Christmas is for White People

Once we made it to high school and became too cool for a picture with Santa Claus every year, my mom went on a nagging spree.  And it worked.  So what started as an appeasement so that we wouldn’t “have to hear it this year… again,” has now become the tradition of my sister, her dog, and me getting our picture taken with Santa every year.  My mom gets it as a Christmas present, and is somehow always surprised and elated that we took another one.

This year, with the advent of Groupon, Crowd Cut, Living Social and the like, I was able to score a 50% of deal on a 5×7 and 2 3x5s.  Pretty sweet right?

And as I stood in line, clutching my iphone (containing the info for the aforementioned deal), I noticed, right under a picture of a very cheesy Santa, a little button that said, DISCUSSION.  Naturally, I tapped the button.  There were clearly more than a few first timers to Groupon trying to figure out if the company is going to send a coupon to their house, asking how Santa will be dressed, if they need to print one coupon per child, when/if they can bring their dog… All being answered by someone whose username is Santa’s Helper.  And then one of the question jumped up and hit me square in the right eye socket:

“Will there be any sites with African American santas?”

I, like many people I suppose, take for granted that Santa is known in the zeitgeist as a white guy.  But this was a great question, clearly from someone whose kid has spent some time trying to figure out Santa’s ethnic background, or who simply wants to expose their child to a little diversity in the Santa department.  Here’s how Santa’s Helper responded:

“Our character depiction of Santa goes all the way back to the 1930′s when Thomas Nast wrote the book, ‘Twas the night before Christmas.”  Then soon after, Coca-Cola, created the Coca-Cola Santa in an ad campaign that most Americans adopted as the Santa most recognized in this country.  This is the characterization that you will find in many of our centers but we all know that the spirit of Santa can dwell in the hearts of all people, no matter the race, creed or color.  He represents a universal giver with a true, “Heart for the Part!”  Great Question!  Thank you.” [sic]

That’d be a “No.”  But despite Santa’s Helper’s piss poor use of grammar and punctuation, s/he is basically saying that they believe Santa is a White guy, and furthermore, White is what is considered neutral or “universal” in our society; representative of all Americans.  Because if “we all know that the spirit of Santa can dwell in the hearts of all people, no matter the race, creed or color,” then why hasn’t this company hired a Black Santa, or an Asian Santa, or a Latino Santa (which also begs the question, are there Black, Asian, and Latino guys who are clamoring to play Santa?)?  If other cultures aren’t lacking in the spirit of Santa, why isn’t the answer to the question an emphatic “yes”?

I’ve never seen a Santa at any of the malls who appeared to represent an ethnicity other than White.  Imagine if there were a Black Santa at one of the local malls.  I’d like to see a White suburban parent explain to their kid why the Santa they stood in line for the last hour to see isn’t what “most Americans adopted as the Santa most recognized in this country.”  Because that conversation is taking place in the homes of many non-White families all over the country.

Part of me imagines an angry horde of White, suburban, soccer moms in their “I’m trying to be cool” jeans from A&F, clutching their Coach purses, furiously sipping their lattes, and (with a sense of supreme entitlement mixed with boredom) holding bedazzled signs in protest of a non-White Santa.

Or maybe it’s the rest of us who should be a little pissed.

 

 

And God Said, “Tebow, Take a Knee…”

It was a good game.  I don’t care if the Vikes lost.  Ok, I do, but it was still a good game.

But facebook was abuzz with talk of Tebow.  And apparently, the validity of his faith.  Coming from fans that probably cheered on Kirby Puckett, who made the sign of the cross every time he stepped up to the plate.  So what’s the difference between our hometown slugger and Tebow?  Or even former Viking Cris Carter who, upon nearly every touchdown, took an knee and pointed skyward?

