Why Men Cheat. No, for real. I have all the answers.

I cheated.

Years ago, while in a loving and committed relationship, met another woman, we hit it off and in the electricity of the moment we were damn near fucking. Were it not for the intervention of a good friend, we would've had sex that night.

Didn't matter. Fuck the Clintonisms; it was still cheating.

Let me tell you, though, that I can say without any reservation that cheating was the best mistake of my life.

It seems the entire world is obsessed with cheating right now. The reasons are simple, of course. Jesse James, Tiger Woods, any given congressman, an episode of South Park and every cover of every women's magazine--- the entire world is obsessed because women are obsessed- and scared. If some other man cheated well, then, your man's gonna cheat.

So women want answers. As a cheater, I can very easily give those answers.

But first, a story.

The reasons behind my cheating may be rendered in complex terms: my ex and I were at a crossroads, an ebb in the flow of our relationship. She was suffering from a libido-killing depression, I was feeling tied down and unattended to and into this mix came my very own Manic Pixie Dream Girl... and movie magic happened. Or some approximation.

As far as I'm concerned, the why doesn't matter-- well, not until the end, that is....

It's what happened afterwards that's important.

I woke. I looked over, seeing the pantied and snoring form of my mistake. I went home. Not mine. Hers. I crept into my ex's apartment with her spare key and I wept. I cried as if some important person, my mother, my sister, my child, had died. I grieved.

I called my mother, weeping like a widow, bargaining with her and God to somehow make this not-alright thing, alright. And then, later, much later, I sat my girlfriend down and I told her.

And then... she told me. Yeah. She'd cheated too.

It was years ago, with someone who I used to joke about her cheating on me with.

She told me she was afraid. She told me she knew, the way I was, that I would leave her the minute she told me. Leave her and hate her for it. She was absolutely, 100% right. In hindsight, I approve her actions-- they showed she knew my character better than I did.

If I remember correctly, I laughed. And in those moments, I had an epiphany that has since changed my life: people cheat. You can't control them. You can't figure out reasons, you can't guilt or bribe them and you can't even love them into not-cheating. Some people cheat and some people don't and that's the universe, in a nut shell.

Let me tell you something I believe about human nature: we are all, each and every one of us, the protagonists of our very own living novels. Humanity, being what is it (a rational-seeming being in an largely chaotic, irrational set of circumstances), tries to make sense of the world through narrative. We tell ourselves stories, about the trees, about the rivers, about the Gods and about our own motives.

Ask yourself, after all, which comes first? The emotion or the action? The feeling or the processing of what that feeling is? Do you feel anger and then realize it is anger you felt? Do you feel love first, then call that feeling love?

We're all in a story, written by ourselves, starring ourselves and let me tell you, we are very, very unreliable narrators. Whatever our actions, most people, at core, believe they are good... or at keast just. Everyone believes there's a good reason for whatever it is their character is doing. Just ask a rapist-- that bitch always deserves it, doesn't she?

This may seem like a philosophical digression (and it is), but there's a point.

Would you like to know why men cheat? It's the same reason why women cheat.

Because it felt good at the time.

We'll call it sex addiction, we'll call it a moral lapse, we'll call it a drunken escapade; we'll blame our spouses for not loving us enough or loving us too much. We'll need space, we'll need attention, we'll need whatever but in the end those are just the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of an irrational chemical instance: we fuck because it feels good. We flirt because it feels good. We cheat... because it feels good.

Got your answer? Good. Now stop freaking the fuck out. You can't control other people any more than you can control the weather.

All you can do is all you can do and the rest? The rest is just someone else's story. Live on, writing your own.

What's a Feminist?

I was out at a bar the other night, having a deep conversation with two ladies, one my own age and the other in her 40s (both of whom seemed to have wildly divergent ideas on what "feminism" means, but call that the generation gap), when we started talking about abuse and (in some disclosure) the experience I had in childhood, growing up in an abusive household.

