#93 - Your Cheating Heart

Your Cheating Heart (But Not Mine)

8/23/06 (#93)

Psychologists, sociologists, and Maury Povich have long theorized on the motivations that lead a man to be unfaithful to his wife. Inquire with the web and you can find a variety of non-scientific top-ten lists that chronicle the reasons for such transgressions---and depending on the author, it might be a scathing call-out (female authors) or preposterous justifications (male authors), all of which claim to answer the age old question, "What's so hard about keeping it in your pants?" (No pun intended.) But these theories are all wrong. With apologies to Maya Angelou, I know why the caged bird wants to bang the cockatoo in the next cage.

Misconception #1: He's bored.
No, that's why he does crossword puzzles. Jumping the bones of the waitress at Romano's Macaroni Grill as a means of alleviating boredom is like hunting wild boar as a means of alleviating hunger---it's just too much work. (Besides, Romano's is to delicious pasta what Schlitz is to delicious beer---there is little chance of late-night passion if "courting" means having to eat one of their mammoth bowls of penne every time you want to clean the pipes.) Adult male boredom is a leading cause of Lionel Train sales (and their accompanying HO scale trees, general stores, and period accurate 1941 coupes), but it doesn't cause infidelity. (Unless your railroad store of choice is staffed with a nymphomaniac with long lunch hours, but that is not the case with my local hobby shop---though Ed is certainly a charming enough fellow.)

Misconception #2: He's not getting any at home.
Wrong. While the accepted view that a married couple's sex life wanes as the years pass seems to be true, it is a gradual decline that occurs over years, even decades. Think of it like heroin: If you were shooting up 6 times a week and had to quit cold turkey, you'd be jonesing for a fix by Tuesday; but if you were to ween yourself off the drug slowly, over the course of several presidential administrations, the withdrawal symptoms are much easier. Every now and then a strange and vaguely familiar sensation might come over a man, but it can usually be solved quickly with the sexual equivalent of methadone: the quick tug. That way ten minutes later (or even two), he can get back to his crossword puzzle.

Misconception #3: He's collecting trophies.
While this myth is often applied to the whole gender, I suspect it was the activities of a small percentage of men that spawned this myth. Sure, if you got to take home an actual trophy it might be fun---like getting to take home the day-glo green stuffed puppy if you score at the ring toss at the Rose Festival---but no one I know has ever been awarded a statue of a gold-plated couple going for the brass ring on a faux-marble pedestal. Instead, you get souvenirs like unsightly hickies, awkward 10 PM "wrong numbers" on your cell phone, and medical conditions that make your story about sitting on an infected golf cart seat seem suspiciously implausible. Besides, all women (like men) have their own scents, textures, and flavors---some of which are much more appealing than others. Just as a champion bowler would think twice about winning if the trophy emitted a musky effluvium that seemed noticeable no matter how many times he washed his hands, most men are careful about the awards they accrue. Besides, what if your trophy decided, post-victory, to hit "play" on Yoko Ono's solo album and purr about how happy she is to finally have a person with whom she can share her musical tastes? Horniness might lead a man to banging his way through side one of a Yoko album---heck, horniness has apparently led men to actually knock boots with Yoko herself---but once the baby batter has been distributed into the condom, no prize is worth laying through side two.

Misconception #4: He's afraid of getting old.
C'mon---if you have a genuine fixation with aging, is there any combination of hair color and cup size that will distract from that thought process? Sure, it's nice to be 20 years past your prime and sitting across from a woman who is the same age as the woman you were sitting across from 20 years ago, but the blank stare returned when making references to Larry Bird, H.R. Pufnstuf, or Steely Dan's "Hey Nineteen" hardly makes a man feel young. No woman can make a man feel young. Only tequila can do that.

In fact, there are not ten motivations behind infidelity, or even five---there is one reason that a man cheats: It allows a brief escape from the reality that is himself.

We are all a composite of our lives, and our baggage travels with us. My wife knows almost everything about me----she knows I have spent 15 years talking about being a writer without truly committing to writing; she knows that, left to my own devices, I'd probably pull up my socks to my knees, even when wearing shorts; she knows I'm going to cry anytime I see the "Dad, wanna have a catch?" scene in Field of Dreams. And frankly, who wants anyone to know that kind of crap about themselves? I'm certain I'd have a much better chance of doing the naked pretzel when I get home if my wife had not witnessed me making full use of the airline vomit bag last time we flew into Boston, or inexplicably getting motion sickness during the inane movie Made (Suffice to say, Blair Witch Project it was not), or seen me plow through 60% of a Breyer's half-gallon in one sitting. That's just not attractive stuff. Meeting someone new allows a man to be the person he wants to be, not the man he actually is.

That's why other men cheat. The reason I don't is because I recognize the futility of trying to score a few of evenings of mattress surfing with the flirtatious barista at Starbuck's---the initial attraction would surely be heady, but I would be constantly annoyed with the sound of the clock, ticking down until the moment when she, too, found out that I get nauseous reading a road map in the car, and that, no, I'm not "splitting" the Ben and Jerry's with her. Just one woman in the world knowing these things is plenty.

©2006 wpreagan