Why you shouldn’t date married men, or is it OK?

Who is really responsible for cheating?

We continue to be inspired by themes from the cult TV series Sex and the City and try to answer questions from Carrie Bradshaw from today’s Moscow together with the editor of the Opinion section Evgenia Fomina.

You remember that the main character had another round of romance with the man of her dreams when he was married. And this caused a conflict with Charlotte, for example: she was offended because, being a married woman, she considered such an act of Carrie a crime against female solidarity.

Charlotte always seemed a bit odd to me with her overly correct attitudes. What does her marriage and Carrie’s affair have to do with it? And what is this female solidarity in such matters anyway? There are always wives and there are mistresses, sometimes they change places. Why such hysteria?

But in reality, everything is much more complicated. Today, we are witnessing both a marriage crisis and a turn towards traditional values. On the one hand, the love triangle is the basis of almost all plots literally everywhere – in movies, TV series, literature. It’s as if they are shouting at us from all sides: fidelity doesn’t exist, it’s normal! Be it Emma Bovary or Asya from the TV series “Infidelity”!

But if you look at the question from the other side – does anyone really want to live in a TV series?

What would a hypothetical ideal story of one couple look like? They met at a young age, almost in school, got married, had children and died on the same day. I would definitely not watch a movie about this – it’s boring. It would be nice to live like that, but alas, I am one of those who exist in “Unprincipled”, only for the poor.

My close friend believes that dating married men is wrong, it spoils karma and always ends badly. Despite this position, she was unable to avoid such relationships: “it got twisted and you can’t get out”, as they said in one movie. She has not changed her opinion and since then she tries not to get involved in similar stories – it is too energy-consuming.

In my opinion, it is not so much energy-consuming as it is humiliating. I have no moral principles on this issue, because I do not want to take responsibility for someone else’s betrayal. Let those who cheat on each other come to an agreement with their own conscience, I think so. But being a mistress is very unpleasant and offensive, much more offensive than being a deceived wife.

Carrie, by the way, looked at it differently. In the series, she was ashamed in front of Natasha, Big’s wife, and I don’t understand why. If anyone should be ashamed, it would be Big himself, who has been screwing up with almost all women for all six seasons and two full-length films! But no, Carrie prefers to sprinkle ashes on her head – by the way, completely in the spirit of our Russian women.

Every time the conversation turns to such a triangle, the wives start to stigmatize their mistresses. The man always acts as a prop, as if he were just a “passing crocodile”. The discussion turns to rhetoric like “she stole the man”, “how shameful to encroach on someone else’s”.

We completely deprive the unfaithful husband of subjectivity, shifting responsibility to the woman, who is already in a less than ideal situation. And we have been doing this in exactly the same way for 20 years now.

No, I’m not going to defend mistresses, but I don’t intend to demonize them either. Because I don’t believe in female solidarity, but I don’t think it’s right to support misogynistic sentiments in society. Stop living by the principle: “Women are to blame for everything.”