"All Men Cheat!"

Well…I don’t.

There’s an entire industry online in the dating sphere with experts of every kind. One personality wants you to ignore all men. Others will claim that women who seek an actual partner that is doing something positive with his life are deceitful. Another will tell you that knowing what you want but never going after it…is attractive for some reason. It’s dizzying.

Yet, the title of this piece speaks to me on a simple level. It’s thrown around so much that I worry about the women who absorb it into their heads and process it when they consider romantic partners. Specifically as it pertains to men.

It’s not spoken as a question. It’s guaranteed. Never to be challenged. Similar to a settled Supreme Court ruling in the U.S. Oh, wait…

Women broadcast the insidious message to fellow women and go on about their lives as if the message has no lingering power. It does.

“All men cheat!”

No. Not at all. You can’t see that I’m raising my hand so I’ll fall back to typing sentences. All men do not cheat because I am a man…and I’m not cheating. For meaningful context, am I currently in a relationship? No. I’m working on that. However, this isn’t an entry about my lack of success in that area. Hey! I’m dating, OK?

For women to proliferate a harmful message such as that into the atmosphere will have intentional and unintentional consequences. Which could be the point.

For starters, to say and believe that, ignores all nuance. Secondly, it’s a lie.

Is it possible that a man cheated on a fantastic woman and she’s blowing off steam because she’s carrying the scars of a relationship that she believed had long-term viability? Yes. Anyone can understand and relate to that. That’s part of the human experience. This assumed position foretelling infidelity from an entire gender is an idea/belief that’s growing so rapidly that I believe it’s being done for attention.

Why is this spreading?

On one side of the coin if it’s the subject of a dating video, it’s been produced to drive engagement. The creator wants you to watch, comment, and subscribe. To draw you in - and then highlight subjects that align with the worldview you may already have connected to dating. Then? They’ve hooked you. It’s commerce. You’re the customer they wish to trap into an endless cycle of receiving their programming without questioning it.

Stop.

To look at every man as a walking vessel for adultery is a fallacy any way that you approach it. It’s absolutist. “It has to be this - or it has to be that!” Does that sound reasonable? For any subject in life?

More often than not life has everlasting lessons in the spaces between two extremes.

Going through (hopefully) decades of a lifetime believing that all men cheat is corrosive. What’s the goal of allowing that idea to take root in your brain? Will you approach dating with an open mind? You’d eventually disable your ability to do that. You’re already certain that the new guy in the sales department where you work will become a sleazebag the moment you admit that you want attend the date he asked you on. Right?

There’s no reason to waste your time considering it. Continue to complain to your friends about the lack of good men when one sits a short walk from your office. Could mister salesmen of the month be a womanizer? Hell yes, he can. Is there a crumb of a chance that he’s the partner that you’ve always dreamed of finding? You’ll never know as you’ve already made up your mind about his entire character - and the unpredictable behavior of his dick.

Why take the chance to search for someone that could be a good match? Remember the guy in the building down the block that saved your adopted pet from darting into the street because…your puppy didn’t realize that cars don’t cuddle tiny dogs at high rates of speed? Ignore him the next time you’re both at the supermarket. He'll eventually sleep his way through your friend group once you let down your guard to become emotionally invested in him.

As a side question: If he boned four-fifths of your married girlfriends, who shoulders most of the blame in your eyes?

If it’s a man, he will cheat. There’s no reason for you to be convinced otherwise.

“All men cheat!”

This is not advice.