The Anti-Anti Cheating Contrarians

Some people have decided cheating is fine, actually

Heads up that I’m offering a 20% off discount on all annual subscriptions to celebrate the fact that I finally quit my day job! Anyway…

This week, Twitter kicked off some fresh drama about comedian John Mulaney, who famously cheated on his wife (or at least the perception is that he did- at the very least, he most likely left his wife for someone else.) Anyway, it started with the following tweet:

Just noticed the username. Kinda weird! lol. The response was that of condemnation—not of Mulaney, but of the person describing Mulaney’s behavior.

Maybe this is me outing myself as an old fuddy-duddy, but I was pretty surprised. Do I think John Mulaney deserves to be “canceled” for cheating on his wife, assuming he did? Hell no, I still watch his comedy and I enjoy it. Do I think anything he did warrants me changing my username to JohnMulaneyHater69? No, but it is funny. Do I think cheating is “basic real world struggles” or “not that bad?” Also no. If my husband cheated on me, and somehow this became national news, and everyone online was like “ugh fragile white women being Karens about infidelity again, YAWN” I’d be uhhh…kinda hurt. Like, I get that public figures are fair game but this feels extremely mean:

Granted, I’m not a big fan of celebrity gossip and the main reason I “don’t care” about what John Mulaney did is because I just don’t care what celebrities do in their marriages, certainly not to the point of no longer consuming their media. I still think John Mulaney is funny, new Chad chin notwithstanding. But if someone asked me if I thought he was a good husband, I’d definitely say no, and I don’t think that makes me a crazy sensitive dork.

This is a body double.

But this is much bigger than John Mulaney (and I should clarify that his infidelity hasn’t actually been confirmed.) Mulaney’s debacle represents a rift in the types of people who discuss infidelity online. For a long time, I’d say that the topic of infidelity was subject to “Reddification.” Generally, people took a Redditor type stance on it, which I can best describe as the following beliefs:

• Cheating is evil and cheaters are evil

• Cheaters are innately evil and cannot be reformed

• Cheating never happens because of any problems in the relationship, and the blame always falls specifically on the cheater, no matter what happened prior to the cheating

• Cheaters should be shunned from society for life

If you ever saw someone post about forgiving a cheater or working through infidelity on r/relationships, people responded with extreme vitriol about how anyone who cheats—even just once, or even just emotionally—is essentially marked for life as an irredeemable human being and you’re a gullible mark if you forgive them or associate with them. You shouldn’t marry anyone who has cheated in a past relationship, you shouldn’t forgive a cheater, you shouldn’t even be friends with cheaters.

The problem, though, is that lots of people cheat. Conservatively, at least 10-25% of married people have cheated, and that number is far higher if you include people who aren’t married. Are we supposed to believe that at least 30% of our society is made up of irredeemable monsters with whom nobody should associate?