Sciences Participating with Arts & Culture in Education

Cheating: A Transfer of Interest?

Illustrated by GABOR BATA

Most people spend their Sunday mornings relaxing at home while drinking a coffee, reading the paper or even sleeping in. Mine, on the other hand, are spent seeing my three hung over friends and discussing their crazy Saturday nights over brunch at our usual bistro. Last Sunday, before I could even take a sip of my coffee, my best friend, Amber yelled “That asshole!” She was referring to her boyfriend. The story was that he told her to behave on Saturday night and not do anything stupid.

Considering that she was going clubbing and planned to drink, he was concerned that she would kiss another guy given the opportunity. That morning, he asked her if she behaved. She was annoyed. There is no better way to turn a dull brunch into an exciting one than engaging in the subject of a cheating partner. While this weekend was supposed to be closure after surviving a week of midterm exams, sadly topics of my moral knowledge class were echoed in our morning discussion.

My initial reaction was that Amber’s boyfriend’s paranoia was driven by the fact that he had cheated on his previous girlfriends and was now worried that the same would be done to him. If anything, she should be worried about his fidelity. Also, he is not very fond of his looks and tends to be a little insecure which only adds fuel to his belief that my friend would cheat on him. The conflict echoes Shakespeare’s Othello, a play wherein the title character is manipulated into thinking that his wife Desdemona is unfaithful to him. Othello, like boyfriend, has insecurities since he is the Moor of Venice and is constantly presented as an other throughout the play. Though boyfriend is no Moor. Furthermore, Iago, a supposed friend of Othello, uses this insecurity as a seed to further plant ideas that his wife’s fidelity is non-existent for the stated purpose of destroying Othello. I am not sure how I fit into Othello -not being Iago here. But the moral of the play is to warn the reader to beware of the green-eyed monster which is a reference to jealousy.

Clearly, her boyfriend’s physical insecurities force him to unintentionally draw the worst conclusions as well as allow jealousy to get the best of him. It also does not help to know that women are generally tagged with the motivation to cheat on their partner should their current relationship lack intimacy, as some psychologists would argue. However, I wondered what actually constitutes as cheating. Is there a concrete definition or is it subjective to an individual? Is it the act of flirting, kissing or actually sleeping with someone who is not your partner, or is it more than that? If nothing else, is it even wrong to cheat?

Anthropologists may say that men are asserting a biological right to have sex with many women to spread their seed to help the their own legacy. A ridiculous justification for men to cheat. Audrey, another friend who had been listening quietly at the table, now talks about her take on relationships: "in principal you cannot link kissing another person to cheating." Cheating is a matter of perspective and cannot be defined. Wrongness of cheating lies in how one reacts to their actions. Essentially, you can’t say that kissing is linked to cheating, since another person or another culture might hold the opinion wherein kissing is merely innocent and respectable. While Audrey's idea about cheating was interesting, I could not help but feel for Amber's boyfriend. I too, at one point, in my life felt a little insecure about myself when I was seeing someone and that someone still had close relations with his ex. It made me rather uncomfortable.

All these thoughts led Amber to say “Why would I cheat on him? We were intimate the other day, guys. He ate whip cream off my body!” It was clear to assume that she was not paying any attention to our opinions. With that thought in mind, I was at a loss to answer her, but I did feel compelled to rethink my order of crepes with strawberries and my side of whip cream. I also felt bad for the retired couple sitting beside us.

Of couse, the names above are made up and the details rather fictitious, but you get the point.