I spoke of confusion and quite a bit of blame for my mother for putting up with it when the older woman said, "There's the problem. Why are you blaming her? Why are you asking why she put up with it when you should be asking why he did it?"

The question was very clear to me: The reason he did it is that he's an asshole.

To an 8 year old, a 12 year old or a 27 year old, that answer couldn't be clearer: my step-father was an asshole. To even try to understand him was to try and sympathize with him and, in the end, I made my peace by assigning him to that category of "Non-human force of nature with whom I rarely interact." At this point in my life, he's something like a familiar stranger, like someone I see at the bar some times and make a bit of small talk.

The mystery, to me, is in why anyone would ever continue in an environment of abuse.

But again and again, the woman would rebut me-- stop asking why about her and start questioning him. Why would he hit a woman?

This, to me, is an example of one of those confusions of priority and belief when dealing with an older feminist.

I could give dozens of reasons why I'd hit a woman (besides sex). Most of them revolve around power and control and respect-- about the same reasons parents hit their children (if they ever bothered to admit it). While I wouldn't do it, I'd still be able to come up with reasons.

Frankly, I know plenty of women who have come with reasons why they'd hit their man-- and do so.

But to be hit? To be the victim? Why on Earth would anyone put up with that, besides financial reasons (besides divorce, which was discussed a bit in the house-husband post)? It's irrational, therefore interesting.

But to her, questioning the victim is blaming the victim. Sure, I blamed the victim when I was a kid-- because I lived in the mess. Why wouldn't I? But years later, the mystery remains and the questions go unanswered.

The conversation meandered somewhat, veering into ideas about respect and male-female difference-- the younger woman felt she didn't want any help or retraction due to her gender, she felt she was not only just as good as a man but that there was barely a difference between the two. Meanwhile, the older woman spoke at length about the difference between male and female energies, about femininity and it finding a place at the table in the masculine world-- a difference so marked, I couldn't help but respond to it with my own point: they have an identity crisis but, at least, they have an active conversation about the identity in the first place.

Males, on the other hand... and that was where she cut me off. It was as if to say, even the subject, the very idea, of the oppressor trying to find his identity to cope with the cultural shift is too absurd to talk about (to be fair, this lady was good at cutting anyone off- and we were drinking).

There's a sharp line between these generations of feminist and it makes more clear to me the fiasco of the Clinton/Obama primaries and its identity warfare. Older feminists are still living the war, younger one's are coping with the reconstruction and furtherment of their goals--- where the bleeding edge, years ago, involved radical ideas and ideals to battle an overwhelming enemy, the enemy has changed shape and the war has gone subtle. Now the politics truly are personal-- how women carries themselves, self-respect, the question of sex, the question of objectification in the media (which is overwhelmingly used against women but, as with the growing trend of male body dysmorphia, has become a bit more equal opportunity exploitative).

In other words, to even ask the question, "what is male"? is a question for this generation. Just as our fathers before us never had to question it- hence why, in many ways, they are left behind-- neither have our mothers.

If They're So Fatale, Why Is No One Actually Hurt?

Thanks to Daniella for giving me the heads up on l'Homme Fatale-- sadly, she might disagree on my reading of it....

A few years ago, Katherine, an actress in her mid-20s who lives in Park Slope, was cast in a play by a theater director several years her senior. He wasn’t particularly attractive. In fact, he was almost effeminate. But he was intelligent and not too forward, and he was always surrounded by beautiful women—which, Katherine admits, she found intriguing.

“He seemed like the antithesis of all the jocky guys I went to high school with,” she said. (The women in this story agreed to discuss their romantic pasts only if identified by their middle names.) “He was sensitive, funny, supersmart, not athletic at all and not physically imposing. But there was something that was so charismatic—a gentleness and gracefulness and a confidence.”

Katherine and the director began a weeks-long courtship. There were late-night rehearsals in a dark theater that turned into surprisingly intimate later-night conversations. But then summer came. They both left New York for a while. And every time Katherine tried to reach him, he never returned her phone calls and ultimately disappeared altogether.

