Adultery - Andy and Jacqueline - Part II

Can we understand marriage by understanding adultery? For you can’t have adultery without marriage. And where there is marriage, adultery is often just a wink away.

And I know it is an affront to good sense to ask, what can we learn about marriage from adultery? It’s like asking, how can we learn to be good by asking a bad person about it? 

Yet, I recall what Confucius once said: “If you see a worthy man, endeavour to emulate him. When you see an unworthy person, then endeavour to examine your inner self.”

That saying may be what is necessary to correct the affront to good sense about asking the question: “what can we learn about marriage from adultery?” 

There are always two ways to look at such things. And I take my cue from the scandal that has rocked the media and entertainment world. By now, we should be familiar with the media leak of Andy Hui and Jacqueline Wong. 

I guess the best advice for now comes from Kenneth Ma, Jacqueline’s boyfriend, possibly ex-boyfriend, when he said: “I feel that in this world, apart from Hui’s wife, actually no one has the right to say anything.”

That said and noted, I return to the two ways to look at the situation.

First, we can do what the Pharisees did when they caught the woman in the act of adultery. They all wanted to stone her. They made the private affair into a public affair. Incidentally, the mystery man had apparently escaped from the pharisacial dragnet. 

Or second, we follow Confucius’ advice and examine our own heart, which is what Jesus meant when he said: "Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her."

The point here is not about not judging when the time calls for it. It is however about taking some occasions as opportunity to turn the mirror on ourselves. The truth is, we ourselves have to be careful because we can never be too careful when it comes to the secret affairs of the heart. 

As Blaise Pascal puts it, “The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.“ And I take that to mean in this specific context that not everything we do is supported by a balance and consideration of its costs and consequences. 

We should therefore never give ourselves too much credit, lest we puff the fluff and forget that we are only human struggling with our only-human desires. 

The reality is, some things happen even to the best of us, and even happy marriages fall prey to an unguarded momentary temptation that seems like the stupidest thing to do upon sombre reflection the morning after. 

Mind you, it may be a featherweight of a temptation which confronts us, but at times, it may very well meet up with a featherweight of our resistant will before we foolishly succumb to it, and regret big time later. 

By then, the damage is done, the trust is broken and the marriage is endangered. 

And Andy’s admission that he is lost, his heart and soul are broken, and he is undeserving of forgiveness is just the silent pull back of the waters on the beach before the emotional tsunamis hits real hard. 

Alas, when it hits, the mess it leaves behind takes years to rebuild. And the foundation broken may risk never to be able to be restored.

So my takeaway is to rest the stone beside the mirror before me - to see my own reflection and that of the stone’s. More importantly, to examine the stone and see whether it has my name on it. Most times, it is inscribed in it. 

And I am again reminded of Jesus’ words, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her." 

Most times, it is not the sin that disqualifies me for we have all fallen. But it is how I too may fall prey to it that ought to restrain me, and keep me humbly and constantly examining my own heart.

Sammi, Andy and one named Jacqueline.

Forbidden fruit is always sweeter? But sobriety can turn that bite into a nightmare.

For Andy Hui, the aftertaste left him in tatters, broken to be exact. 

His dalliance with actress and former Miss Hong Kong Jacqueline Wong in a taxi ride and beyond was captured on camera. That 16 mins video will sadly mar his marriage to Sammi Cheng, 46, for a long time to come.

The leak showed Andy, Jacqueline and another man sharing a cab. When the man alighted, Andy assured the man that he and Jacqueline will go home separately. 

“After the man leaves, however, (Andy) and (Jacqueline) provide only one location to the driver and begin holding hands. At one point, (Jacqueline) leans over to kiss (Andy) as his hand rests on her thigh.”

They then left the cab together - End of leaked video. 

A little background here. Andy and Sammi’s love affair and marriage (no kids yet) is touted by Comedian Dato Wong as “Hong Kong’s Last fairy tale.”