Moments after I watched Tebow stroll into the endzone for a two-point conversion, he looked up and pointed two index fingers to the sky.  No biggie.  Then one of my friends chimed in, “What, no prayer?”  Apparently, I’ve missed out on the Tebow meme, affectionately called “Tebowing.”  The site shows people imitating Tebow’s signature prayer stance in various situations.

Manny Pacquiao, another noted religious athlete, is known for praying upon entering the ring to fight, and upon the completion of the fight.  But there’s no website devoted to his double-knee-gloves-to-the-face-in-the-corner-of-the-ring posture.  So again, what’s the difference?  Pacquiao was even quoted at the weigh in before his bout versus Ricky Hatton as saying, “only God knows what will happen tomorrow.  Pray for us.”

I consider myself to be deeply faithful.  This may be a surprise to the people around me since I rarely attend mass, I don’t talk about Jesus as my lord and savior, nor do I go around talking about God’s will.  My faith is very personal to me, and I don’t expect anyone else to subscribe to it or even understand it.  It’s what works for me.

I don’t know anything about Tim Tebow’s faith.  If praying in the endzone after a touchdown is what works for him, then I say leave him alone and let the man pray.  But here’re the questions I’d ask Tebow if I could:  Why not point to the sky when you got sacked and fumbled in the first quarter?  Isn’t that as much God’s will as the two point conversion in the 4th?  Do you presume to count yourself blessed only when something happens that you judge to be positive?

My theory about Tebow’s negative attention is based upon the common experience of many Junior High and High School kids around America:  You can’t teach Cool.  We all knew the kid in school (or maybe we were that kid) who was trying so hard to convince everyone else that (s)he was cool that it ended up backfiring and inviting ridicule.  No one questions that Puckett, Carter, and Pacquiao were/are men of faith.  Their gestures of faith felt natural, personal.  With Tebow, it feels like he’s trying to convince people that he’s religious by doing empty gestures and calling it faith.  And just like Junior High, we can smell it a mile away.  It’s like watching Michael Jackson kiss Lisa Marie Presley onstage at the MTV VMAs.  It feels like a stunt; for show.  As if something is being flaunted rather than coming from a place of purity.

Maybe it’s his youth, and he hasn’t come into a personal understanding of his faith yet.  He may simply be doing what his parents, teachers, pastors, and other role models do as demonstrations of their faith.  I think that’d be completely understandable.  Or maybe it’s like what’s written in Matthew 5:11, “Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. “

The Rare Intersection of Theater and Football

It’s Thanksgiving weekend.  That can only mean 2 things:  Turkey, Football, and people getting pepper sprayed at Walmart.

I guess that’s 3 things.

But this weekend and the traditions that come with it have led me to make the following conclusion:  I’d be a terrible NFL place kicker. Too many games have been won using the March-down-the-field-and-kick-a-field-goal-with-seconds-left-on-the-clock strategy.  You might see a total of 2 minutes playing time in any given game, and your job (and your career) rests on being consistent and scoring points every time you’re on the field, which is not the case for any other player.  And when it comes to legacy, there’s no middle ground.  Most place kickers are remembered for either their stunning successes or dream-crushing failures. It all rests on one moment in time.  A couple of seconds that can determine your fate and the fate of the people around you.

That moment can be an off-hand comment, like in Neil Labute’s reasons to be pretty, or it can be the work of a goddess, like in Ajax in Iraq by Ellen Mclaughlin.  I had the distinct pleasure of seeing both of these plays over the last couple months, and I can’t help feeling, in retrospect, that the universe is trying to tell me something.

reasons starts after Greg is overheard saying that his girlfriends face is “regular.”  The following 90 minutes shows the fallout of that one statement.  His 4-year relationship is over, his girlfriend moves out, he realizes his best friend is a douchebag, and everyone ends up making some pretty major life changes.  It feels like four people standing on a trampoline.  One person makes a slight shift, and everyone has to adjust.

