I don’t care whether you consider a sexual kink, or sexual fulfillment, a “need” or not, but whichever way you decide for yourself, you shouldn’t have your cake and eat it too: either it’s important, which means you should be working it out with your spouse, or it’s irrelevant, which means you shouldn’t be using it as an excuse to cheat.
Well, if you meet a woman that is absolutely perfect in every way, you have a long and loving marriage, but you decide to ruin it and cheat because she doesn’t want to shit on your chest while pounding her chest like tarzan, go right ahead. Obviously your “kink” is more important than having a loving partner that is fulfilling on other levels.
Have fun with that “kink.”
So, Epimetheus, what if the sexual problem is that your spouse has simply settled into a “twice a year is good enough for me” sexual preference and my “kink” is getting it more than 1 per week? If I had a perfectly good marriage otherwise, and my wife couldn’t stand the thought of a “poly” marriage, my only moral decision is to accept a basically sexless life? And sometimes these things develop over the course of the marriage so please don’t reply “you should figure that out beforehand”.
I dunno about this. B may not have his head as far in the clouds as his wife or Barrington thinks he does. He may have been tracking her online activities. He may have been tracking her. For that matter, Barrington may not be her only “Z”. Hubster may be biding his time until he’s amassed enough evidence to take to a divorce lawyer.
How is this meeting going to happen, anyway? Is the wife going to where Barrington is, or is he going where she is? If the former, what’s her cover story? If the latter, where will he be staying? Hotel clerks aren’t dumb either.
You really think that it’s acceptable to break a marriage vow and disrupt childrens’ lives over a sexual kink not being fulfulled? Really?
But that’s not what the OP said…the OP said “sexual adventure/kink.”
And isn’t the OP in a different country, to top it all off?
“Oh hey, honey. Um, so, I noticed your passport marked a trip to a foreign nation last week and I was just curious why?”
Or do things not work that way in the EU? I’ll fully admit my ignorance here.
And also, I’d chime in with the chorus here that sexual needs don’t trump the emotional needs of your family. If they’ve got kids, this rule ESPECIALLY applies. The fact is, if everything else is fabulous but the sex sucks, get yourself a vibrator and gtf over it. Or, ya know, ideally, speak to your partner and work something out. And I’m saying this as a person who feels sex is a VERY important part of a relationship. I mean, sex is important, but there are more important things.
No, the only moral decision is to tell the other person who will be hurt by being cheated on. Talk to them. If necessary, end the relationship before sneaking behind their backs. If a group of people can work out an arrangement where no one gets hurt and everyone gets what they want…whatever. Good for them. Most people in our culture will not be happy with that. At that point, it’s up to the cheating partner to come clean and leave the relationship. Period. It’s not about sex or kinks or who wants to screw a goat. It’s about lying. Cheating = lying. Lying = bad. If you wanna screw someone else, you should tell your current partner first and deal with the consequences.
To the OP–this could work out to be the most wonderful relationship you’ve ever had. This could also blow up in your face. But I think you know that sleeping with her when you know her husband doesn’t know about it and wouldn’t be ok with it if he did means that you’re helping her lie. If it’s so wonderful, it’ll keep. If it won’t keep, it’s really not so wonderful. I say you should ask yourself what you want out of this. Just a quick lay? Find someone else. The drama’s not worth it. Something more? Then ask her if she wants that with you. If so, ask her to leave her husband first. If she won’t, I think that should tell you where her priorities are. And for god’s sake, if she won’t leave him, move on. Don’t screw her when she’s still married. You’re only going to get yourself into a horrible heartbreak.
Sex is like pouring gasoline on a fire. If you think you’re as close to being in love as it sounds, you’re walking into hell with your eyes wide open by going all the way.
You’ve both gone as far as you need to go to have irreversibly corrupted her marriage, don’t not do this for her sake, she’s already cheated and you’ve already facilitated that. At this point you two are just working on making things worse for yourselves.
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Well, I guess the best solution for everyone would be for me to be fulfilled without disrupting the children’s lives - which would come from a little secret cheating. Some seem to think that getting a divorce would be the more moral thing to do, I guess.
And regards your last point, I almost made my hypothetical to be “Imagine your spouse has gotten lazy and is unwilling to do anything but lay there during sex and your ‘kink’ is having your partner look like they are actually enjoying themselves. Otherwise perfectly happy marriage with kids, what’s the moral decision?”. Feel free to answer that one if you were worried my other hypothetical was somehow misleading.
