This is a spinoff of a thought prompted by a current thread on sociopathy and empathy, with morality flitting lightly throughout.
I was informed, and have no reason to doubt, that I slept with a close friend’s girlfriend, not long before I was sent to a mental hospital and elected to have ECT (which, BTW, saved my life). As a result I cannot and will never remember the one-nighter or the wretched guilt it undoubtedly engendered. I presume. I hope.
The friend has never spoken to me since. To me the whole issue is a moral chestnut of some kind and has bothered me for 30 years. I don’t even know how to approach it, but have decided it isn’t worth zillions of dollars of shrink time. From a long time ago the issue is 98% philosophical.
Considered as a tort, and it’s recompense, whatever that may be, it is immaterial, i think, that I can’t remember it. It really did occur, I have no doubt.
I don’t know how a lawyer would play that. It undoubtedly arises often in civil and criminal cases.
But as to contrition, in the Jewish and Christian conception to which I am atune, I’m left high and dry. When you repent, you figure the minimum is to feel, emotionally, what you’ve done, and “feel bad” (if deemed a correct emotional response) after immersing yourself in the memory of the event and your emotional knowledge of what hurt you’ve caused.
But I can’t. Some other guy named Leo Bloom did that, and I can certainly sympathize–what went around came around with some cast changes, believe you me–but as to that particular event I’m at a loss.
How would one go about framing this affair?