This mindless penis has enough trust in his wife’s intelligence to sincerely believe that in the - very much unlikely - event of him cheating on her, she’d be intelligent enough to kick his nuts instead of primarily blaming “the other woman”.
At least, I hope she’d respect my intelligence enough to react that way.
Exactly. It’s not a zero-sum game. He’s 100% at fault. So is she. (Unless one or the other is lying about his/her status).
OK, first of all, are you talking about meeting someone, and feeling like you can’t be happy without this person, so you must pursue this person regardless of the marital status of this person, or are you talking about two people who conspire behind the back of a third person, who happens to be the spouse of one of the two?
DO NOT pursue married people. I don’t care if you have just met someone you feel you would be miserable without. There will be someone else. Just wait, you’ll see. If a married person is pursuing you, that should be setting off all kinds of alarm bells in your head, and you should be doing everything you can to discourage that person. Someone who cheats with you is pretty likely to cheat on you.
If you are friends, or co-workers with someone, and there seems to be a “spark,” but one of you is married, is something wrong with the marriage? the married person needs to decide which person he or she really wants to be with, and if it isn’t the spouse, make a clean break. If there really doesn’t seem to be any deciding, then maybe the couple is candidates for an open marriage, or a threesome, or something not typical, but there needs to be some serious thought, and some difficult conversations, and maybe some HIV tests, before anyone just falls into bed.
But “true love” doesn’t come like lightning. You can nip it in the bud (excuse my mixed metaphors) if you want to choose your marriage, or at least apply the brakes to it until the divorce is final. I’ve never been divorced, but I understand it takes some energy. I wouldn’t want to be divorcing, AND trying to build a new relationship. One thing at a time.
Band name/movie idea! Oh wait.
I think that if it’s “true love” then you can endure a very short period worth of misery while the other person ends the prior relationship (tells their current partner, moves out, separates, etc.) before you embark on your lifetime of happiness.
If the feeling isn’t going to be there in a week (or if the other person isn’t willing to end their current relationship) it’s a fling.
I’m not sure what’s the difference. Presumably, once you’ve met the person, and something begins, you’re conspiring behind the back of the spouse.
First, this kind of statement is bullshit. There’s absolutely no guarantee that you’ll meet someone else significant anytime soon, or ever. An ex’s mother fell in love for the first time at 65 or so. Some people never do. Empty statements like that shouldn’t be used as advice. Life isn’t a Disney movie, and there’s no guarantee things will always turn for the best.
Second, why exactly should you desist in favour of the current partner? Unless you see people as property (first come, first served, that’s mine), there’s no objective reason why the current partner “deserve” this relationship more than you.
Again unobvious. Make sense to an extent, but I’ve seen here many posts of people who have zero intimacy with their spouse, for instance. It’s likely that if they’re seeking a new partner, it’s because they don’t get what they expect from their current relationship, not because they’re inherently cheaters.
Besides, I noted with amazement that even in such cases, the majority of Dopers think that seeking another partner is morally very wrong. For instance there was this guy who hadn’t have sex with his wife for years. Not only that but after they had agreed that she would make the effort to at least kiss him once in a while, she wouldn’t bring herself to even do that. IIRC, he didn’t want to divorce for the sake of the children. Ok, fine. But I can’t fathom how in such a situation, his wife could think she should have any say in his sexual or intimate life, or why dopers stated that for him to have a paramour would be morally wrong. In fact, that’s this kind of issues that prompted me to post in this thread.
Finally, you’re talking about a cheater who might be more likely to cheat again. My question was a bit different : it was about whether it was actually wrong to pursue a romantic interest, wrecking the previous couple in the process. For instance, forget about cheating. You meet someone, fall in love, whatever. Your partner tells his/her spouse (so, no cheating) and presumably break up. Were you morally at fault for pursuing this interest in the first place. Did you have a moral duty not to, and why?
