Morals of sleeping with a married person

Great Debates
1

A question on the morals of meeting and having sex with someone who’s married to someone else; I’d appreciate your comments on the rights and wrongs of the potential actions of one person in this situation:

A (female) and B (male) have been happily married quite a long time, love each other and are very good friends. They don’t have children. However, A wants to explore areas of sexual adventure (ie kinks) which she’s into, but which B has no interest in, so she goes online using Second Life and finds a community devoted to that, in which these kinks are acted out in a virtual world.

Meanwhile, Z (male), who is single, is already a member of that community. He goes there with the same aim - casual virtual sex of a certain flavour.

A meets Z and they start talking, and realise that their sexual desires are astoundingly similar. Both are completely honest about their offline situations, and accept that whatever they do together is only pixels on a screen. They have amazing sex (as good as it gets online, anyway) and quickly become very close friends, but agree that they can never meet - A won’t leave B, and A and Z live in different countries anyway.

Over a period of weeks, A and Z spend many hours a day, mostly talking about all sorts of things, and becoming very loving and romantic and happy together in addition to the sex. The friendship grows stronger, too. Without expecting to, or wanting to, they fall very deeply in love with one another, although A retains her existing love for B (her husband), who is completely unaware of the relationship.

Eventually, A suggests to Z that she should come to visit him, without B’s knowledge. A and Z know that this visit would naturally and inevitably result in sex. Both A and Z are by now absolutely crazy with love for one another, but accept that the relationship between A and B takes ultimate precedence in the long term.

Neither A nor Z can resist the temptation, despite the risks involved, and despite being acutely aware that a stable marriage is in danger of being badly damaged or even destroyed by the meeting.

The question is simply this: should Z say “no, don’t come” to A for the sake of B, or even to protect A and B’s marriage against A’s express wishes?

Note that I’m not interested in the morals of A’s decision to visit, or even to continue the relationship in the first place. She’s made her decision, and is old enough and wise enough to realise that it’s of very questionable morality, to say the least.

Nor am I interested in a debate about how (as some people think), any love found online cannot really be true love without first having met.

It’s just about “should Z say no?”. Please show your working, etc. I’m out of my depth here.

(And yes, I am Z.)

2

I think the fact that you feel a need to ask other people’s opinion speaks volumes. Clearly you’re not ethically comfortable with the idea of being the one to assist A in trashing her marriage–and just as clearly you should say “No”, as it seems to conflict with your own personal, basic morality.

If you weren’t having second thoughts, you wouldn’t be here. And I count about eight paragraphs of your OP that are basically just rationalizations–“oh they’re so deeply genuinely in love, they’ve spent SUCH a long time really, like, getting to know each other, and they’re like, really really good friends, and oh they’re really tormented by the thought of what they might do to B”, etc.

When it really all just boils down to:

If you really want A that badly, let her truthfully and honestly dissolve her primary commitment first, and then the two of you have my blessing. But assisting her to cheat is wrong. If she asked you to help her cheat in any other venue other than a sexual one, would you help her? If she wanted you to help her cheat on an exam, would you?

I will also point out, what generations of second wives have learned to their dismay: If he’ll cheat on his first wife with you, he’ll cheat on you with someone else. Swap the gender there, and you get: If A will cheat on B with you, she’ll cheat on you with C.

3

These are the kinds of decisions we all have to make on our own. You already know what you are going to do whether you admit it to yourself or not. I don’t think you will get much validation here. Even if a few nutjobs come in and say “go fer it,dude” is that really going to make you change your mind as to whether it is a good thing to get involved with a married person?

And before any of you open marriage types come storming in, this ain’t about open marriage. No mention is made of telling the husband.

4

It’s also, generally speaking, a mistake to do your thinking with your johnson.

5

Don’t do it. There are about a thousand ways this could go bad and destroy people’s lives. It’s a terrible idea which you or A will very likely regret.

6

That’s a line I am personally unwilling to cross. I’ve been in a position more than once where I’ve had to tell a married man that while he may have no respect for his marriage, I do. I doubt I would have carried an online affair any further than the point that I found out he was married. My mindset on this probably stems from the fact that I was cheated on.

7

We’re missing important information:

Is she going online with or without B’s knowledge and consent? What are the parameters of that knowledge and consent? B doesn’t know about this particular relationship with Z, but does he understand and accept that the virtual relationship was a possiblity? That the physical relationship was a possibility? What did she tell Z about it?

Z ought not to encourage A to go outside whatever boundaries that A and B have established, but ultimately it’s A’s responsibility to keep whatever word she’s given to B, whether that be “forsaking all others,” “only virtual” or whatever else. Personlly? I wouldn’t have sex with one half of a couple without an explicit understanding on the part of the other half. It has nothing to do with the ethics or morals of the situation and everything to do with not wanting to get drawn into the drama.