Ajax comes out of his tent covered in blood, and says, “The mighty Ajax.  When I am remembered now, it will be for this.”  For those of you who haven’t kept up with your greek tragedy, Ajax was a war hero.  Then by some twist of fate, and some interference from the goddess of war, he’s driven mad and ends up going to town on some farm animals, thinking he’s torturing and killing the commanders who betrayed him.  In one fell swoop, everything he’d built up as far as greek warrior street cred is out the window.  And when the crazy subsides, he knows that all the good deeds he’d done and the glory he’d won for Greece will not shine brighter than this dark moment in his life.

This is hardly confined to place-kickers and theatrical characters, we see the OJ Simpsons, the Arnold Schwarzeneggers, and the Anthony Weiners fall off their pedestals, and for the most part, we find it intriguing; we might even enjoy the schadenfreude of it all.

Maybe some moments are more important than others, and maybe not.  There’s really no way of knowing which moments are the defining ones.  And perhaps that’s the deception; they’re all important.  They all have the potential to be defining moments, so we might as well make the most of them.  And it probably helps to do lots of squats and have really good aim.

The Thing About Friendship

Imagine you have this friend.  A friend who’s in a happy relationship, until one day, you hear that their partner cheated on them.  How would you feel?  Being the good, kind person you are, you check in with your friend, and they do the whole, “it’s fine… I don’t want to burden you with my problems…” song and dance.  You, of course, tell them that if they ever need to talk, you’re here for them.

So one night, the phone rings and it’s your friend, crying, upset.  They’re taking you up on your previous offer to talk, and you’re happy to oblige.  They’re swinging between being absolutely incensed and extremely sad.  Through the tears, nose-blowings, and occasional long silences, they tell you that they “just feel so stupid;” that they should’ve seen this coming.  They could’ve done this or that differently.

The natural response, of course, is “this isn’t your fault.”  And from there you can go to, “You don’t need that  [expletive],” or “You’re better off…”

Now, do me a favor and honestly answer the following questions:

Is your hypothetical friend in this story male or female?

Are they straight or gay?

Do any of these factors change the way you would interact with them in this example?

In the somewhat recent past, I’ve had two different friends cheat on their respective partners.  One is a male friend of mine, the other is a female friend.  Both situations ended their relationships, both became extremely sad or depressed, and both took steps to heal from the experience (counseling, meditation, prayer, etc.).  But there were drastic differences in how people interacted with either person.  The man who cheated was almost immediately written off by many, even by people he called friends.  The woman wasn’t unceremoniously written off by anyone.  To be fair, some peoples’ opinions about her changed, but no one would turn the other way if they saw her walking toward them on the street.  In fact, in the case of the woman who cheated, people would say things to the effect of:

Can’t he see that it was a mistake?
If he doesn’t want to fight for you, he’s not worth it.
You have to ask yourself if he’s not willing to forgive you, if that’s the kind of guy you want to be with.
If he’s not willing to work with you about this small thing, what would happen if something really big came up between you two.

One mutual friend was honest enough to say, “You really blew it,” and I don’t know how often she heard something like that.  While the man who cheated was forced into solitude to figure his stuff out on his own, the woman had a strong support system, made up mostly of other women.  The real irony is that the two people in question have a handful of mutual friends, and many of the women who had unequivocally turned their backs on the man, came to the aid and support of the woman.

I imagine that both of their former partners were met with sympathy in some form.  But what I find interesting about peoples’ reactions is that while the stereotype of the emotionless man is often seen as a negative (many of my straight female friends have talked about dating guys who don’t open up to them, or never talk about their feelings), in this case, there is a definite “suck it up and deal with it” attitude toward men who exhibit feelings of being hurt, and not wanting to continue a relationship after being cheated on.

