Adultery

@King Zeal: why does The Other Wiki have a stoned Asian chick◊ as the picture for sexless marriage?

edited 10th Nov '11 8:49:06 PM by joeyjojo

Apparently "Sexless Marriage" and "Celibate Marriage" were originally two completely different articles. The former was intended to describe marriages in which the lack of sex is a symptom of one or both partners' problems, while the latter refers to relationships with a mutual agreement on lack of sex.

As for the Chilean model in the photo, I can only imagine she would be delighted to learn her photo was being used (probably without her knowledge) in the header for an article entitled "Sexless Marriage." At least it's not an article on STDs or the like, I suppose.

edited 11th Nov '11 2:47:58 AM by ForlornDreamer

...

Well I was close

Interesting how so many people become judge and jury to others based on their own morality, but especially with adultery. It fascinates me how a group will normally keep good boundaries. but if a relationship experiences adultery, they take it as personal as if it happened to them.

A lot of us have had it happen to us.

I understand that. I have my own experience with it to. I just find it intriguing that adultery is one of the only issues that the people outside the situation can be as emotionally charged or invested as the people in the situatuon.

This is not a condemnation. Just an observation.

"I just find it intriguing that adultery is one of the only issues that the people outside the situation can be as emotionally charged or invested as the people in the situatuon."

I don't think is that intriguing. We are animals and one of our basest instincts is to procreate and pass the genes. Maybe at some basic unconscious level when a woman cheats the man feels she will deprive him of his offspring. And when a man cheats he will go have offspring with another woman thus harming the former partner's offspring.

My point is that biology still plays a huge role and we should make an effort to control our ape sub-routines. But sex you can get from anyone while a fulfilling relationship is usually a bit harder to find. Finding a vagina/penis is easy. Finding someone you would want to spend an entire lazy Sunday, under the covers, cuddling and playing games or watching anime is another ball game.

Relationships are like contracts. You make a implicit or explicit agreement with the other person(s) and everyone feels comfortable with the terms then enjoy it. But when someone decides to unilaterally break the terms then that person is betraying the other(s) who carry on assuming they are still in the relationship they sign up for and not living a lie.

And that's what most people object: the lies. Nobody bats an eye to what consenting adults do in the privacy of their lives/relationships. But basic empathy will make people condemn anyone who lies and betrays his/her partner be it a romantic, a business or some other kind of relation.

For me, and I'm sorry about the sweeping generalization, someone who cheats regularly on his/her partner and then goes to forums in order to rationalize why he/she is entitled to lie, deceive and betray the Not-So-Significant Other is merely someone who likes to cheat but not be cheated on or else knows that the partner would just leave and is selfish/egotistical enough to keep a person around in those conditions.

Ops, sorry for jesusing the thread... haven't notice the data of the last post...

Adultery is one of the few things I'd take the risk of being called "old-fashioned" for finding morally reprehensible.

But not in the context of marriage itself: In the context of a non-"open" relationship in general. It's a breach of trust, is all.

Note that I don't count an Arranged Marriage as a true relationship, however.

@Einherjer, I understand what you're saying. But in my experiences of adultery, those who are outside of the specific relationship can be just as angry, sad, any of the gambit of emotions that the person who was actually cheated on or the cheater themselves, even though the action itself didn't happen to them. Women seem to be especially prone to this behavior.

How many times have we seen in movies, books, or real life the irate friend who happens to be a girl (regardless if it's to a man or a woman) yelling for the cheater's head on a platter and telling the person in the relationship they need to leave no questions asked.

While I understand people have similar life experiences, and most likely someone who is more offended about cheating most likely was cheated on themselves, I find it intriguing that in this particular situation, it is very easy for the bystanders to put blinders up and impress their personal feelings and experiences on the affected couple without hesitation when they normally wouldn't in other situations.

For example, if the couple had a miscarriage/abortion/death/something along those lines, it's easier for the bystanders to keep their personal emotions and experiences in check and listen first to the specific instance of their friend. But with cheating or divorce, it seems easier for them to either consciously or unconsciously project their specific experiences on their friend and try and guide them accordingly even though no situation is exactly the same and they were not in that relationship.

