People have affairs all the time. That’s their business. What I don’t like is all the Holier Than Thou condemnation crap that been thrown at RSSchen.
You never know what some other person is going through and a third party on the internet is hardly in a position to pass judgement. If you don’t want an affair, do like I do and don’t have one.
I don’t believe in Jesus, but this is, in fact, a no-brainer. Don’t betray people’s trust. How much more basic can you get. I mean you don’t even do that in a casual friendship, let alone a marriage. The attack mentality is entirely justified.
If you want a polyamorous marriage or an open marriage, more power to you. But everyone’s gotta know the score and agree to it.
Reread my post, you’re simply wrong.
Sometimes, there aren’t enough roll-eyes in the world. Cheating is wrong. This is an absolute.
Having sex with other people is NOT necessarily wrong, but it’s also a different thing. The OPs husband believes that he is in a monogamous relationship. He believes that because that’s the deal they made, and the deal has not been renegotiated. If the OP wants to renegotiate the deal, good on her. If she wants to continue to deceive the person she promised to be faithful to for the rest of her life, then character points will be subtracted.
Actions have consequences. This is not complicated, or difficult to understand. This is toddler-level ethics, they cover it on Sesame Street.
Well, if she doesn’t want people to pass judgement then she shouldn’t have posted details of her affair where every single person who can read English and access the internet can see them.
She’s a scumbag and deserves to be called on it.
I certainly have no problem being wrong, since that’s where I usually end up, but I’ve re-read your post several times and I see no disclaimer that you’re only talking about some people in that thread. However, if I’m not parsing it correctly, could you please point out specifically where you clarified who you were directing that at?
Well, it’s not like we hired a private eye. She ASKED for comment. She ASKED for, in her words, “help”. She took what was her business and made it our business.
If I come spew my private life all over you (as, in the past, I have), and ask you for your feedback on it, then you have every right and permission to speak freely.
Granted, I think there are useful and less useful comments. I’ve tried to keep mine thoughtful, thought-provoking and actually useful. But “stone the bitch” is a perfectly permissible sentiment as well.
(I’m, frankly, just amazed and happy that my suggestion that she discuss re-negotiating their marriage contract hasn’t been met with similar stones, and that a fairly large (relatively speaking) number of people have finally gotten than polyamory isn’t the same thing as an illicit affair and vice-versa. Honestly, it makes me feel like maybe I (and a few others, I can’t take all the credit) have actually made a difference in the last few years here, and that makes me happy.)
Oh I take your point. My point is that the expectations we (Americans in 2007) place on marriages are unreasonable with the results you see every day: Tons of unhappiness and divorce.
The dynamics of friendship in our society are such that I basically never feel I have to lie to my friends. For one thing, I don’t make lifelong promises of loyalty and exclusivity to them! The unspoken context is this: Behave, or we won’t be friends for long.
Now in marriage you have an agreement to be with each other and love each other forever–no matter what. It’s a stupid thing to promise, and then all manner of expectations are piled onto that. Then, as our knowledge of human nature would predict, when some people feel they have a sure thing they take it for granted and don’t uphold their end of the bargain.
When one side doesn’t uphold his/her end of the bargain, the other very naturally resents the exclusivity part of the deal. In our society, there are two options, one accepted and one excoriated: divorce and affairs.
Just out of curiosity, how old is “old enough to be able to deal with a divorce”?
Sure. I said, “I find you people willing to judge this person and call her names and go for the jugular quite scary, yet quite normal for the Dope.”
Saying, “those of you,” would have been clearer. But such was my meaning, thanks.
Oh, god. I had forgotten about that.
Yep, reasonable suggestion.
She really should negotiate it; that’s best. But you try that with some spouses, and they’ll drag you down to the grotto to do penance before Santa Maria, and there will be cursing in the night, and manner of irrational, culturally-determined torments to deal with.
I don’t agree with you.
I think life contracts are stupid and unrealistic by nature. But there’s also no way of knowing whether he has changed the deal on her, so you really can’t judge.
My dad got heart disease and went batshit crazy from depression in the 1980s, making all our lives sheer misery. That’s changing the deal quite a lot. My mom never had an affair, to my knowledge, but had she had one I sure wouldn’t have blamed her. At same time, I could understand her not wanting to get divorced because she felt an obligation to see my dad through his illness, which she did.
So, the whole “then get divorced” logic doesn’t work for me.
Yes, it sounds like a level of complexity that appeals to you.
This is rich, coming from you, one of our most persistently dim contributors.
The bottom line is this: If you’re in a bad relationship, you can either fix it, or end it before starting a new one. There is no middle ground. Period.
The OP is right.
Even if we grant that she “deserves” to be called a scumbag, does doing make the world a better place, or a worse place?
Hey, you’re the one with the handle that means “cherry.” Why are you so uptight about sexual matters, hmm?
Another Sesame Street watcher?
To me, the worst part of this is the implication that RSSchen is only staying with her husband because she doesn’t currently have a job, she’s a SAHM, so if she left the marriage she’d be in a bad financial state. That’s fucked up. She should just get divorced, like half of America has, bite the bullet and get a job. Work out custody of the kids, figure it out like everyone else does. Then she’ll be a single, self-sufficient woman and can do whatever she wants with a clear conscience. But leeching off the man you married, for whom you have nothing but disdain, and having an affair on his dime? Fucked up.
And that’s certainly your right, but in my opinion, that makes you an unethical person, and not to be trusted.
I don’t actually disagree. But the thing about contracts is that you’re perfectly free not to enter into one. You’re also free to honorably dissolve one. You’re NOT free to enter into one and then not honor it. That is unethical.
:rolleyes: Yes, I’m a very simple person. I recognize that some actions are simply unacceptable, and don’t perform a bunch of mental gymnastics trying to justify them.
One more thing before I go. It’s not the affair itself that makes me so angry. People do bad things all the time. God knows I have. And I don’t know all the details of her marriage, as JC of Mars points out. But what pisses me off is the narcissistic way she justifies betraying her husband and her kids because, goddamit, it makes her happy.
If she started a thread saying “I’m having an affair, I know it’s wrong but I can’t stop” and then detailed the frustrations of sex life at home and sincerely asked for advice, I think a lot of people would have been more sympathetic. But her attitude is “I’m unhappy and I deserve to be happy, whatever the cost to others.”
I actually partly agree with Aeschines in that I find the board is highly populated with prudes and scolds. There’s something about the anonymous nature of the internet that brings that side of people out, I guess. But in this particular case, the scolding is deserved. Not because of what RSSchen has done, but because of her attitude about it.
She doesn’t know that she isn’t hurting her kids, or that she won’t hurt them in the future. She’s risking a lot of other’s pain for her own pleasure, and seems completely oblivious to that. And yes, I’m partly enraged because I was raised in a family that had something somewhat similar going on. (Very remotely, but close enough to push my buttons.)
Very few of the posts on this or any board affect the world at all. But maybe a verbal slap in the face will cause her to re-think what she’s doing.