Playing the Blame Game

In today’s society, we love to play the blame game. Someone is always to blame, and in an extramarital affair, it’s all too simple to lay the blame squarely at the foot of the married party involved. But the question remains, What amount of culpability, if any, do we attribute to the single party?

There are those who feel strongly that the single party involved in the affair has no responsibility toward the marriage at all. The single party, after all, didn’t take any marriage vows, legal, religious, or otherwise. They aren’t violating a sacred or emotional trust.

Or aren’t they? Don’t we, as a society, accept a certain amount of responsibility toward all marriages when we recognize the sanctity of those vows and endow them with legal and moral rights and consequences?

I have always argued that a certain amount of culpability is imputed to the single party as well as the married party. Aren’t we taught not to knowingly do things that would hurt others? I know I was, and I've tried my best to live my life according to teachings such as this.

Thus I find myself in the unenviable position of being involved in a situation where I know that I am at least partially to blame, and it’s not something that I enjoy thinking about. But to be truthful, right now, I can’t find it in myself to really care that much or feel that much guilt. I’ve been living such a half life for the last few years, barely allowing myself to feel anything at all, and now that I actually feel really alive again I know that this is exactly what I need right now. For the first time in years, I can feel that part of myself that attacked life and wrung happiness out of it like squeezing a wet sponge. And I need that more now than I need my sense of ethics or morality.

So go ahead and blame me if you want. I know I will, too, someday when I care. And that’s when it will end. Until then . . .