I was more thinking of the “other woman”. Should she nip it in the bud, given that she never promised anything to the spouse? I know it’s considered rather obvious that she’s doing a bad thing, but I’m not sure why objectively, unless you consider a partner as, sort of, property (hence, anybody “stealing” him from you is a bad person).
Marriage is a contract. Preventing, or even strongly discouraging someone from fulfilling a contract is a cruddy thing to do. If you keep pestering a friend of yours to go out with you and stay up to all hours every night, even though you know this person has to get up early in the morning and go to work, you are interfering with his contract with his employer. If you try to get someone to go out with you after work, and forget the fact that he has a dog at home he needs to go let out, that’s even a crappy thing to do, and the “contract” one has with one’s dog, to provide it with care isn’t enforceable by anyone, doesn’t need to be formally dissolved, and hurts only the dog. But you are still a jerk for trying to get someone to neglect his dog.
If I promise to mow someone’s lawn on Sunday, and you steal my lawn mower, I bear a certain amount of blame for not securing the lawn mower better, but you are the real jerk. The person who gets hurt, though, is the person whose lawn I promised to mow. You kept me from fulfilling a promise. Now, if you really desperately needed a lawn mower, and had asked me, so that I could call the person whose lawn I promised to mow, and either made other arrangements with them, or at least give them a heads up, so they could call someone else, they don’t get hurt. I still break a promise, but not in a way that screws someone.
This is an interesting point I haven’t seen made yet.
As old-fashioned as this seems, a “committed-and-exclusive” sexual relationship feels a lot like property. I don’t mean chattel, although that may be there too. I mean something more like land: a boundary, a limit that’s recognized by those who hold it and society (since society offers a contract – marriage – that solemnizes it and is defined by it).
So “the other woman” is trespassing, and not to ask you if you want to buy Girl Scout cookies. More like a burglar trying to steal your partner’s affections and emotional commitment. So trying rather primitively to drive them off is an understandable emotional response.
If marriage doesn’t establish some kind of boundary, what’s the point of getting married in the first place?
Unless you know for absolute certain that a marriage is a green card marriage, or a person is just providing a good friend who is ill with health insurance, the boundaries are there until they aren’t.
Anyway, love isn’t magical, or mystical, and it shouldn’t be idolized, or used an an excuse for anything, especially bad behavior. I know a lot of people who were in absolute true love who didn’t stay together, and I even know some people who had brokered marriages who pairings led to love, and they were together for decades until one of them died.
Then it’s time for the married person to leave.
And why do you deserve the relationship more than the spouse deserves honesty? I get that you want it, and that honesty may take time and delay your gratification. But you’re an adult, you shouldn’t feel like you have to have the thing you want right this very second. “I want it! Gimme! Gimme NOW!” is for people who are still figuring this whole pooping in the potty thing, and we’re generally not big fans of it even in them.
If they’re that unhappy, they need to leave.
If he’s that unhappy, he needs to either leave or sort out some sort of mutually agreeable openness.
If you meet someone and hit it off and they decide they’d like to see where it goes so they leave, you’re good. If you meet someone, hit it off, and you two see where it goes before they leave…that’s an emotional affair, and you bear the same culpability you would hold if the two of you were fucking.
Yes, she should. It’s not about property, it’s about honesty and keeping promises. Your new love promised someone else physical and emotional loyalty, and as far as that person knows those promises are being kept. Deliberately breaking a promise to someone and lying to them about it is a shitty way to behave. Knowingly helping someone do something shitty is also shitty. It’s really not that difficult.
Right there I have a problem. I can’t view relationship in term of “contracts”. I don’t think that whether the other person is married (as opposed to a commited relationship without marriage) should change a thing (of course if you’re a believer and involve god in it, we don’t have a common ground). Either it’s wrong or it isn’t, marriage or not.
