What if the New Environment is No Different to the Old?
Adult life has turned out to be something other than Nikki's youthful optimism had anticipated. All she had known from those close to her was that families were stable, reliable, trustworthy and dependable, and love was a consistent guiding light. Her initial lack of worldliness was a consequence of her growing up in a nurturing, but sometimes over protective home environment. Now as a young mother in her late twenties with two young daughters she has, over the last painful decade, become aware of a grown up world that seems full of marital fictions. It was an education that was loaded with pain, deception and betrayal.
It seems that some men have an irresistible desire to “hunt”. When they present as likely partners this fact is of course never made clear. Bruce appeared to be a Prince Charming but it wasn't that long before his dark side emerged. From the Old Testament through to Alfred Kinsey there exist sophisticated, well argued rationales for this type of behaviour, but this range of professional opinion is of little comfort to the broken hearted wife who has to accept “here we go again”. Sadly she also learned that her own attempts to be a good person, wife, friend or lover, mattered little. She also saw that the only behaviour she could control was her own, and all the goodness that had been so important was impotent when attentions were trumped by the distraction of a young filly, with fire in her eyes, and a commensurate lack of moral fibre.
Keeping all the seedy details “in house”, and finding in her heart yet more forgiveness for him meant her plight was exclusively hers, and her isolation slowly increased. For his part he couldn't believe his luck. He only had to deal with her, and she was so naïve and gullible. His performances of regret, guilt, or remorse were masterful, and may have contained a modicum of sincerity. He did really love her and thought she was the sweestest person he had ever known, but during the growing excitement of a new seduction these emotions very quickly get locked in an old suitcase and put in the trunk. They only seem to get brought out when one is facing the unpleasant consequences of being caught. When he has to face the consequence his behaviour might impact on issues like – a place to live, bank balances, mortgages, career prospects, and relationships with children; or in other words, when it might actually cost his life something – his conscience returns.
After his latest lapse, followed by his earnest confessions of regret, there came a sincere decision by him to try to change, renounce his past poor behaviour, and to be guided by Godly love from there on. This was something new and out of the box for him. Oddly enough it happened at a time when she responded to the same yearnings in her for something greater. The peace amid the chaos that came into her life from becoming a Christian all felt so natural to her troubled soul. She drank up all she could, and in a perverse turn of events he kind of followed her along.
To be fair to Bruce, the roller coaster slowed to a complete stop for a reasonable amount of time with this latest development. Perhaps there was a little substance buried somewhere in amongst his hormones. He initially just tagged along but then seemed to accept it and embrace it. He appeared to be genuinely changed by its influences. The new environment did mean a reduction in the supply of prey, but as anyone will tell you a church community is not immune to temptations of the flesh. Sadly for everyone close to both of them that pathway remained very slightly open. What if,he had used his new heart to try to shut it off completely? Was such a thing actually possible for a man like him?
Nobody was more surprised than Bruce himself at just how much he found the whole church experience comforting and satisfying. While he didn't feel he had finally come home to the same extent that Nikki did, he did love the different social dynamic of mostly kind, generous, and accepting fellow believers. His state of mind around this time was a combination of guilt and gratitude in equal measure. He'd been caught out this time, hence the guilt, but his ever patient wife had remarkably forgiven him again, and for that he was grateful. So church just seemed the right place to be. In this delightful little congregation the basic principles of the message of Jesus were the raison d'etre. This is not the universal experience of all church goers, as many disaffected former attendees will tell you, but luckily Nikki and Bruce chanced upon a group of many like-minded believers.
Doing regular Sunday school activities with his much loved little girls, while Nikki got a break and engaged with the adults for a change, was something he came to enjoy and look forward to each week. He learned the words to all the songs and clapped and sang along. He helped his girls with their colouring in, cutting out and gluing. He couldn't believe the beauty in their young and expectant faces.
When Bruce was not being distracted by weaknesses he was very much the lovely man that had swept Nikki off her feet. He was energetic, funny, personable, very good with his hands, and reliable. In the previous decade there had been significant and extended periods when their lives together were as enjoyable and as satisfying as Nikki could have hoped for. Everybody loved Bruce and enjoyed having him around. His presence always raised the levels of cheer and hilarity. He was a better than average tradesman, and in the work environment he was humble, helpful and modest. His workmates often commented on how he could achieve so much but yet manage to never draw the spotlight to himself. For him it was about getting the job done, and praise was for idiots and blokes who had tickets on themselves.
