Cheating

I was reading Zeitoon’s web log today and she had mentioned a web log written by a married woman who writes about her relationship with another man. I was curious and decided to check out that web log. I read her recent notes and she says that she is married to a man for seven years and they have a son but they couldn’t really relate and she divorced once (mostly because of her lover) but got back to her husband after 3 days because of her son but still is seeing the other man but they are trying to stay just as friends now.

She explains how the husband limits her and always have limited her, never really listened to her and … I understand that it is very hard to live with-ought love and since a Woman get divorce in Iran, man will have the kids by law (girls older than 7 and boys older than 2), so may be some women keep their marriage because of their kids and have their own private love life as well. How right is this? Who is responsible? Society? Culture? Or the person herself/himself. I am asking this because even in west, that the societies are more open and after divorce the woman can have the custody of her kids, still some women (I am just analyzing the woman side of the story here, I know the number of men that cheat is usually more) cheat. My opinion as a married woman who has kid too is when you have kids and you cheat, you are cheating your children first, this can be more destructive to them than divorce. Some parents think their kids won’t know any thing but I think kids are the first ones who know all the secrets of their parents. If a kid especially a boy knows some day, that her mom is cheating or has been cheating that can have a huge harm on him/her, some kind of harm that will always stay with him/her. It will affect his future marriage and relationships a lot.
I think the first step to avoid such a situation is try to know the person we want to get married as much as possible. I know with the current situation in Iran and limitations that exists especially for girls in families it is really hard to know the person that you want to marry very well before marriage and I believe you can not truly know some one unless you live with that person under the same roof but spending enough time together and try to be realistic not just romantic can help a lot in making this big decision of life. So the first step is knowing your future spouse and then make the final decision for marriage, now if you did not have that much chance to know the person at least try to know him before having any kid. Now if you really were not that fortunate, and did not know your husband well enough before having baby then you are trapped and there is no better choice than sacrificing our feelings for our kids, if we think we cannot do it and our own happiness is more important, divorce is the last solution but cheating and living with lies all the time should not really be considered as a choice or solution!!

I wish we (Women and men) try to be realistic and less selfish so we can have a better world!!