It was a 30-year fairy tale. They met and dated as far back as 1991, after they recorded the duet “Actually, Do You Have Me in Your Heart.” 

They broke up in 2004 and after seven years apart, they got back together in 2011. They then married in 2014. 

As for Jacqueline, she has been openly dating another TVB actor Kenneth Ma. 

After the leak yesterday afternoon, Andy was emotionally devastated. He must have felt exposed. Hours later, he showed up in a tear-ful seven-minute appearance. 

Andy’s head was bowed and he said: “Sorry, Sammi.”

“I want to apologise to my family. Sammi’s family, friends and people who love me. Because I did what I cannot make up for, something that will not be forgotten.”

Andy then cried and continued: “I drank a lot that night but I feel that being drunk is definitely not an excuse to do something so wrong, very bad, very disgusting and very unfamiliar. I reflected on why I could not control my lust.”

Lesson? Actually, the duet “Actually, Do You Have Me in Your Heart?” is the question all wives occasionally asked of their husband. Indeed, the heart is a strange place for married men. 

While a woman’s desire is the desire of her man, the man’s desire is at most times just desires - period. That is why that last confession is quite familiar to us men, “I reflected on why I could not control my lust.”

It is strange (and I would not say as Andy said, “very unfamiliar”) that the institution of marriage always has a dark and wet basement leading to a secret backdoor of extramarital indiscretions. 

Alas, it is hard to define cheating in a marriage, especially in a world of virtual experiences. When Bill Clinton said, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” was he cheating. 

Jimmy Carter once admitted in a Playboy magazine interview that by Jesus’ standard of lusting in the eye, even he has “cheated” in his marriage. 

Author Esther Perel wrote: “Is chatting cheating? What about sexting, watching porn, joining a fetish community, remaining secretly active on dating apps, paying for sex, lap dances, messages with happy endings, girl-on-girl hookups, staying in touch with one’s ex?”

One frequent visitor of strip club said, “I watch, I talk, I pay, but I don’t touch. Where’s the cheating?” 

And nowadays, with virtual platforms like Second Life, for example, where you can play out your alternate-fantasy of another life with another man in virtual worlds of your creation, is that cheating? 

One commentator called it “customized pornography.”

So, I return to the heart, the only organ in our body that bears the greatest responsibility (or culpability) for and of our conduct since we metaphorically blame it for all the extramarital indiscretions (and other immoral deviations) we commit, when its only role (and wholly vital one no doubt) is to be no more than a dumb pump, circulating and renewing blood in our body to keep us alive. 

When we fall, we don’t hear people accusing us of a bad or corrupt liver or deceitful kidney or an immoral spleen. It’s always the heart which gets all the bad press when the two organs truly responsible for our actions should have been the brain (impulsivity, emotionalism) and the only extendable and retractable organ in our body (and mind you, I am not talking about the tongue).

Let me end with Andy’s own heart-rending words: -“I have no soul. I am a broken man. I hope everyone can give me time to find myself.”

Well, I wish Andy well. I hope he can find himself, to find his soul again. 

As for their marriage, it is a personal and private affair, and it’s really none of anyone’s business. They must be given their own time to confront, confess and reconcile in whatever ways that the offender and the victim can live with. 

Like Andy said, he needs time to find himself and I am sure Sammi needs hers too, that is, to process the betrayal, a broken promise (that risks triggering the breaking of all other promises after that). 

My takeaway from this is that in the institution of marriage, you can’t bolt-shut all the doors and pull the blinds over the windows. 

A straying heart is not one who sees no evil, hears no evil or speaks no evil. That’s not possible, and it’s surely not a marital institution. It’s a mental and emotional asylum of two distrusting souls living together in a panopticon tower of high and insecure 24-hour mutual survelliance. 

Before long, it will suffocate love, eviscerate trust and eliminate all hope. 

