Claude Mills, Staff Reporter'I want my wife and sweetheart to be friends.'
Ed 'Bim' Lewis and Hyacinth Clover
I READ HEATHER Little-White's piece on 'Single Woman and Married Men' which appeared two weeks ago with first, quiet amusement, and then growing alarm.
Ms. Little-White painted a vapid vignette of a married man 'concocting lies' to deceive 'The Other Woman' into maintaining a long-term relationship with him. What a lot of crock!
That idea is OLD, and about as spontaneous and inspired as a bowel movement. Women are no longer that naive anymore, in fact, there are many now who possess the emotional gradient of a rock.
It takes two to have an affair, and the mistresses know exactly what they are getting into. One cannot ignore the mercenary streak in the Modern Day Woman where women actively seek out the caresses, charms and beds of married men. I always try to hunt in my heart for sympathy for these women, but always come back empty-handed.
These 'mercenaries', especially the younger ones, are highly evolved creatures who have adopted a level-headed and practical approach to the infidelity of the married man that is all KA-CHING. In short, they are on the prowl and cashing in big time. And they no longer want rich, older men; they want them married as well.
So it's not the MM's fault that they fool around. Have you seen those micro-mini skirts those girls are wearing? It's an ego thing and women are competitive and cut-throat, programmed to believe that they are always the best option for any man they find attractive. And they set out to prove it at all costs. That's why you see, the MMs are PRESSURED into acts of infidelity.
Read for yourself:
"Married men are better in bed and are more creative and selfless, free-spirited lovers. They are more mature, they have more money and they don't sleep around as much as single men do. Right now, I'm sure it's just me and the wife, and she doesn't do the things I can do for him," Latoya Wignall, a 23 year-old student, said.
"He made the first move, but I was the one who wanted him; he was just the kind of guy I had always dreamed of having."
She may have a point.
A recent article printed in the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis publication suggests: 'Married men make more money because the traits that make a man a high wage earner are also the traits that make him a good marriage partner'. Studies show that married men, on average, make about 11 per cent more than never-married men. Divorced men fall between.
The wage differential is based on findings of the US Current Population Survey by the National Bureau of Economic Research which surveyed 2,549 males with a white-collar job and at least a bachelor's degree.
One reason given for married men making more money is that upper-level managers look for people who demonstrate responsibility - being married and having children - and that can contribute subtly to one's unwritten resume, romantic and otherwise.
Latoya agrees.
"If I am going to have an affair, it is most likely with a married man as he has more to offer. For one, you escape the drama of a real relationship, if there is any drama going on, it must be between him and his wife. If him start flip, I just remind him that there are no rings on these fingers...he can't control me."
However, in Jamaica, the ability to foist the STAR 69 feature is not a big concern of mistresses on the side. They have achieved a species of legitimacy that is quite striking. More often than not, the wife and the sweetheart are well acquainted with each other, and have brokered a sort of uneasy truce.
Mistresses: A necessary evil?
"Jamaica is a small country. I know cases where the sweetheart and the wives are actually friends, but most times the wife knows OF her. She accepts it because it is something she knows about. The sweetheart even protects the interests of the wife. That man cannot have any other women except those two else is a real war," one man explained.
So are mistresses a necessary evil, especially when you have a good man who is a good provider for his family?
"Most men need another woman on the side because he needs to escape from the reality of verbal battles, children, mortgages and so on. You share a special relationship with the woman on the side because she knows everything about you...things you don't even tell your wife...you cannot even too diss her," computer expert Jeffreysaid.
Heard that before? Well, here is a new twist:
"The sweetheart can actually help to save the marriage because she gives you a vibe to go home to your wife, and make even sweeter love to her," he added.
Huh?
Other women give an emphatic no to such an arrangement.
"Yu mussi mad!" one 29-year-old secretary said. "Me fi put up wid dat? I want to hold my head up high pon the street. Is beat me woulda haffi beat her, and if him get involved, mi beat him too, and check mi lawyer. Yu crazy? Me and him other woman friends? Hah! What next, a three-way?"
No formula for infidelity
There is no cookie-cutter formula to explain infidelity. Even if the wife is loving, sensual and kind, it can happen, and that's the scary part about it - infidelity could happen to anyone. Just why people have affairs has no single answer. Each case is different. You know the same tired cocktail of excuses: married too early....found soul mate too late...needed more excitement in the bedroom.
Unless you're extremely lucky, someone, somewhere in an extramarital affair, always loses. Affairs rock your world. Life is never the same again. And you know it is going to end badly. It always does.
"I knew what I was getting into," one self-confessed mistress Janet Sinclairexplains. "But I didn't get out of it without getting hurt." Near the end, it was clear to her that he was seeing someone new. Another affair. His 'skanky' secretary, Janet says.
"His wife eventually left him for someone else, and I just couldn't stand to be with him anymore. I just couldn't bring myself to trust him so I told him goodbye. It's been almost a year...I hear he has someone," Janet said.
But why do people risk everything for that stolen kiss, cheap daytime hotel sex on grungy mattresses, sweaty palms, ripped underwear and adrenaline-drunk heartbeats? Why do writers like to dramatise the affair in popular mythology? Remember novels like the "Bridges of Madison County?"
As a doctor friend likes to say: "It's like chocolate, a sugar-rush, this yearning for the romantic love high we experience from the release of natural amphetamine-like chemicals in the brain."
Who knows?
Not everyone cheats, but the crux of the matter is that deep down, where it really counts, we are all the same - human. And happily - dysfunctionally so - we share the same virtues, passions and faults.
What happens next is magic and drama. And life as we know it.
And anyway, I believe that relationships without pain are not worth having. Pain implies growth, and that the parties involved are evolving into better creatures (hopefully), and that is always a positive thing.
Till next week.
You can e-mail me at cmillsy@yahoo.com