“People told me he was trouble, but I really thought he was too evolved and sensitive to hurt me the way he did,” Katherine said.

Katherine’s director was an Homme Fatale—a genre of man that New York women have come to know well. Often the creative type, he projects a deceptive vulnerability, while maintaining an appealing confidence. He’s usually not the best-looking guy in the room, but he is the smartest; he turns these traits to his advantage, playing up the contrast with the typical hot guy or womanizer (physical inferiority, emotional evolvement). His courtship begins with a rushed sense of intimacy and, yet, a disarming lack of forward physical advances; a first date might involve a game of Scrabble or perhaps a cup of tea; his target usually leaves wondering if in fact it was a date at all. And yet the story always has the same ending—he grows distant, stops calling and eventually disappears with little explanation, if any.

There's so much here, I don't know where to begin-- but a good place is this idea of "deceptive vulnerability" and being "too evolved to hurt me."

You find yourself dating the sensitive "perfect man," the kind that romantic comedies assure us are hiding under every rock but, lo and behold, he does the unthinkable: he grows quiet. He grows distant. He leaves you.

And that leaving hurts.

Has this happened to you? Congatulations, you've just gone through a break-up. It happens. But why is this, a normal occurance, somehow sinister under the "Homme Fatale?" The author never says he did anything except for not call. Katherine's sense of betrayal comes from herself and the reason is simple: she expected, because this man was "sensitive" and "evolved," that he was just another nester stereotype. That all sensitive men are the boyfriend type-- this sensitivity of theirs assures her some measure of control and security.

Surprise! It doesn't. Katherine's betrayal came from buying into a stereotype and centering her expectations around it. It's painful, yes, but where exactly is the Fatale to these Hommes?

Dangerous femme fatale heroines, as portrayed by Rita Hayworth in Gilda or Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct, are nearly extinct or have been reduced to tragic cougars while their male counterparts have only proliferated; now they can be found roaming the halls of magazines, publishing houses and the better English literature Ph.D. programs by day, and frequenting ironic dance parties in cramped Boerum Hill apartments by night. And unlike the typical womanizer, whose game is laughably easy to detect, the Homme Fatale’s modus operandi is more emotional and controlling than it is physical, leaving a wreckage that is, in the end, more disastrous.

(We pause here to note that the Homme Fatale, while related, is not the same as the oft-bemoaned indie rock or emo boy. While he may exhibit similarly sensitive qualities, an Homme’s emotional side is a learned part of his manipulation, not an authentic sentimentality.)

The Noir-era Femme Fatale character had particular traits, besides being beautiful and manipulative: they wanted something. They wanted a husband killed. They wanted some material object, some great and terrible favor. The love they elicited from men was of the obsessive kind, the kind that only a noir film could create: nihilistic, cynical, empty.

Often, those who wrapped themselves up with a Femme Fatale... actually died (if not that, went to jail or had some other terrible end).

The deadliness, in that era, was where their power came from: the allure was in the fact that these women were independent, blatantly sexual and always angling for themselves. That is what is fatal about the Femme Fatale.

And L'Homme Fatale, the so-called counterpart is... being sensitive as a trick? Well, what's this rotten bastard angling after, anyway? Sex?

The Homme Fatale has also slyly insinuated (as is to be expected) his way into popular culture. Take, for instance, the Aaron Rose character played by John Patrick Amedori on the teen drama Gossip Girl, the young downtown artist and RISD grad with the unfortunate goatee. In the six episodes in which his relationship with the glamorous, blond Upper East Sider Serena van der Woodsen has progressed in fits and starts, he has yet to actually have sex with her.

Okay... he's not trying to get laid? What makes him so terribly suspicious, then?

