Okay, getting back to the OP:
No, don’t let her visit you until she has worked things out with her family situation.
If things go well in person, you’ll probably end up feeling more attached to her than you did from just online talks, and it will be painful for you to watch her get back on the plane to go back to her hubby.
If things go bad in person, you’ll have destroyed the fun fantasy you had for nothing - except for increasing the risk that her husband will figure things out.
If her husband does figure it out, there is always the small risk that he will figure out what’s going on, track you down, and might somehow take his anger out on you. Men generally do not appreciate it when they find out that another dude is boning their wife, and you never know what extremes a guy who’s in a jealous rage might go to.
Plus there’s the whole guilt of being a “homewrecker”. I’ve always thought it was a good policy to treat other people the way I would want to be treated. Just kind of an idea I came up with all by myself.
It’s been said, and resaid, and resaid. But I’ll say it again.
If you want a relationship with this woman, wait 'til her first relationship is over. You’re being a first-order dick, in my opinion, if you see this woman behind her husband’s back.
So her sex life is less than fulfilling. A marriage is based on so much more than just sex. Breaking up her marriage for the sake of some fantasy sex is pure selfishness.
Hell, you don’t even know if the sex would be good - right now you’ve been having zipperless fantasies. Dealing with a real-live person, with skin blemishes, zits, cellulite, body odor, and all that other real stuff is no where near your little fantasy game.
You haven’t mentioned if there’s children involved. There’s lives that’ll be forever colored by their mother’s infidelity.
I’m saying this from the position of “B” in this little triad.
Search threads started by me for my whole sordid (and maybe sorted) story.
You’re making an arbitrary distinction. Some people apparently need a certain type and/or amount of sex. If it’s strong enough, it doesn’t matter what the nature of the desire is.
I bet that some people here who are arguing this point or something like it have been influences by sex columnist Dan Savage, who does sometimes advise readers to go ahead and screw around. From here, this is his response to a woman in a long-term relationship who’s interested in a particular guy as a fuck-buddy, and asked about the pros & cons of cheating. You could find plenty of advice from him on the topic of cheating with a Google search.
There’s a flaw in Savage’s argument. He’s conflating sex and fidelity. Those who are in the CIAW camp can simultaneously believe that SEX is not that importand and that FIDELITY is uber-important.
[QUOTE=brazil84]
It’s like selling somebody a gun that you know will be used in a robbery.
[QUOTE]
What’s wrong with that?
Look, I won’t tell you it’s right or wrong, I’ll just tell you what it means.
You will hurt the husband. Whether you care about that is up to you.
You’ll be a wife stealer. That’s a guy that can’t be trusted by other men. Whether you care about that is up to you.
You’ll surely have some fun.
You’ll realize you don’t love this virtual woman. You just wanted to do her.
If you save the woman from herself, that’s a moral victory. If you let her fall, that’s not bad, it’s neutral…like not stopping a murder in Kenya. Not your job.
So weigh all those out. Do you care about being a good guy? I surely wouldn’t hold it against you if you did her. I would also tell my female friends to stay away from you. If that doesn’t matter (and I’m not trying to say it should), then go for it. Invite her over.
Pretty much. Extra-marital sex? No problem — if that’s what the couple wants, and agreed to. It’s their genitals, who am I to say? Breaking your promise, saying you want fidelity at first and secretly fucking like monkeys in the back seat of a stranger’s car? That’s not cool.
Well, I agreed with your interpretation of the OP. I thought it came across that way too. But I didn’t think talking about it on a message board to get support meant he was weak or amoral. Lots of people need reassurance to do something even if they know what’s right.
Of course it matters…a relationship with no sex at all is one thing…a relationship without one particular “sexual adventure” is quite another. People sacrifice much more than that to keep a family together all the time.
It has nothing to do with whether I personally like it or not…I don’t even know what “it” is. Marriage is about way more than getting what you want. It’s about mutual love, respect, and committment. Sometimes we have to live with things we don’t like or don’t make us completely happy, for the good of the marriage.
(c) is an unacceptable option, as far as I’m concerned, morally or ethically.
Only if those things are interfering with being able to lead a reasonably normal and happy life. I can’t imagine a “sexual adventure” that would be worth breaking up a marriage for, especially when there are kids involved.
If a couple can work out their problems openly and honestly, that’s great. But it’s better to get a divorce than to allow the marriage to devolve to a point where they clearly don’t love each other anymore, or even openly hate each other. I know one couple that perhaps loved each other at first. Now, decades later, they constantly snipe at each other in full view of everyone.
