Say I ask you to sell me a gun, which I need to stick up a liquor store. I’m quite upfront with you on the matter.
Now, the sale was perfectly legal, and you certainly didn’t rob anything. I could have bought the gun anywhere. Would you feel in any way responsible for the crime?
Think before you do something emotionally charged like having an affair?
Very few of us are strong enough to have the brain overrule the heart (or other organs) in a situation like this. If you can, great, congrats. But is your scolding going to make a difference when we rationally know its wrong at the beginning? Not a chance.
I see your point, but I don’t agree. Dating someone you know is cheating on his wife is a bad idea, in my opinion, because it means that the guy is a bad person and I don’t think one should date bad people. By the same token, I don’t think women should date guys who kick puppies. If you do date a bad person for whatever reason, in my mind you’re guilty of allowing good things to happen to bad people, which is bad from a karma point of view. However, in my opinion it doesn’t make you partially responsible for the bad person’s actions, be they hurt wives or bruised puppies.
FWIW, I’m backing off the the thread the OP brought up. In the other thread I had a very detailed response to a post. I can’t say it’s 100% honest, but I can’t say it’s bullshit, neither. It appears there are many, many layers to this, and while it may be a crock, I certainly don’t want to excacerbate it by piling on without knowing for sure. It’s just as (maybe more) likely that it’s a situation I could never comprehend. The mental illness is vague, but frankly I see no reason to press the issue. What would be the point?
Excluding the Doper referred to in the OP (until further notice) I’m still sticking with honoring your vows. “In sickness and in health” doesn’t mean a chest cold. You made a promise to live through it.
Of course, but I don’t think that’s an appropriate analogy for this situation. Rather, imagine you ran into an old friend from college who asks you to go to lunch and catch up. He tells you he had promised his roommate he was going to run an errand for him but that he could blow it off. Later you find out that the errand for the roommate was important (e.g. paying the rent) and not doing it caused the roommate problems. Should you have quizzed him to make sure having lunch with you wouldn’t cause him to break promises he made to other people, or cause anyone else harm?
Don’t forget that in hopefool’s case, as I suspect happens in many affairs, the married guy presented a completely different picture of the situation than reality. By the time she found out the details, she was in love with the guy. I don’t think she should have dated a married man with kids unless she was sure the marriage was over, but he is the one who damaged his marriage, not her.
So you’re anti-divorce in all instances, circumstances be damned? :dubious:
Yeah, in all instances. I’d prefer you kill your spouse. :smack: :rolleyes: :dubious:
You realize there are some exceptions. Failure to keep from willingly taking a man’s penis into your vagina is a far cry from having a spouse drown your children or trying to kill you thinking you’re Hitler. See? There are degrees. In the instance I was referring to, there appears to be a likelihood of serious mental illness, hence me backing out of the debate.
I am.
Marriage takes a series of thought to enter into, and as far as I’m concerned, takes a series of thought to get out of. If you can’t get past one or two doubting thoughts, then you shouldn’t be hitched. Your dumbass fault for saying the words “I do.”
Call me harsh, but I see marriage the same way as sending a nuclear missle to Russia. Once it’s done, it’s done. Stand by your damned promises and vows. You swore to a community and your god that you would.
Tripler
Go ahead, call me harsh. Walk a mile in my shoes.
I like my analogy better, but if you want me to be more specific, consider this - your friend told you that the robbery would be a one-time affair, he really needs the money, the liquor-store owner is loaded and really a mean person any way, and it’s not as if he’s actually going to shoot anyone. You have no reason to disbelieve him, other than the fact that you don’t know him all that well and let’s face it - the guy’s a criminal, isn’t he?
Are you more, or less, comfortable wth selling him the gun?
So you se, you can’t get around the fact that she knew he was married, and she knew that there were kids involved. She had an obligation to consider the worst possible results of her decision, and to take responsibility for them… just like we all do with everything we do.
Fair enough, I wasn’t trying to be snippy, just curious. You kept talking about honoring vows in regards to fidelity, but another vow is the whole “till death do us part” thing. It just strikes me as a bit off to demand lockstep adherence to one vow while allowing for dismissal of the other.
Tripler–I’m not sure what you mean by “walk a mile in my shoes”, but I assure you the feeling is mutual. Marriage involves two people, and throwing your life away struggling to make a marriage work when the other party is willfully and gleefully abusive, destructive, and untrustworthy is a fate I wouldn’t wish on anyone.
I’m of the mind that you simply must exhaust all options before you get to the “breaking point”, which is what I continually observe as ‘divorce’. Given my experiences with many couples, I’m seeing that the line which you draw that breaking point has become more and more trivial and pathetic in the past.
