Crap I Feel Needs to be Said: Fidelity Edition

It's been a while since I've posted here at all, and even longer since a stupid sign on Pinterest about motherhood drove me to the edge and into writing Crap I Feel Needs to be Said: Mother's Day Edition, but here I am again, enraged to the point of furious typing by something stupid I read on the internet.

What I tell my students a lot of the time is that the internet is the great democratizing force, because anyone can say anything and be seen.  Which is great in the case of, say, social movements like Black Lives Matter, that wouldn't have otherwise gained traction if we'd have to had to rely on the mainstream media to pick it up.  But the downside of a medium where anyone can say anything is that anyone can say anything.  Think of the stupidest, most bigoted, misinformed person you know.  They can say anything on the internet.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against that.  It's the price you pay for equal access.  But I do worry a lot about who is reading what and what they're internalizing.

The internet is rife with them, but just in the past two days, I've had two different articles, from two different authors (both women!) pop up in my Facebook newsfeed, both explaining "Why Men Cheat" and "10 Simple Ways to Guarantee They Won't Cheat".  I almost don't want to put the links there because I'm afraid that they get paid per click and, Jesus, please don't click on that.

Clearly it's not The New Yorker, but Thought Catalog is a site with some decently decent personal essays, and it's written by and for the 20-30 year old crowd.  The above gems of wisdom offer such insighful tidbits as, "The number one reason why men cheat is..a lack of emotional appreciation!" and, [If you don't want them to cheat on you] "Have Sex With Them as Often as Possible", "Have Sex With them Even When you Don't Want to" and "Sext Them Regularly".
You know, women of the world, it's a good thing that you're not an actual person, with your own life and aspirations, because if you were, it would be really, REALLY difficult to lead that life AND do everything you need to do to keep your partner from cheating on you.

Sorry, but, pulling no punches here, if your partner cheated on you, it has nothing to do with your ugly underwear, or your failure to sext them on your lunch break.

There is ONE reason your partner cheats on you- not six- and that one reason is that he's a jerk.  Really.  Stop looking for the six answers why, or the top ten ways to stop him from doing it.  He's just a d-bag, end of story.

Granted, I haven't met all of your partners/spouses/significantothers/itscomplicateds, but I am willing to bet that 100% of them have a mouth and speak a language which you are also fluent in.  If they don't, maybe we can look deeper into the causes of their infidelities.  But if they do, then what they need to do if they think your underwear is ugly or want you to do/be more of X is open that mouth and speak words that explain that you.  Because that is implied in your partnership, as well as in your graduation into adulthood.

You know, if you, as a couple aren't great at talking, you don't even need words!  Maybe you could do a rousing game of charades.  I don't care.  Do what you do.  But, I'm telling you, even effing Nell got her point across, so if you are telling me that an adult man is somehow not able or expected to communicate to the level of a woman raised by wolves, I have to admit to you, I am effing confused.

If they express that to you and your response is,"whatevs", now we're talking about something else.  But even then, we're not talking about cheating.  We're talking about, "Wow, we have some serious problems in this relationship, and we either need to fix it or end it."

And, to be clear, I understand that women cheat as well, and that is equally awful.  But never ever in my newsfeed do I see an article titled, "Men! 10 ways to keep your woman from straying!"  Somehow we just seem to accept that a woman who cheated is acting selfishly.

The reason that this pisses me off so much is that takes the blame off of the cheater, and puts it squarely on your shoulders, because your not-enoughness is somehow driving him to this, and IT'S ALL WRITTEN BY WOMEN.

Women of the world! Seriously? STOP IT.
Every time you write that article, you are validating people who cheat.  You are telling them that it's not really their fault, and in the course of saying that, you are disrespecting the hell out of the people who invested themselves in that person and got cheated on.

It pisses me off because it's self-hating, but it also pisses me off because I feel like, as a gender, we spend a WHOLE lot of time trying to figure out what we can do to be enough for other people.

You know what I'm afraid of? I'm afraid that if we collected all of the hours and minutes that women spend wondering if they're doing the right things to keep their partner from cheating, that we would end up with enough time to cure cancer, write the great American novel, solve the social ills of the world.

I like to stress about a whole lot of crap, and my partner's favorite thing to tell me is that you can't control another person.  All you can do is try really hard, and that person is hopefully going to do the same.  It might be the most brilliant piece of advice on earth.

Women of the world.  Stop reading the articles, stop buying new underwear, stop writing weird sexts from the employee parking lot (I hope you weren't really doing that but, if you were,...stop).  Try really hard, and go cure cancer.  That's all you can do.