Have you ever been involved in a love triangle? Simply stated, this is when one or the other person in a couple meets an outside person whom they are strongly attracted to, and they have an emotional reaction to this third party, which they may or may not act on…No matter who or what, they HURT!

In real life, unfortunately, people almost always actually DO act on these impulses…This is when they start having affairs on the side and try to conceal their new found paramours from their current partners, when they start being ruled by their passion, by their hearts instead of their heads, and begin the cycle of cheating, lies and deception that are all an integral part of the love triangle…

The dynamics of this phenomenon is true not only for married people but also holds true for people just living together in typical boy friend/girl friend arrangements, shacking up or common law marriages and includes of course gay and lesbian couples, married or not, equally….The dynamics of the love triangle are always the same, no matter who the parties involved are….

Nobody is really immune from these temptations, but the attractiveness of the option of the love triangle, of seeking passion and romance outside the primary relationship seems especially prevalent in the case of married people…

They have a vested interest in staying married, because there are usually children involved, they are joint economic partners in business or in their homes, there are mortgage payments to make or other real estate ventures they may have invested in and share equally, and as BB King once sang “It’s Cheaper to Keep Her”….Or how about that old country song, “You Always Hurt the One You Love, the One You Shouldn’t Hurt At All”…

Unfortunately somebody always gets hurt, somebody always pays a steep emotional price for a love triangle, usually the person being cheated on, but sometimes the backlash also involves the ones doing the cheating…When the innocent party first finds out about the cheating and the love triangle, it is like a sucker punch to the gut…

The sudden impact of finding out about the existence of the love triangle is like having the rug pulled out from under you, like getting doused with a bucket of icy cold water by complete surprise, when the scales are ripped from your eyes and the truth is revealed…The emotional shock is painfully extreme, the feelings of hurt, loss and betrayal come cascading down on you, it feels like your guts are being ripped out, and the sad part is, you can never undo it, never go back to the way it was before....

This is always the greatest, most personal of emotions, and it can and does literally change your life forever…It hurts enough in private life, but the pain seems magnified a thousand fold when, as it always inevitably does when the couples involved are famous already, leaks out into the media…Suddenly, EVERYBODY knows your business, your business is right out on the streets….

Some famous historical examples of love triangles date back to the 15th century…. England’s King Henry the VIII, the one who divorced his wife Catherine after a mad passionate affair with his mistress Ann Boleyn, the mother of Queen Elizabeth the 1st, has been well documented for his many dalliances…

But the English are not the only randy ones, of course, it is a world wide phenomena…. America, especially Hollywood, with it’s insistent tabloid and paparazzi coverage of everybody who is anybody has discovered and divulged in maximum doses of publicity many more such steamy love triangles…In these more modern times, Hollywood has been a fertile ground for a multitude of illicit affairs and love triangles, so much so it almost seems like the norm for Hollywood couples….

Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton had a grand, sweeping, majestically well covered tabloid affair when they were filming the epic movie “Cleopatra” in the 1960’s. Although they were both married at the time to others, they were flagrant and rebellious in their mad, passionate love affair, and scandalized much of the world back then….

Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie, all brilliant Hollywood stars in their own right had a very well publicized love triangle affair in the early 2000’s…..The music world has also always been susceptible, and one of the more modern scandalous love triangles involved aptly named musician Courtney Love, who was having an affair with the lead singer Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins while she was still married to the enigmatic, moody but brilliant singer/composer Kurt Cobain from the legendary band Nirvana, that made world wide headlines at the time….

This tawdry love triangle was revealed shortly before Kurt committed suicide at the very young age of 27…There is no proof that this particular love triangle affair in the murky, drug addled confusion and exhilaration of the life style, played out behind the scenes in the back stage arenas and concert venues endemic in the mainstream of the music world was the actual reason for his death, but it certainly could not have helped his already sensitive, talented, but fragile psyche….

I guess in the end, you have to personally experience a love triangle affair, from the perspective of either the one doing the cheating or the one being cheated upon, to truly appreciate the raw intensity of the emotional impact of a love triangle and all it’s many ramifications and consequences for all the people involved …

As I wrote in one of my own songs: “The Geometry of Innocence,”about love triangles, “The geometry of innocence is shattered when the circle of friends splits off, and forms triangles of pain that really are squares, that box you in, and lock you up, and make you feel alone again.”‘…. Such is life….