.

And of course, they end up having a soulful exchange of their deepest feelings. You know, the ones you should keep to yourself.

The conversation seems to go on for hours, as if time were being dragged through thick sediment. He speaks about his insecurities; I tell him my deepest and darkest vulnerabilities. It feels like the most open conversation we’ve had in years. Later, I find out that nothing he’s told me here is true.

I like that final touch. She is thrilled to have an open and honest and heartfelt conversation with her lover. It is the therapeutic thing to do. Unfortunately, she discovers that this soul blending conversation is also based on lies. He is placating her. One suspects that he has chosen to confess because he is about to be exposed. One does not know because the information provided is incomplete.

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