To me I think this is more of a result of social conditioning more so than biology because death and miscarriage are very primal and human acts of nature.

Hey Gabe, long time no see.

It's not really that unique a phenomenon. People can, and have, had strong opinions on things that had nothing to do with them.

But a miscarriage or death is just... something sad that's happened. There is no 'bad guy', no perpetrator. People see it as "My friend has been treated badly by someone they love", and it's easy to step from that to "How dare they hurt my friend, I'm not going to stand for this".

Not all deaths are just sad, but I see what you're saying.

I'm not saying that it's a wrong reaction, rather just trying to get to the root of why these reactions are there. While I understand someone being protective, sometimes I wonder if it's not the bystanders selfishness sometimes. They feel their pain more than realizing the reality of their friend's pain.

If my theory that this is from social conditioning more so than biology, what steps do you think we should take to help reign this in? Or should we even?

Trying to keep people from having feelings or an opinion on something is a losing battle. I wouldn't worry about it; getting mad about something a friend's behalf seems to happen with less charged issues as well. We just need to remember that the friend does not control what we do in any given situation. It's also part of a solidarity thing; it's our friend that's been wronged here, and the good ones stand up for you as much as you'll stand up for them. There's no reason to condition against that, just to keep it in check enough that the friend can make their own decisions without feeling railroaded. And you know, just in general support them through a rocky time in their life.

But yes, adultery. The only ones in favor of this are the people who intend to get away with it and justify it with selfish reasoning.

Never wanted to stop people from feeling, just as I said, check ourselves better.

While being protective of your friends is most of the time an admirable and sought after quality, I'm concerned with how we can as a society help I guess help put in safeguards to give the same sort of constructive support we give in other times of distress as we do for adultery.

Why should this specific pain be given special considerations? I am asking this because I know how painful cheating can be. And some well intentioned but still over zealous friend can aggrivate the situation.

Again, not condemning, just this side of the adultery prisim is interesting and I wanted to just get some ideas from other people. Some friends in my experiences were so emotionally charged they got into fights with me about it or said things they later admitted they never would have under normal circumstances. Some even surprised themselves with how they reacted.

I don't know, maybe I'm personally too much of an emotional control freak to allow someone else's personal life wind me up to the degree popular media has pointed out, regardless of how I love them. But it does bother me how some bystanders can get far too emotional too quickly with little awareness over it sometimes.

It's up to every inividual to determine how much is too much, but overall I think we can all picture at least one instance, fictional or first hand where we have seen this. Even in this forum I've noticed people get blindsided and worked up over cheating faster and/or to stronger degrees than abortion or child abuse.

I think that adultery is in very bad taste as a practice. Arranged or not, it does not matter how emotional the relationship is. What matters is keeping one's word, it's trust. They say first and foremost comes the love of a mother, then that of a father, then that of a dog, then that of a lover.

If a lover is going to be a life parter, someone with whom one wades against the undercurrents of destiny and together with whom one seeks to build a shelter against the arrows of fate, then no betrayal is acceptable. Depending on the nature of the couple, a sexual betrayal may be more emotionally loaded than another, but that's incidental, I think.

I for one have no use for a lover that does not offer me comfort and security. I'm getting old and I need somewhere to rely on. I'm getting tired and I need somewhere to begin. I've had enough of sex partners, crushes, and fair weather friends, I just need to find me somebody to love, someone to come home to, at the end of the day. Life is meaningless, but, with the right person, we can build a universe around each other, like twin branches of a double helix. We can be each other's world.

Adultery kind of gets in the way of that.

edited 16th Feb '12 10:03:53 PM by TheHandle

Maybe if I provide some examples everyone will have a better idea of what I'm asking for commentary on. I'm not talking about the couple. I'm talking about those around the couple.

First example, I was cheated on by my fiance. I found about this by going home telling him I was pregnant, and he told me about the woman he was cheating on me with and was basically only using me.

