[QUOTE=zweisamkeit]
Exactly. So, lobotomyboy63, your “all’s fair” philosophy means you would be doing nothing wrong if the woman was married and you were fucking her brains out?
And a woman/relationship is not something to look at as a conquest. How about, I dunno, a relationship of equals? :rolleyes:
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zweiskameit: We’re not talking about a married woman, unless there’s something the OP isn’t telling us. And if you reread the post, you’ll see it’s prefaced with “Playing devil’s advocate a bit…” That, I thought, would clarify that I may not believe it but I’m looking at the problem from another angle. :rolleyes:
And where did I use the word “conquest?”
Pick any old saying—a rolling stone gathers no moss, a watched pot never boils over, a stitch in time saves nine—and they all survive because there’s some truth to them. People don’t say “All’s fair in love and war” because they think ‘How untrue that always is! What a stupid saying! Let’s pass it on to our children!’
Well, PLAYING DEVIL’S ADVOCATE, how might it apply? I’m just going by what the OP has told us, but he seems to be telling us what he believes to be the truth: she isn’t happy with the boyfriend and went so far as to break up for awhile, IIRC. Her actions of making out with the OP for an entire weekend make me think she was truly unhappy. I’ll own my gender bias here—if this were a guy who was unhappy with his girlfriend, we’d be all over his ass as a playah.
Sure, I think she should “woman up” and break it off permanently before starting something new. But not everybody plays by the same rules in love or war—and to me, that’s a big part of what the saying means. If you haven’t agreed on rules of fairness, then there are none to be broken and by definition, therefore, nothing can be called unfair. I think posters are assuming everyone has the same morals and values, but I’m not willing to do so.
As a parallel, I’m pro-choice but for myself, I could never father a child and then abort it. IMO I don’t have the right to look down on those who choose differently than me. So in the OP’s case, I don’t think pursuing her is the way to go, BUT that’s up to him. Visual: it’s like at the end of “Planet of the Apes” when the apes don’t pursue Charleton Heston and the babe. The ape leader says something like, “He’s going to find his destiny.” Some things you just have to find out for yourself, the hard way.
But what if I’m wrong? I’m not the one who lives with the consequences, good or bad, and that’s why he has to choose.
I think the saying also means people interpret the rules situationally as they go. Suppose Alice is the sort who would never just go out and have an affair…but then Alice finds out that Bob, her SO, is having one. So Alice says “Well, I’ll show Bob…if he can do it, so can I!” Should Alice “woman up,” confront him, etc.? Of course. Got anything in writing that guarantees she will? Alice may decide she prefers to be judge, jury, and executioner.
Hell’s bells, waterboarding anyone? Gitmo? Abu Ghraib? The government is allegedly rational, enters into “legally binding” agreements, and then does some very, uh, questionable things—and they’re not even crazy in love. Clearly some “agreements” get folded, stapled, and mutilated in time of war. That doesn’t make it right, but it also doesn’t make it not happen.
And that’s the biggest message to me in the saying “All’s fair in love and war,” i.e. that bad shit goes down. We can debate what should never have happened, who started it, why this was unfair yadda—but once a shitstorm happens, it can’t unhappen. The man at the bottom of this picture?
He’s dead. Argue to your heart’s content and you won’t bring him back. Relationships also die terrible deaths sometimes and the academic debate doesn’t undo the damage.
“All’s fair in love and war” could be said so many ways. Tongue-in-cheek: yeah, fair, right, depending on whose ox is being gored. Ironically: sure it’s fair because it says so right here, in the history books that the victors wrote. The “Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord” slant: the universe put a karmic smackdown on a total asshole. Etc.
@featherlou: I wasn’t suggesting that he should go for her…I was playing Monday morning quarterback. This toothpaste has already left the tube, after all, because he can’t undo what’s done. 
I’m saying that in the future if a similar situation with a different woman presented itself, he might try that strategy but IMO it would be unlikely to work for the reasons I discussed. But I don’t think there is a better one…at least not that I can think of.
