As they say, "Once a cheater, always a cheater."
As they say, "He cheated his wife with you, and so do you expect him not to do it again sooner or later?"
Ellen Adarna should have known better. However, I still salute her for being empowered to walk away from not just a cheater but more so a toxic partner.
I remember writing a column before about mistresses and homewreckers, and that men will always have that tendency and will to cheat on their wives and girlfriends. It happens when they encounter an enabling person willing to commit adultery or unfaithfulness with them.
And because I abhor mistresses, "kabits" in our dialect, I will always hold it firm that there is no such thing as etiquette for mistresses, as a popular Filipino movie would put it.
In the first place, when these women decided to have an affair with married men, they had already broken the social etiquette and, more importantly, our moral etiquette. This movie, which relates the lives of mistresses and attempts to lay down the so-called rules of being a “Number Two,” should not be patronized as it perpetrates mischievous and intolerable acts. There is no such thing as etiquette for mistresses, as these people are the reasons why a family and a home will be broken, and children will have miserable lives of having unfaithful parents and a shattered family.
And so this is my message to all the women who dare become a mistress: do not expect these men to stay faithful to you.
Infidelity would raise serious concerns and deserves no tolerance whatsoever. Cheating partners, in effect, undermine the trust and emotional security that are prerequisites for any safe or healthy relationship. Infidelity can lead to extreme psychological effects, including trauma and heartache, not only for the hurt partner but also for the dynamics of the relationship in general. The emotional consequences of such offenses often lead to and prove pretty hard to repair; breakdown of communication and intimacy is therefore what it's usually caused by.
These answers evince the sharp pain of betrayal and strengthen the argument for zero tolerance; adultery cheapens respect for the self and generates dynamics of distrust. Where some evidence seems to suggest that an affair need not be a guarantee of the death knell for a relationship, this perspective might be argued to legitimize destructive behavior and, by extension, encourage cheating. Ultimately, only a clear imperative towards a zero-tolerance policy for cheating partners can sustain self-respect.
This is why Sarah Lahbati, Kylie Padilla, and Ellen Adarna walked away. I salute these women for having the courage to stand up for themselves and their children.