I’ve been thinking a lot lately about cheating in my relationship.
I guess I better explain that statement, huh?
Well it seems as if in America, we’ve become a nation of cheaters. I googled “sexual scandals” and the second entry was a list of FEDERAL SEXUAL SCANDALS. There were 8 between last year and this year alone and in the last decade over 27 scandals were reported (of course these are just the ones that we know about)! It’s as if the curtain is being pulled back in everyone’s lives and the cheating WIZARD is being exposed!
Has it really come to the place where literally EVERYONE cheats in relationships? You know, between me and you, I use to think that…and I’ll tell you why.
I grew up in a home where cheating was the norm. In fact, around this time of the year, when my brothers and I were little kids, I remember my Dad taking us to a lady’s house. We ate lunch, and she gave us toys, clothes and presents…and I remember going home with all of these goodies…but my Mom wasn’t happy AT ALL. Turned out the lady was one OF MANY in a long line of women my Father had on the side.
For my Dad, women were disposable, changed and discarded like paper towel… He had them everywhere…He was caught by my Mother and brothers… he never denied it…it was who he was.
And I became my Father’s daughter.
For me, there was no such thing as cheating…you got what you wanted. Married, single, young, old… everyone was up for grabs…until I met Tony.
Someone asked me recently how did I know that Tony was the one? My honest to God answer was that he was the only man I ever felt compelled to throw away my “little black book” for! I am not kidding! He didn’t ask me to, he never even wanted to know about my past…I just knew that with him I wanted things to be “right” whatever “right” meant!
And so I began an EXTREMELY long journey learning how to purge what I learned from my Daddy; learning how NOT to cheat in my relationship!
Honestly America (as Bernie Mac would say) I believe we’ve been asking the wrong question concerning CHEATING. In fact, while researching extensively for this show, ALL of the information out there is about WHY WE CHEAT!
I’ll tell you why we cheat. We cheat because we WANT TO! Period.
Male or Female, Young or Old, Married or Single, we cheat because we all have the potential for the cheating virus in us and I don’t believe anyone is exempt! But I do believe that many, many people CHOOSE NOT TO CHEAT every single day of their lives.
We’re just not asking the right question. The question isn’t why DO we cheat? The right question is why DON’T we cheat?
You know we all think that on some level we “own” the person we’re with!! Let’s talk about this cheating thing, adult to adult. Let’s not make it the woman’s responsibility to do everything humanly possible to keep her man happy so he won’t cheat. And let’s not make it the man’s responsibility to please his woman enough to get her not to cheat. That’s garbage.
Two adults entering into a relationship should know that there’s NOTHING you can do to keep someone else from cheating on you! The ONLY person you have control over is YOU!
Honey when Halle Berry got cheated on, I knew I didn’t have a prayer! That told me, you can’t be beautiful enough, fine enough, or sexy enough to make someone not cheat on you. Each one of us, have to look inside ourselves and take responsibility for ourselves!
But what do you think? Maybe you don’t agree with me. Maybe you think EVERYONE cheats, end of story. I want to hear from you! I KNOW you’ve got cheating stories and I want to hear them. Maybe you’re like I was and cheating is just ‘in you’ from your parents or your upbringing and you’re fighting to keep from cheating. Or maybe you’re a man (or a woman) who’s decided, I’m not going to cheat. WHY did you make that decision? HOW do you keep it? I want to know!
So after being married 25 years to Tony, what do I know about cheating? I know that temptation is around me and us EVERY day and that we’ve got to know some things up front:
#1 We’ve got to know WHAT TURNS US ON (or better yet, WHAT WE FIND ATTRACTIVE). News flash: getting married isn’t a force-field to protect you from cheating! You like what you like, married or not!
#2 Then we’ve got to know our “HOW NOT TO CHEAT” STRATEGY! Here’s another news flash if you fail to plan how NOT to cheat, you’re planning to FAIL and you WILL cheat! We’ve got to do the non-sexy work of figuring out how we’re going to avoid cheating in our relationships and then…
#3 We’ve got to DECIDE DAILY NOT to cheat. We are in a hyper-sexualized atmosphere it’s downright STUPID to think that in an oversexualized culture, you’re going to be exempt! We’ve got to decide every day of our lives to NOT cheat on our spouses, significant others, boyfriends and girlfriends.
We can do this, IF we want to…
Let me know what you think! FACEBOOK, TWITTER or my website www.jenniferkeitt.com
Wow!! To cheat or not to cheat? I would first have to ask myself this question. How will it benefit me? If I was the cheater what would I be looking to gain. For 17 years I was with my husband. There was a 25yr age difference between us. I know some would say or have said “you know that man was to old for you”. But I loved him and I believed he loved me, but he lived two separate lifestyles. Now you know you can’t straddle the fence because sooner or later your pants will get stuck trying to cross over and they did and because they did, I became the cheater or should I say I was suckered by a touch. Ladies and gents when I tell you the benefits were not profitable to me at all. I became a friend with benefits and just apart of the team. In Yolanda Adams book “Points of Power” she said one of the greatest story of treachery resulted in the greatest act of salvation. As Jesus was betrayed by a kiss I was suckered by a touch. I don’t need to give all details I’m sure that you can read between the lines. The moral of the story “betrayal” no benefits, it will cause you to be emotionally drained, confused, sadden, divorced or sometime death. Thank you H.O.P.E. (Helping Other People Endure)