Does this pass the mirror test? When the fun is done, and A returns to Z, will you look in the mirror and respect yourself? Or will you feel… empty, like you sold a piece of yourself for something you’re not sure was worth it?
Does this pass the reciprocity test? If you were B, how would you feel if A did this to you? Can you personally reconcile your own self-respect with being a party to this?
Doesn’t your respect for A go down for suggesting a clandestine tryst in a supposedly healthy and stable marriage with B?
My opinion: if your love for A is strong and reciprocated, then she must tell B of you first. Either he gives it his blessing, or not, and then the next move is up to her. But A is trying to use you to have her cake and eat it too.
As for this Dan Savage fellow, I don’t know what to say. No, strike that, I know exactly what to say.
He completely misses the point of what “cheating” is when he writes: You can’t have it both ways, CIAWers. If sex is hugely important, then people can’t be faulted for wanting some; if it’s unimportant, then it shouldn’t be seen as a huge betrayal when some poor fuckers, under duress, are forced to get their needs met elsewhere.
Inherent in the act of “cheating” is clearly the act of lying: an attempt to hide, cover up or deny what is going on behind the other person’s back.
If one’s sexual needs are so important that it is worth going outside a stable monogamous relationship to get, then it needs to be made a fulcrum point of the relationship. Either the other party participates, allows the other person to explore elsewhere, or the relationship ends. Trying to claim that “cheating saves the relationship” in that it allows A to continue carrying on with B by basically not telling him about Z because A knows it would be a deal-breaker for B, is simply dishonest, an attempt to get what one could not otherwise get by honest means. B trusts A not to do this. Which means doing so is theft of trust.
For some people, I guess honor and honesty are just words beginning with an unaspirated H, whose Need To Fuck Like I Just Gotta Fuck is stronger than valuing a sentiment like I meant what I said, and I said what I meant. An elephant’s faithful, one hundred per cent!
Come on, dial it down a notch. No one is saying “Hey if you gots to cheat then go right ahead”. I think what was suggested was that if the discrepancy in sexual expectations is big enough, if a compromise is stalemated or impossible, and if the breakup of the marriage would be a “very bad thing” then some discreet cheating/lying/dishonor may be the lesser of two evils and not completely unexpected.
I wonder how people feel about the commonly asked question that A would be facing shortly after meeting up with Z. Namely, if the cheating is a fait accompli, let’s say with no plans for a repetition, are you now honour-bound to confess all?
Except that this is not the potential adulterer’s unilateral decision to make. IOW, it’s “the lesser of two evils” according to whom?
When you make a bargain with a spouse that includes sexual fidelity and the trust that is required to make that work and to believe it works, then you have an obligation to fulfill both parts of that bargain (being faithful AND being trustworthy) unless or until the bargain changes. It is dishonest, and dishonorable, to allow your spouse to believe you are keeping your bargain – being faithful – while in reality you’re getting a bit on the side without their knowledge or consent. It’s a fundamental betrayal of the trust and fidelity that most people expect to be part of a marriage, and there are many people – and I am one of them – who would NOT consider it “the lesser of two evils” to discover that I was married to a lying, cheating weasel who believed that our marriage vows were really only binding on me, not him.
CarnalK (whose username is strikingly apropos for the sentiments expressed ;)) wrote: Come on, dial it down a notch. No one is saying “Hey if you gots to cheat then go right ahead”. I think what was suggested was that if the discrepancy in sexual expectations is big enough, if a compromise is stalemated or impossible, and if the breakup of the marriage would be a “very bad thing” then some discreet cheating/lying/dishonor may be the lesser of two evils and not completely unexpected.
I’m sorry, but in my book there is no “dial” for honesty when it comes to this sort of thing. I would not consider you as being honest with me if you are “well, like 95% honest, except for the 5% that I really didn’t want you to know 'cause I knew you’d get upset about it, but what you don’t know won’t hurt you, right?”.
If it’s that important to you to get your kink on in this way, and you swear up and down that going outside the relationship to fulfill it will in no way diminish your feelings, respect, or commitment to your partner, then great, I fully believe that is possible and true. In which case the only honorable thing to do is to tell this not to the SDMB or Second Life or any other proxy group of anonymous people, but to your partner. Convince your partner that it’s true and hey, buffet’s open, feed all you like. But if you can’t convince your partner then you have a choice to make. Avoiding a choice is not making one. And denying your partner the choice is making it an unequal relationship. It will come out soon in other ways as well.
Or, please bring a large framed poster of A that we can place on the wall above the bed/wall/bench/stove/hoop or whatever kinky scenario is in the works.