If you are one of the half dozen regular readers of this blog, you know about my attitude regarding cheating.  That said, I think all parties involved could use more honesty and more compassion from the people around the periphery.  No matter what our gender bias may be, there are always three sides to a story, as the saying goes.  And the ever-elusive truth may not be apparent, so we can choose to blindly blame whoever has a penis, or we can choose to listen.  Because at the end of the day, it’s not about how much fault you find in the other person, but how much care and concern you demonstrate to your friend.

People Are Constantly Telling You Exactly Who They Are

You know what’s really fun? Finding out that while your X who cheated on you has been, seemingly, trying desperately to work things out, claiming that she’s willing to do anything to make it work, that she loves you, talking about going to counseling together, begging for another chance…

…hearing from a buddy of yours that he stumbled onto her match.com profile. Apparently she’s been active within 24 hours.

She’s willing to do what it takes, but maybe she’s just making sure that she has a backup…

Dealbreakers

My sister told me that she met a guy and went out on a date with him.  Maybe it was going well, maybe it wasn’t.  Maybe it was too soon to tell.  Either way, this guy let it slip that he has a motorcycle.

Game over.

“It’s so dangerous!”  My sister whined to me.  Ok, fine.  You don’t like dudes who ride motorcycles.  But is that really a dealbreaker?

For her it is.

A few years ago, I dated a woman whose father is an alcoholic.  She said that one of her criteria in choosing a boyfriend was someone who didn’t drink.  Luckily for me, I had just given up drinking at the time.

She recalled some traumatic experiences before her dad got sober.  So it seemed to make sense that she’d be actively looking for someone who wasn’t hooking a bottle of Wild Turkey to an IV drip.

I wonder what would’ve happened if I decided to have a boys night  with Jack Daniels, Don Julio, Jim Beam, Jose Cuervo, and Johnnie Walker.  How easy do you think it would be for her to overlook the dulcet tones of a smashed Wile E. singing romantic Filipino songs as they echo from the toilet bowl?  I mean, come on.  It’s just your dad who used to come home drunk, A LOT, angry, throwing things, maybe.  And what I’d've done at that moment was remind you about all that, and bring up a bunch of scary memories.  Get over it, already!  What?  Wait… what’s that?  That’s a really shitty thing to say to someone?  You’re right.

I’m sure that if you start asking around, you might get some real ridiculous dealbreakers.  Everything from Smoking Preference (tobacco or otherwise) to “must have a strong opinion regarding the oxford comma.”  Some may seem more malleable than others, but a lot of those others might be totally justified.

For instance, my sister’s high school best friend was involved in a motorcycle accident back in the day.  Pretty freaky.  Possibly traumatizing to my sister.  But without the context, that dealbreaker might seem a little extreme.  Same goes for trying to find someone who doesn’t drink.  You’re severely limiting your options there, but understanding why that dealbreaker is in place would make most people go, “yeah.”

My #1 dealbreaker is pretty simple.  Don’t cheat on me.  This might be a no-brainer for most, but it’s come to my attention that my unwillingness to bend even a little seems harsh to some.  Well, if you’re new to this blog, here’s a recap of the last few years of blogging:

Since my junior year of high school, every exclusive relationship I’ve been in has ended in infidelity, except 2.  For those of you keeping score, that means 5 of 7 relationships that lasted between 10 months and 3 years long have ended with me being cheated on.  Not a whole lot of fun when I look back at the last 15 years of my life.

So, woe is me, pity pity pity.  Add to that a history of racism, the number of white parents who didn’t like a brown guy dating their white daughter, and the frequency of the “other guy” being white, and you’ve got the makings of a weekly trip to the shrink’s office.  Ack, pity, blergh.

I say all this to hopefully clarify this particular Dealbreaker.  It’s a trump card, a silver bullet.  It has the power to level a building filled with good experiences and happy memories.  Set your egg timer, and you can clock how quickly someone goes from “that really cool girl I dated” to “that other one that cheated on me.”

