Perhaps it’s just me but is anyone else losing faith in men? Is your confidence that your relationship will endure, unmarred by infidelity, for the rest of your life, rapidly diminishing? Anyone else starting to think that maybe it’s only a matter of time until it happens to you?
Amid the latest reports of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s love child, debauchery seems to be the flavour of our current new stories with male politicians, business leaders, sporting stars, celebrities and members of the armed forces at the centre of the storm.
Tiger Woods reportedly had at least nine mistresses, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and his cabinet have allegedly treated their country’s political system as one big bachelor party, Ricky Nixon (the most recent football personality to grace our media) still has a lot of explaining to do and countless other public figures have had their reputations tarnished by some form of sexual indiscretion.
Where should our faith in men come from when the media is choked with mistresses, love children, misconduct and lewd photos?
Men are absolutely capable of forming meaningful relationships but time and time again we’re told tales of seemingly uncontrolled sexual behaviour with other women. We see public apologies to wives, children, fans and, well, anyone else who might find adultery offensive. And it seems that lately, these remorseful speeches have been more common than ever.
I’m no prude. I understand we’re sexual beings and it’s natural (and often good fun) to express that in a number of ways. But these married men who have sworn to be faithful (probably because they genuinely wanted to be with just one person) then caved after a few years make me question whether I should even bother trying to extract those sorts of promises from my partner in the first place. Maybe monogamy really is acutely unnatural for humans.
Should I righteously believe that monogamy is absolutely possible — that these men just weren’t trying hard enough — or should I understand that temptation is a very normal thing so maybe infidelity, by extension, is too?
I’m similarly confused by arguments that this sort of behaviour is a trait of ‘alpha males’. Is it that all alpha males lose touch with their marital vows while busily chest-beating and power-mongering? Surely relegating infidelity to just one social group is a bit too reductionist. Nice guys must suffer temptation too. I didn’t think that being nice and being sexual were mutually exclusive.
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