Unfortunately however it was these very same set of personality traits that made him attractive to individuals who should not have responded to his charm and wit in a particular way. Human attributes are actually neutral in their moral worth. It is what is done with them that defines them. An expert in explosives usage can use his skills to enable the safe engineering of a railway cutting or an open cut mine. Those exact same skills in another place can design a bomb to maximise it's destructiveness and lead to many more deaths. They can launch a rocket that might carry a communication satellite into space, but in another place have a nuclear warhead strapped to it. Likewise a person angered by social injustice can be motivated to work for a charity in a developing nation. If that same person is an isolated outcast with a personality disorder and lots of rifles, then its a bad thing, particularly in the US.
King David in the Hebrew Bible had a similar set of personality features. According to the narrative of 1st Samuel he found himself king of Israel because of the direct interventions of Yahweh. Starting with the defeat of the giant Philistine Goliath, his ascension to the throne appeared to be a continuous procession of Divine guidance and outright miracles. Then he saw Bathsheba bathing on the roof next door and he was ready to break every commandment God had given at Mount Sinai to pursue his lust. Apparently eight wives and an unknown number of concubines were not enough to satisfy whatever it was that she awakened in him. Clearly the problem for David was not biological. It would be pretty safe to assume that it was much more a psychological need.
This is the major issue for the philanderer. Just like the mass shooter, his or her behaviour has implications that spread way beyond the small circle of the two participants and their immediate partners. The hurt caused can extend to children who can't work out why their parent's temptations are of higher import than their love for their offspring, and the stability of their family. It can hurt older parents who have spent their lives nurturing, guiding and protecting their offspring just for them to stomp all over their efforts and assert that selfishness outdoes everything. There are those that assert that all this means that the key must be to not get caught. This carries with it the grim reality that lying to those you profess to love the most is a perfectly alright stance to take. Certainly the philanderer in their heart of hearts would not be happy to know that their family, friends and loved ones had spent all their lives lying to them! Honesty is something that just about everything in our world is dependant on.
Where and when it starts, why her and not one of the others, and why in defiance of the famous aphorism that real stupidly is repeating the same old errors and hoping this time it will be different, is anyone's guess. In Bruce's flawed mind those well worn habits are powerful beasts. Rachel was the joint organiser of that little Sunday School he took his girls to. She had a one boy. Her husband was a fly in fly out employee of a large engineering and maintenance company, off for two and on for six. The money was very good but the pressures such domestic arrangements put on relationships has been well researched and documented. Rumour was that he and her were feeling the strain a little.
The reality was he opened the door first. It was all very innocent and simple. During the kids Sunday School he and Rachel exchanged many pleasantries, jokes, and amusing anecdotes about their children and home life. Over the weeks and many interactions he started to unconsciously notice her in a way that was different to everyone else. Maybe it started with her eyes, the shape of her smiling lips, or just “je ne sais quoi”. Whatever it was it was less than helpful. Then the level of perception deepened and it moved from the externality of his sight and hearing and into his subconscious. Here, in his poorly controlled imagination, he dusted off an old blank canvas and got out some brushes. In his inner ”art” room he began to explore what might be her physical shapes that sat so comfortably beneath her her elegant dress sense. And then the part of his mind, where his carnal pleasures had previously ran free, called up some well worn pathways that some modern scientists assert are the result of millennia of Darwinian conditioning.
This theory of the male brain is that it operates in a natural environment that has existed for at least a hundred thousand years . With the recent overlay of our current moral and social environment there just hasn't been sufficient time for males to adjust to the new book of rules. Natural instincts and survival imperatives call on males to spread their seed as widely as possible. Darwinian evolution, or “survival of the fittest”, is all about enhanced procreation, that is, gradual changes in select features suited to particular environments, and the consequent genetic benefit. No philandering male has ever used evolutionary conditioning as a justification for sexual behaviour regardless of the scientific opinion. Bruce was not motivated by dreams of producing a fit, healthy, and genetically blessed offspring. As he eyed her up and down as discreetly as he could he never once contemplated impregnating her to enhance homo sapien's genetic dominance. His thinking patterns were many stage posts back in that lengthy production line, and pretty much stopped there.
It might be considered reprehensible that all this germinated (no pun intended) in his head at a time when his beautiful wide-eyed innocent daughters were seated right in front of him singing, “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world”. Such is the perversity of the human or, more particularly, the male brain.
His internal journey became compartmentalised into different scenarios. There was the conventional world where he was a husband, father, son, brother, friend, workmate, team member, and employee. Nothing in this compartment was any different. He accurately performed whatever role was necessary. And he did it with the aplomb of a sophisticated character actor. But it was mostly fiction because that other compartment was being activated, opened, fed, and nurtured. Just why he chose yet again to pursue this path is curious. There were the two times previously when he was actually caught, and they had ended in disaster. He knew at those times he had been sloppy and careless, but he equally knew his actions had created tensions, pain, unhappiness, emotional turmoil, anger and bitterness for everyone close to him. He was in sackcloth and ashes for months afterwards. While very few others knew of his indiscretions, Nikki was at least consistent in not sharing the facts, those who did know had nothing but contempt. They generally thought of him a parasitic piece of vermin. The whole wash up was negativity on steroids.
