Hi! Fidelity

I finally saw Unfaithful tonight. (No, that's not one of those highly recommended flicks -- I was bored and it was on HBO.) That was disturbing. If you haven't seen it, I'm going to give away the "twist" but you've pretty much been living in a closet if you didn't see it coming. In movie-land, bad things happen when you have affairs. Think Fatal Attraction and Presumed Innocent. Men were a-cheatin' and baaaaad things happened. Now, it seems that the women are a-cheatin' and baaaad things happen again.

Bad things should happen, don't get me wrong. But he killed the guy and his wife knows and lets him off the hook. (Kinda the reverse of Presumed Innocent. ) Let's think this through -- you KNOW that he murdered your lover because of YOU, what makes you think you're so safe?? You're 5 minutes late from your KFC run and he's going to think you're screwing around again and he's going to whack you this time. What are you thinking?

The thing that disturbed me more was these graphic sex scenes between Diane Lane and her lover... It kinda turned me on and that bothered me a lot. She was betraying her husband and her son and I just couldn't stop thinking that it was pretty hot that they got it on in the bathroom. And I'm forced to wake up when Richard Gere snaps and kills the guy and really examine the consequences. I'm pretty upset that the sex scenes were arousing, but maybe that's the point. She finds herself in this erotic situation and she can't get out of it. She knows its wrong but just gets sucked into that vortex -- the same way we the viewer get sucked in.

My belief is this -- don't put yourself in a situation where you're going to be exposed to that kind of vortex. The fact is that we can love each other unequivocably, but if Scott were thrown in a room with Catherine Zeta-Jones' identical twin sister who expresses her unabated adoration for snuggly guys... He's gonna cave. He's not going to remember my name. It's almost not personal -- she's CZJ's identical twin, I'd be a little weak. So, if you're Scott you just don't get into those situations. It may sound silly (calm down Honey -- she doesn't HAVE a twin) but the fact is that in every day life situations just like these come up. You have to acknowledge that it's possible that you may be attracted to someone else. That doesn't mean you should act on it.

I'm not trying to be preachy, because my life is certainly not above reproach. I guess the movie just really made me re-examine my feelings about fidelity... I've been cheated on by just about every man I've ever been involved with. Forgiven or at least moved past it several times. One of my friends has said that it's not so much the sexual act itself but the fact that her husband would've kept it from her... The fact that something like that he was tempted to leave their bed to share it with someone else and wouldn't even talk to her -- THAT would be the betrayal. I agree with that, mostly. I could almost get over the act itself if I could just get past the betrayal of trust. But, the bottom line is that I don't think I could stand for it again. If I were in the situation today, discovering that Scott had cheated on me -- I wouldn't be able to just look the other way and try to get through it...

But I also wouldn't kill anyone over it either...

Tomorrow I'll watch a comedy where everyone's faithful. ;-)
HP