I. Rationalizations
It’s hard to feel good about yourself when you’re a cheater. That’s a problem. If you feel too bad about your behavior then you might attempt to change it. As a cheater, you must make the construction of justifications your first priority if you hope to suppress feelings of guilt, maintain a semblance of sincerity in your relationships, and carry on as you please.
(If suppressing guilt and maintaining a semblance of sincerity is not a problem, please see next month’s article: “Romantic Strategies for Unrepentant Psychopaths.”) As a cheater you must understand that everything you do is understandable if you can first come to an understanding with yourself. Five useful rationalizations are listed below. Be sure to choose the one(s) most compatible with your personal style:
1. It’s not your fault because you are unhappy. You are desperately miserable and unable to be content in your own life. Because you are so starved for joy, or feel so trapped and confused, or think you’re so underserving of love, you are incapable of making healthy choices and therefore can’t be held responsible for them. Poor you.
2. You never meant for it to happen. You never realized that you would fall in love with/so desperately want to bone this Other Person. When it happened, you were shocked—and now that you’ve acted on it, it’s too late. You could just break it off with one person or the other, but that would be unkind. You’re not a monster. You are simply confused. You must continue sleeping with all involved parties until you figure out if you’re going to continue sleeping with any particular one. The fact that you can love/want to sleep with more than one person is bewildering to you. You are like a babe lost in the woods, if you take “a babe lost” to mean “an adult secretly arranging” and “in the woods” to mean “clandestine sexual intercourse.”
3. You warned them. Like a pack of smokes or an industrial solvent, you came with a hazard label. Caveat emptor, baby. You said you “had problems,” or “was no good with relationships,” or “was a nymphomaniac with a severe amphetamine habit.” You are not fond of limits. You are a free spirit! So, even though you agreed to this relationship, anyone should have known you weren’t really agreeing. You were only trying to make your partner happy. You did it for them. This is kind of their fault.
4. What they don’t know can’t hurt ’em. Perception is reality. If your partner thinks you’re committed, and everything in your partner’s life affirms this, then it is functionally true. So, as long as you keep your misadventures isolated and compartmentalized, your cheating and not-cheating are for all practical purposes indistinguishable. Except, in one of these scenarios, you get to cheat. Everybody wins!
5. There are worse things. Yeah, you cheat. But you are a great parent/provider/listener/some other quality. We all have flaws. Most people cheat. Cheating is not that big a deal compared to all the other bad things you could be doing—but you are not doing those other bad things because you are so nice. Besides, (pick a number above, 1-4).
II. Strategies
Mastery comes through method. You should cheat like you’re a player in a deep cover heist, not some smash-and-grab moron. Why? Because desperate and impulsive criminals get caught. Also, the benefit of strategizing is that you get to feel smarter than other people in the game, even though they may be unaware they are involved in it—which shows how much they know, right? Five important strategies are listed below.
1. Be a Very Busy Person. Romantic affairs take time, and you’re going to have to account for it in one way or another. Establish that you are a Very Busy Person early on in any relationship. Your job is demanding, so it makes sense that you have to come home late, or travel often, and so on. (Mention what a drag this is. Make it seem as though this is something you resent having to do.) If you don’t have a job like this, claim your artistic pursuits require you be unavailable and unreachable, and refer to this as your “work.” Both artistic endeavors and actual jobs can be said to involve “networking,” which is a great catch-all for not being around. If you don’t have any of these options, overstate how important your friends are to you, and draw attention to what a social person you are. All of these things can free up hours every week—or every day—for cheating. If questioned about it, act hurt and somewhat indignant.
2. Master the technology, don’t let the technology master you. Carlos Danger might be fading from public memory, but don’t ever forget his lessons. Digital technology is dangerous. But, look, don’t get a second phone. You are not Walter White. Just delete the evidence and keep a passcode on the thing. Turn it off when you go to sleep—late night calls arouse suspicion. Unless your significant other works for the NSA, you should be fine. Of course, to begin with, you should not be sending texts or photos that might incriminate you. An old rule of thumb among high school note-passers (back when such things were on paper) was “Don’t write anything you wouldn’t want your mom to see.” A good rule of thumb in the Internet Age is “Don’t write anything you wouldn’t want the world to see.” Every email you send, every Facebook chat, every smartphone photo lasts forever—somewhere. You can’t delete them from other people’s devices. A screencap takes only seconds. Make advances and establish parameters with your cheating partners in person. That way, when you contact them asking if they want to meet for a bagel and go over the accounts, they will know you actually are talking about furiously copulating in room 116 of the Wagon Wheel Motel—but you both maintain plausible deniability.
