Why cheating on your bae is NEVER a mistake

We all make mistakes, but adultery isn't a mistake, write Paige Nick and Jason Mykl Snyman

Adultery never ends well for anyone: Paige Nick

Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it, let's do it, let's fall in love, then let's meet someone at work, sneak around a bit, have mad, dirty motel/car/ elevator/desk sex, until your significant other picks up your cellphone and spots 16 million filthy texts - many containing the aubergine and flame emojis (why no guava?) - and busts you. Let's do it, let's fall in love.

Every month, my co-writer, Jason Mykl Snyman and I have a Facebook conversation that can last anything from 10 minutes to 10 days, during which we bat around topics and try to decide what to write about next from a She Says/He Says point of view.

This month has been more challenging than most, because we chose adultery, and that never ends well for anyone.

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I've since spent a stupid amount of time considering how women feel about cheating compared with how men feel about it, and I've come to the conclusion that we've stumbled on a subject that affects men and women in pretty much the same way.

The only person who doesn't mind a cheater is a person who is also cheating. That's got to ease the conscience.

We can't even divide society into whether men or women are better at adultery, as it has more to do with your personality and your situation, than your penis or your vagina.

And I've seen enough men and women at the bottom of a tub of chocolate-choc-chip or inside a bottle of regret, to know heartbroken looks just the same across gender lines.

The why of cheating isn't sexist either. We all have the same basic reasons for doing it - because we can, because we're stupid, because we drank too much, because, because, because...

I knew a couple who discovered they were cheating on each other with the SAME person. That'll flatten the moral high ground with a bulldozer.

Cheating isn't a mistake: Jason Mykl Snyman

There is something horribly broken about our society.

Oscar Wilde once said; those who are faithless know the pleasures of love; it is the faithful who know love's tragedies.

It used to be that when you were caught doing the horizontal tango with the milkman, you'd have to walk around with a scarlet letter, branding you as an adulterer. Now, a decent human being can't even go online to pirate a series without some or other website popping up trying to tell you cheating is in vogue.

When considering joining a site whose slogan is Life is Short, Have an Affair, a good alternative is to stop being a complete idiot and just not do that.

It's easy to chalk this behaviour down to being "open-minded" or "free spirited" or "#LivingTheHoLife" and fall into the trap - I've learnt that the hard way.

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My girlfriend once found lipstick in my pocket. I told her straight up that I was cheating, but only because there's no way I'm going to say I was selling Avon. We all make mistakes. But cheating isn't a mistake, nor an accident. Falling off your bicycle is an accident; you don't trip and fall into somebody's vagina. It's a choice.

In 2015, online cheating site Ashley Madison had their database of 32 million users hacked. The details of those morons are still widely available.

We're living in a society of monogamously challenged people outsourcing their sex life, engaging in textramarital affairs on phones, trading temporary pleasure for permanent regret and, for the most part, people seem okay with it.

Stellenbosch is basically Sodom for liberal gits. Randfontein men spend more time hiding in wardrobes than at work.

Now, I'm not saying, if a guy doesn't respond to your text within five minutes, or if he won't let you go through his phone, that he's cheating. He probably just has porn on it. But if ever there was a planet deserving of a meteor.

Cheating is easy. Try something challenging, like commitment.

• Email us if there's a topic you'd like to hear about from a She Said/He Said point of view: amillionmilesfromnormal@gmail.com

• This article was originally published in The Times.