And that pathetic nature is what disgusts me–that people will throw in the towel at trivial moments in time is just revolting to me. Both sets of my grandparents have held together through two world wars and then some. Given their example, you expect me to toss the whole endeavor of marriage and let go of forgiveness simply because someone has a dalliance? Granted, it’s one hell of a violation of the social contract of marriage, but personally I’ll take the work of keeping that marriage together until someone else calls it ‘over’.
Yes, call me naive.
I may be naive, but I’ll hold to it until I’m long gone and buried.
Tripler
Details excluded, I have promises I intend to keep to my girlfriend. She’ll be my wife someday.
So Tripler, was I all right in getting a divorce?
My first husband moved out and in with his girlfriend.
In the meantime, he was racking up a lot of joint debt - and then expecting me to pay it. I was fine when the bills were his, but it was difficult to stomach the gifts for his life in girlfriend.
He refused counseling.
I wouldn’t call it trival and pathetic, would you?
BTW, I had a boyfriend before the divorce papers were signed. It took 18 months to sign the paperwork and I moved on. Was that ok?
Duffer, she wasn’t trying to break up a marriage and step in. Her lover’s marriage was broken. It might have been fixable, but the very fact that he was ready and willing to screw around (barring a poly or open marriage) means that his marriage was NOT whole and healthy. It was like a vase with a very large crack that still holds water. If you’re very careful with it, it’ll hold up for a long, long time. If somebody sets it down a little too hard, though, it’s going to shatter. When that happens, did the person in question break the vase? Not really. The damage was already done before they came on the scene.
I find making a play for someone you know is in a relationship pretty damned shitty. It’s disrespectful of the partner, the relationship, and of the target of your attentions. In questions of fault, though, it’s ultimately irrelevant. Keeping your promises is your responsibility, and yours alone. Nobody can force you to have an affair; it’s something you freely and willingly choose. It doesn’t matter if hundreds of really hot guys who think I hung the moon throw themselves at me every time I stick my nose out the door. I’m a grown woman, perfectly capable of not taking them up on the offers. If I do decide to have an affair, the results are completely, entirely, and exclusively my fault, because it was my choice.
Where was all this venom when Clinton cheated on Hillary?
I got so upset when people downplayed his affair(s).
Clinton supporters, some of you in this thread, went around yelling; (paraphrasing) “It’s nobody elses’ business - character doesn’t matter”
I still think his act of cheating on Hillary was worse than the Perjury.
If you’re going to be President, keep your dick in your pants for the four/eight years.
In Clintons’ case his wife and kids were affected along with the whole country!
Political slant complete, carry on.
All those admonitions in the OP to THINK have brought on a Frankie Valli flashback:
Before you say,
That you want me.
I want you to think,
What your family would say.
Think,
What you’re throwing away.
Now think what the future would be with a poor boy like me.
Meee-ee.
This is not good.
Being a bad husband doesn’t make you a bad president. Being a bad person doesn’t neccesarily make you a bad president, either. Some of the greatest leaders in history were total sleazeballs.
We seemed to get the impression that the Clintons’ marriage had was rather… well, open to begin with, and that Hilary didn’t have much of a personal problem with her husband’s infidelities in the first place.
What does this have to so with anything?
Hey, I’m not almighty, but I have an opinion. And while I opine with serious heat, you’re situation is pretty cool . . .
You didn’t choose that path, but he did. You were cutting you losses to yourself, while he continued. He called it “over” before you formally did. I’m not familiar with the circumstances, and I wouldn’t presume to call anything ‘pathetic’ to you on-line, nor would I to your face.
To be honest, your circumstances are damned near parallel to those of one of my cousin–she kept racking up debt, and he had to keep paying for it.
Tripler
She’s blood relation, he ain’t. However, I feel closer to him than I do her.
Universe Damn it that I left all day long to go sailing, and this whole thread blew right up in the PIT. Not that I think it wouldn’t have, but Jeez! I wish I had sent something towards my inner premise. Luckily, most in this thread agree. However, to all of you esteemed teemings I must day…I’m being pulled nearly by my shirt to dinner…BRB
Unlike what I did in my own thread where it looks like I’ve answered a bazillionbezelwaitingpositionAIAZ times individually, I’ll do my best to be brief and hopefully reply to everyone in a couple of posts.
