10 posts tagged “infidelity”
The thing about secrets that confuzzles is that the people who own them don't think they'll come out. Even when they themselve reveal them. Simon Foster, for example, fell on bad times after going on a the British show "Wife Swap" and having his character defined by being in a relationship whether both partners had girlfriends. So there was embarrasment, then divorce, then substance abuse and job loss and, finally, either suicide or a tragic drug accident. Which, thanks to his bit of celebrity, will remain forever unsecret via the internet.
Can you really kill by revealing a secret? Litterateur V.S. Naipaul believes so. In the just-published, authorized biography The World is What It Is he admits that letting the world know that he had paid prostitutes during the early years of his marriage was likely what pushed the state of wife's cancer from remission into terminal.
The readier someone is to reveal a secret from the past, the more likely that secret will be like the sandwich stuck in a drawer and forgotten at work. While it was out of sight it may have gained pungency, but as a secret it has lost its ability to satisfy most tastes. And so we have Gennifer Flowers trying to squeak a few more shekels and nanoseconds of fame by auctioning her secret recordings of then-Governor WJ Clinton as her proof of their infidelitous amorousness.
It may seem like a good idea at the time, but murdering an ex-lover rarely seems to work out as a way to keep the relationship secret. The latest to take the fall for following that fool's gold strategy is Pennsylvania's Jennifer Vinsek, sentenced to life without parole when her ex-boyfriend was shot to death by her new beau. Apparently, there was a plan to keep the two apart; but the plan fell apart.
Even the world's oldest avocation now has a consultant trying to make some money off it. Marina, Calif., homebody Deborah Barnhart charges $500 a month to help infidelitors cheat on their spouse, providing them the backup for their secret life on the side.
Nobody keeps a secret unless they are afraid of the consequences. But Pamela Druckman's new work, Lust in Translation, suggests, anecdotally, that the power of a secret infidelity and severity of the consequences for straying depends on the cultural context.
The shark of infidelity or the piranhas of tiny lies. The shark probably kills faster, but which way of cheating instead of committing is more harmful to a relationship? Does it matter when the relationship has died? Of course, by the time a couple gets to arguing on who is to blame it's probably all over but the shouting.
To benefit from someone else's secret you need to know who they are most afraid will learn it. You don't even have to know what is being hidden, but it certainly gives you the upper hand in negotiations if, like some creative Texas lawyers, you were a part of building the secret.
A line separates what a majority believe is lying and keeping a secret? Not everyone agrees where the line is -- and an individual might not feel there is even one definite site -- but wherever the line, once you know it has been crossed it is foolish to feel anything less than pity (and complete antipathy is not necessarily wrong) for the person who pretends the line was either never there or still yet to be crossed.
The revelation of extrarelationship activity is an exchange of power between the couple. The power resides with the "infidel" as long as s/he keeps the secret. That power may not be without cost -- conscience -- and it shifts when that secret is let on consciously or accidentally.
** Does Big Jo play her hand in the marriage game by letting on she knows while minimizing the risk of being outtrumped by forcing a confrontation? **
