Why (Some) Men Cheat

I have a friend, who told me, very matter-of-factly, "I get p___y every chance I get."

I have another friend who used to throw away thousands of dollars in Atlantic City every chance he got.

I can think of several men I know who get sloppy drunk anytime a bottle of alcohol is in the same room with them.

All of these men are married men. All of them have different poisons, but each provides the same result --- escape.

Last Wednesday, it took me three hours to get to work. After dropping my son off at school, I missed my train into the city because he was running late. I quickly switched gears and decided to take the bus part of the way in. But no more than five minutes and roughly five blocks into my ride I had to jump off because my wife couldn't find her set of car keys and she needed to drop the baby off at the sitter. She insisted I had both sets. Because I was pissed I walked home much faster than I would've been able to had it been any other time. I found the car keys 30 seconds after I walked through the door on the dining room table next to the fruit bowl. I left the house again, this time completely punctual for the train that would get me to work sometime around ten o'clock --- a full hour after I needed to be there. My intern comes in at ten. What kind of example am I?

The fact that I had been up since 5:45 that morning only made me angrier.

As I stood on the platform I felt so weighed down by my unnecessarily complicated life hustling my kids back and forth for the sake of a long commute to a job that doesn't even slightly fulfill or appreciate me.

A thought crossed my mind:

I can't take this. This is killing me...I just need somebody to f^%! me unconscious.

I didn't have my wife in mind. I didn't have anyone in mind at all. It was an outburst based purely in my desire to escape momentarily into something else.

My friend, the gambler, was always working, always getting home late, always fighting with his wife for working late and getting home late. He gambled to deal with what he couldn't control, until he got counseling.

That other guy who told me he gets some every chance he gets still isn't sure he should be married, but he's picked the worst way in the world to find out if he's right.

I'm not defending anyone's behavior --- most men don't need a reason to cheat. I also know that once you get a taste of your poison escaping gradually gets replaced by the chase for the high that comes with the escape. Personally, I prefer not to be addicted to anything so I choose to ignore thoughts like these when they enter my mind. But I'm not going to righteously pontificate either. From the biggest bums to the most stand up guy, depending on how hard a man's day, week, life might be, fleeing is probably mixed up somewhere in all his options.

With the week we had on Wall Street and with EVERYONE scrambling to make ends meet, I imagine escapism for both sexes will rise. I pray it doesn't escalate much. Poison destroys both the person taking it and their families.