A Cold Play...

Well, by now, pretty much everybody in the world believes that the executive of Astronomer (which I think most people had absolutely no idea what that company even was before this debacle - underscoring the concept that there is no bad press) and his HR manager definitely made a Cold play against their respective spouses by getting caught on the kiss cam at the Coldplay concert. I’m sure Chris Martin had no idea that his kiss cam idea could ever go quite so wrong.   And it is always a Coldplay when you cheat.

However we’re all acting like this is some sort of anomaly, like rarely do people cheat on their spouses.  I’m a divorce attorney and I can tell you that almost everybody does this shit. I’m not exaggerating, in 100 of my divorce cases, 75 of them have some cheating.  Perhaps it was one time a long time ago, perhaps it was emotional only, most of the time it is outright cheating.  There are mistresses, and misteresses (I made that word up because there is no name for a man that is ok with being a side piece...). [Esther Perel did research to show that of long term affairs, it is only women that will stay by a man that remains married to someone else - men might hang in there for a little while, but eventually, if they can’t move forward in the relationship, they leave.  They do not stay and be kept in a perpetual state of limbo...and that is something to note about the differences between men and women...I will leave you to draw your own conclusions].

People have multiple one night stands, flings of varying durations, long term side pieces, one affair partner.  This is commonplace in the divorce arena.  And these are the ones we KNOW about...how many fly under the radar of your knowledge?  And as the Astronomer Exec is finding out, it is not all that hard to get caught in a world where everything, and I do mean everything is filmed and uploaded.  

And I am not even talking about the open marriages.  THEY CHEAT TOO!  (See Esther Perel’s book - State of Affairs - in that she explains that while we may have opened up marriages and commitments but that has not stemmed the tide of infidelity).   Even ENM (Ethical non-monogamy) relationships have rules: you can’t fuck friends, you have to fuck people out of town, no fucking someone more than once, no lovers, no not lovers, full disclosure, etc.  And as Esther’s research showed, even people in open relationships cheat.  They violate the rules, not created by society, but thoughtfully crafted by the partners themselves. Now if that doesn’t blow your fucking mind, I don’t know what will!

I think it is harder to ascertain what is cheating in the open relationship world because it’s just way more fucked up and hard to decipher because the rules are so convoluted. I guess what I find fascinating about this whole Coldplay kiss cam fuck up is that everybody is so indignant about it when literally so many people are out there are cheating on their spouses!  My research shows so many of us are out doing exactly what these people did, but everybody’s like acting like this is some sort of anomaly, like these people are doing something that is so morally repugnant and obscure. 

Well if it is so morally wrong why does it happen so often in our society? I don’t know very many people who have not cheated in some capacity and for the ones I do know that haven’t cheated, most of them have been cheated upon.  Seriously, I am struggling right now to think of one marriage I know that there wasn’t some infidelity of some kind or another.  Especially in first marriages.  I think the ratio for first marriages and cheating is ridiculously high!

In some cases, it happened when they were younger, and then grew out of it, for other people drinking was a huge fuel for infidelity...I would fall into that camp for the most part.  I had a hard time remembering who I was committed to when I was drinking. It’s probably because I had no self-esteem and no boundaries. However, there are some people that just love the thrill.   They don’t think about the damage that it’s gonna do.  Because they think the harm only comes when they get caught. But the harm is building all the time.  The missed connections, the missed intimacy and the lying.  Even if they are successful keeping it under wraps, they grow to hate themselves and completely distance themselves from the life (double as it may be) they are missing out on.  They don’t think about the damage that it’s gonna do to their children, because they think the kids will never know.  The kids almost always know...sometimes before even the other parents knows.  

Often times there is this air of right, they stayed too long in a relationship that is just dead and now they’ve somewhat feel justified because their spouse is a dick or she’s a bitch and so the cheating seems like they’re doing some sort of, I don’t know, almost harmless act.  Or if it is harmful, the other person has it coming because of all the shitty things they have done or said, or all the ways they didn’t show up.  

I think most people cheat because of the thrill.  It is the dangerousness, the clandestine meetings, the trysts, it add this element of excitement that is missing in our daily grind.  I mean, it doesn’t have to be, but we all allow our most important relationships to drift into a comfortable disassociation.  We could use our marriage as a vehicle to deeply explore intimacy, but instead, we sideline our spouses and treat them as an afterthought.  The primary relationship becomes the last place we dedicate our time, our attention and our lust.  

But that thrill of getting away with it!  That’s really what seems to be the epidemic in our lives, people in polyamorous relationship relationships go very far to define what the rules are in an open marriages, what are the rules, and they go about breaking them just as often and as badly as the monogamous couples.  Esther Perel, who is hands down the authority on sex and love and marriage, says that people in those relationships still cheat, they violate the boundaries just as often.  There is just something about the thrill of getting caught that heightens sexual attraction and arousal pushing it to a place that we just can’t leave it alone. 

