Sex Reparations

So I have plenty of married friends, most of us do right? How many of yours are happy? The majority of married women I know are unhappy, unfaithful, and unmotivated to leave. Sure, I know a couple or two who I'm sure will celebrate a fifty year wedding anniversary, but they're few and far between. We've called men dogs for years, but like Jay-Z said "Ladies is pimps too." Even though women are just as scandalous as men, we don't blame them for it. It's like sex reparations. Mommies were at home barefoot and pregnant while philandering daddies were sneaking off with secretaries for decades. Sons, it's time to pay for the sins of your fathers. It's not fair, but we all see it in action all around us.

When men have affairs, we blame the man. When one of our girlfriends calls us hysterical after finding a phone number in her mans wallet, we grab a bottle of Patron and a crow bar. We pop in Gloria Gaynor and sell his autographed football on EBay. We'll have overages on our cell phones after talking for hours analyzing everything he's said over the last six years, trying to figure out when he became a lying, cheating, dog. We help her burn his clothes and hack into his myspace page to change his sexual orientation. We don't stop and tell her to get a grip. We don't tell her it's just plain wrong to key his new truck. We go on and encourage this craziness for as long as she wants to carry on like a lunatic. Lord help our boyfriend if he's friends with that loser. All communication ends immediately. No more poker nights, no more basketball games, fellas-if y'all crash your cars into each other and needed medical attention-you better be going to separate hospitals. If we so much as see that dirtbag's number on our man's phone-they're going on P. Probation for at least a month.

So when the tables get turned and our girlfriends are the ones slipping their wedding ring into their coat pocket, what do we do? We blame the man. That's right-it's still his fault. We'll justify our girlfriends behavior; Jen may have monica'd the Verizon guy, but her husband did abandon her to go fight for our country, girl like that can't be left alone for long. We'll tell her old man we're doing girls night at Heathers-Cosmos and cards. We'll wait as our friend tucks in the kids, kiss that poor fool goodnight, and changes in the backseat of our car-before we hit the club and she tries going home with the first guy who buys her a Bud Light. We may try to talk some sense into her, tell her she has a good man at home, and even ask her if she really wants to risk it. Then she'll remind us of how that lazy bastard didn't help at all last week when the baby had the flu. That's all you need, you give her the green light, if he knew how to help around the damn house, she wouldn't be out acting like a college freshman at 32. Now, like all plans, sometimes there's a flaw. Sometimes, that poor fool learns how to put two and two together and she gets busted. Now here's her man 'bout to catch a case, and our ridiculous asses will run over and get all up in the middle of that drama. We'll cuss him out, when he calls our friend a whore. She may be a whore, but she's still our girl and no one uses that tone when talking to her. How bout when our man says a bad word about Mrs. Trifilatis in an effort to defend his boy. It's P. Probation once again.

Why do we enable this kind of behavior? Why do our friends behave this way in the first place? Is this what the bra burners of our mothers generation hoped female equality would bring? Now I'm not saying all men are fornicators and all women adulterers, and everyone has their own reasons. But what if we stopped making excuses for our friends, what if we actually pondered the consequences of our own actions, what If we learned to hold onto a good thing and let go of a bad one without destroying each other in the process?