As preposterous Olympic scandals go, I wasn’t sure the rumour that ski jumpers inject their penises with hyaluronic acid to fly further could be topped. Alas, Team Norway has outdone itself at this year’s Winter Games, as one of its athletes now has every woman on the planet baying for blood.
I am talking, of course, about Sturla Holm Lægreid, who won bronze in the men’s biathlon and gold for prat of the week when he announced, live and unprompted, that he had cheated on his girlfriend.
“Half a year ago I met the love of my life,” he said tearfully to the baffled sporting press on Tuesday. “The world’s most beautiful and nicest person. Three months ago I made the mistake of my life and cheated on her, and I told her about that a week ago. This has been the worst week of my life.”
Poor thing. It is such a shame when the consequences of one’s own actions spoil an otherwise cracking day of Alpine sport, and I for one feel sorry for him. He made a mistake but, albeit three months of further deceit later, he decided to do the right thing. And how incredibly generous that on what should be a day of national pride, when his gold-winning Norwegian teammate Johan-Olav Botn dedicated his medal to their late teammate Sivert Guttorm Bakken, who died in December, Lægreid devoted his to proof of his remorse, accountability and devotion. It’s actually very romantic. She’d be mad not to take him back.
Honestly. I am sure emotions and adrenaline run high after you’ve just beasted it at the shooting range, and please do forgive the misandry here, but I am given to wonder if the male species is beyond help.
Because if it weren’t for the infidelity – which, running the numbers, came only three months after they’d started dating, hardly a promising start for a new relationship – I would have assumed from this ill-judged display that Laegreid had never met a woman. Who advised him? Surely no sister, mother or sane friend would recommend he volunteer a public confession.
Or is his emotional incontinence a symptom of chronic masculine repression, in which feelings have no healthy outlet and so leak from the orifices at an inopportune time of their own choosing?
In any case he was doomed: there is not one woman on God’s green Earth who wants her ex-boyfriend to humiliate her by going viral. Especially not by pleading for sympathy on the world stage, when she’s already had to endure his public profile as a sporting hero rather than the liar who broke her heart.
She – still anonymous, and I hope for her sake it stays that way – has responded with commendable measure, telling a Norwegian newspaper: “It’s hard to forgive, even after a declaration of love in front of the whole world. I did not choose to be put in this position, and it hurts to have to be in it. We have had contact and he is aware of my opinions on this… [I am grateful] to my family and friends who have embraced me and supported me during this time. Also to everyone else who has thought of me and sympathised, without knowing who I am.”
Anyone who has ever watched Friends, had friends, or read the problem pages of a teen magazine is familiar with the dilemma of “to tell or not to tell”. Some people believe that you must tell the whole truth about any transgression in a relationship. Others think that it can cause unnecessary pain. What not enough people, usually men, seem to grasp, though, is that accountability doesn’t just mean owning up; it means accepting what comes after. It means respecting the privacy, boundaries and decisions of the person you have hurt, whether that involves forgiveness or not.
Unfortunately, too few think that the very courageous and difficult act of telling the truth is enough, and once they’ve got it out of their system they should be relieved of the burden and allowed to move on. In fact, all that happens is a burden shifts to the wounded party, upon whom there is now an expectation, as well as considerable pain.
The way this dynamic usually plays out is with a very sorry man expecting a woman to take her back, and the burden then somehow being flipped onto her. If she doesn’t take him back, she is cold. Yet if she does, she is weak. She cannot win.
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It simply doesn’t happen the other way around, because women never expect to be congratulated for showing vulnerability or emotion – we expect to be vilified for it.
Lægreid has since apologised both to his teammate and his ex, explaining: “I am not quite myself these days.” But let’s be clear here. Embarrassing yourself by airing your dirty laundry and trying to make up for it with grand gestures does not demonstrate the depth of your regret and love for your girlfriend of six months. It is the incredibly unattractive act of a teenage boy incapable of the emotional maturity required in a healthy, adult relationship.
Men, take note: keep it zipped, go to therapy, and let your ex-girlfriends hate you in peace.
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