::: crosses fingers :::
[ol]
[li]Thank you Phlosphr for being so respectful of my feelings. I agree totally that I should have, above and beyond all else, thought first of the children. That will forever be what I’m sorriest for.[/li][li]World Eater: Ditto. No more else needs to be said. [/li][li]Ponder: I wish I could lay the blame for this on lack of fore-thought. However, considering I’m so completely anal, that wasn’t it. I led with my heart while my delusions drove the damn car. No excuse, but that’s what happened and I wish this was one “stupid” think in my life I could erase.[/li][li]Phlosphr: I hope by now you know I don’t think anything was ok. Not now, not ever, under any condition. The only thing I can say about what little cognitive processes I did have in advance, were that they weren’t impulsive or impatient, and goofily enough, I felt they were well thought-out too. Just goes to show I have lots more therapy to go through than originally thought.[/li][li]Yes, there is a line, even infinitesimal as it may seem, that is always crossed. In my case, it was the very first kiss again, after knowing where he stood. Yes, sex came much later, but that still wasn’t the dividing line. Did I think there were extenuating circumstances? Yes. Did I probably need a tinfoil hat to then sort that out? Undoubtedly. But regardless, I am the one responsible for my actions in what we chose to do together.[/li][li]Belladonna: You are right about the multiple ways of “ending” a marriage. Mine falls into that category. Sadly, his did not despite his portrayal of such. That’s when I should have ran the other way. But as I’ve discussed endlessly now, I’m not so good with making informed choices when I’m nuts.[/li][li]Dangerosa: I abhor given the mistaken impression that he ever presented that they had an “open” marriage, just that she was capable of destroying the lives of his children until he had an opportunity to leave (at his daughter’s age of 12). I, like the idiot I was, believed that and thought by confronting her (which I was willing to do right. off. the. bat.) would only make things worse. [/li][li]Giraffe: That’s true and there’s nothing else I can add to that.[/li][li]Homebrew is also correct. It takes two, and although it will never heal how used and loathsome I feel, I know it would’ve just been someone else. Like whoever will take my place, like whoever’s place I took. The best thing in the world would be if the wife took control and dumped him for good. That’s the only way to save her and her children.[/li][li]I think by now we’ve got the duffer recap straightened out, but just in case… my husband knew from the very get-go. She found out one month in and was duped into believing otherwise despite my protestations. Take that for what it’s worth.[/li][li]Yes, my marriage was dead and his might be in his mind, but not in her’s. I still take as much responsibility (or more) for the damage I’ve caused there as he should.[/li][li]Single people who’ve been mislead, IMHO, are completely off the hook. See the Scott Peterson trial for a very apt example. However, sometimes the clues are present and we don’t want to see or believe. I know that was true of me, even if it happened later. In curly chick’s situation, blessedly she found out immediately. I’m so very glad you didn’t have to go through that long term or deal with that sort of person. Good on you. Seriously.[/li][li]I don’t know if you read my thread or not Tripler, but I had tried to end my marriage and requested, right from the start for him to at least start proceedings likewise. That I didn’t enforce that shows how stupid I was, but none of it, at least for me, had to do with lack of discipline and everything with being too tired to want to live anymore. You don’t have to believe that, but I will try and find my previous thread about my last hospital stay if it will help shed some light on my mental status. Don’t know if any of that matters or not.[/li][li]Hi again duffer! We’re definitely becoming well acquainted. 