8

If he is her friend and truly loves and cares about her, he would not let her come visit.

A friend is someone to protect you, not sabotage you.

That can be an incredibly hard pill to swallow, especially if you are B. Stop thinking with your dick and think with your heart, would you honestly tell one of your friends to go cheat on his wife? Encourage him to do so? As a true friend to someone, your JOB is to call bullshit on them.

9

Interesting answers so far - thanks, people.

As far as I know, B knows that A uses Second Life, and that sexual encounters do take place there. But he doesn’t know about the relationship between A and Z, and probably is even unaware how common it is for online relationships to develop further.

10

Dude, she met you on a singles/dating/fuck buddy website.

11

Did she? Ah, I didn’t know that. All this time, I’d been thinking we met on Second Life.

Dude. :rolleyes:

12

If the spouse was ok with it, I would say have fun. Since that is clearly not the situation I would say to stop the relationship altogether.

13

If she’s trolling for kinky meat online if not you then she’ll bag another(maybe me). If you’re saying you don’t want to be the one to harpoon another man’s whale then why even waste your time chasing married women in other countries? Just tell her no! Find somebody else maybe a married woman in your country who hates her husband who lives in another country that might work out better. Don’t you have unmarried women in your country or is courting married women some sort of custom?

14

Did RSS_Chen get a sex change?

This woman obviously has no respect for her husband and she doesn’t love you. Block all communication from your life and consider yourself lucky that you didn’t go through with something that the entire world thinks is wrong.

Oh, and while Second Life may not just be for people trolling for sex (or just plain trolling), it’s devolving that way pretty fast. Whatever lofty goals the Linden Labs people had when it first started are crumbling away a little bit every day.

15

This question is way more complicated and more sad than a lot of people even realise. For one thing, the wife (I get confused by calling people by random initials) is already unhappy with a part of her relationship - something that she may have realised long before got married but ignored it, or maybe she only realised there were aspects of herself that weren’t ever going to be expressed in her marriage. She ultimately has the choice of sticking it out for the sake of family/society/the sanctity of marriage, or walking away and trying to find someone more in tune with her kinks. Bottom line is, the marriage is in major trouble that possibly can’t be fixed.

I’ve known a woman of advanced years who had spent many years in a loving, imperfect but real relationship with a wonderful man who simply could not give her what she wanted/needed sexually. He knew what she wanted, but was simply unable to give it to her, so he (sadly) accepted that she was having cyber sex with other men (and I’m someone who considers cyber sex equal to real life sex when it comes to cheating on an emotional, if not risk of disease etc, level). She finally had to nurse him through a horrible period of illness which he ultimately succumbed to, which she did to the absolute best of her ability.

After he died, she hooked up with a couple who were more in line with her interests and managed to express herself fully, sexually, for the first time in her life. She still mourned her husband with the same full force as anyone who has lost a loved one.

In other words, there is a lot of sadness ahead for all three people involved, regardless of the decisions made at this time. I hope it works out for all three of you, as you’re all essentially innocent, and it’s only that fate sometimes sticks the boots in hard for no particular reason.

16

Bullshit. The husband is innocent. The wife is a lying bitch.

Our friend Z has a very important decision to make. One side will let him look in the mirror in the morning with his head held high knowing that he (eventually) did the right thing. And the other will make him an ass hole of the highest order.

Screwing around on another man’s wife is one of those absolute wrongs in life and most of the world knows that. It’s only the people doing the screwing around that think it’s justified in some way.

17

You already know the answer, and the answer is walk away.

For the most part, this almost NEVER leads to anything good for anyone. Trust me when I say you should wait until a truly single person wants to hook up with you. It will be worth the wait.

18

Z should step off.

You’re not innocent. She’s not innocent. The only innocent is the husband, who to all of your account, is aware his wife likes to play online where “sometimes sex occurs”, but who apparently is unaware that his wife is the one having the “sometimes sex” and who is having an emotional affair with someone else.

Your situation is simple. If husband and wife had an open marriage, and he and she were both okay and had discussed the ideas of having other partners in the marriage then you would be fine, go ahead and have fun. But from your story they haven’t. She’s cuckolding him, to the extent of wanting to plan an international trip behind his back to bone you? Back away, find a single girl or someone who is in an open relationship with all parties consenting and leave this alone.

If you back off now, you’re morally in the right. If you go any further without her honestly opening up to her husband and accepting whatever consequences may become of that, then you’re both in the wrong.

19

Don’t do it. You knew that all along.

20

If you don’t mind being a liar and a cheater, knock yourself out.