The price and pain of betrayal

Online social networking is no more a buzzword. It has now become an integral part our social lives. Given the fact that nowadays we hardly enjoy the luxury to meet and hangout, these online platforms help interact with our dear ones each day. As social networking skyrockets to unmatchable heights of fame, dating websites too have been welcomed with open arms and hearts. However, the downside of this relationship finder erupts when harmless dating starts transforming into discreet encounters. An unremarkable by-product of dating, adultery and extramarital affair is no more a matter of hush-hush hedonism, and very often doesn’t get shrunk with guilt or shame. Shockingly, several marital relations are no more clung to the conventionality, but have pushed the contours of monogamy and rules of society. With the onset of infidelity websites that continue to mushroom frenetically, philandering is no more an outcome of unhappy marriages. This was proved beyond doubt with a catastrophic online attack that hit the headlines earlier this month, leaving no stones unturned to put the social lives and reputations of many at risk. Hackers successfully unearthed and publically dumped a huge cache of customer data from infamous infidelity website, thus making the world aware about the pietism of nearly 37 million adulterers who had been addicted to an ill-famed hook-up website that helped brazenly cheat on their partners. Adding to the disgust of knowing about this in-famed online platform was the shocking fact that millions of people face the risk of having their personal information shared online, for all the discreet or supposedly secret dallying encounters that they enjoyed for several months and years.


Apart from credit card details, hackers have leaked the identities of several account holders who unashamedly shared several nude images and gross sexual fantasies by clearly overlooking the vulnerabilities of internet. This major and embarrassing leak has raised a crucial question that we have to immediately ponder over: What amongst those galore of reasons make these people cheat on their partners? The sickening part of the entire fiasco is not the expertise of the hacker, but the nauseating philandering secrets of several millions people. Does that mean faithfulness in marriage has become a thing of the past? Irrespective of the strong and unwavering urge to believe that all is well with the world, the bitterness of reality keeps echoing the blatant fact that cheating in marriage is no more considered a taboo. If marriages are still considered as the rock-solid institutions that it used to be, the story of this most sought after cheating website has credible details of longstanding and shameless stories of adultery.

According to the website, far from the conventional myth that illicit hook-ups are limited to men folk alone, women too are willing to risk everything for momentary extramarital flings. As several millions of account holders who indulged in numerous discreet hook-ups and liaisons have been exposed before the world, the reasons that prompted them into falling for this ‘licentious’ betrayal is not limited to sex and physical intimacy. That said, an emotional reasons cannot be accounted as longstanding and sensible enough to cheat on partners who have been utmost loyal and loving. However, lack of commitment and shallowness in relationships can be the crux of cheating on partners. Precisely put, lack of mind-to-mind connection can lead to emotional infidelities which in turn escalate to physical closeness with that significant ‘other’.

For want for happiness and contentment, people are often tempted to flee momentarily and look for comfort and content in a significant ‘other person’, thus betraying their longstanding partners. But what these cheating spouses often forget is the fact that this parallel support too is momentary and terrible fallout keeps looming all the time, mainly due to lack of trust, faithfulness, and commitment. But a website that sells this naught adventure, with millions of authentic accounts, is the sure-fire sign of deteriorating moral standards of the society that we live in. A potentially damaged hacking has brought to light the horrific fact that cheating has now become a popular norm in today’s society, thus making us re-evaluate the institution of marriage.

Looking at the moral side of the entire hacking saga, such cheaters have to be exposed for their uncontrollable urge to hook up for momentary gratification; physical or emotional. As they were well aware of what they are getting themselves into, divulging their discrete affairs before the world is perhaps the most reasonable punishment that they can ever get. But here lies an ironic question that none of us avoid. Though the website prided itself on discretion, and always guaranteed to provide secure services, were the account holders downright foolish enough to believe that they can get-off scot-free without leaving any digital trail?

However, looking at the entire fiasco from the other side of the coin, no one deserves the nightmarish experience of having their personal details stolen. This includes the cheaters as well. While hackers believe that their efforts will expose millions of cheating douche bags who hoped for discretion and privacy, the amount of righteousness in their efforts can never balance with one’s fundamental rights.

