As if others would not do the same if they had his money and fame!
OK, maybe not everybody, but it is time to stop the hypocrisy. Tiger Woods’ trysts reveal nothing more than the nature of today’s young male when he finds a willing lover. Without strong religious boundaries, we find that many people will say yes to trysts more often and in the case of most people, they don’t care and no one else cares.
Fidelity is no longer expected in many a marriage, it is only expected among some people of faith, every other marriage is now free of fidelity and cohabitation clauses. Imagine going to court in Australia and seeking to sue your spouse for infidelity?
Let us imagine a different scenario, one where a person is trying to file a claim against a spouse, in front of a judge of any court, demanding reparations because the spouse is not cohabiting with him, or her?
As I have argued in the past, marriage today, except for a decreasing minority of young people, means very little, it is divorce and separation that invoke legal rights and great fears.
Marriage these days is a quaint tradition that people enter out of a sense of nostalgia, all long-term relationships are under threat as more young people are choosing clubs over an early night’s sleep in the arms of a long-term partner, even some married people.
The difference between a club life and a commitment is that when you are in a club, whether you are male or female, you can keep searching until you find someone who shares your mood, whereas in a long-term relationship, either party may go without the snuggle because the other is not in the mood.
While this bed-hopping does not bring happiness, it does bring some form of release and people seem to be willing to spend their nights pursuing these rituals with monotonous regularity. The drink, sometimes drugs, the lights, the noise, the make-up, the latest fashion, all to morph into the new expectations of modern short-term relations.
As expectations among married couples are changing, so is the relevance of marriage and long-term relations.
Yet Tiger’s popularity drops by 20%, and he stands to lose some of the contracts that have made him one of the most well-known friendly faces in our world. Why? Surely his lifestyle is very reflective of that of many of his fans!
This lifestyle is not of his own doing either, it is the social trend that expects him to be in certain places and to interact in certain manners. It is the lifestyle that made Paris money for just being Paris, it is a world whose standards are set more by Madonna, Britney and Lady Gaga than the church or the traditions of our parents.
If his fame came because of his golfing prowess, I want to know how his infidelity reduces his prowess as a champion golfer? Or the prowess of our own Warnie as a champion bowler? Or that of Beckham?
While there are revelations of several women in his life, it seems that they were more in succession rather than at the same time. It would be almost impossible for any of them not to have known who he was.
If the modern world was a little more open-minded, maybe Tiger would have been able to roar into an openly acknowledged relationship with more than one woman and the rest of us can forget about his private life and those who care about golf can focus on his sportsmanship and the rest of us can get on with our lives.
I do not mean to glorify infidelity. In fact, I abhor it. I advocate that intimacy should only be within marriage amongst the married people only.
However, when our world has stripped marriage of all forms of commitment and made divorce so messy and so scary and made image greater than substance, we will keep hearing about trysts and our role models will continue to have human failings and a new generation will be born that is completely desensitised to these forms of relations. After all, despite the 20% drop in popularity, still 60% of those surveyed still idolise him.
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