I was left, 19 years old, sophmore in college, who couldn't even mourn the loss of her relationship because I was having to find a new place to live, figure out how I could stay in college, as well as attend to my pregnancy and prepare for the birth of my son both medically as well as the impending legal battle when my ex decided he was going to deny paternity and attempt to abandon me with my child.

I had a friend who was completely sincere in saying she knew exactly how she felt, never mind the boyfriend who cheated on her did so after 2 months of dating, they never lived together, and she was talking about breaking up with him anyway. I could believe her claims of sympathy, but empathy? No.

Another case I know of is a woman who cheated on her boyfriend. She had a history of intense mental instability as well as sexual abuse. They had been friends for years before their relationship, which had almost been a year at that point. She was intensely in love with him, but through some messed up breakdown and a wolf in sheep's clothing friend, it happened. The man chose to stay with her and work things out with her. There were tons of his friends, women mostly, who literally wanted to go kick the woman's ass all over the place. (And probably would have should the man allowed it to.)

He had his own brand of hell to deal with alone from the incident, but a portion of his friends gave him their own hell for accepting back a cheater even though they didn't know and to a degree didn't want to know the whole story. Likewise the woman who cheated had to accept the responsibility to not just redeem herself to her love, but to his friends, his family, pretty much anyone who knew about the incident. She was branded a sex-crazed idiot not worth him; some considered him weak and letting a fox back in the hen house.

Needless to say they are a very strong and happy couple now.

My concern is how the friends, especially those of the second instance, were moved by such anger they physically wanted to hurt the other person. As an inital reaction, maybe that would be understandable, but to hold a long term emotion over the ordeal that didn't even happen to you makes me very uncomfortable.

If their friendship was the true motivation, then why would they lash out if the victim of cheating didn't agree with their advice as if they themselves were cheaters? Why not try and understand the full story including talking to the offending party so they can guide and support their friend as clear and strong as possible?

I'm not trying to imply that this doesn't happen, because that wouldn't be true. And I know there are people who will say that there are plenty of other occasions that would cause these reactions, I'm just saying I've noticed the subject of cheating is easily the one subject that people are more likely to go into rage mode over. Even reading this thread and others, I have seen how people's emotions can get more carried away much faster and more powerful then what other topics can do.

I don't think this is a good thing. If you can be so moved by emotion over an occasion that didn't even happen to you that you are moved to say or do things you would never do in any other circumstances, I think that's a problem.

I don't think there's anything wrong with adultery. No one should be expected to have sex with one person when it's very clear the human libido gets bored easily. Maybe if people started being open-minded and doing away with ancient customs (marriages), then "adultery" would become a thing of the past.

@Aka, The problem with adultery is that it harms one's partner. There is nothing wrong with open, poly, etc. relationships, but once you start going behind your partner's back is when things start to get nasty.

edited 17th Feb '12 11:15:58 AM by setnakhte

What he said .

I'm in a polyamorous relationship. My boyfriend and I occasionally have different partners, and I'm okay with this.

But, if he decided to sleep with someone and tried to hide it from me, it'd be a symptom of something going wrong deeper in the relationship, so I'd be worried/pissed off/etc.

Adultery has little to do with having multiple partners, and more to do with deceit and unhealthy relationships.

It serves them right for expecting a human being to have sex with one person.

That's nice.

It's not about expecting someone to have sex with only one person, it's about betraying your significant other. It's perfectly possible to cheat in an open or poly relationship.

If you don't want somebody who has such expectations then... maybe don't have a partner that expects you to only have sex with one person? Maybe that's much more reasonable?

Because, if your partner believes that he/she exclusively has sex with you, if you let him/her believe so, yet also cheat - then that is a relationship on false premises. It's sex on false premises, something which under other circumstances we would (rightly!) condemn to hell and back. That's what's wrong with cheating and adultery: Your partner has a right to know the truth before committing to start or maintain a relationship with you.

edited 17th Feb '12 1:55:41 PM by Octo

Sex under false premises is legally rape, in certain jurisdictions. Because the conditions your partner needed you to fulfill so they could have sex with you were not, in fact, met, and thus the consent is null and invalid. Just letting you know.