Of Betina Gatal and Jantan Miang (Part I)

In other words - Infidelity.

It is splashed on newspapers, in the gossip columns, the advice pages, magazines... in short, just about everywhere. Every kampung has a case or two, in unis, offices, wherever there are men and women, you can be sure they are there, lurking, just beneath the seemingly calm surface…

What is it?

In a word, unfaithfulness. Married men or women who has a third party on the side, boyfriends and girlfriends who are not as ‘exclusive’ as they profess to be.

Does THAT count?

There can be a fine line between friendship and romance, and many parties will insist that it was just ‘a friendly gesture’. A hug can be neutral, a kiss can be friendly, a peck on the cheek ‘doesn’t even count’. Well, that depends on your personal beliefs too. Something acceptable for one may not be for another. In the same vein, someone can be ‘seeing’ numerous people, yet can it be deemed wrong if they were just ‘spending time with a friend’?

So when is an affair an affair?

I would say when there are feelings invested. Otherwise it would not even count as a relationship, would it? Except if it was termed a platonic relationship, like the ones we have with friends, colleagues, neighbours and extended family. That’s a technicality. It doesn’t count.

Perceptions and misperceptions

Like it or not, every time an affair rears its ugly head, the one getting rich will be the bomoh or medium. For our seemingly ‘modern’ surface, the service of the bomoh is still in great demand.

The common perception is that the other woman is always in the wrong, even if it was their husband who started the affair. I notice that every time a bomoh is consulted, the offending woman will be accused of having given the unfaithful husband ‘something dirty to eat’, thus capturing him in a magical spell. Something in the lines of ‘nasi k…….’ as in the one portrayed in “Perempuan, Isteri dan …”, a film made in the nineties, starring Sofea Jane, for those unfamiliar with the local movie scene. Maybe because the one that is hurt prefers to believe that the other woman is at fault, and not their husband. After all, he is the one they love, and often, the father of their children…

Unfortunately, this belief did not come up out of thin air. I have seen cases where ‘the other woman’ basically ‘hijacked’ the husband, literally causing him to abandon his family. The situation gets worse if the wife i snot working, so she has no means to support the children. Some of these women even go so far as to threaten the wife and insist that she ask to be divorced!! I wonder WHAT kind of woman would do such a thing…? In some places, it seems poaching of one another’s husbands seems particularly rife, causing divorce rates to be alarmingly high.

To be fair, many married men do seek younger women, basically because they could. They will lie to buy a girl's sympathy. Call it pride, ego, greed, stupidity? I personally think these people have no consideration for the well-being of their wives. They are just self-serving people who has no respect for others and no sense of responsibility to their family. I'm not bitter, I'm just disgusted with these guys.

But.... Can it be justified? Let's discuss that in Part Deux :-)