And for a somewhat nebbishy, shy person, he seems to have a suspicious number of beautiful female friends hanging around at all times. When Serena is justifiably confused by the other “muses” in his life, he simply says, “I could explain who Tamara is and why she was at my apartment last night, but the fact is, you feel something or you don’t. If you’re looking for an excuse to keep us apart, that’s fine.” It’s a classic Homme Fatale move: come on strong, then, when confronted with evidence that points to a lack of commitment or deception, turn it around so the woman feels like it’s her issue.

Again, we return to the problem of expectations. He's sensitive, he's shy but... he's surrounded by beautiful women? How dare he! That's Frat-boy behavior!

It's as if to say, if the guy doesn't walk like a Jock, quack like a Jock and fuck around like a Jock (and the funny part it, he doesn't seem to be fucking like a Jock at all), he's deeply betrayed someone by associating with a lot of women.

Let's just recap here a moment, shall we?

Femme Fatale:




























:L'Homme Fatale.
































The article later goes into a complete misreading of the Pick-up Artist stuff (I'll be writing about that at some point, I assure), making our "Homme Fatale" more sinister through association, despite the fact that the tactics of the two (PUA and HF) are clearly opposite. The manipulation meme is strong here-- how on earth could a man be sensitive and not be using that vulnerability as a way to emotionally manipulate women? Especially if-- gasp-- he leaves?

The article itself can't even answer that question as, in the end, it starts to contradict itself about how manipulative these Fatale Hommes are:

In my opinion, being an Homme Fatale is more of an affliction than a conscious course of action. I think you’re in love with the feeling as much as you are with each of those people. The Homme Fatale is not a slut, but the interest is both in the person, and even more so, in the feeling it gives you.”

Worse than a monster, then. A Romantic.

The Homme Fatale is neither a womanizer nor a sociopath—though these categories might overlap a bit.

“The Homme Fatale is a different, possibly more modern condition than a sociopath— he is not as aware of his actions. My understanding is that sociopaths are more clever and conniving. Maybe this is my personal bias, but I think the Homme Fatale is a slightly more sympathetic character,” said James. “The empathy is there, but people who do the most harm are people who don’t know what they want, and Hommes Fatales don’t know what they want.”

Gasp! Worse than a Romantic! He's the stereotype of a woman.

That's wrong of me, perhaps, but to this day I'll still hear that it's the right of every woman not to know what she wants.

So, too, is it the right of every man.

This article is emblematic of the Male Definition Problem: women have a expectations of behavior and feel betrayed when they are not met. And instead of blaming the female expectations, the males are blamed for exhibiting the exact same traits a female would bristle at being criticized over. All because no one knows what to expect of a "Man" anymore anyway-- emotion is encouraged yet, when displayed and someone is left hurt, it is then manipulative emotion, not true sensitivity. These expectations are tied into traditional gender roles: the more a male acts like a "female" (the article itself calls these hommes "almost effeminate"), the more he is expected to indulge in female-expectatant behaviors. And when he has "male-expectatant" behaviors, like emotional distance or haremizing? He's Evil and Wrong and Must Be Stopped.

No woman has the right to feel betrayed by a sensitive man who promises nothing, just as no man has the right to feel betrayed by a woman who doesn't give to him sexually. It's her right to choice to say no; it's his right to not know what he wants.

Public/Sex.

I am in love with My Hot Mess (mostly safe for work, but don't scroll down past mid-point, one naughty picture), the blog that insists it's not a blog.

It's raw, honest, brutal-- its writer talks about ignoring douchebag's she'd never date (while happy to use them for cheap ice cream), about her interactions with celebrities and coworkers and, in it's most recent, about how she's used loved one's and grown as a human being.

Oh. And she fucks for the camera. She's porn star/director Penny Flame and she must be one of the most public personalities in all of creation.

Imagine: getting on camera to have sex, displaying the most societally-intimate acts (although in the gonzo style, which isn't terribly intimate), putting them on the screen then opening up the lap top to admit to coke habits and a fucked up break up.

I am fascinated by the phenomenon of the public personality- and most especially by the female public personality. In them, there is a measure of instant fame that comes from being on the power-end of a relationship with a lustful audience.