Thats stretching the definition of sexual kink. Getting regular sex (at least once or twice a month at bare minimum) can be said to be a need and I wouldn’t argue. Kinks refer to something a bit more than the usual sex, so making up a scenario where “kink” refers to a normal sex life is a bit of a stretch (and almost a straw man).
Many people get divorces based on lack of sex or attention. Getting a divorce because of a sexual problem is one thing, cheating behind your loved one’s back is another.
I think you are seriously underestimating how strong a “kink” can be for some. eta:Or maybe I’m overestimating. Kinky people feel free to chime in.
But the problem with “a little secret cheating” is that it never is just that. Pregnancies happen, women who previously said they would consider abortions change their mind, and babies are born. Hell, that’s not even going anywhere near the potential disease thing (which, frankly, is my biggest beef with cheating. It isn’t so much the emotional ass raping, but rather the fact that you can’t possibly care about your spouse if you’re willing to potentially give them something like HIV for your personal pleasure. Of course, all of this is assuming a married couple that doesn’t use protection).
Never, huh? I guess all those automatic pregnancies and/or disease is why nobody ever commits adultery.
Not everyone who isn’t as turned on by spanking and bondage as you personally are therefore necessarily “places little value on sexual fulfillment.” There isn’t a “universal morality or desire baseline” but the time to work out issues of sexual compatibility is before you marry a person, not some years after – and this is a perfectly legitimate position that is in no way hamstrung by your preemptory declaration that no one should “bother” to state it because “these things develop over the course of the marriage.” The hell they do. If one person seeks to materially change the terms of the marriage, including significant changes to sexual practices, then he or she owes it to his/her mate to work those changes out or honestly explain that, yes, for him/her, this now has become a deal-breaker.
But you work that out with your partner before you start shagging other people, not after.
I guess you didn’t notice that line was in response to a couple of “Fuck that” and “who gives a shit?” comments.
The reason I think the only “right” choice would be coming clean is that cheating behind his/her back is going to come out eventually. (Unless you married an idiot, which would turn out to be a whole other problem.) They’re going to notice that you’re not as affectionate with them. They’re going to notice secrets and lies and weird schedules. And the kids will pick up on it too, because they’re not dumb either. They’ll know something is wrong with their parents’ relationship; they’ll hear the half-muffled fights. That’s hard on them, too.
It seems to me that all cheating does is prolong the inevitable, and add an ugly prelude that wouldn’t be necessary if the person who isn’t being fulfilled would just grow up and tell the truth. Not to mention that it’s really unfair for the partner being cheated on to be lied to. And hey, in the best of both worlds, maybe the partner being cheated on wants to cheat but decided not to because they thought the other party would be hurt. If the first partner came clean before cheating, there’s a tiny chance that they could work something out before resorting to divorce. If they can’t, then at least the first partner has shown some respect to this other person they’ve claimed to love.
Alright, well my absolute phrasing wasn’t totally correct, but it doesn’t defeat the point.
Sure, we only hear about when people fuck up and get someone pregnant or something serious like that, but man, I sure hear about that stuff a lot. The odds, I think, are far too good that something bad would happen for me to be willing to risk it. Maybe that’s just me though.
What’s the kink?
- A Curious Cat
But from the viewpoint of the functioning of the marriage, it doesn’t matter what the unfulfilled desire is. Either they bring it out into the open and discuss it, and come to some sort of agreement, or it festers in the background.
Restricting the discussion of desires to something one personally does not like is muddying the argument, IMHO. The only thing that counts is what the people in the marriage want, and aren’t getting. If your spouse doesn’t want something and you do, it does not matter whether it’s some uncommon sexual activity or something as mundane as applesause.
The difference of desire is the issue, and either a) the person who doesn’t want something will have to put up with it, b) the person who does want that thing will have to put up with its abscence, or c) everyone will have to make other arrangements.
And this doesn’t hold just for sexual activities. It’s everything from watching football to shopping. All is subject to negotiation.
The moral thing to do is to come to a compromise with your spouse. A compromise doesn’t mean you both get what you want. It means you come to an agreement. That might mean she does it more than she wants and you get it less than you want. That’s the moral thing to do.
If that still doesn’t make you happy or you can’t come to a compromise, you move on. A marriage is not a prison sentence. You can leave at any time. You might not want to, but you can. That’s the moral thing to do.
One may be able to justify having an affair behind their spouse’s back, but that doesn’t make it moral. You can always come up with justifications, but that doesn’t make it right.