Nobody wants to be the sucker in a relationship. Nobody wants to find out that for the last (insert period of time) their significant other has been cheating on them behind their back.
This happened to me the last several months when I was married. I should have spotted it. I should have realized when she complained and told me she didn’t like talking on the phone when I was in the room. I should have realized that she only cared about that when she was on the phone with her guy friend. A guy that for six years was one of my best friends .
Maybe I did secretly know, I just didn’t care enough.
Still after that whole ordeal I told myself I was never going to be the sucker again. I wasn’t going to be that asshole whole settled down into a family life with some girl only to find out later she was having her fun on the side. If anything I wanted to be that “other guy.” But then I started thinking about that other guy. Is his life really all the great? Yeah he might get laid every so often from some girl who cheats on her guy. But is he missing out on a meaningful relationship? What happens if he ever finds one? Is he going to realize just what an asshole he was? Will he end up being the sucker himself?
What spawned this post is that I just finished watching the movie “The Hangover.” That one character who has that bitch of girlfriend who cheated on him with that bartender on a cruise really got me thinking. This guy keeps making excuses for her. Even going so far as to say “at least he didn’t cum inside of her” to which his friend responds “do you really believe that” or something along those lines.
I think there is something inside all of us guys (and I’m sure girls too) that really bothers us about this shit. On one hand we’re told by these women in our lives that we should be good steady providers who get married and have kids and never sway. But then we hear these stories about lonely and bored housewives who go and fuck the dangerous loner types for a lark. Because this guy that they married and that they groomed into being steady and responsible is no fun anymore. Between that and our desire to stick our dicks in every hot piece of tail, it’s no wonder guys are classically so hesitant to want to accept marriage, mortgage, two kids and a dog.
Yet deep inside most of us are good guys. Most of us do want a loving caring and steady relationship. Most of us do want what women want. We just don’t want to wake up one day having realized we’ve let so much nice tail go by and wonder why considering that now we know our wife has been banging the guy who was just supposed to be an old friend.
But yet we take the chance. We’ve got the balls enough to risk being the sucker because the reward is great if it turns out we aren’t. Because even we realize that in the long run, the other guy is really just an asshole. Somebody who doesn’t have the balls or the capacity to settle down and take that risk.
So who’s really the sucker?
I’m not really in a position to comment.
I believe marriage is obsolete. It was fine in it’s day, but it’s day is done. I wish I didn’t believe that, but I do.
I think couples should enter into a 5 year agreement with an option to renew. That’s about how long most marriages last these days anyway.
sorry to hear that story.
but i couldn’t have said it better. who is the real sucker?
Great post man… it’s fucked that you got cheated on… sorry to hear it man… hopefully the next one will work out.
@Bricker59 – interesting idea
Dude, that sucks. The Hangover had me tripping over that as well. I couldn’t believe all the shit he said to protect her. I couldn’t do that. Hell, I know I couldn’t do that. I could forgive but never forget.
I suppose we are suckers because we go out looking for someone to love us. For someone to be the perfect match to us. As if we are some puzzle piece.
Life takes risks.
xo
@Bricker59 – that is fantastic. Yes!
I’m sorry you were cheated on. I was cheated on but I’ve never been married. I don’t know who the sucker is.. sometimes I feel like it’s me because I just want to be loved.
It’s great seeing a guy’s perspective on this because [sorry to say] most posts are about girls being cheated on by boys.
I think part of loving somebody is to let go of all of those suspicions.
As to what happened in the Hangover, I think sometimes people just say that to make themselves feel better. Even when all the signs are hitting you in the face, you don’t want to piece it all together, in fear of what the conclusion actually means.
AND it does suck when girls say that they just want something steady and reliable, but then all they want is a party in their pants. Boooo.
I think sometimes we don’t see it (the cheating that is) because we don’t want to, not necessarily because we don’t care. We believe that the person we’re with loves us the way that we love them (or used to love them), and that trust will never be broken. And, in my mind, it’s not the actual having sex that breaks that trust, it’s the lying about it. You can’t live in a relationship where there are lies like that. That’s not really a relationship.
And the psychological reasons behind cheating are numerous. I don’t think very many people (there may be a few) go out and cheat just to piss off/upset/hurt their significant other. i think most people end up in that situation (and I’m not saying it’s not their fault, because it is) because they don’t know how to communicate their needs to their partner, and their partner doesn’t know how to meet them. It kind of sucks for both people. Or all three, because you know it’s not fun for the third wheel.
It seems to me that a lot of people forget that love is a part of life, and in life, we all take risks. We sometimes separate the two so we feel better. We all tend to have our own fantasies of how our love life should go, and then when the lust and the initial infatuation dies down, we start to realize that our boyfriend/girlfriend are just normal human beings and that tends to make us look at them differently. It’s like, suddenly our fantasy starts to fade and the excitement diminishes. The problem lays in the fact that humans by nature, are impatient and we tend to not want to work hard for love. We work hard in our everyday lives, so (to me) people feel love should come easy. It doesn’t. We need to consistently work (on both sides) to achieve happiness. I feel that once the initial infatuation fades, we need to communicate more and find ways of keeping the spark. If two people can’t find the compromise, they shouldn’t be together in the first place.
Cheating, to me, is the worst kind of betrayal associated with love. You feel you know a person and you have absolute trust in them. Finding out they have committed a form of betrayal puts us in a state of denial, at least for a while. There are some, that want to be loved so badly, they will take the abuse. As long as they continue to get those feelings of being special or wanted. I could never do that. I, just like anyone else, want to be loved, but I’m not willing to sacrifice my values or my self worth.
It is easy to feel like a sucker when you find your lover/husband/wife has cheated, however; the person who cheated IS the sucker because they devalue themselves as well as they lose the best thing that could happen to them.
I believe you when you say most of you guys want to just get it right and be happy and serene with the right person.
Thank goodness, can we picture a world full of Charlie Sheens from two and a half men? It’s funny to watch, but that’s about it!
“The other man/woman” is an asshole for going after someone married, but it takes two to tango.
Monogamy is overrated. In my mind, there is no moral/ethical difference between wanting to/thinking about having sex with someone, and actually doing it.
So as long as it doesn’t take away from time/energy he could be putting towards me, and as long as he’s open and honest about it, I wouldn’t mind if my boyfriend had sex with other women. (Of course I wouldn’t want him to get her pregnant or catch a disease either!!!) I don’t see a difference between that and a threesome, either. Some people may, but to me, if he’s going to have sex with someone else, it doesn’t matter if I’m there or not. As long as he doesn’t start neglecting me, emotionally or sexually, I have no problem with it. :)