Second Chances

Why is it justified when women cheat but for men there are no excuses?

A friend of mine confided in me about her situation with her child’s father who had cheated on her and left her to be with another woman and now he wanted her back. She asked me what it was that I thought she should do even though she had somewhat made up her mind already. She wanted to just close the door on him forever and be done with him in that way. However I, being the hopeless romantic and the one who is forever optimistic, told her that she shouldn’t just close the door on the possibility. When prompted with the obvious question of why she should set herself up to be hurt again I just had one response. Isn’t there a such thing as a second chance?

Now this coming from me was surprising even to myself because I myself have been through what feels like an up and down roller coaster ride with my child’s father. But my situation is not hers. I do believe that people deserve a second chance, and hell some would say three strikes and you’re out. Even though you hear people say that in a sense men are like leopards because a leopard never changes its spots and I have even gone around myself stating that men are always going to be nothing but the dogs that they are. But even still there are a very small margin of people that can change and can truly be remorseful for what they did. They may have even needed to have made the mistake that they made just to see how much the grass was not greener on the other side.

I guess my reasoning for being so “forgiving” as my friend said is because I see things from two sides of the same coin. We, and I mean us women, are so quick to dismiss a man for his infidelity and wrongs that he committed but somehow we forget that women cheat too. And maybe this does not apply to you but we all know of at the very least one female who has stepped out there on their mate and we’ve comforted them through their situation. We’ve been the shoulder to lean on when their man found out and kicked them to the curb. We’ve even probably gone as far as to say to them that he should’ve given her another chance and taken her back. So why are we so forgiving for our female friends who have strayed but if it were us who got cheated on by our man then it’s “to hell with him” and we never even give the “second chance” a thought.

I know that I probably sound like an idiot and believe me I am in no way on the man’s side but I just think there’s a double standard going on here. I researched the statistics of infidelity and they actually show that in marriages it is now the woman who is found to be more likely to cheat then the man. I wasn’t actually shocked when I read that because I can sort of see it happening all around me. I’m not in any way saying that it’s not a big deal when men cheat but how can we persecute them so extremely when there are women out there who do the exact same thing. Hell sometimes we even congratulate the ones who do. We sympathize with whatever their reasoning is and tell them that they are justified. What about men and their reasoning? Even though they’re not as quick as we are to show it, aren’t they emotional beings too. Women have a right to cheat when they feel they are being neglected by their mate but what about if men feel the same way about theirs. We see men as just cheating because they want to get more notches on their bedpost or because of their egos but what if it’s more so because of their insecurities and their low self-esteem. Now that doesn’t make it right but then again it doesn’t make it right when women cheat for those reasons either. All I’m saying is that we need to really do some thinking about whether we’re dishing out the same treatment that we would want someone to dish out to us. Haven’t you ever needed a second chance?

Jimmetta Carpenter
Writer/Editor
The Diary: Succession of Lies (Release Date To Be Announced)
Writing as “Jaycee Durant”
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