It doesn’t even have to be an illusion. It could just be a more flexible concept of “good.”
Just be cognizant that saying that everyone should split up if everything isn’t perfect consigns more people to hardship and misery.
There are a lot of things that are horrible personal injuries – physical or emotional abuse, for example --and divorce may be the sole solution in those cases. But discreet infidelity isn’t necessarily in that class of injury.
I know a woman who has said that every serious relationship she’s ever had, including her one marriage, has been with a man who openly had sex with any woman who would do it, because he felt it was his “right” to do so. :eek: I’ve known other women who were involved with serial cheaters, one of them probably with both men and women BTW.
C’mon, does anyone who isn’t famous REALLY have that many people chasing after them?!?!?!? And where do people find the time to have that many affairs?
I just came from another board where a poster is currently going through hyperemesis gravidarum, and has described the difference between it and morning sickness very graphically. What kind of man would cheat on a woman going through an ordeal like that, and what woman would play along? (Besides my ex-boyfriend, who said he wanted to be reincarnated as an inner-city black guy so he could impregnate women and abandon them without consequences, but I digress). :smack:
Oh, I think that if you’re happy in your marriage knowing that it’s not exclusive, that’s a good marriage. I’m referring specifically to people who are more invested in being married (i.e., scared of “failing” at marriage or of going it alone) than in their actual relationship with their spouse. Being invested in that relationship makes for a good marriage, even if that relationship is more cooperative than romantic.
For the record, IMO a marriage that involved any sort of systemic deception is NOT a good marriage. It may be a livable situation, but it is not (again, IMO) what a marriage is supposed to be.
I guess anybody would, given the right circumstances. It’s a difficult problem.
A person can be a good person but be a terrible spouse. A cheater isn’t necessarily a bad person, depending on the situation. A frigid spouse is the perfect example of such a situation.
So if cheating turns into not-bad if a wife won’t have sex with a husband, does it turn bad again if the reason she won’t have sex with him is because of something he controls: she’s working more hours, and doing more housework and childcare, maybe, and is wiped out? Or he’s sexually selfish and basically just wants blowjobs and no hassle? But does it turn not-bad again if the reason for that is under her control? Like, she’s the one who thinks so damn ambitious and a perfectionist and is working herself to the bone trying to make her dead mom proud? Or she’s sexually inhibited and needs like two hours of foreplay to get going and who has time for that every single time? But, of course, some of those things could be his fault . . .
“Who is the REAL bad guy?” is never a productive game in a relationship. Better to own your own actions and judge them against your own standards of conduct than to get caught up in a spiral of rationalizations.
Make up your mind. Is it something that should be considered acceptable and rational, or is it a secret that should be lied about?
Because saying “I know that my infidelity is a valid and positive choice that deserves to be accepted but I’m still going to be crazy careful never to let my spouse find out about it” isn’t rational, it’s just rationalization.
Mind you, I have nothing whatever against non-monogamous relationships if both partners are okay with it. But promising a partner a monogamous relationship and then secretly going back on that promise is simply shitty behavior, no matter how much mealymouthed pseudo-utilitarianist rationalization the cheater indulges in to try to convince themselves that this is really the optimal solution.
Three months?! That’s what he considers a sufficiently drastic dry spell to absolve him from all marital vows of fidelity? Lordy, I’ve known women with problem pregnancies who were on full-time bed rest with no shtupping for longer than three months. Anybody who literally can’t go without sex for three months (or three years, for that matter) has no business even attempting to undertake a lifelong fully-committed monogamous partnership with another human being.
If you really mean “for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, till death do us part”, then you need to be aware that “for worse” and “in sickness” can sometimes mean extended periods of no sex. If that’s a dealbreaker for you in terms of lifelong commitment, you need to get that clear with your partner before you make that commitment to them.
Because the other spouse has promised not to commit adultery, and committing adultery involves breaking that promise, with a side order of dishonesty and deception. That’s why not.
Now, if you consider that one spouse refusing sex to the other without any explanation or mitigation for an unspecified period of time is such a betrayal of the marital bond as to effectively destroy the marriage and release the other spouse from their marital vows, that’s up to you.
