My Wife’s Having an Affair this Week (2016)

Good performance, your enjoyment might vary depending on your views on the subject matter

The actors' performance was very good, particularly ML's actor who is always exceptional. The enjoyment of the story might vary about your views on the subject matter, thought. I do think that there is a bit of what I would call "self serving cynicism" in terms of the way some people try to equivocate/evade about affairs, when it really comes down to basic golden rule stuff. Would FL like to be betrayed and deceived like she did to ML? Obviously not. Would Yoon-ki? We know the answer, and it is "no". Would she like to be in the position of her lover's wife, deceived forever and not given a chance to make an informed decision about her own relationship? Again, I would bet "no". No PhD in Ethics required, it's something that anyone without a broken moral compass or completely inverted set of priorities should be able to agree on: basically, one shouldn't betray others if they don't want to be treated the same way, and if they do, they shouldn't act surprised if those people don't feel any inclination to be loyal to them in return. To deceive and betray someone that is loyal to you and didn't deserve it, and to be ready to do so indefinitely without any guilt, is pretty toxic, manipulative behavior (notice the caveat "didn't deserve it", because I did feel sympathy for the cheating wife whose husband had previously had a kid out of wedlock behind her back, see more below... but in general, I don't have an issue with "manipulating the manipulator": loyalty is a two way street, if you are disloyal you are not owed any loyalty... I wouldn't have been against Yoon-ki's wife giving him a taste of his own medicine, for example, and we know he would have objected to that, as he explicitly told us in the show, talking about his "dream").

The good news is that it would have been perfectly reasonable to expect FL to simply stop being uncommunicative and actually talk about her problems with her husband, and that most people would have done that. The choice to have a lover a non sequitur in that regard: it didn't in any way help with her schedule or address her problems, in fact if anything it should have made her schedule situation worse, though very strangely she seemed to suddenly have enough time to carry on a full blown affair.

To me, My Mister had a much more realistic and truthful approach to this, separating the unhappiness, divorce and affair pieces, because the reasons for one's unhappiness cannot be used as the reasons for the affair: the question of happiness is a distinct and different matter from the affair. One might well feel unhappy, and maybe even want to get a divorce, but that does not imply that they would feel inclined to actually treat their partner with no loyalty, honesty and respect: that's simply a non sequitur, the second does not simply automatically follow from the first, in fact it shouldn't, and there is no reason it should, if your partner never did anything to deserve such treatment. So the question becomes not "why you feel unhappy", but "why when push came to shove you chose to actually do this to someone that didn't deserve it", and in FL's case here, I would add "to do it without guilt". FL admitted that she didn't feel any guilt at the idea of betraying and deceiving him indefinitely while she had the affair, and that him and the kid were not even a consideration during the affair. That's not exactly what I would call "expected behavior", even for someone that is unhappy.

I do think that the way this drama dealt with the topic was not particularly realistic. I mean, her mother in law's reaction? The way characters that were cheated on excused away/trivialized/diminished cheating and didn't consider loyalty, honesty and respect cornerstones of relationships? FL's husband, mother in law, husband's friends, even most netizens, engaging in fawning hagiography of FL given how she turned out to be, factually speaking, unworthy of ML's loyalty and trust, by being disloyal and breaking his trust (the netizens part being particularly unrealistic, given that netizens in reality argue even about something as uncontroversial as the Moon landing). The very "tame" flashback scenes, appearing only as a plot device and then forgotten when they didn't suit the plot, with ML suddenly "healing" from his trauma, as if people could decide to heal from trauma or be happy on command? Compare this with the depiction in My Mister, the much more realistic images with him thinking about his wife with the other man, etc. And My Mister also had a much more nuanced and mature approach to cheating, as explained above, while this drama's arguments tended to heavily equivocate and evade (with some double standards, I have to say, and other double standards being used as a non sequitur: if women don't hold men accountable, for example, that's an issue that is resolved by holding men accountable, not by not holding anyone accountable, and in any case this is not some sick societal score setting exercise, ML had never slept with anyone behind FL's back).

In fact, I would say that, while she, like Yoon-ki, was willing do betray and deceive her spouse for entirely self serving reasons (well, it's not as if there are non self serving reasons for an affair), to keep doing this indefinitely, without a shred of guilt or any thought about her partner (and kid, in this case), as she herself admitted in the end, at least Yoon-ki had a reason that was connected to his actions: he wanted to have sex with other women, and he did. FL's betrayal, by contrast, was not only cruel, but also needless and entirely and easily preventable: she could have easily just reconsidered her priorities, schedule and commitments, and stopped being uncommunicative or outright lying to her spouse, who for his part was already helping out, and would have been more than willing to do more. They also had family and friends they could ask to help.

I feel that in general it is not particularly helpful to frame this in terms of the cheater's perspective or happiness, the question should really have been whether the people that were cheated on deserved such treatment. Imho they didn't, because they never did anything similar to their partners. There are those who did: for example, the cheating woman that they mentioned in the show, whose husband had a kid out of wedlock behind her back. I was 100% supporting of her sleeping with another person behind her husband's back, because if he didn't abide by their promise, she had no reason to hold up her end of the agreement. So in that way I don't consider cheating a "black and white issue", for example I would have been completely in favor of FL's lover's wife divorcing him and having an affair on her way out (maybe with ML, as in the episode of At The Moment with a similar premise). Actually, I don't even know if I would call it "cheating" if it was done against someone that had cheated on you and had therefore shown themselves to be unworthy of your loyalty: turnabout is fair play, or, to paraphrase Ji An's words in My Mister, "don't make me laugh, you have done worse", so you have no right to complain. Though I guess that it's a matter of definition, or semantics, the point being that I do think of the act in such a situation as having entire different moral implications. Besides that, though, lying and cheating "are" a rather black and white situation: nobody likes it if is done to them, they are obviously wrong, it's not exactly a situation where you need the nuanced take of a PhD in Ethics, it's basic golden rule stuff. Don't do to other people what you wouldn't want be done to them.

I think that there was more moral clarity in the small dialogue Astrid had at the end of the movie Crazy, Rich Asians than in all this drama, to be perfectly honest. It felt kind of like the emotional abuse equivalent of seeing a Stockholm Syndrome or battered housewife going back to the criminal/wife beating drunk that mistreated them. It was exemplified, for me, in ML's female colleague thinking that Yoon-ki's wife was cool, while she had walked away from her marriage after her husband's affair. But the truth was that she did exactly the right thing: basic loyalty, honesty and respect shouldn't be something she has to fight to have, they are the basis of a relationship and if you are going to be loyal and honest, you have every right to expect your partner to treat you with the same loyalty and honesty in return. Yoon-ki's wife was miserable, and thankfully ended up dumping him. FL's lover's wife was another example of this tendency of the drama: she was very good in seeing through FL, but she couldn't see that her own husband was the same kind of person as FL: a toxic manipulator willing to betray and deceive a loyal spouse indefinitely, and to risk jeopardizing his children's happiness over a whim, by sleeping with a married woman with a kid.

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