Flirting with a Western Woman, betraying your Wife and all for your Career?

I told you last week about the many musicians who have always wanted to come to the west and saw it as a great opportunity to make lots of money, a career and have success. Although some people may have found just that, I have seen many more discover another part of their journey, one which they may have been excitedly dreaming of: the ‘open culture’ of the west, obviously regarding sex.

I have seen many Indian men astonished and excited about the possibilities that seemed to open in front of them. They see how men and women live together without being married, how people have casual relationships and many have sexual encounters without any further consequences, one-night stands and open relationships. Coming from a country where you are practically never alone or physically close to any other woman than your wife, this can be mind-blowing. The hug that we often exchanged at the end of a meditation program was for many of the musicians who travelled with me throughout my work a highly sensual experience – hugging women whom they did not even know!

Seeing that excitement and that wonder about this completely different culture made me think of my own astonishment during my first months in the west. I often had to smile about a shyness fighting an inner wish to make experiences as well. Once the first fascination wore off however, I also saw things happen that I could not approve of and that made me wonder.

I have seen people who have wife and children at home in India exploring the depths of those ‘sexually open’ countries they were travelling to, and there I am not only speaking about the musicians travelling with me. I have seen that in many other areas of profession as well and I was always shocked by the readiness to cheating and betrayal. They didn’t think or didn’t care about that person who is their life partner at home – they were on a journey, an adventure!

If they stayed longer in a western country, they started leading a two-faced life, having relationships in the west as well as their family at home. Obviously they didn’t tell their wife and children what exactly they were doing when they were abroad!

Maybe for some of them, here now especially musicians, there was a further aim, an underlying idea that by creating a sexual relation to someone, an emotional bond will be there that will make this person help them further. They will get established sooner in that foreign country and will have support to gain more success. That’s how they always gave some extra attention to women and tried to get closer, if in any way possible.

When I or my younger brother had a serious talk about this topic with such men, there were always a lot of excuses, explanations and half-truths and even once the exclamation: ‘I never go far! I have wife and children at home!’ They went according to the principle ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans do’ but did not realize that their view of that ‘open sexuality’ was not true to reality, that people in the west have moral values attached to their sexuality as well and that most people don’t see cheating your wife as something normal.

Of course I have to mention here that not everyone is like this – there are many honest men who live abroad for years and never even think of having an affair.

A difficult issue and a question or problem that will probably always persist as long as mankind is on this planet.