Friday, April 11, 2008

Things Men Do When They Cheat

Okay, so today I decided to do a response article to this article about cheating husbands, because I found it to be outrageously stupid. It lists five classical warning signs that your husband may be cheating on you, based on a book called The Script: The 100% Absolutely Predictable Things Men Do When They Cheat.

So, here are the five warning signs they list, and what I think of them.

1. He starts criticizing everything you do. "He's trying to make you doubt yourself, become defensive," says Landers.

Hmm… This is something women to men ALL THE TIME. This is one of the many double standards that really gets on my nerves. If we criticize them, we’re trying to make them defensive. When they criticize us, it’s routine.

Interestingly, as a man, my experience has been the exact opposite. Once my girlfriends started cheating on me (yes, “girlfriends” with an ‘S,’ I was gullible enough to date not one, but two cheaters in a row), they criticized me a lot less. At first I welcomed the break, until I realized it was only because they really didn’t give a shit.

My last girlfriend could NOT STOP CRITICIZING ME! Sigh! That’s how I knew she loved me.

2. He starts offering "suggestions" to improve yourself. Again, says Landers, this is about making you appear difficult. "He'll say, ‘I keep telling you to lose weight or get a job or go back to school,'" she says. "As though you are the one with the problem, a problem he has been trying to fix."

Or maybe, MAYBE you DO need to lose some weight. Or get a job. I mean seriously, criticism isn’t always a veiled attack. Sometimes criticism is criticism. Honestly I think women give men too much credit. They think we have a cleverly veiled passive aggressive attack, when we actually just tend to say what we mean. Perhaps I shouldn’t speak for all men, but I certainly don’t try to layer my messages.

3. He calls you crazy or depressed. "When he starts acting suspiciously later, staying out late, you'll question your own suspicions," says Landers. "After all, he told you that you're crazy -- you'll start to wonder if you are."

Okay, I do agree that you should never call your significant other crazy, especially if she actually is. Although if she is, you probably shouldn’t be dating her, and you certainly shouldn’t have married her. Or him. Maybe your spouse became crazy later though. And if your husband says you’re depressed, maybe he just means you’re depressed. Maybe he’s worried. Maybe he wants you to feel better. Most husband don’t like it when their wives are depressed, because they love them. Nobody wants somebody they love to be depressed.

4. He starts doing strange things with money. Money or bank statements are suddenly missing, he's carrying around lots of cash or he's spending too little cash.

Finally, here’s something I can agree with. If he’s doing this, he’s definitely hiding something, although it might not be cheating. He may have a drug or gambling addiction, which frankly, can be just as dangerous to your marriage. Okay, so I’ll admit you got 1 of 5.

5. He buys you big, expensive gifts. "You'll think, how could he cheat on me when he bought me this big diamond?" says Landers. "But it's more likely he bought the gift to throw you off or to hide his own guilt."

OR, maybe the gift is a GIFT. Maybe he wanted to give you something special, JUST ‘CUZ. Questioning a gift your husband bought you is a big FUCK YOU, and the exact opposite of what he’s trying to achieve. Then again, I suppose if he really is cheating, he’d say the same, which basically means this simply isn’t a way to tell.

Though I’m aware that in a lot of cases where cheating happens, this is exactly how it plays out, I am under the impression they do not account for the instances where it does not. My girlfriend in high school was convinced I was cheating on her, and did indeed act a little crazy because of it. It turns out she was the cheater, not me. I’ve never cheated on anyone, ever. Her suspicion does not equal his guilt. How many healthy couples did she interview for her book? I bet none, probably because nobody wants to hear about them. (Ugh! Healthy couples are sooo boring!)

All right, so what kind of jerk would I be if I simply tore down a list without offering up any ideas of my own? Feel free to rip mine down too, or add some of your own. So without further ado, here are some real tips for the ladies.

  1. You do not use condoms, yet you find them among your husband’s belongings.
  2. You find women’s garments in your home that are not yours.
  3. He becomes abnormally obsessive about his appearance. Maybe he’s started working out, or put in hair plugs. Maybe he got a bikini wax. The question is, if he’s not doing it for you, who’s it for?
  4. You come home unexpectedly, and there is a naked woman hiding on your balcony, in handcuffs, and wearing your favorite ball gag. “I have no idea how she got there,” he’ll say, holding a pillow in front of his raging hard-on. The really sad thing is, you might still believe him, out of sheer will power.

Here’s a story. It’s not a true story, but I thought y’all might enjoy it.

Awhile ago, a female friend said she found condoms in her husband’s coat. When she confronted him about it, he explained that he took them to work because sometimes he’d “need to relieve stress,” so he’d go to the bathroom and masturbate into one of them.

“Oh, men do that all the time,” I told her.

“Really?”

“Sure.”

“So, you take condoms to work with you so you can masturbate into them.”
”What? No! I thought you meant lying about sex. He’s cheating on you, you moron.”

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I am always amazed at how a book by a woman about men cheating will sell like hotcakes, whereas I've been trying to publish my book about men cheating(It's called "Keeping it real: Walk out bitch! Walk out now!") and it has yet to be picked up.
Some of the tips my book offers on how to spot if your man is cheating:
-He smells like vagina and champagne
-He smells like penis and beer
-He gets calls at weird hours and then goes out and then comes back really relaxed
-He asks you leading hypothetical questions: "What would you say to a three way with the woman/man in the closet?"
-He asks you to put on more weight
-New and offensive sexual routines make it into his repertoire
-He warns you to be careful in public bathrooms because you can get herpes/syphilis/chlamydia/whatever stds from sitting on them, and then when you do get them he says "I told you so"
-He seems happy