Kwasi Kyei Darkwah
By Kwasi Kyei Darkwah
"Why do people cheat?
The Akan proverb cautions that "Wo de w'ani mienu hwe toa mu a, baako bo" ditto Squinting advised: For he who stares into a narrow bottle with both precious eyes, harms one.
Whilst there are greater sins and crimes than finding solace in another's arms and legs behind a spouse or lover's back, cheating is widely known to cause more broken hearts, madness and slow deaths than any other. So why do people do it?
People cheat because they simply can. Cheating goes on because lovers momentarily find someone new more appealing, more exciting, more readily available and more inclined to partake in extra-curricular, often nicodemus, canoodling and nookie with one who is free or already taken.
Cheating happens because some find it easier to start a new relationship with someone whose faults they do not know than to fix the existing faults in the relationship they know. For others, it is simply because they are not with the one they love; it is convenient to be with them for a purposeful while but they do not intend to go a further mile.
Does the cheat know that cheating is bad?
Try finding out the mood of a philanderer on learning their partner has condescended to their level and begun cheating too. Everyone with a conscience knows good from bad. "ennye obi na okyere akwadaa Nyame" Of course they do. But good people can do bad things just as bad people do good things. People do bad things because they believe they will not be found out; or that if they were even found out they can get away with them. In their time of sin or crime, perpetrators are curiously emboldened to believe observers around them are momentarily blind and deaf. From petty thievery to malicious lies, laying down with another's spouse through drug-trafficking, baby-swapping and armed robbery to murder, if they can get away with it, if they can find an accomplice to do it with, the wise and otherwise, the noble and ignoble are tempted to try.
Some cheat on their spouse because they are convinced by the lives of a long line of forebears that it is the norm.
Some are wired through their upbringing to choose personal gratification over common decency and respect for their partner, bond and family.
Some cheat on their partner because they consciously choose deception, lust and greed over honesty, modesty and a dignified existence.
And some do because they can find equally easy, fallen angels as partners to partake in their act of fleeting excitement and subsequent shame.
No matter how perpetrators get there or how long or briefly it lasts, cheating chips away at trust in a relationship and causes untold pain for those who believed and invested much in it. It invariably rips sworn lovers, happy homes, careers and the lives of innocent children apart.
Wouldn't it be better to end an unhappy relationship than stay in it whilst finding comfort elsewhere? Many cheats from years gone by made excuses that they did not want to hurt their partner with an abrupt ending.
Special announcement: We, yes I mean we ladies and gentlemen, yours truly included, disrespect and hurt them even more with cheating whilst pretending that all is well with a failing or unfulfilling relationship.
So what is a disillusioned lover to do?
If you love someone, let them know, honour them and let it show; if you don't, tell them so, open the door and let them go. Cheating hurts the spirit of the committed and breaks the heart of the beloved. It sows seeds of self-doubt in partners who may have done their best to abide with you through joy and pain, sunshine and rain. It causes good people to be overly suspicious in future relationships and damages marriages.
Lessons Learnt?
Experience has bestowed upon me a few burnt fingers and toes, and taught me that it is better to be labelled cold by one who loves you no mo'; to be bold and tell them whom you used to hold with affection and call dearie that this love has gone cold, passionless, and weary.
'Tis better to walk out the door and close it behind you than to stand in a sworn lover's view whilst even thinking of embracing someone new.
If you can get closure on the relationship that has outlived its love and respect before canoodling with the one who now gets your appendage erect, please do.
If you can bid farewell to the one who lifted and comforted you in years gone by before giving it up for the new lady or guy you fondly call sweetie pie, kindly do.
Your mind and heart will be at peace for it. Be bold and say it is over, then go in search of your new friend and lover.
Unlock the sweet old love's shackles on his wrists and manacles on her ankles before running towards another, lest you drag them with you to view the new oasis you drink from in the desert whilst they continue to thirst for only you.
Through the changing scenes of life, some sweet hearts will go sour, some 'endless loves' will expire, once eager and passionate lovers will retire. It is so because the only permanent thing, apart from the Word of God, is change. And when change is upon you, change something in your cherished relationship lest one of you change lovers.
Until the vagrant winds of the gods or the extra strain on lovers' nerves and chords blow you and your sweet love apart, be careful whom you smile with, chat with and play with.
Because whether they show up via stated intent or by some curious accident, each cheating man or woman needs a reciprocal smile, chat and play with another to make the dishonesty happen.
Unless they can find someone poor in cash, low in morals, some presumably generous trickster or needy lowlife, the cheating cannot actually begin and the twisting of a dagger into the heart of he/she who was once our greatest love of all will not happen."
* His Royal Blackness Kwasi Kyei Darkwah (KKD) who wrote this article in February 2014, is currently standing trial for rape in Accra, Ghana.