A resilient marriage, even after a betrayal where one is genuinely remorseful and prepared to make amends, is an institution where the doors and windows are always clear and opened. 

At the center of this institution is trust, which may be vulnerable but it is not inconsolable or irreparable. At its boundary is hope, which may be lost at times, blurry even, but it is not lost forever if the couple are prepared to forgive, heal and move forward. 

And at its foundation is love. This love is not perfect, for we are human after all. But what makes this love exceptional, even in our failings, is its willingness to go beyond oneself to heal and bridge the gap. 

In the end, let’s not be too quick to be over-indignant about our own state of the heart after reading about Andy’s fall. 

We should always guard our heart because at times, it is not about how much we can boast to others about our invulnerability to fall like Andy did. 

But it is about what it takes for us to fall, and for some of us, if not most of us, it may just take far lesser than what we think is necessary to trip us over. Cheerz.

Jackie Chan - dark side of the moon.

It is no surprise that Jackie Chan’s memoir does not tell a clean tale. He has a dark side. In fact, everybody has it - some are just darker than others. There’s no perfection, just degree of imperfections in our life.

Here’s the tally for those bent on keeping karmic scores?

Jackie Chan admitted to a time when he abused a child. In his memoir Never Growing Up, it reports that “his fans will likely be shocked to learn that the action star once threw another toddler - his own son, Jaycee - across the room during an argument with his wife, former actress Lin Feng-jiao.” 

But Jaycee was not hurt as he landed on a sofa.

Yet, that’s not all. Jackie Chan further admitted that he “used to visit prostitutes and drive when he was drunk. Once, he crashed a Porsche in the morning and a Mercedes-Benz later at night.”

And his marriage with Lin was not exactly unblemished either. It was a marriage not so much out of love as it is out of necessity. She was pregnant in 1981. So, to legitimise it, they registered their marriage. 

However, he was paranoid over Lin because “he believed his friends when they told him Lin might have got pregnant on purpose.” As such, he “constantly thought of ways to keep (his) money from her.”

Then came the affair. He broke Lin’s heart when “he had an affair with actress and former Miss Asia, Elaine Ng.” They had a love child from that illicit affair. 

Although the memoir is quiet about the affair, Jackie Chan told Lin and Jaycee this: “I’ve made an unforgivable mistake and I don’t know how to explain it, so I won’t.”

Jackie Chan recalled that Jaycee just stared at him when he confessed while Lin cried. But they had over time forgiven him. 

Lesson? I guess tallying life’s scores like this can go on and on for a life as complicated as Jackie’s. 

He is a multimillionaire, world renown, and I would expect such a life to be a sizzling magnet not just for media attention and scrutiny, but also controversies, scandals and temptations of all earthly kinds.

Jackie Chan “pins his wildlife down to his work as a stuntman.” He wrote that “we all knew that if something went wrong, we wouldn’t live to see the sun rise the next day. We had a short-term mentality, which means recklessly spending our money.” And that accounted for his splurging on “gambling and prostitutes.” 

So, there you have it, it is a life (at 64 and still counting) with all the ingredients of a good movie plot, that is, action packed, drama filled and seedy as usual. Well, they say fact is stranger than fiction, but in Jackie’s case, it is hands-down juicier too. 

Some may call it our “skeletons in the closet”, while others call it our dark side, but whichever way you cut it, our secret life and the mental processes that run through it is always the massive iceberg underneath the seemingly calm waters.

It is an undeniable fact that what is conscientiously projected in public is seldom what happens most habitually in private, and for this reason, it is convenient to call it the hypocrisy gap. But maybe, we might just want to consider calling it the ”being-human” gap.

It is curious that being human invariably comes with many rules and regulations about how to live our lives. Religion composes it. Society presupposes it. Our government in maintaining law and order superimposes it. 

And needless to say, we break any of them with dire consequences to our conscience, to our reputation, and to our freedom. 