How else do you explain others, like Paris Hilton, like Kim Kardashian, or that Alysson chick Gawker is so obsessed with?

In a way, it's like the Dominatrix (fodder for another post, I assure you); her audience is already a sexual fandom, worshipful of her body-- but is that enough? Apparently not: now, they need her heart, her mind, her private self and her public pussy.

That's quite a bit of "self" to be selling.

Question is, which side of the Porn Star argument do you go by? The empowered woman, controlling and profiting from her own sexuality-- or the Sarah Silverman, a thousand penises can't fill the hole in your soul argument?



It's hard to say, vis a vis her porn, but I love, respect and wish more of her written work-- (I wasn't actually familiar with her porno work-- I'd stumbled onto her from the totally NSFW Fleshbot site (kind of a Jezebel for porn)-- as the level of honesty she displays, there, helps every jerk-off and chump save himself, from himself:

Its good to play dumb when you are breaking someone’s heart in front of their coworkers. Nothing worse than the shit talking that commences as soon as dream girl walks over your heart and out the door with a big ass extra special cheap acai bowl. So I play dumb and he accepts my ignorance and I walk out that door, bowl in hand. It was this final interaction that I make it clear we would not be going on a date. Fuck, I mean, and I hate to say it because it makes me sound like a shallow fucking bitch, but really?

I’m just not going to date the guy from Robek’s. And while his employment at said smoothie shop is a big factor in me not dating him, there are other reasons as well. Here are my reasons for not dating the guy at Robek’s.

1. He works at Robek’s. This should explain itself, from the apron and the visor to the minimum wage paycheck. I need a self made nucca, who is driven and going places.

2. He has roommates. He’s mentioned them, and I am not into that.

3. He is my height. Fucking shallow bitch.

4. I have a hard time respecting people that hook me up because I am a pretty bitch. If you know me, and we are friends, fine, but just random good looking strangers? Come on dude, paying $5.95 for a bowl instead of $6.95 is not a big deal, and it isn’t going to impress me.

5. He works at Robek’s.

She admits to being shallow about his job, shallow about his height and, most importantly, disrespectful of the fact that he's giving her a cheap hook up as a way to get into her pants.

Basically, she's telling men (her primary audience) the truth about women (or, at least, herself). And that, my friends, is very necessary.

I was at a bar the other day, sitting with a girl who was pining over a guy there-- a guy there with another woman, who wasn't even as attractive as she was, who still had no interest in her.

I tried to tell her the truth, the same truth that I'd tell any guy: he's not only not into you, you look like an idiot. But of course, she didn't listen-- why should she? I'm just a guy in a bar and her future husband is the only man for her, so what do I, some dude, know about male psychology that she doesn't?

She's probably going to very visibly take someone home one night, having been rejected (again) and hoping to make him jealous somehow (it won't). But who am I to tell her the truth?

Enter Penny Flame, sex object: In telling the hard truth to the public, in being honest about herself, she gives the lessons to an audience who might be more receptive, if only because it gives insight into how to get into her (fantasy) pants.

She's in a position, as pornographer, to affect her audience's cocks and their behaviors.

She's also in a position to just seem more human. Imagine that: jerk-off material, thought of as a living, breathing person.

She isn't just a pussy and a pair of tits. She works out at Bally, knows Murs, hangs in Vegas, used to have a coke habit, needs to knock off with the weed and sometimes directs videos of her and her costars sucking the very real cocks of pretend strangers. What's more, unlike the Lindsey Lohans of the world, her frailties aren't exposed by the media, but herself. She creates a product (and uses herself as such), then engages in a dialogue. And well written, at that.

I have to say, from the profession to personality, I have nothing but respect.

Desperate House Husbands.

Perhaps the problem with the modern woman is that, like the modern man, she's not so sure she wants to be modern. And when she does, she may not want to be fair about it. Perhaps the problem with relationship is that modern equality is a thoroughly defensive.

