Wrecking Ball

Bizarro is brought to you today by Jobs That Require Orange Vests.

I never had a job where I had to wear an orange vest, but in high school I worked at a place called Dr. Redlove's Old-Fashioned Ice Cream Parlor in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and we had to dress in those goofy straw hats, bow ties, and vests, like singers in a barbershop quartet. At the time, I had long, bushy hair, so when I removed my hat at the end of my shift, the top was perfectly formed to the cylindrical shape of the hat. Very sexy.

Speaking of sexy, cartoons about home wreckers and cheating spouses are always oriented the way this cartoon is: the husband cheats, a hussy helps. But in recent years, women have been catching up to men in the infidelity department. Polls show that a larger percentage of women cheat than used to (although at least some of that increase is due to the fact that women are becoming more comfortable admitting it.)

But I've seen a very real trend in this area in my own circle of acquaintances, as well. While men have always had a tendency to stray, I know more women who have cheated on their significant others than men. Perhaps because women have in recent decades experienced a change in their social standing, it has lead them to react in the same ways that men traditionally have. With so many choices – career, motherhood, both, neither – I suspect there is more pressure on them to succeed in a variety of arenas and so they are more prone to midlife crisis-type symptoms than they used to be.

Just a guess on my part, I'm no sociologist. But I've seen what seems to be a growing amount of self-destructive behavior in my female friends in their thirties, the sort that used to be almost exclusively associated with men. And before anyone gets fired up in the comments section, I am by no means suggesting that women were better off before the women's movement. Liberation is always a good thing.

Some people just handle liberty better than others.

So, dear readers, how many of you have been to the Home Wreckers Depot? Have you cheated on a partner? Have you been cheated on? Were you able to forgive and save the relationship, or was it a deal breaker? While most human societies have always leaned toward monogamy, it is clear that we aren't particularly good at it.