Touche Cliche ― The Book of Cliches

-rant; cheating

18. cheating

I know I've harped on about this for a long time, but I recently read a book that just really annoyed me (although every book I read these days annoys me). Cheating as a topic is very important to me because my family has been torn apart by it and it's still seeing the effects of it to this day so I don't have a soft spot for authors who mess it up.

Now I'm all for doing whatever the hell you want with your book, fuck censorship and all, and I believe you as an author hold the inalienable right to create an unlikeable main character. It's for that reason why I continued to read this particular story even as I saw that it was taking a wrong turn. 

Let me set the scene.

THE SCENARIO;

So, the book begins with the main character and her significant other in their bed at night. The main character suddenly confesses that she cheated on her boyfriend with some other man because 'he wasn't paying attention to her'. His reaction? He decides to go full '50 Shades of Grey' on her ass and ties her up and punishes her if you know what I mean, then forgives her. 

THE PROBLEM;

I don't know if it's just me, but I feel like when a cheater says 'you weren't paying enough attention to me', I feel like they're being extremely manipulative. It's like they're trying to gaslight their significant other and take the attention off of themselves. 

It's frankly just not an excuse.

If you feel like your s/o isn't paying enough attention to you, talk to them. In a relationship, if you're unhappy, address it in a conversation, don't just be a huge manchild about it and cheat on them. How is that going to solve the problem? It's just going to exacerbate it and ruin your relationship.

Also, why the hell does the man just take her back? If it were me, I would've kicked their ass out of my house and never spoken to them again. I just hated how cool he was with it, he didn't even leave the room and contemplate what she'd done - he's just like 'oh you cheated, well guess I've got to sleep with you now'. 

And then their relationship goes back to normal. What the fuck? Every example of cheating that I have witnessed with my own two eyes has ended in the person who was cheated on never speaking to that person again. Infidelity ruins relationships and it ruins lives, it's not just a hiccup on the road, it's border patrol. 

It just hurts my brain so much. 

THE CONCLUSION;

If you're going to make one of your characters cheat at least give it real consequences, I'm pretty sure most people who have been cheated on won't just take the person back in an instant (unless they really, really love that person). Have your characters take a break from the relationship, have them leave permanently, have them do something with some impact! 

If you want to make some erotica where the cheater gets 'punished' then do you. Most eroticas don't have repercussions to their actions (cough, cough, incest erotica, cough, cough) so it's fine to have cheating handled like that in that instance, but don't put cheating into your everyday slice-of-life romance and have it disappear with a Thanos snap because that's not realistic. 

WORD COUNT; 574

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED; Thu, 30th May at 11: 09PM