I’m going with A here. Sure, in an ideal world people wouldn’t hook up with married people but, as others like belladonna have said, it’s A who made the commitment and took the vows, and it’s not up to anyone else to enforce that commitment.
I also cannot agreel with those who seriously believe that B is at all to blame. Sure, it might be the case that the relationship is having problems, but i don’t think this has to be the case for cheating to occur. Also, if there is trouble in the relationship, then A should either stick it out or cut the cord, not sleep around while the relationship is still officially on.
As i said, it would be good if C didn’t pursue a married person, but the only occasion where i’d be willing to assign any real blame to C is in FlippyFly’s case, where C and B know one another. That changes things, although it still doesn’t reduce the culpability of A.
A is mostly to blame: A hurt his wife* AND broke a promise. You shouldn’t hurt people, and you shouldn’t break your promise
C is partly to blame: C hurt A’s wife*. You shouldn’t hurt people.
Daniel
or her husband, his husband, or her wife–it’s easier for me to think of A as the guy in a het relationship
This, I don’t understand. I know that it might be easier to hurt someone you don’t know, but does that make it any less immoral? I’ll buy that if C knows B, then they are guilty of being a shitty friend on top of everything else, but I can’t absolve them of all wrongdoing just because they didn’t know the person they were hurting beforehand.
If B and C do not know each other, or have only met at office christmas parties or whatever, A is fully to blame–C doesn’t owe B anything, but he’s still kinda slimy.
If B and C know each other enough to be friendly, A is still just as much to blame as before, but now C has broken the trust of friendship or whatever. Still doesn’t alliveate A of any blame.
But the question for me is how much effort you are obliged to take not to hurt someone. I guess my point is, that if you are C and you don’t know B, then you have no particular obligation to try and save A and B’s relationship.
If, on the other hand, you are friends with B, then you are burdened by the responsibilities of friendship, which go above and beyond simply doing no harm and involve actively helping your friend/s in any way you possibly can.
Like i said above, in an ideal world there would be no C. Nor do i think that what C is doing is especially laudable. But, for me at least, C’s actions are more fraught and problematic if C knows B.
I guess the underlying philosophy of my position is this: In general, i try to be a good person to everyone, at least to the extent that i can. But i reserve for my friends an extra level of commitment and concern that i don’t (and, in some ways, can’t) apply to everyone. Friendship, for me, implies a level of trust between two people that trascends simple good manners.
Hehehe…that’s exactly what I was thinking. Did anyone make A a female? It seems like everyone has A pegged as male and B and C as female. In my head their all male and all hooking up with each other, but that’s a completely diffent topic than the OP probably intented.
As to my answer to the OP, I think that A is to blame completely up unto the point when A tells C that A is married. At that point, C takes on some of the blame of potentially ruining a marriage. Although, as others have pointed out, C didn’t make any lifelong-til-death-do-us-part vows, so C can’t, IMHO, take to much blame.
Let’s say that A eventually dumps C and goes back to B. Later on, you, a swingin’ single, meet C and hook up. C tells you the whole sordid affair.
Do you have trust issues with C?
I know I would. C’s actions bespeak a cavalier attitude toward romantic commitment that would really worry me. I don’t know whether that’s fair, but it’s how I’d feel.
Not necessarily. I would have trust issues if C broke any promises C had made, but C did not do such a thing. The fact that C didn’t value some other relationship doesn’t mean that C doesn’t value C’s own relationships.
If Mr. Butler is B (me), and Mrs. Butler is A, it would go like this.
B divorces A, as A is 100% at fault with regards to the break in trust with B.
If B knows C, he finds him and breaks his legs.
If B does not know C, but B sees him around, legs may be broken. If C confronts B, legs will be broken. If C is never seen by B, he will be thought of as scum. (all of this is dependant on C knowing A was married.
Either way, A is gone, and B becomes the “wierd guy with the cats.”
I agree that they’ve broken no vows, but they have demonstrated that they don’t consider vows to be much of an impediment to a relationship. I have no evidence to support me, but I strongly suspect that people who enable vow-breaking are less likely to take their own vows seriously.
One area I switch to black-and-white morality is adultery. That’s why, in my book, both A and C are to blame, with slightly more blame on A. You see, whether C knows B or not, in my book you do not knowingly damage a person or that person’s marriage. You also do not aide and abet a person committing a sin. Adultery is, bluntly, sinful as far as I’m concerned. Now, before I sound too much like your friendly, neighborhood religious fanatic, I’ll point out that I have friends who have and have had open marriages, including one of my closest friends. I therefore distinguish between what takes place in open marriages and committing adultery, and yes, I do realize I’m splitting a hair here. To me, the difference is in the open marriages I’ve seen, both partners are aware of and consent to each others’ activities. There’s no element of deception or lying involved as there is in adultery.
One other thing. I’ve been in a position where I could have been C. I met at guy at a weekend get-together and had a great time with him. We really hit it off, and I regretted leaving before I could give him my phone number. Several months later, I ran into him at another weekend get-together. I was genuinely attracted to him, and wanted to date him. I asked our mutual friends if there was anything I should know about him. They told me he was married. Note that he didn’t mention that small detail himself. If he had, we might have remained friends. One of the people who introduced me to that crowd was in an open marriage and he talked about his wife from the beginning and she was a friend in her own right. This guy never mentioned any such thing. A family friend was also going through a nasty divorce which started when she learned her husband of 40 years had been having an affair with a woman he was supposedly madly in love with. The friend was my parents’ age, and her life was devastated by this. That’s why, when the fellow I mentioned told me he was madly in love with me, I turned him down flat. I had a chance to be C and didn’t take it. Instead, I became, well . . .
CJ
(By the way, a few years later, I met a woman who had been married to my
would-be A. She’s since become a good friend, and she congratulated me on dodging a bullet! )
A broke the vows and is a shithead. 99% blame. : bangs the gavel :
C is an opportunistic shithead completely devoid of morality
But why does A want to cheat on B? I’m B in real life by the way. And I don’t hold myself totally blameless. I’ll accept the 1% for not being someone worthy of fidelity.
Without knowing you, your (ex?) wife, or any of the details, I’m going to go ahead and say “Bullshit”. Not that I’m going to change your mind about it (I wouldn’t want to), but I really can’t imagine how it’s possible to blame you. Your wife can come up with every excuse in the world (like all the stuff I mentioned in post #37, second paragraph) for why she cheated on you, but they’re just excuses. Leaving your specific situation now…
If A gave a shit about the marriage, A would address their relationship concerns with B with the goal of possibly fixing the problems and moving forward in their marriage. If the problems are beyond repair, then A would grow a pair and ask for a divorce. The proper response is not fucking some random C because, really, who is that helping? Cheating is just a chickenshit thing to do, IMO, and is in no way B’s fault.
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