Cheating @ MindSay

Hi everyone. I am a young mother of two from NYC. Love my kids, love God, love family. I am very open minded but make emotional decisions, or have made emotional decisions in the past. I love my husband or maybe the idea of him. I am so frustrated with him and have no financial independence so wouldn't be able to do anything about my situation without incrdible hardship. My husband, who is educated with a great job earning more than an average late 20 year old. I am so used to living this comfortable lifestyle with my children that the thought of being on my own just scares me. He is constantly cheating on me with girls who are about 10 years younger than him...just for the record...I'm actually pretty hot myself and I am too hot for him...but he still cheats on me...we have beautiful children and I do a lot for him but still, he cheats on me. It all started with hitting. He used to threaten to kill me and attempted a few times but when mentioned later, he said he was just joking or trying to scare me...joking haha so funny...not! Anywho, he used to throw things at me, grab me hard enough to leave bruises, twist my wrist, punch the side of my head, kick me on the floor. This is all before the kids were born....why did I stay you ask? I was scared because I left him before and realized I loved him and went against everyone to be with him...and now if I left...everyone would say told u so...and i would loose him forever...and never know or understand why? Then I got pregnant...after trying for a while. Few months down the pregnancy I found out about his internet cheating. I forgave him, saying if you tell me the truth, I will be understanding. We held eachother and cried for a bit. It was done and forgotten, by him. A few months in our relationship, he just started to act like a jerk. Would verbally abuse me. Tell me what is wrong with me everyday. Then after my first child was born, I got verbally abused by him, and others in the household. It was horrible. My child was colicky and I strictly breastfed and co-slept because after million tries, it didn't work any other way. I was awfully tired and depressed and starved till late at night. I quickly dropped 60 lbs. Hubbi used to sleep in a different room because baby kept us up all night and he had work in the morning. We moved to a new place and hubbi was still jerk like. One day he left his phone at home which led me to find out that he was secretly talking to a girl every night while I was taking care of our child. The affair or friendship lasted 2 years according to the girl and 1 year according to him. It was hard on me because it was a real person, not an internet person. Hubbi went to cleanse himself of his sins and returned to me after a while. I took him back and we got pregnant with our second child. During this pregnancy, he banged my head against the wall once and tried to kill me another time. He kept choking me and I kept starring at him as if I didn't care. Freaked the heck out of my kid. That is what GOT ME! I was like oh hell no...not my kid. Mind you, during the time I was trying to get over the first betrayal, he just slapped me and told me to snap out of it. Well, moving on, then 3 months into the pregnancy I found out about another girl. I had no clue because he was SOOO nice to me and our ahem ahem life was great! I was just looking at his phone and was asking him who kept calling him and who did he keep calling so many times. Dummy left his history, and told me he didnt know who it was so he was trying to figure it out. Anyway, long story short, I spoke to the girl and he lied until he got caught. I was sad again, and once again, he...I can't do this now...this hurts to remember...I will continue another time...and before I go, I know you are probably thinking, why did you stay through this? There is more to my situation. I would lose everything and everyone, or atleast feared it so I couldnt just leave at the time...or even now...I am still with this man who till this day is abusive and cheating on me...and still denies it lol right? men!

I don't know what to think right now.  Last night the other guy showed up at my house, no call, no email he just showed up.  I told him he can't just show up unannounced- what if my bf was there.  I should have told him to go but I didn't.  He stayed an hour and we fooled around some more.  He again reiterated that he doesn't want to date me.  I don't know why he keeps telling me this because I am not going to leave my boyfriend for him anyway. 

The issue I am struggling now is that I want to tell him I shouldn't see him again but I'm afraid he'll somehow tell my bf and that can't happen.  Or I have the one time with him and tell him it's over.  I just don't know what he'll do either way.  I don't want to lose my relationship.  God I really fucked things up royally.

The Market for Lemons: The case of Developing Countries

 

 

 

When Akerlof the famous information economist and Nobel prize winner wrote about the market for lemons describing the tendency of sellers to cheat customers of goods whose quality may not be verified until a good is consumed, some readers of the article including myself were far from  convinced that he had a less controversial point. Five years since I first read the article, I am of the opinion that what he theorised in the article applies even more in markets of societies where good and service provisioning faces many challenges and the few providers that exist do enjoy monopoly power in the short and medium run.

 

In developing countries including Malawi, one notes the conspicuous lack of service providers and the difficulties associated with entry of firms on the markets. The difficulty associated with firm entry on the markets implies that at any point in time, there are fewer service providers relative to demand and as a result markets do not clear. Prices and quality that prevail are those associated with unmet demand. Under such conditions most firms lack the market incentive to be efficient so that they are not concerned with provision of quality services because they know the consumer has no choice.

