ARE you tempted to shag someone who isn’t your partner, or are already embroiled in a messy affair? Here’s how to rationalise away your feelings of guilt. Almost.
You haven’t been getting on with your partner
There’s the actual, sad realisation that things aren’t working out, and there’s ‘not getting on’ in the sense of general relationship friction. Your partner not stacking the dishwasher properly isn’t really a good reason for putting someone else’s penis in your mouth, although it should be a good incentive for the lazy f**ker to stop putting bowls in facing up.
You didn’t evolve to be monogamous
A favourite of blokes, who suddenly develop an interest in evolutionary psychology when there’s a chance of a shag. They may invoke prehistoric times to justify cheating, but if a sabre-toothed tiger appeared in your back garden it’s unlikely they’d be fashioning a spear from a mop and a Kitchen Devil and tackling the beast to protect the tribe.
You and your partner have incompatible sex drives
This is a genuine problem, and a source of tension between otherwise happy couples. Some people would say it’s not the same as wanting frequent sex with your illicit shag because they’re new and interesting and look good in a tight skirt, but that’s just hair-splitting.
You wanted to feel attractive
Everyone wants, at some level, to be attractive. But there’s a handy device for checking your attractiveness level. It’s known as a ‘mirror’. A variation for men is blaming your extra-curricular porking on a midlife crisis. Coincidentally, there’s also a simple method for checking you’re still a fully-functioning sexual being, and that’s having sex with the person you’re meant to.
A handjob, blowjob, etc. isn’t really cheating
Probably the weakest excuse because (A) yes it is, and (B) you probably just haven’t got round to the vaginal sex bit yet. You might be able to delude yourself but it won’t cut much ice with your partner unless they’re a messed-up US Christian teen who reckons God is cool with anal so long as you hang onto your virginity. Pretty sure that’s not in Corinthians.
Dubious moral comparisons
Tell yourself you’re not the first person to have strayed. Steve McQueen shagged loads of women who weren’t his partner, not just one. And people have definitely made more harmful decisions in their lives. Look at Tony Blair and Iraq. Or Jeffrey Dahmer. By the time you’ve started congratulating yourself on never having taken part in an SS massacre of a Russian village, you’ll feel a bit of harmless sex with Chloe at work is worth some sort of medal.
It was a mistake
You feel guilty, you’re rethinking your priorities, it was a mistake. Put like this, your cheating doesn’t sound too bad. However a mistake is something like buying the wrong size batteries for the remote. Cheating involves a vast number of mistakes, including taking all your clothes off, repeatedly stimulating sex organs and thinking up lies that are plausible but not too detailed. If cheating was like buying batteries, you wouldn’t be able to move for f**king AAA Duracells.
