Rationalization #64 A, The Cheater’s Defense or “It Didn’t Mean Anything” is a rather narrowly applicable addition to the list: it arises when a half of a supposedly committed couple has sexual relations with a third party. I have entered it as a sub-rationalization to the infamous Yoo’s Rationalization (“It isn’t what it is”) because betraying a spouse, partner or lover does mean something, probably many things.
The Ethicist received a question from, as always, “Name Withheld,” whose partner had cheated on her and used that phrase, “It didn’t mean anything.” She asks, years after the event, “I still don’t understand why cheaters use the phrase ‘‘(She/he) didn’t mean anything to me.’ How does one even respond to a statement like that?”
Kwame Anthony Appiah, in his usual measured fashion, says that the line “is how cheaters try to reassure their partners that their infidelity wasn’t going to lead to a serious relationship and needn’t spell the end of their existing one; that a fling was ‘just sex.’’’ But that still doesn’t translate to “It didn’t mean anything.” Having sex out of one’s committed relationship probably means, among other things,
- The cheater isn’t as committed as he or she had led the betrayed partner to believe.
- The cheater cannot be trusted.
- The cheater has a drinking or substance abuse problem.
- The cheater has some apparent needs that the supposed love of his or her life isn’t supplying
- The cheater lacks some degree of impulse control.
- The cheater is an easy mark for an aggressive come-on from an attractive member of the opposite sex (in other words, the cheater is a typical heterosexual male.)
Of course it meant something. The statement, like many rationalizations, is a lie. “The Ethicist” concentrates on what the use of the rationalization means: that the cheater, in addition to cheating, is manipulative jerk. “Cheaters demean the people they cheated with by dismissing them as meaningless, demean their partner by implying their pain is unjustified and demean their relationship by saying that they betrayed their beloved’s trust for a liaison they insist was insignificant,” he concludes.
Yeah, that too.
Ethics Alarms 
A possibly apocryphal, but hilarious, presidential story (“I’m not stupid about presidents, I’m smart!”):
President Coolidge and Mrs. Coolidge were visiting a large chicken farm (well before Avian Flu). They were led on separate tours by separate guides. Mrs. Coolidge’s guide was explaining to her that one cock serviced a significant number of hens. “Does he do that more than once a day?” “Oh, yes,” responded her guide, “many times in one day.” “Tell Mr. Coolidge,” Mrs. Coolidge responded.
When Mr. Coolidge was duly informed of the cock to hen ratio and the fact cocks were busy guys, repeatedly, every day, he asked the guide, “Do they have sex with the same hen each time?” The guide answered, “No,” to which Cal responded, “Tell Mrs. Coolidge.”
Open guffaw!
PWS
I had never heard that one, but it sounds like Cal, who had the driest, most economical sense of humor of all the Presidents. Like Yogi Berra, some of Coolidge’s witticisms are attributed to him that he never said, but he was genuinely witty.
“ ‘Silent Cal,’ once sat next to a woman at a dinner party who reportedly said to him, ‘I have made a bet, Mr. Coolidge, that I could get more than two words out of you.’ To which he replied, ‘You lose.’ ”
PWS
Spectacular. I’ll think of Cal as we drive through Coolidge, AZ from time to time when we’re tired of driving on I-10.
The best and most famous of “Silent Cal” anecdotes!
Recounted by Carol Hooven in her book T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone That Dominates and Divides Us
A book I heartily recommend. I turned to it looking for an explanation of why guys play sports as kids and then into adulthood and follow them their entire lives. Answer: testosterone.
When after being told Grandson No. 1’s jayvee high school football team had suffered their first (and only loss) of the season Mrs. OB told our daughter-in-law, “Well, it’s good for them to learn how to lose,” I said, “No, that’s not the point. The point is to dominate and humiliate the guys on the other team and steal their girlfriends.”
If a wife refuses to have sex with her husband, is that also a form of cheating? There are many marriages that are practically sexless, e.g. less than once a year. However if the husband wants sex, but the wife has lost affection for her husband. Would that be a breach of contract on her side?
Is divorce on any other grounds than fault (adultery, abandonment, cruelty) cheating?
If a man with a high sexual market value who is unmarried has sexual relationships with multiple women, and does not hide that fact for these women, is that unethical?