 

To put it into context let's come up with some obvious examples and we will deliberately avoid mentioning names of service providers who surely have taken advantage of the situation to dupe consumers. In Malawi one notes that for some reason, we have very few shops selling electronic and in general manufactured goods (though not relevant, I will mention to those interested that most of these shops are owned by foreigners such as Asians, Nigerians, Tanzanians et cetera and too few are held by Malawians ) in town. The fewness of these shops implies that in general the supply of goods and services is surpassed by far by the existing aggregate demand and as a consequence most of these shops are not concerned with providing quality and durable goods. They are however concerned with selling as many items as possible at as higher prices as possible. If customers knew the quality of the goods and services being offered, they would make reasoned decisions whether to buy or not. The problem is that until one buys one item oneself, one would never know whether the product was durable or not.  Now, if information transfer between customers was rapid, the long run would be associated with improvements in services and quality offered but in a country like Malawi where information transfer is not so easy, it is unthinkable whether consumers would someday come together in their decision against poor quality services.

 

I remember one day in Lilongwe where one customer came into a Nigerian shop and wanted to return an item he had bought the previous day saying, 'inu tandibwezereni ndalama zanga chinthu chanu mchowonongeka' meaning (would you please give me my money because the item I bought is not functional) and the Nigerian, supposedly the owner of the shop just laughed and said 'ha-ha you meano you can come hiya wit your ehh broken thing'o and then ask for mone? Who do you think you are, who told you to take a broken thing'? I guess meaning 'you mean you can come in here with a broken item and claim money from us. By the way who told you to buy a broken thing? The man stood chin in hand and mouth agape...in disbelief. He had bought the item the last day and there was no justification for the treatment he had just received. By the time I left the place, they were still arguing.

 

To me that showed just an example of customer dissatisfaction. The sellers have taken advantage of the scarcity of competitors on the market to charge monopoly prices and deliver poor quality of products.

 

There are many examples of customers of treadle pumps, solar systems, boreholes, etc being cheated. The purpose of this paper is not to victimise such culprits but rather to warn them that silence in most cases does not mean cheaters will always go scot-free. As they say one can cheat one person forever, one may cheat a group of people forever but never all forever. There will be a time when unscrupulous sellers will face justice. Let us change for the better. As consumers, we depend on sellers and as sellers we surely depend on consumers. None can exist alone.

 

My advice to the good government of Bingu wa Muthariaka is that they should try to regulate the market in one way or the other to ensure that sellers provide goods and services at reasonable prices commensurate with quality. The government has already done many good things so far in the transport sector, the agricultural sectors among others, and I think since development is driven by a system of sectors, let them also look at the market regulation issue to foster the spirit for development.

 

I never thought I would cheat I'm not that type of person- never say never.  I have a wonderful boyfriend I wouldn't trade him for the world but I want someone else.  When I say I want someone else I don't mean a realtionship I mean sex.  The co-worker I had a crush on- it went somewhere.  It started with a motorcyle ride, add a few beers and we're making out on my couch.  Today at work (it's actually his last day) we fooled around pretty heavily- much more than kissing.  I'm a horrible person and probably going to hell if I believed in hell.  I don't know if I'll see him next week.  If I do I know I'll sleep with him, we've already talked about it.  If iit happens I don't think it will be more than once or twice.  I'm crazy to do this becase I'm risking my relationship.

It doesn’t often come up directly, but people sometimes hint at it – can you, should you cheat at exams, and if so how can you get away with it?

 

Well I have to say at the outset that I’m not a fan of cheating, because I think it’s…well, cheating. Like stealing or lying, I think it’s wrong. But you might well say, it’s all very well for someone who’s passed all the exams to say that – I’m not in the desperate position that you are.

 

OK, so let’s look at cheating. Cheating basically means doing something to give you an unfair advantage over others in the exam. Now you could argue that employing someone like me to coach you gives you an unfair advantage over those who try and do it by themselves. And in a sense that’s true – remember the scene from the film ‘Chariots of Fire’ where Sam Mussabini, the professional coach of 1924 Olympic champion Harold Abrahams had to hide away in a Paris hotel room whilst Abrahams won the gold medal? For many athletes of the time, having a professional coach was seen as cheating, nowadays it is normal practice.

 

Methods of cheating in professional exams vary from getting someone else to take the exam in your name; having cheat sheets up your sleeve or texting someone for the answer; through to copying the answers from your neighbour on the next desk. The exam boards are wise to all these moves  - for example, the RCP employs a statistical computer programme to look for similar patterns of answers from people sitting at adjacent desks. Getting caught cheating in a professional exam means possibly ruining your hard-won career, or at least making for a very embarrassing conversation with your boss.

 

So if you are going to cheat, whatever system you come up with needs to be:
1. Novel – so the examiners aren’t expecting it
2. Foolproof – so that you won’t get caught
3. Deniable – so that if you are caught, they can’t prove anything
4. Effective – make enough difference to your marks to be worthwhile

 

Now it may well be that you are ingenious enough, clever enough and determined, you may well be able to come up with a system which meets these criteria. However, if you really are that ingenious, clever and determined surely it makes more sense to use your talents to plan and execute a good exam preparation programme?

 

And to be honest, most people who think they are that clever just aren’t. That’s why people regularly get caught cheating. Cheating well is like being a good criminal – if you’re good enough to get away with the crime, you’re good enough to get what you want honestly. And if you’re not good enough to do the exam properly, you’ll probably not make a very good job of cheating either!