What Did She Just Say?!?!

orig. published 5/19/2011

Over the last couple of days the media has been all over this Arnold
Schwarzenegger “love child” debacle.  I admit it makes for interesting gossip
and television but it does serve it irritate me on at least one point, why does
everyone have to call this child a “love child”?  A love child implies that
there was love there and somehow I am highly suspect of this idea.  A love child
is consumed out of the love of two people, hardly it seems the case of this
little boy, or for that matter it would seem his own son with Maria Schriver
seeing how as the two boys were born within days if it as the case may be.

But maybe I am wrong, I’m sure that that he loves both children, they are
afterall his sons, still there is something about this term love child that just
seems to rub me the wrong way, I guess it just brings back memories of the pain
and betrayal of a partners infidelities.  I just can’t seem to get a grasp on
why anyone could hurt someone in such an intimate and shattering way.

A friend the other day posed this question to me, is it better to live in a
situation that doesn’t meet your needs than to be happy?  I admit that it was a
slightly touchy situation, I had just finished watching a news article about,
what else, Arnold and Maria, and the local station interviewed a marriage
counselor who basically said that anytime a partner cheats that both parties
should look to themselves for the answers.

If you know me and my story then you can imagine the steam that was blowing
out of my ears at that moment, I even rewatched it later to make sure that I had
heard her correctly.  How dare she say that, this broad generalized statement
without any notation of an the “always an exception to the rule” rule; after all
I was that exception to the rule.  I looked to myself for answers, I searched
and pleaded and wept trying to find the answers, answers that I may never find.
Its been a year and a half since the last time he broke my heart; broke my heart
was an understatement really, there are days that are still hard, days that I
still wonder what I could have done to make everything turn out different, even
though deep down inside I know that there was nothing I could have done to
change what was going to happen.

It just stirs that emotion all over again, that pain and anger and
frustration and now the indignation that someone would suggest that I could have
done something that would have changed the out come of those four tumultuous
years.  I may never know why someone cheats, why their partner just doesn’t seem
to be enough, why some people are just so stubborn to work out the problem and
ultimately why they seem to be unable to find the compassion to spare the soul
of their supposed loved one.

Incidentally, the answer to my friends question was that no, it is not better
to live in a situation that doesn’t meet your needs rather then being happy.
The moral of this story kiddos is that while it your relationship may not be
meeting your needs, your infidelity will never meet the needs of your partner.
Spare them the months of agony that come with that kind of betrayal, if ever you
loved the other person you could at least do that.