I felt compelled to share a news story I came across a few days ago in which a Central California woman stabbed her husband after “arguing about [nude] photos on a phone”. He was hospitalized and has since been released, she was booked on suspicion of attempted murder and held in lieu of half a million dollars bail, and their two children have been remanded to Child Protective Services.

The article, the first one I happened to read about the case, goes into no detail. We aren’t told whether the nude photos were received from or sent to an outside party. We don’t know whether stabby wife caught her husband sending or receiving said photos, or whether the husband had caught stabby wife sending or receiving them. All the article states is that nude photos were indirectly responsible for a domestic stabbing.

However, many of the follow-up articles published in the days since the story broke state that the stabby wife – one Jasmine M. Teltow – discovered the photos on her husband’s phone, and that they depict “one of the man’s ex-girlfriends”.

I’m not one to try and justify domestic violence, and I’m certainly not going to do so here. But I could almost put myself in Teltow’s shoes if, say, her husband had received the photos from a woman with whom he’d been having an ongoing thing behind his wife’s back. Even if it wasn’t physical – say, someone he met and interacted with online, or an old high school friend with whom he’d reconnected through Facebook – if the rules of their marriage forbid such a thing and he broke those rules, I could almost see where she’s coming from on this.

Wait. No I can’t. She fucking stabbed the guy with a kitchen knife. In fact, per the second article, Teltow stabbed him in the neck. We are not led to believe that she attacked him in self-defense, i.e. she confronted him, he punched her, and she stabbed him. No, she lashed out from a place of fear and inadequacy, because she felt threatened by his having nude photos of another woman on his phone. That motivated her to stab him, ostensibly with the intention of ending his life, because let’s face it, the neck isn’t the fleshy part of the thigh. You go for the neck, you understand that whatever’s on your DVR is going to have to wait until you’ve disposed of the body, mopped the floor, and burned the knife, the mop, and your clothing.

So no, I can’t put myself in her shoes, but I can understand her anger at least in theory. Even if I am not prone to jealousy in such situations, even if I don’t believe that humans are naturally wired to be monogamous, I have to acknowledge that we are socialized that way, and further we are conditioned to feel possessive of our single mate, and to exhibit jealousy, if not necessarily violence, when that possession is challenged, even on a minor level.

And it does seem to be a minor level, doesn’t it? For all we know, based solely on the information given in the two articles I linked, the nude photos were ones the husband had been holding onto since he and the ex-girlfriend were dating. I have pictures of ex-girlfriends going back to before I had a smartphone. Actually, I have pictures of ex-girlfriends going back to before I had a digital camera. I know that I’ve put old photos on my phone for the sake of convenience, as it’s a lot easier to jerk off looking at my relatively small Android phone than it is to lug my laptop from room to room. So it is plausible that he might have done so as well.

Though I have no way of knowing for sure, there has been no indication that the husband was still in contact with the ex-girlfriend featured in the photos, much less that he was involved in an ongoing clandestine relationship with her, or that the pictures had been sent recently. It is conceivable that he just wanted to jerk off to a picture of his ex. That is seemingly no worse than pornography, though I suspect that a woman who’d stab the father of her children for having nude photos of another woman probably isn’t down with him watching porn.

I do, however, accept that there is a difference between the two. Porn features largely unattainable fantasy scenarios that most people probably understand aren’t going to happen to them. Even a random photo of an anonymous nude woman found on the internet carries no implications; it’s just something sexy to look at while getting off. But for some people – many people? – the perceived connection to an ex-girlfriend, even one out of the picture for many years, equals a threat.

But why is that? Is our ability to trust others so non-existent, and our expectation of others to hurt us so high, that we can’t even take the word of our own spouse, someone who presumably vowed to be trustworthy? If that is indeed the case, why get married in the first place? For love or companionship? You can have those things without being married. For the insurance benefits? The financial security? Let’s rule out fear of dying alone because attempting to murder your spouse kind of negates that one.

I suspect that social pressure contributes greatly to some people’s desire to get married. We – women especially, but also some men – are programmed to believe that we are worthless unless we are in a relationship, and by a certain age, married as well. This programming is deliberate, and can be hard for most people to overcome. It’s no secret that many industries get a financial boost from the existence of marriage, from caterers and bakers to beauty supplies and formal wear, to gifts and engraving, to flowers and travel. It’s hardly an accident that psychotherapy is among them.

