Cheating women

By RENEE MURRAY
Published January 27, 2010

One day, while watching TV with my mother who had come to visit, an advert on HIV awareness came on. This is where a woman gets a sharp rap over the knuckles from Jimmy Gathu, for her infidelity and ignorance to the fact that; the man she is cheating with possibly has affairs with other women too. She is made to realize that her thoughtless actions, put her spouse at risk of contracting the HIV virus.

At the beginning of this HIV-awareness campaign, the message was directed towards men. Now it is the women’s turn to get a slap on the wrist. When the message had sunk in (thanks to Jimmy for his dramatization of the punch-line “Wanawake, wacheni mpango wa Kando!” with an accentuation towards the end of the sentence); my mother was disturbed and told me, that the advert was misplaced because according to her, it is men who do ‘such things’!

Excuse my mother’s ‘naiveté’, she is a very traditional woman who believes that infidelity is a man’s ‘disease’. She was upset because to her, the message was addressed to the wrong gender! Well, I informed her that the men had had their ‘share’, but that did not do much to quell her disgust for Jimmy! Women who have affairs while married, were unheard of before, but now we hear of them almost as much as we hear of unfaithful men.

That reminds me of a conversation I had with my sisters one Sunday evening over tea. The aimless conversation led to a discussion about a marriage well known to us, that was at the brink of falling apart because; the man had cheated on his wife more than once, causing them to separate. As we tried to weigh the chances of the marriage surviving, one of my sisters said something that made us think hard.

She insisted that the marriage would be just fine, and that the couple would soon be back together, to pursue their ‘happily ever after’. Those of us who did not see the chance of that happening, reasoned that if the man had been a problem ever since; maybe the lady had had enough, and she most certainly would ask for divorce. My sister’s faith in that marriage did not waver, for according to her, Kenyan marriages do not end when a man strays; they end when a woman is unfaithful.

Welcome to the world of cheating wives. Women today, despite knowing that two wrongs do not make a right, are increasingly having affairs while married. When they say that what men can do, women can do better, it apparently applies to infidelity too. Women who cheat on their spouses do it so discreetly that when the affair eventually becomes public, the damage is almost irreparable. By that time, either the affair has run its course, or it has reached a point of no return; and the woman has left the husband, for the other man.

Most Kenyan marriages today end, not because men stray- they’ve been doing that since our father’s time- but because women are seeking that ‘forbidden fruit’ as well. Unhappy women in relationships go out there, in an effort to find that elusive happiness, and in the process they fall in the open arms of other men, who are too willing to fill that void.

The fact that men find this betrayal by their wives impossible to forgive, puts a damaging dent in marriages, making them almost irredeemable. See, a woman’s love is something special, because with this love comes total acceptance – something that all men seek. That love is not only receptive, but also nurturing. Somewhat like that woman’s touch, that turns something lifeless, and mundane, into something vibrant and beautiful. Men become obsessively jealous, when this special part of the woman that they feel belongs personally to them, is shared with another man. This does not help their ego one bit. It is never just about sex when a woman is unfaithful, it goes way beyond the physical aspect of a relationship; and that is why it takes a saint of a man, to forgive his straying wife.

For men, having sex with a woman does not necessarily mean he has feelings for her. They have to try really hard to even remember the names of their ‘conquests’. That goes to show that when a man strays, sometimes it is purely about sex; no emotions, no feelings and sometimes, no names. That ironically does not mean that, dealing with a straying husband is any easier for the women.

The lethal effects of a straying woman, are felt in the way she perceives the affair. When a man has an affair, he has the capability of leaving the affair out of his marriage, enabling him to live two, three, or even four (depending on the number of affairs he cares to have) separate lives, with those women. He is able to switch to “loving-husband” mode, and block the other women out of his daily routine, until he has a need to ‘use’ them again. A cheating wife on the other hand, cannot detach herself completely from the affair; she brings the affair into the marriage. Anything small can make her think of the other man, and she can even begin comparing the sexual performance between her husband and the other man, therefore bringing the affair into the privacy of their bedroom.

A cheating woman is a sharp blade deep in the heart of any relationship. Whether the bleeding stops, or the relationship hemorrhages to death, depends on how the man takes it. Forgiveness does not come easy, but men need to be reminded to pay attention to their women; because unlike them, women do not have affairs just for the thrill, or sex, they need a reason to cheat. Men should stop taking their wives for granted, and causing them to stray, it is about time they took responsibility; for the starring role they play in creating dysfunctional marriages. On my part, I wait to see what happens to the estranged couple, and whether my sister was right about them.

Infidelity has crossed the gender borders, and when women stray, you know something is dead wrong. Like my mother lamented, women do not do that; it is not in their nature. Well, maybe they shouldn’t stray, but sadly, they do!

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