First Person Shooter

I’m up, it’s late, and I’ve been tooling around the interwebs to procrastinate from folding the laundry that’s on my bed so I can go to sleep.  I stumbled over to a photographer friend’s website, and was blown away.  And after seeing some of the pics taken by another friend at HLP’s wedding I’m in awe of the amazing shooters I know.

To be able to capture such fleeting, intimate moments so vividly takes mad skill.  You’d think that I’d have the permanent stink-eye face being surrounded by so much marital bliss in my newfound singleness, but the opposite is true.  The way these women look at their new husbands is intoxicating.  I hope to find that someday.

And when I do, I know I’ll have to save up plenty of cash to hire my friends to shoot it, cuz they’re just that good.

Deliberately Stepping off the Wagon

Three and a half years ago, I had my last sip of alcohol.  It was a margarita at happy hour at a Mexican restaurant in San Diego with some work friends.  It was February 8th, 2008.

When I got back into town, my Heterosexual Life Partner and roommate at the time, bought a bottle of wine, brought it home and told me that when I decide to drink again, it will be from that bottle and it will be in celebration of something.

Then, HLP decided to go and get himself married.  That happened last weekend.  When he asked me to be his best man, the collective light bulb went off for both of us: The perfect opportunity for me to come out of retirement.

The truly weird thing was people’s excitement at the prospect of me drinking again.  Was there some kind of Mr. Hyde-esque party guy that used to come out when I was sucking down Long Island Iced Teas back in the summer of ’07?  I don’t know.  But people seemed excited nonetheless.

As took my first sip of wine, I realized that I was sitting down.  That much had stuck with me from my binge drinking days:  Don’t drink sitting down, cuz when you stand up you’ll fall over.  I learned that one the hard way.  A couple of times.  Then the warning came from the DJ:  we’ll be hearing speeches in a few minutes.  Gotta stay lucid for the Best Man’s toast.  As I stood up and sipped my water, taking the microphone in one hand as I fished around in my pocket for my speech, I was surprisingly steady.

The other thing I noticed didn’t come until around my 3rd or 4th cup:  I don’t feel drunk.  I thought it would go straight to my head, considering it’s been 3 years since my body’s had to contend with alcohol.  I thought I’d start slurring, stumbling, and telling everybody that I love them.  My decision-making was still somewhat clear; after all, as the best man I was still representing the family.  There was music, there was dancing, there was wine and champagne, with alternating glasses of water in between.  I remembered a story I’d heard in college about some Psych majors who got a keg of O’doul’s for a party and told everyone it was regular beer.  And how, after people had had a few red-solo-cups-full, they were stumbling around and awkwardly hitting on people.  Maybe I’d lost that frame of reference of how I’m supposed to act when I’m drinking.  Maybe my tolerance was always pretty good, and back in the day I was using alcohol as an excuse to act like an idiot.  I wouldn’t've been the first, and I definitely won’t be the last.

And when I woke up to the sunlight washing across my bedroom the next morning, I got up, started my day, and was halfway through brushing my teeth before I realized that I wasn’t hung over.  Maybe my body had reset to my first years of drinking where I wouldn’t get hung over at all.  Or maybe that water really did the trick.  Or maybe it was the dancing.  Or maybe this is the beginning of my life as a superhero, who’s power is to be able to consume any amount of alcohol and not feel the affects.  We’ll have to test this theory at a later point in time.

After all that anticipation, all that wondering, my first few steps off the wagon were pretty uneventful.  It was great to clink glasses with HLP and his beautiful wife on their wedding day, and it was especially good to have something to drink to, rather than something I wanted to forget.

Maybe I’ll keep drinking, maybe I won’t.  I might even adhere to a strict “celebrations only” policy.  Either way, there’s always a chance that I should be pondering if I’m the kind of superhero who wears a cape, or not.

Cheers to you all.

