Latest Celebrity Cheating Scandal That Could Have Been Solved by Nonmonogamy

Editorial Note: This post was written by Wes Fenza, long before the falling out of our previous quint household and the subsequent illumination of his abusive behavior, sexual assault of several women, and removal from the Polyamory Leadership Network and banning from at least one conference. I have left Wes’ posts  here because I don’t believe it’s meaningful to simply remove them. You cannot remove the truth by hiding it; Wes and I used to collaborate, and his thoughts will remain here, with this notice attached.

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In case anyone cares, Kristen Stewart (the vapid lump of clay from those bag-of-shit Twilight movies) cheated on her husband. Or boyfriend or something. Then apologized. Yawn. I only bring it up because this article brought up a good point:

What struck me about actress Kristen Stewart’s public apology for her infidelity wasn’t that it was a rare case of a famous female doing so — although that is notable. Nor was it the fact that celebrities are expected to issue public apologies about the most intimate aspects of their romantic and sexual lives – which is also remarkable. Instead, it was the language she used to explain the affair. She described it as a “momentary indiscretion,” which called up a host of post-affair cliches: “I made a mistake,” “It just happened,” “I wasn’t thinking,” “It was a lapse in judgment” – and so on….

“The chance to feel in love, to feel expanded in some way, to feel understood or intimate with another person, or to be sexual with another person, are powerful pulls for many people,” she says. But those pulls are harder to explain to the cheated partner. “Because of societal stigma around cheating and affairs, it’s also difficult for many people to say things out loud, and sometimes even to themselves, such as ‘I just really desired that person.’”

This is a really good point. The article also points out that cheating is very common, and is often due to the feelings described in the above quote. Those of us familiar with nonmonogamy are very familiar with those types of feelings. The difference is that we do say those things out loud, to ourselves and to our partners.

It’s sad that nonmonogamy is not accepted enough for it to be mentioned in an article of this type. It seems a glaringly obvious omission to anyone familiar with the idea. The assumption of monogamy is so strong that a person can say “it’s… difficult for many people to say things out loud” without suggesting that maybe a person ought to say things out loud, and have a conversation with hir partner about how best to handle each other’s feelings. The article makes it sound like feeling desire for someone outside of a relationship is an unsolvable situation. We know that it’s not.