Reverse cougarism

Is there a ‘marriageable’ age for men and women? If not for men, our country still believes that women should enter into matrimony at eighteen or even by their early twenties; much against the growing trend of unwillingness to settle down without a stable career to one’s credit. Although one can find several reasons behind the predominant misconception, the reason that lures men to marrying much younger women is their supposedly fertile wombs. No matter whether one reaches to the highest strata of the society, or step down to the uneducated slum dwellers in the country, many people continue to adhere to the misapprehension that women in their late twenties and early thirties might face several hurdles to embrace motherhood. As the naivety of twenties get preferred over the maturity of thirties, this unwritten conventional rule of procreation surprisingly doesn't apply to the men in the country. Even astoundingly older men are cautious about listing age as a parameter while choosing partners, and carry a significant amount of negative stigma regarding women of their age, or a year or two younger to them. Precisely, youthful and voluptuous bodies are the yardsticks, while emotional connect and maturity often take the back-seat.

On the other hand, a woman who shapes up her career and life in her twenties, and achieves both emotional and financial stability to embark on the matrimonial journey might find it hard to bump into prospective matrimonial alliances from single men. Tired of the long and humiliating wait on the matrimonial market, and having left with hardly any options to look forward to, such women are often forced to accept divorcees or much older men. A third and widely chosen option might be to remain single for the rest of their lives. Matrimony in the country is very often narrowed down to a legal way of procreation. Healthy wombs are the destiny creators and child bearing abilities are the sure shot ways to being on the forefront of marriage market. But here lies a crucial question: are women in their early twenties invulnerable to all the health risks that can rob off one’s reproducing abilities? Are men insusceptible to health problems? If both men and young women too can be prone to such health disorders, the world has no right to mortify a thirty-something woman with irrational presumptions on fertility. That said, here is another reason that stands close second to the much-prevalent myths on women’s fertility.

Virginity, or the intactness of the hymen, is where both men and some elderly women have a strong and erroneous misapprehension about, though medical technology currently has surgical ways of fixing that broken sign of virginity. But much to our shock and dismay, no one among the conventional thinking group is specific about having an emotional ‘virginity’ or faithful mind to completely embrace the chosen partners and their flaws. This prevailing lack of emotional closeness and bondage is perhaps the strongest and most relevant reason that has been sky-rocketing the number of divorces in our country. For lack of love, understanding, and strong commitment towards respective partners, neither separations nor fun-flings and extra marital affairs are matters of shock, disbelief, and regret these days. So why is the world still persistent on physical virginity, when the necessity is to have a committed and truthful mind? More demeaning is the delusion that women who successfully traverse their career roads thrive at the cost of their virginity. It’s often upsetting and awkward to meet men and women who have wrongly preconditioned minds that are engraved with the mistaken belief that a success career comes with sleeping with several men. Much surprisingly, this conventionality doesn't apply to successful men, which is perhaps for lack of a membrane and a blood spot to prove the much-talked-about virginity.

A third and perhaps the most foolish of the delusions is the fear that women get deprived of their attractiveness once they cross the borderline of their twenties. While looks are the least important among the necessities to have a fruitful marital life, finding the world continue to relate it to nuptial bliss is belittling and prejudicial. Despite excelling education and career, our men continue to fantasize on young and physically virginal brides, and overlook the need of a partner who can promise a strong emotional bondage, a helping hand in building-up a stable and happy life, unhindered faithfulness, and unwavering commitment. More shocking is their hard-hearted attitude of cutting women off their career choices and social life, wanting themselves to be confined to homely chores. However, for lack of experience, wisdom, and maturity, young and brainless wonders who are content with being eye candy might bear all the domination and superiority, while those with good quantum brainpower and worldly experience might hardly bear the dominance for quite long.

Irrespective of being phenomenal in education and career choices, when it comes to dating and marriage, sadly, several men are completely preoccupied with the idea of age, which is perhaps the weirdest and the least important factor to be obsessed about. Will there be a day when men stop judging women based on their age, looks, hair colour, height, weight, eyes, and cup-size? Or do men in thirties and forties believe in the myth of recapturing and maintaining their youth, exuberance, energy and passion by mating with younger women?