The roommate’s unfixed female cats are horny for the next door neighbor’s unfixed male cat. The girls squeeze their big hairy black butts up onto the windowsill and lament their inability to push the screen out and be ravaged by the naughty tomcat. They’re completely disinterested in playing as they usually do, and only for a second come and stand in front of us, wailing about our barbarism.
This got me to thinking about love triangles. Not the ones where nobody knows about anyone else, one person keeping a secret from two others, but the ones where it’s all hanging out in the open. I got to thinking about those women, the ones who know that there is someone else, that there is another woman out there, doing things to the same man that she herself does things to…when it’s her turn.
Of course, I’m not talking about single folks, those of us who remain single simply because we’re aware of our inability to commit to only one. I’m talking about those gals who consider that they are indeed in what they consider to be a relationship, but they stand by their men when it comes to infidelity.
There are a lot of reasons that gals stay. The kids, the money, or even the love, can keep them in blinders and binders. They figure what’s a little infidelity if I’ve got a roof over my head and food in my belly. What’s a little infidelity if he still loves me. The other gal…well she thinks the same thing…what’s the big deal, as long as he still loves me.
This is all so far, just fine and dandy. Except, it doesn’t usually end there, does it? It isn’t like the old days when mistresses were simply another person in a man’s life. No, now, gals confront each other, they beat the shit out of each other, they toss curses at each other, and they even kill each other, all over this love which they’re sure that if they could just get rid of the other woman…that love would be impenetrable. Then, when they scare off the other one…guess what usually happens…that’s right, another one shows up…right out of the woodwork. Then it all happens again.
I wonder why that is? Why the Juliets of the world are so content to attack each other, rather than find a Romeo who has hands for no one else? Why she would abandon her desire for devotion, in order to assault another woman who feels the same way that she does?
I wonder why, once a woman has decided that she can live with the infidelity, she does not then understand that she and the perceived other woman share a common commitment, a common adoration, one that is often more powerful than the most dangerous addiction. I wonder why she does not then, after this decision that she recognizes that fidelity is not in her future with the man of her dreams, embrace the other woman, share not only their man, but their sorrow as well, their fears, their insecurities, supporting each other in their mutual love for this man.
Like the tomcat who sits outside the window and smirks and purrs at the roommate’s cats, there are those men who cannot choose, who may not even want to choose. There are those men who, although they do want a relationship, someone to whom they can come home at night, they also want that extra love, that adoration by an outside entity, that place to go when home is not as welcoming. I know, I know, you may think that they are dogs, these men of whom I speak, but admit it, we’ve all loved one of those dogs at one time or another. Like that tomcat, they are charming, witty, seductive and are unusually capable of loving each of the women in their lives, leaving nobody feeling unsatisfied. It is why we love them, it is why we so easily forgive them, it is why they exist.
Hellish Behavior 