BODY LANGUAGE
Nona Cummings
Self-delusion is one hell of a mirage. At least with the latter, when you arrive at the point where you thought you saw an oasis, it sinks in. But there are just some times when the evidence is there for all to see, but you still don’t get it. Just ask women. By now, one would think, women have realised that sizzling tips contained in the likes of How to Drive Him Wild in Ten Easy Steps are no surefire guarantee that he won’t stray from the nuptial nook. But they haven’t.
There are just some men out there who, at the sight of everything besides their partners, are reduced to leaky vessels. Perhaps, like nesting swallows or gibbon apes, it’s all in their genes. They may say they’re simply programmed to spread their seed far and asunder. But this is not an attempt to explain unfaithful men, which could be easy.
What is more difficult is explaining away women’s reactions. They always reduce it to what should be called The Old Lusty Loins defense.
There are legions of these women apologists out there aka The He Fucked Her But He Really Loves Me Brigade. The justification of choice trotted out by these wifely and girlfriendly types is simple: all he wanted was sex.
The celebrities aren’t getting it right either. Hollywood is awash with famous adulterers, whose fine-young-thing wives have tried in vain to bind their men to their wedding vows.
Imagine living a life of mortal fear like 1980s then-starlet, Melanie Griffith. Her collagen-enhanced smackers positively tremble any time a woman out of a perambulator walks by her Latino stud man, Antonio.
Women have been convincing themselves that when their men stray, it’s perfectly okay, because, they chant happily, it’s her he really wants. Rather bizarre logic. Just look at the kinds of epithets, like my favourite: “He may go looking for tinned fish in the garbage, but he knows he’ll always get roast beef at home.” There you have it, then. Convince yourself there’s no serious problem. He just needs a bit of fish on the side, but you’re the Main Pussy in his life.
But is it all about a good lay, then?
Not so, says self-help guru and author, Ann Perlman, who has penned a rather nice read, simply titled Infidelity: A Love Story. It’s a rather ironically written tear-jerker about how the author, having herself penned numerous guides on marital bliss, found her own advice left her in the lurch when it came to the crunch. Just like that woman who wrote that book called The Rules and got divorced. Not even the explosive combination of being a clever best-selling author of books like: Wholesome Thrills, Sexual Games, and being a hell of a tigress in bed herself, saved Ann Perlman her grandmother’s, her mother’s and now, her own fate: of being cheated on.
Ann’s well-hung football player husband had been messing around with a married Japanese woman while she was on Oprah, at home with the kids, and of course, buying a negligee to keep him happy. As he later admits, he fell in love with his mistress, and even refused to give her up. But Perlman’s first reaction was: “Was she any good?” “Better than me?!” All this she screamed as she bashed in his car window. Like most women, she “thought we had a good sexual relationship”. Point is, as the author writes, you can be Mrs Good at Everything, but a-roving he still may go
Whores can always be trusted to give an enlightened perspective on their (mostly married) clients. Some will say it’s all about balling. And this lot will be at pains to explain how some men are just after a bit of variety in their sex lives now and then like doing it against the door. No S&M, blow jobs and other lewd stuff here; the friends of the housewife will be alarmed to know some of their members out there still haven’t moved from the lights out, nightie up, on the Edblo routine.
But, most will say, these men are just in dire need of a form of something else like a pressing need to have someone listen to his tired old droning about how the boss hates him, or how he did actually have hair when he was 20. Their erstwhile harassed, bored or tired wives, the ladies say, aren’t interested. One told me some of her clients even bring along snaps of the wife and kids.
There is no advice hidden here. Firstly, it would be a bit stale to tell all women out there to leave their philandering partners once and for all. And since the age of militant feminism is not really all but dead, it would be unwise to suggest women blame themselves when their men cheat. But the real key would be for the self-duping to end. It’s not about his “urges”, girls. It’s about you and him. Your relationship. And where it’s headed. There is a problem. A problem that in the age of nasties like HIV, that would be plain foolish to ignore.
One of the real tear-jerkers in Infidelity came as the author and her daughter were paging over a Victoria’s Secret catalogue; when her daughter suddenly says, pointing to one of the models: “If you looked like that, would Daddy have stayed faithful?” In a display of sexual honesty a lot of women could learn a lesson or two from, Perlman says she knew the answer. But unlike her grandmother, who lived a lifetime with a man she knew was in love with another, and her mother who put up with her father screwing every woman in town because “it was me he came home to, after all”, Perlman made up her mind, and made some tough decisions. Any more would be to give the plot away to our good readers.
Infidelity: A Love Story, by Ann Perlman, is published by Hodder and Stoughton