OK, but is this promise more important than what you want now? OK, you’re going to answer me that promises are important, and you shouldn’t make one if you intent to renege on it at the first opportunity. But in matters of love, people make promises all the time that, most of the time in our modern societies, they don’t uphold. See the divorce rate to begin with (and for the record I never promised eternal love or anything remotely similar in my life. In fact, I’m reluctant to promise anything, even to mow a lawn). I think a lot of people agree that when you aren’t happy anymore, you’re better off ending a relationship. If it’s the case, then how is the other woman guilty of anything?
You’re mentioning later warning the person whose lawn you promised to mow that there will be a change of plan. But precisely, that was my question. Are you wrong for breaking a couple, assuming that it’s done in all honesty (your lover tells his wife he met someone, divorce, whatever)?
Obviously, material issues (buying a house together, taxes, etc…). YMMV, but I don’t think for an instant that a marriage gives a relationship a special value. If there’s a boundary, it’s exactly the same for a non-married couple.
But what are the boundaries. Again, if A hits on B who’s in couple with C, and B drops C as a result, is A at fault? Why A should put C interests above her own? Especially if B in unhappy in his couple and would be happier with A?
Whether or not it is bad behaviour is yet to be established, for me. And regarding idolizing love, it is already idolized in our societies. People are expected to settle for love nowadays. Again, YMMV.
Nice in theory, but in practice many people don’t. There’s currently (or was recently) a thread full of posters lamenting their marriage without sex or intimacy.
Which doesn’t adress my question : assuming honesty, is it wrong to break a couple?
But in fact they don’t leave, in this case like in many others because of the children, for instance.
And anyway, I ask again : you’re living with someone. You don’t have sex with this person. Didn’t have for years. As in this example, you’re even unwilling to kiss him. Let’s assume that otherwise everything is fine (again like in many of those sexless marriages described in the other thread), you go along well with your partner, he’s a good father for your children, you don’t have fights, etc…
However, divorced or not, what makes you think that you should have any say about his sex life or love life? You’re not his lover anymore, haven’t been in a while. Whatever the reasons that make you both stay together, they’re unrelated with intimacy. So what make posters think that your partner should refrain from having sex with whoever he wants and seek emotional support or intimacy wherever he wants? I don’t see how he could possibly have the slightest obligation towards you in this regard, even if you stay married for the children, or the house, or whatever.
In fact I was thinking of fucking. By not cheating, I didn’t mean not fucking, I meant telling your current partner about the fucking.
And I’m not talking about cheating behind the back of the spouse. I’m asking if it’s inherently wrong to pursue your love interest (or sex interest, for that matter) if he’s already in a relationship.
Simply : I’m attracted to a woman who is married. Is it inherently wrong to hit on her, and why? Assuming she reciprocates, and assuming she tells what’s happening to her partner, breaks with him, etc… was I morally in the wrong for knowingly breaking this couple?
This is where we have no common ground.
clairobscur, it seems like you have a very different conception of what marriage means than most people do. That is fine if you decide not to marry, or to make your definition of marriage clear and be sure your spouse-to-be is on the same wavelength as you.
But you need to understand that for most people, marriage IS about making promises and trying to keep them, even if doing so is difficult, particularly when there are innocent children involved who will benefit from being raised in a secure environment.
I can’t help but think of my son’s girlfriend’s family, which consisted of a husband, wife, and three daughters. One day, dad came home and said he had found someone new, so his wife and three kids would have to leave the country (we are all expatriates, and the wife/kids were only resident in the country as dependents of the father). The poor wife had to scramble to figure out an entire new existence for herself back in her home country (where she had not lived in years), while taking responsibility for three daughters.
The new love was someone from the husband’s office, so presumably they came into contact with each other for that reason. Who knows, maybe they were so well-suited for each other that attraction was inevitable. But what kind of man pursues an affair that will cause incredible disruption and pain for his family (and it did - the mom/kids are finally okay, but they do bear emotional and financial scars as the result of dad’s shittiness).
