Why do I read the blogs that I read?

The other day I finally figured out how to add a blog list to the left-hand margin of this blog you are reading now. OK, this should have been obvious to me long ago, I guess, but I never claimed to be a technical wizard. Anyway, I started adding links to a few of the blogs that I read at all regularly.

And after I added the first two or three, it struck me that there was something very unusual about the list. They are all (for the time being, at least) infidelity blogs; that part is not so strange. What is a bit peculiar is that they are written by the unfaithful partner in the marriage, or else by someone acting as a free agent, if you will. I think that my own blog is the only one I read at all regularly that is written by the cheated-upon.

Isn’t that strange? I mean, blogs written by car enthusiasts are typically read by other car enthusiasts; blogs by travel buffs are read by other travel buffs; I suppose that blogs by left-handed Carpathian goatherds are probably read primarily by other left-handed Carpathian goatherds. One of the great things about the Internet is how it can bring together people with common interests, and all ....

So what gives? I have been mulling this ever since.

I’ll admit right off the bat that one of the things I like in these blogs are the salacious stories. It hardly matters which of them are fantasies and which really happened, because they are all fun to read. My own fantasies would look pretty dull by comparison.

But I also enjoy the company of the authors, if you will; or at any rate the sides of their personalities – their voices – that come through in their writings. I recognize a lot of the frustrations they feel in their marriages; sometimes I have the same frustrations, sometimes I have lived through the same issue from the other side. And whatever they may or may not tell their spouses, they sound – in their writings, at least – refreshingly honest and free of humbug.

When I read posts by other cheated-upon spouses, however, the story is very different. (Is there a shorter word, by the way? “Cheated-upon spouse” is the shortest term I can think of, and it is unspeakably clumsy.) Articles posted by the cheated-upon seem to be most commonly angry and self-righteous; often vindictive, sometimes desparate or maudlin. I even understand why, but for heaven’s sake who wants to read that?
I also think that wallowing in one’s own anger, self-righteousness, victimization, or whatever is bad for the author. Despair and a sense of victimization encourage you to feel helpless; pretty soon you are sitting in a corner weeping uncontrollably and shrieking at shadows. Anger and self-righteousness encourage you to lie to yourself; pretty soon you have convinced yourself and all of your friends that the reason your spouse cheated is that he or she is a morally worthless scum, totally unworthy of a shining moral exemplar like yourself.

And of course that’s all bullshit. Name any transgression that you like, and in five minutes I can pull five people randomly off the street, any one of whom would be capable of committing it under the right circumstances. It is true I haven’t cheated on my wife, or at any rate not yet. But all this proves is that I am too timid to carry it off, or too socially inept, or for a hundred other reasons it just hasn’t seemed like the thing to do at the time. God knows that it doesn’t prove any moral superiority on my part. For that matter, my biggest indictment of Wife isn’t even that she cheats, but that she hides it and lies about it ... especially to herself.

And this brings me back to what I find so refreshing about the infidelity blogs that I read. The authors don’t claim to be moral exemplars, but at least they aren’t cowards. They know what they are doing; they know why they are doing it; they know it might be wrong, but they are prepared to deal with that when they have to. They may have to mislead their employers or their spouses for practical reasons, but they won’t lie to themselves or their readers, even when it makes them look bad to tell the truth.

If they’d have me there, I’d eat at their table any day of the week.

Memo to self: In the future, try to keep your posts less angry, self-righteous, and whiny. For heaven’s sake, who wants to read that?