I’m certain that insecurity is another reason why someone like Jasmine Teltow might get married rather than simply date somebody. In her mind, a person can tell you he loves you until the proverbial sun comes up, but he can still leave you (or fuck other people) until there’s a ring involved. I suspect that, for some, there’s a feeling of anxiety and fear that stems from having a significant other whom you are certain will eventually leave or cheat. The expectation seems to be that a wedding and everything associated therewith – the ring, the ceremony, the party, and even the money spent – will permanently change whatever it was that caused the anxiety and fear in the first place. This is simply not reality.

And what does it say when stabbing someone – anyone, much less a person with whom you’ve agreed to enter a partnership and raise children – is a legitimate reaction? Is it an indictment of monogamy? Perhaps an admission that this centuries-old social construct is such an unrealistic expectation of humanity that it drives us to injure and be injured by those we supposedly love? I realize that the reaction of most people who’ve heard this story will be along the lines of “Crazy bitch” or “What was he doing with nude photos on his phone?” as opposed to “Maybe we should acknowledge that monogamy is far too demanding a standard to expect people to adhere to blindly.”

In the interest of full disclosure, I must state that we know couples that seem to have no problem with monogamy. Whether this is actually the case I cannot say; perhaps they are truly content never flirting, never thinking of anyone other than their spouse or significant other. Perhaps sex just isn’t that important to them, rendering any distractions unnecessary. Perhaps they are secretly non-monogamous while in public maintaining the required façade of monogamy. Or perhaps they aren’t quite as content with the boundaries of their relationship as they appear to be.

I am reminded of the time a female friend posted a photo on Facebook of a fortune her husband had found in a fortune cookie. I don’t remember the exact wording, but it had something to do with him meeting a new friend. It seemed the typical fortune cookie fortune, vague enough that it could apply to virtually anybody who received it. I almost scanned right past it until I saw my friend’s caption, which was along the lines of “It had better be a male friend!” And while she got some LOLs and supportive comments, I just felt sorry for her.

Why would you post this? I thought at the time. Why air your dirty laundry in public? The implication is that her husband has cheated on her, or perhaps that my friend’s self-esteem is so lacking that she expects him to, or even that she micro-manages his friendships and won’t let him socialize with women. And while shaming people on social media seems par for the course these days, I couldn’t understand why this person would want all her friends knowing that she’s married to a man who cheats on her, or otherwise makes her feel inadequate. If that’s the case, if he’s done something to disappoint her to the extent that she must rub his nose in it on social media, why live with that kind of strife? Why not just get a divorce already?

And speaking of Facebook posts, divorce, and shame, this is something I’ve seen in my feed a couple times, typically posted by a woman my own age or close to it. The poster is typically single. I believe they have self-esteem issues, and they’re generally the sort to buy into the notion that marriage will magically eradicate every insecurity that plagues them. Hey, cartoon senior citizens pictured above: Maybe the high rate of divorce these days has less to do with our modern throwaway culture than it does the intense pro-marriage programming – some might say brainwashing – to which we are all subjected to some extent. Don’t shame somebody who got married impulsively, realized it was a terrible mistake, and got out. Incidentally, one of the people who has posted this is currently trapped in a marriage that neither she nor her spouse seem to want. But I guess it would be pretty damned hypocritical if she got a divorce. At least no one’s gotten stabbed yet.

I’m not suggesting that opening their marriage would help. I realize that monogamy isn’t always the greatest source of tension – sometimes it’s money, or alcohol and drug use, depression, or perhaps just the sudden realization that one cannot be happy in a relationship unless one is happy alone – though I believe that if society as a whole could stop bullshitting and open up a dialogue on the topic of sex, notably the fact that it can and often should exist independent of love, we’d all be much happier. Still, I believe that, for most couples, the expectation of monogamy is so ingrained that even the suggestion of non-monogamy is going to cause problems. We are so selfish a culture that compersion remains a foreign concept.

Back to Jasmine Teltow. Her mother initially refused to turn one of the couple’s two children over to child protective services, though after a two-day manhunt the boy was turned over to local police. Police are unlikely to file charges against Teltow’s mother, but we’ve still got a woman facing life in prison, a man who’s been grievously injured and may conceivably suffer from physical and emotional trauma well into the future, and two children whose lives have been severely impacted. Who could have imagined that a few nude photos could have such drastic consequences?