Yom Kippur

As I made my way to my usual watering hole earlier today, I passed the Jewish temple and was reminded that sunset tonight marks the beginning of Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement.  It’s the day that Jews around the world ask forgiveness from G-d.  The day before, which is referred to as Erev Yom Kippur, is a day that is marked with giving charity and asking forgiveness from others.

Having had a Catholic upbringing, I went to confession pretty regularly.  It always felt weird.  As if the priest had a direct line to god that we laypeople didn’t have access to without stepping into the big armoire at the back of the church.  After years of hoping the the priest on the other side of the screen couldn’t tell who I was, it occurs to me that when I have confessed to having wronged another person, I was never instructed to go to that person and ask forgiveness.  Most likely, I’d simply get one more Hail Mary tacked onto my penance.

I’ve struggled with forgiveness over these last few years.  Especially in light of recent events in my romantic life.  Alexander Pope reminds us that, “To err is human, to forgive, divine.”  So perhaps I lack the divinity required to forgive someone after being betrayed by them.  But I have to say that I’m not entirely sure that any of these women I’ve dated, for example, have ever actually asked for my forgiveness.

Is forgiveness, like respect and trust, something to be earned?  Or is it something that meant to be freely given?  This is where I struggle.  Mostly because we live in a society that has forgotten how to apologize.  Look at the recent controversy concerning KDWB radio in Minneapolis, which offended many people and caused many sponsors to drop their advertising from the station.  Most of the hubub was due to what people felt was an insincere apology; the non-apology apology.  The “I’m sorry you feel that way, but…” style of Corporate PR apologizing.  People seem to think simply saying the word sorry is enough, but when you watch the news stories about whatever the latest high profile court case is, you hear different words.  Words like “remorse.”  Did this person on trial show any remorse?  Do they look remorseful?  The accused showed no remorse.  On one hand, we let things slide because some CEO or celebrity used the word “sorry” at some point in one of their sentences.  On the other hand, we’re looking at the behavior or the expression or the body posture of someone to try to glean whether or not they actually are, in fact, sorry.

During one particularly difficult, yet all too familiar, she-cheated-on-me-and-I-wanted-to-end-things breakup, my girlfriend at the time brought in a friend who had been to couples counseling because of her own infidelity in her marriage.  She suggested that I apologize to my then girlfriend.  I don’t know what I was supposed to apologize for, but she was winging it.  I could have said that I was sorry, but I certainly wouldn’t have meant it.  And now that I think about it, I’m not sure that this girlfriend ever said she was sorry for what she had done, let alone shown any remorse for her choices and actions.

Apologies are a lot like love.  They are better when they’re performed, lived, shown.  My high school religion teacher, Mr. Miller, made us memorize his definition of love.

Love is not a feeling, it’s an action: to give of oneself for the betterment of another.

And likewise, perhaps, being sorry or remorseful is something to be demonstrated, not simply felt.  Express to the one who you have wronged that you are remorseful and they, in turn, may give you forgiveness.

On the other hand, maybe through the act of forgiving, the one who forgives is unburdening themselves.  That somehow, by forgiving someone who wronged me, I may find peace.  It’s hard to imagine that.  But it may be worth a try.

With that in mind I’m thinking about the things this year for which I should atone.  I could put a list here, but it’s a pretty long list so far, and will likely grow through the night and into tomorrow.  And in keeping with what I’m preaching here, maybe it’s time for me to sit down with people I’ve wronged and express that, demonstrate that, to them.

Bringing Gender Dynamics to the Pity Party

As I stormed off the elevator into the hotel lobby, having just found out that my then girlfriend had fooled around with someone else, the thought nearly hit me right in the face:  How do you suppose this looks to the casual observer?  It’s 3am, there’s a guy storming off an elevator with, I’m sure, a very pissed off look on his face, closely followed by a sobbing woman, begging and pleading with him.

There were a couple of security guards in the lobby, after all it’s downtown, in addition to two or three front desk employees.  The thought stopped me in my tracks.  Beside the fact that the pissed off guy has dark skin and a facial piercing, and the girl is quite strawberry-shortcake-girl-next-door caucasian.