But the truth about life, as Jackie Chan’s 64 years has shown, is that the greatest test of our character is not so much how we try our darnest to live up to them (rules and laws and all), but what becomes of us when we fail to live up. Do we then continue in our destructive ways or do we turn around and change? 

As a human being, expect to disappoint, expect to fall and stumble, and expect to do things we will regret, and for some of us, regret most painfully. 

But if God has us a lifetime to get it right, or at least come to our senses, then don’t expect to change in an instant. And we should always be wary of such confession of overnight transformation, because that which is given a lifetime to live out invariably takes a lifetime to change for good. 

In the end, Jackie Chan had a point when he said “I’ve made an unforgivable mistake and I don’t know how to explain it, so I won’t.” 

Some deeds done are indeed beyond explanation. No words suffice because it is the life lived thereafter that counts more than any explanation one can ever offer. 

That is the finest and truest test of our character. It is a test that comes closest to closing the hypocrisy or “being-human” gap. 

And I believe that we will get it right one day - for in this journey of life that each of us is accountable for, it should never be our failings that define us. Instead, it is our comebacks, however long it takes, that should inspire us all. Cheerz.

The marriage vows: two kinds of men.

When a former lieutenant-colonel (Mr Goh, 40, and married with a child) gave his sincerest and unqualified apology in open court "for sending the woman the text messages" which contained sexual advances, he went further to say, "I should not have sent you the said text messages and I am extremely sorry for the effect that they had on you. I am deeply remorseful of my actions and hope that you can accept my apology."

In addition to the apology, Mr Goh also compounded the matter with a payment of $4000 to a charity of the 29-year-old woman's choice. The woman was in court that day and she was with a male companion. Mr Goh met her when her event company won a tender for an exhibition he was overseeing.

Lesson? Alas, the mind of men is like a tepid lake with passion-conflicting undercurrents not apparent even to ourselves. We therefore underestimate the lurking tides at our own peril. And just when we think it is safe to take a swim in the mental waters, the undertow of temptation can pull us in and leave us in a state of helpless surrender.

We men have a trite way of dealing with adultery. Before the fall, we tell ourselves we are in control. And after the fall, we blame it on everything (and everyone else) except ourselves.

As such, in terms of the marriage vows, we have two kinds of men in this world. The first kind dedicates his life to safeguarding the marriage vows from the day he says "I do". He takes the marriage seriously, even reverently, in season and out. His faithfulness is sealed with the altar kiss.

And the second kind says "I do" at the aisle before a crowd of witnesses, and subsequently, when the opportunity avails itself, he readily says "Why not?" He is one whose commitment is based on emotions. He is someone who treats the marriage seriously only to the extent that he still feels good about it. And his feelings waver with the moods of the time. To him, what the wife doesn't know doesn't hurt her - ignorance is indeed bliss.

Let me end by saying that I do not know how a perfect husband looks like. But a committed one is as vulnerable as any man on the street. He is not above temptation. He is not above doubts and second thoughts. He struggles too with work, family and conflicting passions. He can be distracted, disillusioned and discouraged. He is every bit as flawed as the man next to him.

But in his flaws, his imperfections, he refuses to take the easy way out. In the temptations he faces, he refuses to give opportunity even a whisker of a chance. He knows his weaknesses, and consciously cuts a mental path miles away from it.

He is fiercely self-censuring and never takes anything for granted. He starves his carnal desires by burning the bridges that connect his unstable emotions with the occasional weariness of the human will arising from the stresses of life. And he fights hard for his marriage, constantly reminding himself that lust is fleeting, self-serving, but love is transforming, self-denying.

Let this poem by William Blake take us home about the two ways to love (self sacrificing or self-pleasing):-

"Love seeketh not itself to please, 


Nor for itself hath any care,


But for another gives its ease,


And build a heaven in hell's despair.

Love seeketh only self to please,


To bind another to its delight,


Joys in another's loss of ease,


And build a hell in heaven's despite.

Cheerz.