Just make sure, as I noted above, that you get that condition clear with a potential spouse before you make a lifelong promise to them never to commit adultery under any circumstances. No fair applying it retroactively as a sort of unilateral ex post facto release clause after you’ve exchanged that promise with them.
Yeah, I don’t get why cheating would be the solution. If the relationship has deteriorated to that point, why stay in it at all?
Oh, I can totally see why some spouses may feel there are valid arguments for staying in a marriage even if it’s become pretty emotionally degraded and sexually unfulfilling. That’s up to the individuals involved.
What I don’t buy is the self-serving rationalization that the deterioration of the relationship somehow makes a solemn marital vow not ethically binding so that one spouse can justifiably consider themselves freed from its constraints, while deliberately hiding that unilateral rule change from the other spouse.
I don’t think Ron was looking to be excused. And one of the routines that follow that line point out that he knows what he did was wrong. He’s not looking to be defended or excused.
Also, previous comments of his about that marriage point out that it was likely a troubled one (assuming the basis for some of the hyperboles are real). What he did didn’t help it. At the end, he did get divorce from that wife. And the later shows have him with set ups with a new wife/girlfriend/SO. None of which are, like the previous one, indicating that there are problems in the relationship.
You overestimate the average guy’s looks and prospects. I can announce that I intend to win the lotto next week, but my odds are just as long as ever.
“Darling, I intend to sleep around.”
“Oh, really?”
“Well, just because it is going to take me six months to find a woman, I still declare my intent to cheat today – just to give you a head start.”
Creatures of opportunity have no business issuing proclamations.
He also adds, and I’m trying to paraphrase closely here:
When you’re at the stage in the relationship where you’re promising to be monogamous, you’re having lots of sex, so saying ‘I’ll only have sex with you ever-ever-ever’ is easy. Now if that person later decides to stop having sex altogether, well you find yourself in a bit of a pickle!
The broken promises are equally shitty in my view. One party breaks the overtly implied status quo of the relationship. The other breaks the exclusivity clause. Everyone is guilty.
And it’s obvious in his routine that he’s not discussing someone who is sick or pregnant or mourning or anything rational that might cause a person to shut off physically. Those are all rational excuses. Guys, in general, can deal with rational.
I also wanted to loudly disagree with this. Married/long-term partner sex can be wonderful. It is a pleasure knowing how to turn on your partner, and how to make the person you love most of all happy. I think there’s really something wrong with the idea that once you get married, sex is over, and in my experience, it isn’t. It may not be that earth-shattering crawl all over each other sex you get in early days, but I find I don’t really trust that sex anyway.
As to stepping out after three months, that’s an awfully short time. BUT if your partner doesn’t want to have sex, doesn’t explain, won’t talk about it, won’t come to any sort of terms, well, it’s not just men who would get frustrated. I don’t think adultery is right, but I think that one person is already stepping out on the marriage. Like it or not, sex is one of the things that kind of comes inherent in marriage, and if you can’t or won’t, it behooves you to at least talk about it.
I wouldn’t say it’s a defense necessarily, but it can certainly be a reason. If your partner isn’t paying any attention to you, including sexually, then they really shouldn’t be shocked if you find it somewhere else.
This exactly! You have to listen to the whole bit before condemning anyone.
Rule of thumb? It’s not ok to lie to someone you’re in a relationship with about that relationship or others you might be having, but it’s the lying that makes it wrong, not the thing being lied about.
In the crazy imaginary world where I live, people would talk to their partner/spouse/whatever about problems they were having and together they’d figure out what they wanted to do about it. Ya know, like responsible adults who know how to use words.
I don’t care what Ron does with his bone, but, this sure isn’t too funny. I mean the joke. Kinda lame. Not the punch that the title promised. Can’t defend him cuz I think he isn’t funny.
Which is probably why they are so phenomenally bad at dealing with women…
I jest, but careers have been made dealing with this sole subject; Dr. Phil, Dear Abby and John Gray spring to mind almost immediately as examples.
I, for one, will defend 'Tater Salad as he makes me laugh, and think, which is his job.
I am struck by something he said recently, which I paraphrase: his material has declined in quality of late, because there is nothing funny about being rich and getting fat.