My beautiful friend Lindani Assani this week started a debate on her Facebook page on cheating and infidelity. She wrote: “We always talk about women who sleep with married men, calling them all kinds of unpalatable names. We blame them for the relationship. Well, now we have a new phenomenon where single men are also busy dating married women. They know very well she is married, but they still go ahead and have a sexual relationship with her. Some even have the audacity to go and visit her in her matrimonial home. What do you call these men? Prostitutes? Do you call them gold diggers trying to take advantage of rich married women? I am interested to know. What I have observed is that society still blames the women for the relationships, the same way you blame single women who go out with married men. Are men faultless in all this?” She ended her post with a playful dig at the cheating men calling them ashawo, a borrowed phrase from Nigeria which I gather mean prostitutes.
But her post brought to the fore a phenomenon that has been around for decades. My observation is that women are the easy target to blame every time a case of infidelity has occurred. It is common for women to call other women names because she is having an affair with a married man. The man is spared of the scrutiny and portrayed as a poor man who was seduced by a desperate woman looking for a man to sponsor her life or by a woman who is desperately looking for a man to take care of her sexual needs.
The same approach is indeed taken when a married women is caught cheating on her husband. The blame squarely goes to the woman calling her ‘mkazi osakhutitsidwa ndi mamuna wake’. This time the woman is called even worst names as someone who is self destruct and cannot stay faithful to her husband. Nothing much is said about the man’s involvement.
So, as the debate on who is to blame on infidelity continues, my stand has been very clear from the word go; whether you are a man or a women, stay clear of married people, it never ends well for you. It is even worse if you are a woman.
The type of judgement and scorn that you get, especially from your fellow women is on another level. I know all about loveless marriages and partners have the right to feel how they feel, but getting entangled in these love triangles with these married people is a loss for the single. Let the married couple sort out their own mess and if they fail let the divorce and then at that time you can come in.
I don’t know what it will take for the world to be a fair place where everyone taking part in infidelity will get the same kind of treatment. But as it is right now, it is as clear as day light that men are not held accountable for their actions in the same way women are.
The onus is on an individual to make decisions that will be able to live with. Otherwise it is clearly an unfair world right now. Fact!
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