Using force to stop or prevent consensual contact between adults is wrong, even if one of them is your spouse. Restraining, hitting, or threatening someone for flirting with someone you care about is wrong. There is no excuse for this conduct and should it break the law Police should take it seriously, they should act in the same manner they would if the assault were for any other reason.
AAACK! Mods, please move this to Great Debates Please! I had too many windows open.
Well, OK, but you know how bibliophage gets when I move things out of GQ…
OK. But can we now discuss the scenarios that Maeglin brought up?
Also, on the assumption that minor restraint is involved, please elaborate on the process between the time of the incident to the finalization of the police report. In particular, I would like clarification on what particular human being would call the police over a charge of battery where no long term or short term physical harm was done, within a jurisdiction where adultery is still illegal.
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Wrong, but in some cases understandable and excuseable.
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I don’t know. If someone was trying to pick up my wife after he found out I was her husband I think a little threatening might be in order.
Sure there is. A romantic relationship carries a lot of emotional baggage. When one spouse, or lover, observes they signifigant other in the arms of another that can cause extreme emotional damage. While it might not excuse them from being guilty of assault I think it could count as a mitigating circumstance.
Marc
Jealousy isn’t a good reason for anything, period. Doing something out of jealousy is indistinguishable from doing something out of any other form of petty narcissistic selfishness, and always makes the doer look a lot like a toddler whopping another toddler over the head because “all toys are mine”.
So for example someone who walks in on a cheating spouse and hurls a vase at the couple is behaving out of petty narcissistic selfishness? Or is my example a little more extreme then a jealous spouse?
Marc
No, that would be pretty childish behavior. The proper behavior when you interrupt your loved one going at it with another partner is to apologize to both of them for the interruption and depart quickly and quietly. Hurling vases would definitely be petty narcissistic selfishness.
If you decide that you wish to leave the relationship, that is of course your choice, although I think you’d be pretty foolish to do so unless you thought she’d lost interest in you. I would not make that assumption.
I would.
Although Emily Post would undoubtedly give this advice to every inhabitant of the planet Vulcan, we here on Earth would almost certainly experience an emotional reaction, and that reaction needs to be dealt with somehow. Besides, why should you apologize? If your partner has made any sort of commitment to your relationship, it’s your partner who’s doing something wrong at this point. (Unless you’ve agreed together that this sort of behaviour’s acceptable - though, even so, you might have legitimate issues with your partner’s choice of time and venue).
So, basically, when she makes that little oath of exclusive love and marital care, it doesn’t matter? She can break it as long as she feels like it.
Pathetic. Marriage is about more than a mere temporary sexual reationship. Should I get married, I am making an Oath, a Vow, a Solemn Promise never to do certain things; I expect likewise behavior from my love. I am sacrificing my ability to have sex with anyone else (not that I approve of Pre-Marital reltions anyway) because I love her.
Now if she goes out and breaks that Promise she made, that is a little more than just a “consensual relationship”.
Quite. I would never use force, because where would that get me? However I would simply walk away and never come back.
A relationship is built on trust. For me, once that trust is broken there is no going back. I would forever look upon such a partner as one who broke the utmost of faiths I could place on her. I could never trust her again, even with the little things.
It’s not like you simply fall into bed with someone, after all. Especially not in the circumstance described. There has to be a sustained period of courtship. Such a thing would be reprehensible to me. If she wishes to pursue another relationship in preference to ours, that is her choice. But I expect the minimal decency of breaking up with me first.
pan
I am glad that when my husband walked in on me and my new lover my husband excused himself and when I came out he offered to make waffles. We live hapily together, all sleep happily together, and i have not lost interest in my husband. Also, he gets his life long desire to be a daddy, something that would not have happened without outside help.
I can understand someone deciding to leave the relationship. I don’t understand someone behaving violently. Throwing a vase is a very good example of childish behavior.
lee, was the scene that your husband walked in on something he could have expected? Did you discuss beforehand that you wished to have an open relationship and he accepted this, or did you just go off and cheat hoping he’d be cool with it?
And neither you, nor KellyM, have discussed any of the scenarios presented above.
Please explain to me what type of person would call the police to report a case of battery that occured while that person was committing adultery?
Please explain whether force should be used if you are unsure if the sex is consensual.
Please inform me as to the correct procedure one should take when your significant other is being hit on strongly, and being touched, but it is all unwanted attention.
I don’t do marriage, fidelity, monogamy, exclusivity, or promises of any such things. I try to keep an open mind about marriage and fidelity and monogamy and whatnot, and that means stipulating that there must be good and sound reasons for embracing that system of doing things even if I don’t understand them. Sort of like accepting that some guys are gay and eat oysters: I can believe it but I have to set aside my own vantage point of “but males have boring contours and unattractive surfaces, and oysters are slimy and smell horrible”.