One typical Sunday morning, before proceedings started one of the other Sunday School mums from a farming family was bemoaning a minor mouse plague that they were experiencing, and that their old cat had recently died. The new kitten was not yet mature enough to fulfil its anticipated role, when one of the other mums interjected, “Ah well, while the cat's away the mice will play.” Right at this point, and for what must have been only a nano-second, Bruce and Rachel glanced at each other. He didn't know precisely what had made her look at him, but the gesture was enough to just about rip the door to that compartment off its hinges. He knew exactly why he momentarily glanced at her. Now for him the message was clear, and this is where all those different pathways in the brain become so useful.
With this signal in tow, it became time for Bruce to slowly begin his “due diligence”. Some would probably call it stalking. He would quietly find her home address and drive past to see if there were any clues. He would find out where she worked. He would discreetly enquire about when husband was away at work, what sort of hobbies she had, and was there anything in her family background that might further confirm that she was “up for it”. Things like where she shopped, stopped for a coffee, or bought her lunch were also extremely useful. He could engineer a “quite by accident” bumping into her at one of these places. They could then begin a kind of interaction that was separated from their church activity, separated from the other church members, and definitely separated from his or her family. It was time to once again for those compartments. They were so reliable.
He took solace from the perverse knowledge that his life choices, if he was discrete and careful like he had been on all those other occasions, won't cost anyone else anything. He's not a drug addict. He's not an alcoholic. He's not a gambler. He's not a criminal. It's not illegal. And most importantly he's not a seducer. He's just looking for some mutual life affirmation. She's has certainly given him enough signs along the way. That eye contact was just the final confirmation. The tragedy that awaits him is the same one that awaits people who allow their addictions to take over, and it is one he has known before. It is that consummation doesn't deliver rewards in the way that the excitement of anticipation had promised to do. The drug addict says that after the initial high each ensuing hit is never as good as is expected. The honest gambler knows that the thrill of the win has to measured against the much more frequent losses with their inevitable impact on a person's finances. And the physical engagement with another individual may not be purely on physical terms. The other soul may be interpreting all the recent attention they have received in a much more personal way than was intended. This may make one participant draw erroneous conclusions about what the other really wants. They actually think their seducer is telling the truth. As a result there are many times where there is not a unanimity of purpose. Even when the facts of what occurs are only known to the two participants, somebody in the dynamic runs the big risk of being seriously impacted. The reality that someone, somewhere will be hurt is almost inevitable.
Fortunately for all concerned, one day several assorted memories all aligned in his mind. It was a bit like the planets of the Solar System are supposed to have done on auspicious historical occasions. He thought of that sweetest soul he had ever known, and what she was feeling on this particular day. This vision of Nikki then moved to the sight of his daughters clapping and singing “This Little Light of Mine”. On this occasion, and at this point, he stopped. All the goodness that surrounded him and that he knew he didn't deserve flooded in. That other scenario that had consumed him for a few weeks came to be seen by his new Christian consciousness for what it really was – self-centeredness personified. How could someone so lucky think and imagine such despicable outcomes. The memories of the most recent series of events were still fresh. Nikki had protected him, forgave him, absorbed the grief, insulated their girls from it all, and did everything she could to mop up the entrails and dispose of the assorted refuse – again! This time there was also the annoying and reliable message by their good old church pastor to remind him just how his imagined pathway was the opposite of everything that made him feel good, especially about himself. So he turned around, walked out of that room in his head, put the art supplies away, turned the light off, and almost totally closed the door. He didn't shut it completely because it was his secret, and what harm could there be in a bit of fantasy every now and then?
Funnily enough Rachel's eye contact had actually been the exact opposite of what Bruce thought it was. Rachel had noticed Bruce discreetly eyeing her over for many weeks now. Her constant reaction was “what a sleaze”, and she became quite emotional as it made her think of her beautiful husband who was away sacrificing so much family time, and working his butt off for so many hours to secure a future for them all. She also knew Nikki a little bit. She really liked her. She couldn't believe this bastard would so callously disregard and dishonour her and those gorgeous little girls. Yes, she saw something in his eyes in that nanosecond, and no, she felt nothing but contempt.
One day about a month later while Bruce was buying his lunch in the takeaway near to his work he heard, “Oh hello Bruce what brings over here?” It was Anne from the Sunday School who just happened to be in the area, at that time, on that day. “Oh, hi …. Anne isn't it?” Bruce replied with a highly manufactured spontaneity, and a carefully crafted tone of casual surprise.......
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