Take Karen Karbo's article in the NYT's "Modern Love" feature: the entire feature is about how she found herself an "accidental breadwinner"-- and ended up resenting it and her S.O's (tongue-in-cheek, she says she couldn't imagine being her mother, dusting on Tuesdays, etc, then goes on to say she wanted her "househusband" to dust on Tuesdays, etc.. and give the kids more than cereal for breakfast).

It's all standard-issue role reversal: as the "wife" now, he must take on the traditional gender roles women have been trying to free themselves from for years, follow a work-like schedule of the routine tasks June Clever would have done. Not to say he shouldn't be playing video games, but there's a reason that Soap Operas existed: you can't be cleaning all the time. And if you were expected to, you wouldn't be a house-wife, you'd be a slave.

But Karbo doesn't get juicy until she talks about her leaving a relationship and the financial troubles it represents...

It’s not just a problem from my mother’s era. Several years ago, a friend of mine decided she’d had enough of her arts administrator job. With the support of her husband, who worked somewhat unhappily as a doctor, she quit with the idea of taking a year off to decide what she wanted to do. The year slid into two, then three. She walked her dogs, attended yoga classes. Then her life became a third-rate show on basic cable: she discovered her husband was having an affair with a nurse, and worse, when she confronted him, he said he wasn’t going to stop.

My friend was devastated. She knew she had to get out but couldn’t bring herself to file for divorce. I imagined that she was afraid to be alone, that she would miss her husband’s companionship. “There’s always Match.com,” I said, trying to console her.
She snorted. “It’s not that. I don’t have a job, and I don’t think I could get a job that would pay enough.”

Enough to live in the way she had become accustomed, she meant.

They are still married.

Poor thing. Cheated on by some rotten shlub, having laid around, done yoga and ate bon-bons all day. She couldn't leave the bastard, though-- she's too accustomed to that good living.

Of course, when the tables are turned, after her own house-husband played too much Halo....

When we divorced, he wanted alimony, child support and the house — the house that was purchased with my money, in my name. During one of our last conversations, I wept with incomprehension. He wanted my house? Whatever happened to the way people divorce in the movies, where the husband packs a bag and moves into a sad hotel, leaving his wife (whom he supported) in the house?

The Cuddle Bum said that if I insisted on leaving him, he had no choice but to play hardball. (In response, I stepped up my freelancing work and got a better lawyer, who spun things into my favor quite nicely. Don’t talk to me about hardball.)

So the heroine wins again-- she gets herself the freedom from a relationship, "wins" the divorce by keeping the house (again, Karbo is very knowingly tongue-in-cheek, here).

What's depressing is where Karbo ends up: in a thoroughly litigated relationship, with seperate budgets and an almost renterly attitude. Her current beau pays his share of the bills on the 15th, while Karbo pays for herself and her daughter.

Is this the direction of the modern relationship? separate beds, separate budgets, separate lives?

In moving towards a state of equality, it seems that relationships of equals mean equally on-guard. A shame, but it's meant to be.

I've waited a long time to even consider the possibility of marriage, for this very reason: while I have, in the past, thought a relationship might be "forever" I couldn't get over the fact that marriage is a litigative trap-- a legal concept, masquerading as a rite of love. My partner (read: girlfriend) at the time wanted marriage and specifically for the security it provided.

For her: security.

For me: utter dependence and debt.

Is the only way to have a long-lasting relationship the clearly delineated Karbo way?

The day Jim and I moved in together, I gave him a formal accounting of how much our monthly nut would be; he would pay for himself, and I would pay for my daughter and me. Since then, he has written me a check for his portion on the 15th of every month. Sometimes he buys the groceries, and sometimes I do. But he always pays for both of us when we go to the movies, and spends lavishly on buttered popcorn and Milk Duds. I am always touched by this.

I couldn't imagine "togetherness" more romantic.

But, I suppose, what other choice do we have? It's slavery, independence or nothing, it seems.

Makes me wonder how the communist's fucked.