I don’t buy magazines, normally. But I don’t mind walking past the magazine rack at City Market and glancing at the cover photos, to see who’s famous this month.
One of the magazines recently caught my eye… because one of the headlines on the cover asked the following question:
Why Do People in Happy Marriages Cheat?
I could have opened the magazine, to find out why people in happy marriages cheat. People do that kind of thing, now and then — I mean, stand there reading the magazines without buying them.
But I already knew why people in happy marriages cheat. Because they are cheaters. They can’t help it.
Psychologists make a lot of money doing marriage counseling, and writing magazine articles about why people cheat. Have these articles done anyone any good? I don’t think so. There’s just the same amount of cheating going on, regardless. In fact, some of those same psychologists are cheating at this very moment, and they ought to know better.
I learned all about cheating during my marriage to Darlene. In fact, my education started before we were even married, when we were still dating in college.
One of the guys in my dorm (we called him ‘Zipper’ for reasons that don’t belong in a family-friendly news magazine) had this brilliant idea to start a Wednesday night co-ed poker club, and I talked Darlene into joining the club, even though she didn’t know anything about poker. (Actually, I didn’t either, but you go to college to learn stuff, right?)
One week, Zipper announced that we were going to play co-ed ‘strip poker’ on Wednesday, and much to my surprise, the three girls in the club (including Darlene) agreed to join the game.
Instead of betting money, Zipper explained, we would bet items of clothing, which would be removed if we lost the bet. We would keep playing until someone was totally naked.
Me and the other guys were pretty sure we knew how things would turn out. How naive we were.
Darlene showed up fully dressed. And I mean ‘fully dressed’. She wore a hat. She had three sweaters layered over two blouses, over a t-shirt, over a tank top. She wore a skirt over a pair of jeans, over a pair of shorts. Three pairs of socks. And her hair was put up in two dozen bobby pins. She claimed that each bobby pin was ‘a piece of clothing.’
I should have read the writing on the wall that night. That Darlene was a cheater. But of course, love is blind. Even when I ended up losing my shirt (so to speak), I still held on to my faith in Darlene.
Sadly, the pattern continued throughout our (mostly happy) marriage.
Darlene cheated at gin rummy; she cheated at Scrabble; she cheated at Clue.
She cheated at Sorry.
A magazine article that would interest me more, would be:
“Why Do People in Happy Marriages Continue Playing ‘Sorry’ with a Partner Who Cheats?”
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.