As I mentioned in my psychic post, A gets the rest of us hooked on some weird stuff. She's a reality TV devotee but refuses to watch what she deems "trash" networks like E! and Bravo. But if someone has five wives, marital troubles or 19 kids, she's there. Last year, she got all of us hooked on a show about the family life of a pair of singers. Neither of them are all that likable so I tuned out late in the first season. However, I'm right back there in front of the TV for this season because there is high drama going on and I'm baffled about how it's all being handled. Both these chicks are married with kids and a big part of the show is portraying the happy families they successfully balance along with careers. But all is not as it seems with one of them. it came out last year that her husband had an affair with a "family friend" (some friend, huh?), but that she was committed to working on their marriage and learning how to get through it all. For reasons I don't fully understand, she was the one who put all of this out there in public (either for attention or because someone was threatening to leak the story) during an interview. The drama kicked in when her husband confessed that he hadn't stepped out on her only once. It was, in his own words, "countless affairs" that had taken place throughout the entire marriage. All of this going on while she was on the road and while they continued to have children (four in all, I think). And he waited to come clean about it until she'd already given her interview and after they'd been working on the marriage for a few months, or so she thought. It opened up a whole new can of worms about whether or not forgiveness was actually possible.
The episodes of this show that I've seen from this season rubbed me the wrong way. They started out by talking about the marital discord and she went on and on about how her husband loved her and how she was working to forgive. But he never seemed to be working for anything. He came off as 'meh' as ever, while she canceled this work thing or that one and bought new clothes and tried to lose baby weight, as if she was the one who needed to repent. I don't even remember hearing the words, "I'm sorry" leave his lips. It was odd. He fucked up majorly, yet she was doing all the work in trying to repair the marriage. During this time, we found out that her sister had also been cheated on by her husband in the past and they'd "worked through it". The sister's advice was to do the same - work through it and forgive. And she seemed to be headed down that path, until her husband confessed to all of his affairs. Whatever they'd been rebuilding all crumbled down and found it hard to take that her entire marriage was basically a lie. She'd been sort of half-hearted while proclaiming to the cameras how much her husband loved her and how apologetic he was for what he'd done, so the revelation that there was much more to story sent her into meltdown mode. She stopped speaking to him for a few and the jackass has the balls to call his sister-in-law and say he's "concerned" about what her refusal to speak to him might mean for the marriage. STILL not one damn apology. First of all, how could you continuously step out on your wife and children, and second how are you not living on your damn knees begging her not to leave your sorry ass? It's one thing to cheat on a girlfriend or a boyfriend, but to cheat on your spouse, someone you took vows with, someone you committed to for the rest of your life, is just the ultimate betrayal. I know it's a bit of an old-fashioned notion these days, but those marriage vows should be taken as seriously as a heart attack, and even more so if you've created a family together. I don't get this fool and his thinking at all. It's almost as if he thought this would just be a ripple in the marriage and she'd get over it and they'd move on. Like he was entitled to cheat because she was working. And the sad thing is that she seemed to believe that too and blamed herself for his stepping out.
Perhaps the craziest part of this whole fiasco is that her family are adamant that she has to stay in the marriage. This is a 30-something woman with a mess of kids who is being told by her family that she can't leave her marriage, ya'll. Her mom reacts to the news with absolutely no surprise and flat out tells her that it's gonna hurt like hell while she gets over his infidelity, and that she should let him know how badly she's hurting every chance she gets, but that she'll get past it and the marriage will continue. Why? Because men cheat and forgiving and forgetting is their cross to bear as wives. (Apparently mom and dad were married and divorced to each other three different times. Gee, I wonder why. Children do indeed learn what they live.) WHAT. THE. FUCK. How on earth do you raise your daughters to believe they don't deserve better than a cheater?? How do you tell them to go back to a man that betrayed them on numerous occasions and didn't even come clean about it? The only reason she found out about the adultery is because someone else told her, he didn't even have the cojones to tell her, which means he probably never intended to stop cheating had he not been caught. On top of all that, nobody knows exactly what he may have picked up while he was sleeping with other women. His wife, and possibly even his children, will need to be tested for various diseases. You just cannot trust somebody who has absolutely no remorse about doing that to you and your children. And this is a chick who turned down absurd amounts of money for concerts so that she could reconnect with him because he whined that he didn't get enough attention (he also bitched when they got pregnant for a fourth time, claiming he didn't want another kid. If that's the case, you shoulda got fixed).
And he still stepped out. And, apparently, they're still married. She says she was ready for divorce until her mother and sister sat her down and told her about how they overcame their husbands infidelities. It's some sort of weird Christian thing to do so, I guess. But I'd love to know what the circumstances of those other husband's infidelities were. Were they a one time thing or a string of constant affairs? Did they come clean or did they have to be found out? Were they apologetic? (I'm guessing their father was a habitual cheater, given the three divorces and re-marriages). This may be a different circumstance. One time is a betrayal and is a lot to try and overcome but finding out the last decade of your life was a complete lie is something else. Still, it is ridiculous to just say, "Oh yeah, men cheat, deal with it" and expect everything to move forward.
My mother has always said that if someone will cheat with you, they will cheat on you. She also says, "once a cheater, always a cheater". I fully subscribe to the former, but I'm conflicted about the latter. I think it depends on what the circumstances of the affair were. It was a youthful indiscretion in high school or college and it happened only once, then I don't believe it brands someone a cheater forever. BUT I think that in that situation, the person learns a lot more and becomes a better, more faithful partner in the future if they lose the person they cheated on. You either empathize with what you did to them and you never do it again, or you see nothing wrong with what you did and continue to cheat in the future. A former colleague of mine cheated on a boyfriend when she was like 19, felt horribly about it and never did it again, yet her husband constantly brought it up when they fought, even though they married a decade after the indiscretion. He had no reason to bring it up, he just did it for kicks, as if that's all she was ever going to be was a cheater. Ironically, they divorced last year because HE had an affair. I'm not saying I'd put up with a cheater now, but I wouldn't think anything less of a person if they had something like this in their past. Everybody comes with baggage. However, it's sort of impossible to make a blanket statement about what you'd do if you were ever cheated on unless you've been there. My ex-fiancee had an ongoing affair that pre-dated us and continued throughout our time together. She left without saying why but eventually came clean about it all and I was completely thrown for a loop. I always believed I would escort a cheater to the door and never look back, yet I found myself trying to justify her behavior and find a way to get through it and come out the other side together. You won't believe the shit you try and tell yourself to reason your way back into the relationship. We even briefly reunited, although not as a couple, more like a couple of one nighters. It was those nights that made me realize how cold blooded she was about the whole thing. Instead of being genuinely apologetic and telling me what she wanted, she tried to flip flop - be his girlfriend and keep me on the side. That's when I got my wake up call and made my exit. And it sort of prompted me to reexamine my views on cheating a bit. But I do know that if someone stepped out on me the way this fucker did his wife, especially if we were married, it would be lights out. I couldn't trust someone who'd betrayed me like that. It's unfortunate that some people choose to stick around because they don't think they deserve better.
