Is Adultery Inevitable?

Once upon a time, I believed that adultery was impossible.  I couldn't fathom it, nobody I knew did it.  I was horrified that anyone could do it.

However, in the summer of this year, my sister came to visit from out of state.  We stayed up talking well into the late hours of the night, and she told me something I didn't know about my father.  He was a serial adulterer.

This was a surprise to me.  Now, I had known that he had some moral failings, because about six years ago, he got arrested for trying to have sex with underage girls and he did five years in federal prison.

I also knew that he looked at pornography and that he had cybersex with women online.  By snooping on his computer when I was a teenager, I found, among other evidence, an Excel spreadsheet with the usernames, ages, etc. of women he was chatting with.  He was organized about it, at least.

However, I didn't know that my dad was actually capable of actually crossing the line with someone.  He's an engineer.  A nerd.  He reads Star Trek novels.  When my sister made her revelation to me, it actually earned my father a bit of respect from me.  Rather than a loser who tried to do something immoral, and failed, at least he was successful at it.

My sister told me that he had done it with six other women, if I recall correctly.  One of them was old, and fat, and in a convalescent home, and she just needed some affection.  At least one was underage.  Mostly, they were women who needed a little help with the rent.  He met them online, through chat rooms.  I knew he had kept an account on a popular sex personals website.  I think most, or all of the women, were unattractive by my standards.

Through all of this, he kept up a front in public and in front of the family of doing all the right things.  He was active in church, he had a temple recommend, and he served in callings.  But he was leading a double life.  On at least one occasion, he left church after Sacrament Meeting, committed adultery with a woman, and then came back in time for Priesthood meeting.

I was shocked to hear all this, of course.  My father is a mild-mannered engineer.  He's overweight and meek.  How could he have done this?  Who was he?  Who am I?

I'm a lot like my father, I think, in personality.  If he could do such an evil thing, what is keeping me from doing it?  I had always assumed that I would never be presented with any serious temptation, so I was safe.  However, after learning about my father's double life, it made me feel vulnerable.

We're different in many key ways, of course, and I think that works to my advantage.  Here are some of the things which are different about me and him, which I think will help me avoid that scarlet letter:

1. I have a much higher self-esteem than my father.  I'm wealthier, healthier, and more socially successful.  I can't imagine hiding in a dark basement, desperate for affection, trying to chat up disgusting old women.  I have standards.  While I know that my life could get much worse, and I could be starved for physical affection, I think I would at least get a divorce before stooping to that low, low level.

2. My wife is more attractive than my mother.  As long as I've known her, Mom has been overweight and a little bit crazy.  My wife is much more attractive, both physically and in terms of personality.  I think if I were married to someone like my mother, I would stray, too.  I don't know how long this advantage will last, but I think that, at any age, my wife would be a better catch than my father's wife.

3. I have standards.  If I were ever to cheat, it would only be with a really good woman.  I like to imagine a Venn diagram of women I'm attracted to and women who are attracted to me.  They don't really overlap.  I think I have a high-enough future-time-orientation to not throw my life away on low-class women.

4. My father actively sought out extramarital sex.  I do not.  I am not interested in jeopardizing my marriage or my family life.  There is a risk that a beautiful, brilliant other woman could throw herself at me, but I'm not going to go out of my way to pursue anyone.  Since I'm passive in this regard, and the mating ritual requires the male to be the aggressor, this severely limits the risk.

What worries me most is that, while I think I'm pretty safe from the risk of temptation now, as time goes on I expect it to get worse and worse.  The women in my social circles will keep getting younger and younger than my wife, and once she hits menopause, we could--God forbid--end up with some kind of a dead bedroom situation.  I already think of being with other women on a daily basis, but it seems harmless now, since I'm happy in my marriage and all my needs are being met.  What will happen when I'm not getting all the physical affection that I need from my wife?

Can I continue to be faithful to my wife, as I have hitherto been, or am I doomed to repeat the sins of my father?