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[Kerry]

Sandra, Elen, Jenny: cheating and responsibility

The tabloid dramas of Sandra Bullock and Jessie James, Elen and Tiger Woods, and Jenny and Senator Mark Sanford remind us how easy it is to lapse into blame for unconscious intentions.

What these women have in common is that each has presented themselves unflatteringly as, “I-didn’t-know” infidelity “victims,” at best unconscious.  Yet even in the light of many days all willingly supported the media in portraying their spouses as being the villains. To my knowledge none of the women have issued a correction/retraction to the effect—

“I want everyone to know that I’m the one who masterminded the cheating beginning with the fact that I didn't include in my wedding vow that cheating would be an automatic divorce, no excuses, no second chance. Using my leadership-communication skills I set it up for him to cheat; I drove him into the arms of another/others. Furthermore, I’m the one who supported the media in trashing my husband. I see now that I have done a disservice to women who have given up blaming and making men wrong, women who hold themselves to be equally responsible for all the results she and her partner produce."

Although these infidelity incidents may appear to be a recent trend they are not. Media archives are rife with millions of blaming versions of, “He cheated on me.” We’ll discuss men’s addiction to blaming in another article. For now we’re going to peek at responsibility and the causes of cheating and the "victim" game.

It's not commonly known but few if any teachers nationwide have the same definition of the word responsibility; all have an understanding of what it means but few are clear; fewer still communicate responsibly.  Ask all the teachers in any school to give you the definition of the word responsibility and you’ll get as many different answers as there are teachers. Is it any wonder why parents (graduates) have a difficult time supporting their children in being responsible? Instead, what we see is someone suing McDonald’s for a coffee burn, teachers blaming students and parents alike for poor SAT scores, and spouses blaming each other for cheating and the effects of their machinations.

There is a more insidious aspect to this blaming phenomenon, it suggests a conspiracy, one so well hidden that it's rarely discussed even among the intelligentsia.

Given that over the decades children have spent most of their waking hours with females (mothers and teachers) it’s tempting to draw the conclusion that women have the greatest influence over children. Why then we ask do women make less money than men for similar work? Who trains boys to treat women with such disrespect? Who teaches girls to put up with condescending verbal abuse? Who trains women to be so naive, so unconscious as to not be able to tell when their husband is withholding some thought? Who trains women to not be able to discern within a few conversations whether a man operates from integrity or if he is dragging around a lifetime of perpetrations for which he has yet to be acknowledged (caught)?

Could it be that even though men spend less time with children they have the greater impact? If this were true it would mean that a father's communications are more powerful than a mother's.* This conflicts with my thirty-three years of experience as a leadership-relationship communication-skills coach; what I've noticed is that everyone has the exact same amount of leadership-support skills. Some use their skills to forward and motivate, while some use their skills to thwart and take others down with them; still others use their skills to effect and sustain mediocrity. All three skills are equally powerful; all interact perfectly with each other in accord with Newton's Third Law of Motion— "For every action there's an equal and opposite reaction." The way to tell to what end you have been using your support-skills is to look at the results those around you are producing. i.e. If your husband has turned into a couch potato who seldom helps with housework then you, the wife, have trained and rewarded him. If your husband's weight is unhealthy then no matter what you believe that has been your intention. In both of these examples we see that the wife's leadership-communication support skills don't inspire one to opt for health. And, we see that the husband, using his equally powerful support-skills, is committed to thwarting his partner so as to ensure her failure and the failure of his and her parents—to raise healthy supportive children. The husband and wife, unconsciously, have conspired to support each other in hovering around in mediocrity.

So we ask, if men and women are equally powerful and responsible for the communication breakdowns that lead to infidelity what then is the source of this obvious condescending inequality both at home and the workplace? Could it be that this seldom-mentioned conspiracy between men and women is an unconscious mutually agreed upon non-verbal pact? The implied agreement goes something like this: Women, your role is to let men think they are in charge, to continue to act stupid and pretend you don’t know when your husband is cheating on you, and as teachers, keep doing a half-assed job of teaching responsibility. Men, continue to support women in lying, saying they want parity in the workplace; do whatever it takes to ensure no one implements a communication mastery curriculum for our education majors or your rule will come to an end. This contract makes much more sense as it validates that we all have been communicating consistent with our intentions (however unconscious they may have been); just because one isn’t clear about their intentions doesn’t make them any-the-less theirs.

Kerry

* To think that women are more influential ignores the effects of non-verbally delivered unconscious intentions; that is to say, both parents, and both sets of grandparents, are intending all-day-long regardless of proximity.

For more read:

Sandra B sets the record straight

Elen Woods acknowledges responsibility for Tiger's behavior

Hillary's public acknowledgment

Mind expanding research/experiments having to do with intentions—The Intention Experiment —by Lynne McTaggart