Damage Control.  I even heard one of the security guards whisper to the other, “What’s going on?”

So, being a writer, I figured what our audience needed was a bit of exposition.  ”You have sex with someone else and you expect me to still be your boyfriend after that?” I asked bitterly. “What do you think you can say in this moment that will make me feel better about that?”

Hopefully the onlookers put two and two together.  I was the one that was wronged.  I was the victim here, not the crying woman.

But my need to vindicate myself in the eyes of a few strangers brought up an interesting observation.  If you, as a fly on the wall, saw an interaction like that, wouldn’t you assume that the man had hurt the woman in some way?

I tabled most of my emotions about this incident at the bachelorette party since, as the Best Man, I had duties to attend to.  But when we got to the wedding day, I knew that I would have to see her again.  I didn’t even tell the bride and groom because this was the week before their wedding, already a high stress situation and I was trying to be the low maintenance guy in their lives.  I wanted to keep the focus on celebrating them, not worrying about me.  But, as you can imagine, all it took was an email from my now x-girlfriend that I’m sure started with the words “I’m sure you’ve already heard…” But they hadn’t.

So as I took to the dance floor at the reception, the tightly sealed container in which I stuffed all my thoughts and emotions concerning this infidelity burst open.  It had been 10 days.

No.  You don’t get to smile and be in the presence of great, powerful, awe-inspiring love.  You don’t get to laugh and enjoy the company of others and flirt with guys.  You don’t get to dance and have fun.  You get to be miserable.  You get to wallow in your own self-loathing and loneliness.  You get to look at yourself in the mirror and realize that in a matter of a half hour you managed to throw away your chance at happiness.  You get to live with the choice you made. So stop it.  Stop smiling and dancing and laughing and talking to boys.  Go roll around in the dirt and beat your head against the concrete.  Go sit alone in your apartment with the lights off listening to sad songs on your new iphone.  I hope you can’t find a restaurant to eat at because they all remind you of me.  I hope you are surrounded by happy couples strolling in the glow of the trees in autumn.  Do you have any idea how many people ask me about you on a regular basis?  How often, even this week, I’ve smiled and nodded along while someone told me how great you are and how lucky I am and happy they are that we’re together?  I’ve kept your secret, I haven’t sullied your name or tarnished your reputation.  I haven’t forced our mutual friends to pick sides.  But you don’t get to cry on peoples’ shoulders and get attention and ever “need to talk.”  You don’t get to get sympathy for what you’ve done.  You wouldn’t be in this position if it weren’t for your own selfishness, lack of respect, and irresponsibility.  You chose this path, now walk it.  Alone.  Don’t turn this perfectly good wedding reception, which should be about love and happiness, into a pity party for you.

Naturally, none of this was actually said out loud, but I had me a little moment and then it was over.  And at the end of the day, this isn’t me.  I’m not a bitter, bile-spitting, hate-filled guy.  But as much as she has pleaded to me about this being a huge mistake on her part, saying “I’m only human,” I submit the preceding paragraph as an example of my humanity; the angry, knee-jerk reaction of a man who was recently betrayed.

But what’s interesting is that in the history of women cheating on me, I find that most of the time they actually do get sympathy from others after the subsequent breakup, while I’m out on the sidewalk in the rain with a broken umbrella.  What is it about the heterosexual dating dynamic that says if a guy cheats, turn your back on him, but if a woman cheats, she can cry about it and people will comfort her?   Some of my friends in the past have told me that they no longer want to see me, hang out with me, or talk to me after the woman I was dating, their friend, cheated on me.  As if I had something to do with someone else’s choice.  But I still posit that there are strong gender stereotypes at play here.  As far as we’ve come, there is still a part of us that sees a crying woman as a damsel in distress and a crying man as a big sissy who can’t just suck it up.