If you believe that marriage, monogamy, etc., are right for you, and you marry someone who feels that way too, that’s fine, that’s your personal preference. And although I can’t imagine myself entering into such an arrangement, I can relate to feeling betrayed if your lover breaks a promise, or feeling horrible because you’ve been lied to, and so forth. So if you find it necessary to leave the relationship due to breach of contract or something, so be it.
I can’t be open-minded about jealousy though. Being jealous when you find your lover doing sex with someone else is just another case of the toddler who gets mad when someone else plays with his toys even though he wasn’t playing with them at the time.
and
Neither I nor my partner have made such promises. It would not be “cheating” if either of us had sex with someone else. This is true of other people on this board (and off of it) and those of you who are monogamously inclined should not assume that a monagamy/fidelity system applies to every ongoing relationship; and you certainly should not engage in moral condemnation of behaviors that are only in violation of the rules of YOUR system, not OURS.
AHunter3 I think you’re missing the point. The OP was probably started because of this thread. If so, the OP refers to one partner of a committed monogamous relationship willingly breaking that commitment. Most of the people who have posted to this thread seem to be working under that assumption and (if you’ve been following the other thread) it’s obtuse to assume that this automatically translates to a broad condemnation of a similar circumstance with an open relationship.
Grim
Jealousy is not childish nor is it selfish. Neither is it “good reason” in any way. Jealousy is a feeling. Jealousy is a defence mechanism (one of many) that lets us know a boundary has been crossed.
As an emotional response, jealousy is both valuable and dangerous. Valuable because of what it tells us about ourselves and the boundaries we feel the need to impose, and dangerous because acting on our jealousy can cause harm to ourselves and others.
I’ve heard the argument that polyamorous (“open relationship”) folk think they are “immune” to jealousy, but I don’t buy it for a second. I think everyone feels jealousy about some things, but poly people draw their lines in different places than monogamous people do, and so they don’t feel jealousy about the same things. Also, they choose different actions based on their jealousy, when they feel it. Not better or worse, just different. I find AHunter’s attitude toward those who act on jealousy and pathetic as he seems to feel about jealousy itself.
I had to come to terms with my own jealousy last summer in a concrete way for the first time. Denying it existed would have done neither my wife nor myself any good – acting purely on my jealous feelings would have been very harmful. Rather, I acknowledged my jealous feelings to her and to myself, and we talked them out. As a result, I am far better able to deal with them, and my wife was given the benefit of knowing how I feel about her and about us in a very meaningful way.
My point is this: denying one’s jealous feelings is just as bad as acting directly on them. Jealousy, coupled with reason, love, and most importantly communication, can be a valuable tool in any relationship. But only as a tool, not as an end in itself.
Oh, sorry.
[Johnny Carson] I did not know that [/Carson]
There was no link in the OP and I just assumed it was a stand-alone starting assertion (with which I agreed). I didn’t realize the context of the discussion was a promised monogamous relationship, and in fact one in which one party had violated the agreement and the other walked in on it happening.
Avalonian has some good points about feelings, although we disagree on several matters. I don’t think one should deny one’s feelings of jealousy. The first step of coming to terms with one’s internal baggage, whatever it may be, is acknowledging what one feels. If I met someone who said “Every time I catch my wife talking on the phone to one of her friends, I get angry and impatient, and I know this is unhealthy and I’m trying to work down to what’s causing me to feel this way”, I would not condemn them, and I hope I’d be supportive of them. If, on the other hand, I met someone who had the same emotional reactions but who didnt’ regard them as problematic, and who seemed to think ripping the phone out of the wall and hurling it at his wife was an “understandable reaction”, though, I’d probably say some very critical things that would not be remotely supportive, and I’d say them loudly and my words might offend him very much.
Well, ok. I’ve been waiting patiently for 48 hours. I think it’s fair for me to call “bullshit” now.
Lee, this is Great Debates, not Great Proclamations. That means we debate stances we disagree with and I disagree with yours. You haven’t offered anything but your universal opinion that violence is wrong despite areas of gray that myself and others have offered.
You started this thread because KellyM was called out in another thread and cowardly backed away from a challenge. But she said to start a thread in GD on this subject. You did and she’s nowhere to be seen.
So why start it when you know KellyM had no intention of showing up? Why start it when you knew you weren’t going to debate? All it does is cast both of you in a very poor light.
Gee Ender, I fell Friday lunchtime and haven’t been sitting so well since. Gimme another 24 will you? My back hurts and I am going back to lay down. I’ll read the thread and answer tomorrow.