By your lights (no pun intended!), the dad’s new honey did nothing wrong. As for me, I think both parties were scumbags.
And a huge percentage of the time, both parties are married.
As a woman, I’m more likely to only hear the woman’s side of the story, and more than one woman has told me that she HAD to forgive her husband for cheating - that she could not in good conscience divorce him for being unfaithful, because she had done it herself.
A relationship has two parties, and a relationship where one of them keeps it a secret is not much of a relationship. People fall out of love, people make bad choices, people prefer others. Being open about that may hurt but it is a lot more honest than claiming the third party is number one while sneaking around and not telling the world.
Refusing to be open is where the jerk part comes in. That’s why I’m fine with waiting for separation, not divorce.
I’ve never understood the ‘blaming the other women’ thing but it seems to be the norm, in my experience.
My wife has a friend who had a child with a married man. His wife, when she found out, blamed the other women and made the family move to get away from her. She followed. Turns out the dude had a child with another woman as well. The three women fight among themselves over who gets what amount of his time while (I guess, never met him) he must just bask in the glow of three women fighting over him. It’s depressing as hell.
“One day, dad came home and said he had found someone new, so his wife and three kids would have to leave the country (we are all expatriates, and the wife/kids were only resident in the country as dependents of the father). The poor wife had to scramble to figure out an entire new existence for herself back in her home country (where she had not lived in years), while taking responsibility for three daughters.”
First, I doubt it was “one day …” and second, too bad the wife chose not to talk to a good divorce lawyer and immigration lawyer, not necessarily in that order. (Divorce 101: do not believe what the spouse declares to you about X-Y-Z.)
It is the married person who is breaking the contract/promise, not the “other woman” who made no such promises to the lover’s spouse.
Your are not qualified to comment. First, you don’t know what anything about the legal requirements for remaining in Indonesia as a foreigner. Believe me, there is NOTHING an immigration attorney could do for her. (I’ve lived here for 14 years and know what I’m talking about.) Second, you seem to be suggesting that she should at least try to stay in Indonesia (that’s the point of the immigration attorney, I assume). How do you know she didn’t take heroic measures in that regard? As a matter or fact, she did everything she could to try to stay.
In my view, any person who would knowingly contribute to the harm those girls experienced is contemptible. Why did the two “adults” have to kick the family out and live together? If they absolutely thought it was twoo wuv, they should have had the decency to continue their affair in secret for a few years and not shatter the lives of three innocent kids. I’m sure there was a solution that would have been easier for the spurned family and still resulted in the two love-birds spending their lives together eventually.
I was there and saw how hard it was on the kids. Fault the wife if you want, but the kids were powerless and blameless, and they suffered horribly. While the dad has most of the responsibility, if I were somehow “the other woman” in this case there is no way I could have condoned my lover kicking his children out of the country. (She had a husband and kids of her own that she was walking out on too, but I don’t know the details of that situation so I haven’t brought it into the discussion. Seems likely she wasn’t very considerate of anyone’s needs but her own, though.)
Excuse me, but this isn’t exactly typical of most divorces and affairs, and anyway, the issue here isn’t the affair but the kicking your own children out of the country.
I mean, this guy could also have murdered his wife and his children to make room for wife 2.0, but this wouldn’t exactly be a representative sample that should be used to discuss the issue of divorce in general. The overwhelming majority of divorced parents don’t kick their children out of the house and out of the country.
You have a point about the severity of this particular example not being representative. But from what I’ve seen the trauma to the kids is pretty great in most cases, even if expatriation is not part of the situation.
Kids are often involved when people have extramarital affairs. If you (generic you, not you specifically) set out to steal a spouse when that spouse has young kids, to me that is on the face of it morally wrong. I’m sure there are isolated instances where there will be no negative repercussions on the kids. But it’s not honorable to put your selfish desires ahead of the well-being of innocent children.