What the fuck?

I also find in this time where the president of the United States is a fucking convicted felon and was definitely fucking around on Epstein Island (have you noticed that the only time Trump ever looked truly happy is when he was with Jeffrey Epstein? Which is just sick on a whole variety of different levels).  That morality and what we judge as good, moral and right, it is as if that whole story line, that plot has now just been placed somewhere out of reach and no one seems like they have the power or inclination to ever get it back.  

It feels a bit hopeless really.  We sold the truth for profit. People just make shit up, call everybody a narcissist (more accurate is that half of the people are narcissist, and the other half of people are the victims of the narcissist).  Most of the US is cheating on their spouses.  And the younger generation is deciding NOT to get married in the first place which is not going to stem the cheating tide, it will just create a whole new area of the law as to how to divvy up that which would be marital property except there was no marriage.  Younger people seem to be saying, “you can keep your marriage institution and shove it!”

So what the fuck is up with us?

I think what’s up with us is that we all love to take other people’s inventories.  We all like to point the finger at someone else so we can continue to do shady shit in our own lives.  We are acting like something that is so common place in our society is some sort of morally abhorrent anomaly.  It isn’t.  It is happening in your community, to your friends and neighbors every single fucking day.

My heart goes out to the spouses of the two people caught cheating. If you didn’t know, perhaps maybe, you didn’t even suspect, you are now blindsided and left to pick up the very public shards of what’s left of your marriage. You are now being questioned by your children, your family members and you’ve been humiliated on a very wide scale.  And it isn’t you that should be ashamed or embarrassed. You didn’t do anything wrong.  And I hope you spend very little time feeling embarrassed by your spouse’s shitty behavior.

Hopefully you were holding the tenets of your marriage, your morals intact and now you’re blindsided with a very public outing of person that you loved and married and probably had children with being a dirtbag in front of the entire world. Welcome to 2025!

And if you are the ones that were cheating, did you not see it ending like this? Did you not see that there was going to be a cost for you first and foremost?  Did you not see there was going to be a price to be paid for your spouse ? For your children?  For your company?  For your employees? For your friends? For your family?  How could you not see that coming? It’s The Digital Age. Everything we do is filmed, everything we say is taken down and put up on social media. How could you not see that coming? 

I think that we live in this delusion that what we do doesn’t affect other people but we are interdependent. We are all reliant upon each other for sustenance, for love, for affection, for safety.  It is our social fabric, and it is tattered and threadbare.   We’ve gotten so far away from truth and fidelity, for anything that passes as a moral compass and so this is our landscape.  Cheating reigns supreme while it devastates the lives of all who are to near to the implosion site.

Behavior has consequences, far-flung consequences that you can’t even begin to anticipate at the time when what starts as a harmless office flirtation explodes into somebody’s living room and everything that they held true and right and good and safe is now blown to smithereens in front of well, everyone.

How do you recover from that?  And I am not sure why defilement and public condemnation is the place we go to.  How is this any of our business?  Why do we think we are immune to the very fickle spotlight that flows across our society and relationships?

I hate to quote the Bible but, “let those who are without sin, cast the first stone.”  And let me say that there are far too many people who would just be standing there, stone in hand, looking skyward.  Looking around trying to avoid the obvious conclusion that they have nothing to say without rendering themselves completely hypocritical.

I don’t know why those two people cheated.  The photos I saw looked like two people in love.  Two people who were happy and enjoying each other’s company.  Just totally happens to suck that both of those particular two people were married to other people.

Perhaps Andy Bryon and Kristin Cabot are illustrative for the rest of us; an example of karma in action.  What comes around, goes around.  And when you behave in ways that violate the tenets of vows you took, and roles you agreed to hold, there are sometimes swift and horrible consequences for a whole bunch of people that didn’t see it coming.

It takes a long time to get over betrayal.  And betrayal that is now flogged all over social media is a special kind of pain.  For all involved.  It isn’t easy to have your name the butt of every joke, or to be vilified.  It isn’t any easier to have your very private life now subject to the scrutiny of the masses.

But can we as a society please get over the moral outrage, please?  Many, many people cheat. This isn’t a one off.  This isn’t something that is out of the norm.  And if we don’t like what has become the norm, then perhaps, just maybe it is time for us all to take a closer look at our most intimate relationships and cowboy up.  If we don’t love the person we are married to anymore, or if we have fallen in love with someone else, then for fuck’s sake, please, have the courage and decency to leave before karma tees you up for a nine iron right upside your very lovely life...

Cheating is always a cold play, by cowards, or at the very least people who care more about themselves than they do the people they pledged to love, honor and cherish...regardless of where you stand on the whole fidelity spectrum, cheating always comes back to haunt you, sometimes it comes for you in front of millions of people.

But just because we all know now, doesn't mean that they didn't know all along...

Again, still...