3. Develop a Positive Public Persona. You must let everyone know what a Nice Guy/Girl you are. People don’t suspect Nice Guys/Girls. Even better, those who do suspect them tend to avoid besmirching the image of a beloved figure because they fear disbelief or reprisal. So, if you volunteer at a non-profit, or adore your kids, or have a lovely spouse, or give generously to charity, or help others in your community—make absolutely sure people are aware of it. Humble-brag. Smile. Pat shoulders and tell people how wonderful you think they are. One of history’s most obvious lessons is that nothing buys you a license to be evil like the appearance of benevolence. Not that you’re evil, of course—we’ve established that your actions are all understandable.
4. Compartmentalize. Now Compartmentalize More. What is real in one world is not in another and vice-versa. You can form multiple identities within the confines of other people’s perceptions, and all of these identities are for all practical purposes real. You can deeply feel all or none of them, depending on your approach, as long as you remember all of these relationships are distinct realities that only you perceive and transcend. You must not think of the rules of one world applying to another. You live in many worlds, with many laws, and you are the arbiter of them all. Shape the universe in accordance to your will. Do not take time to consider the fact that you might be completely, egomaniacally, bat-shit insane.
5. Always Have an Escape Plan. Before you even attempt to get in, make sure you know your way out. The situation can always become untenable, and things can go south in an instant. First of all, if you are the sort who needs a relationship parachute, always cheat “up.” You might end up stuck with your cheating partner as your primary for a while if the operation falls through, and you want to land in a good spot. Secondly, your escape plan should be individualized. When you break it off, the other party should feel affirmed and relieved. If you have kids, they’re a golden ticket in most (but not all) cases—just mention their well-being, and how you now see its importance in a way you could not the last time you were humping in a hotel room in Anaheim. Make breaking it off seem like a necessary thing, but be sure to leave the other cheater feeling good. You both have memories to treasure and so on. Make sure they don’t think you plan to continue cheating elsewhere, which you do.
III. The Rest of Your Life
If you live your hustle, you have to learn to live with your hustle. Whether you picked it or it picked you doesn’t matter. Rationalizations and strategies keep you moving, but you need to remember a few rules to endure the long game that will be the rest of your life.
1. Get Used to Fear. Fear is the fuel of it all. Before you cheat: Fear of missed opportunities. Fear of narrowing options. Fear of a spurned advance, a misread signal, a shameful misstep. Fear of waning attractiveness. Fear of insignificance. Fear of boredom. After you cheat: Fear of discovery. Fear of humiliation. Fear of physical insult from offended parties. Fear of losing someone. Fear of gaining someone else. So much more than this, too. It’s inescapable. Everybody has fears. At least you chose yours. Get used to it.
2. Get a Back-Up Addiction. Being the way you are is going to wear on you. Although you have truly committed yourself to infidelity, sometimes it might not be an option. Like anyone with a habit, going without will tear you up. In addition, when it’s working, keeping it all in order is mentally and physically exhausting. You will need an escape from your escape. Drink. Obsess on baseball stats. Work more. Work out. Do something to get you through. You need to take the edge off or you will get sloppy.
3. Embrace Non-Existence. You are not the person those who love you believe you to be. You will realize this early. In time you will realize that you’re not the person your friends, your acquaintances, and even your adversaries think you are, either. This might make you feel empowered for awhile. Eventually, though, it will dawn upon you that without any accurate frame of reference, you have no way of defining yourself. At that moment you will be struck by the insight that you don’t know who you are, either. Do not panic. There is no such thing as “you.” The self is a fragile construct, ever-shifting and illusionary. Let it go. You are better without it. If you understand your own unreality, then you can be content in everyone else’s as well.
4. Do Not Be Sad. You know that you are not what most people would call a good person. But worse than this is what you do not, can not, and will never know: what would have happened if you hadn’t, if you didn’t; how would you feel about this person or that person or yourself if you had truly given it a chance; if the love you received, or the love you gave, meant anything if it was predicated on a lie. You have exploited the most vulnerable of all people, the people who believe in you. It might even make you consider if you are capable of love at all. Don’t let it get you down. Don’t beat yourself up over it. You’re not that bad. Maybe you’ll change someday. Always keep in mind, (refer to Section I.)
Geoff Hyatt is spending entirely too much time with your wife, and you might want to keep an eye on that.