Yes, he isn’t to completely blame. Again, I take more than my share for going ahead knowing his situation. My problems are no excuse because I still knew right from wrong and this certainly fit the bill. As to wanting to break their marriage up, that is totally untrue. I was told, by everyone, it was already over. I was simply hoping to do right by them when we got “married.” Ahuh.[/li][li]scule is another one who is correct. 'Nuff said there, I ‘spose.[/li][li]Alessan, I haven’t forgotten you, just that I’m just a little fumbuzzled right now, so I might have to come back to this part later. I hope you don’t mind. Then maybe I’ll be able to sort it out better and answer reasonably.[/li][li]Sean Factotum: Thanks for your show of another side of the coin. I really appreciate it. I certainly wasn’t thinking rationally, but then again, that doesn’t absolve me of blame. I just wish I could go back to September of last year and start over.[/li][li]Giraffe brings up another good point… I’ve had enough friends (and my parents/family members) to know that one seldom gets all the facts, if any. So the mere idea that he was willing to cheat on his wife, despite the circumstances he presented, should have been enough for me to know better. I wanted to be loved again and let everything else cloud my judgment. No excuse.[/li][li]I am willing to explain my mental problems to any degree that might help. I just didn’t want them viewed as a ‘sympathy’ ploy. And I think that “in sickness and in health” covers it all. Just in my case, I had the sickness I was trying to save my husband from and went about it in a completely ass-backward way.[/li][li]And Giraffe nailed one aspect head on. I was led to believe, repeatedly, something other than the reality of the situation. By the time I had a glimpse, I’d had all his group agree that she was an ogre and that, though they didn’t think he’d really ever changed, he must feel something for me. Add to that our history from school (when I thought he was an angel incarnate), I wanted so desperately to believe. No matter what it cost me (and I thought that was the only person who’d be hurt, because we’d be saving the children from her and giving them a new, better, real life – my husband didn’t love me, so he’d be safe too – only I would suffer). Still didn’t mean I shouldn’t have walked away instantly.[/li][li]Yeah, it really wasn’t just consumption or anything. Much worse than that, I think. Again, I’ll elaborate further if need be.[/li][li]Well, we had no “doubting thoughts” until many years of trying to conquer my mental problems. We were determined to make it forever. I was the one who wanted to save him from my killing off his spirit and body. He wouldn’t hear it. Besides the suicide attempts, I’ve even tried to run away, all to no avail. (Obviously, I suck at many things). But we (my husband and I – can’t speak for him and her) meant what we said and busted our asses to try and fix it. We both should have just bolted the sinking ship and gone on. Unfortunately, neither of us would and I’m the chickenshit for doing it the way I did and it turned out. No ifs, ands or buts.[/li][li]Ok ** Alessan**, now I understand what you were getting at. Yes, all completely up to me to be the one to walk away. I knew I was getting into something over my head and even though I tried to prolong certain aspects of it, it was all wrong and I DO take that responsibility. No matter how misguided or off in La-La Land I might have been.[/li][li]Belladonna: I couldn’t agree with this statement more… “Marriage involves two people, and throwing your life away struggling to make a marriage work when the other party is willfully and gleefully abusive, destructive, and untrustworthy is a fate I wouldn’t wish on anyone.” That’s what my parents, his parents and plenty of other people I know did. It left us much the worse for wear and completely fucked up as to what was real and what wasn’t. In the other thread, I didn’t have a clue until I was 18 and even then, it took forever to shake off that instilled belief system.Just IME, of course.[/li][li]**Tripler{/B], I think you are right. Many divorces are for the silliest, most trivial, stupid reasons. People don’t want to work at things if they are difficult. But this wasn’t the case with us. My husband has now dealt with my mental illness for roughly 8 years. We’ve had to file bankruptcy although he has a very good paying job. I’ve wrecked his self-worth, confidence, his weight (that’s his way of coping) and much, much more. He no longer has any friends because of me and for much of our marriage, his ex used my illness as an excuse to keep his son away from him (and to be fair, I tried to shield him from it as much as possible, as did his father, the few times he got to come around.) He’s moved and changed jobs for me. Sold every freakin’ thing that we own, his most beloved possessions and he did that willingly, without telling me. Gave up physical health care so we could afford to get me mental help when the insurance didn’t cover it all. He went with me, amazingly, to a hypnotist, if that would help. Anything to get me over the next crisis, he’d indulge or do. We bought self-help books and tapes. Attended seminars and had me take every prescription known to man (and cocktail varieties there of). Now, I did a lot too, but IMHO, that’s not worth mentioning nor should it be after what all HE has gone through to save my miserable fucking, worthless life 24/7. I don’t know what else to tell you.[/li][li]Another one who’s spouse thought therapy was only necessary for me. At least initially. After my first suicide attempt (December of 2000, I think), he did a complete about face on that and held my through any session I wanted and was there in mind, spirit and body as far as support went. But by the end, he wouldn’t go alone (just if I needed him for some sort of back-up or clarification), wouldn’t agree to a separation and what else is there if divorce isn’t an option? I know blew it. The only thing salvageable now is our friendship and I’ll fight to the death for that because it’s more important to me (and he says so too) than anything else in my life has ever been.[/li][li]I agree with CrazyCatLady on all points. My marriage was my responsibility and where it was at. So was his. If they were broken, it was long before we hooked-up again and we should have taken steps then to preven what finally happened. We both knew better and yet, here I am. We are. [/li][li]I don’t know what I should say to you Uncommon Sense, but that was an interesting observation. Thanks for giving me something a little more light-hearted to reply to.[/li][li]**Jackmannii: True. Do you think if I’d heard/known those lyrics before that it would have helped or mattered any? I’m not sure one way or the other, except of my guilt. And that I was so far gone, in so many different directions, that I highly doubt it.[/li][/ol]
Ok, so that was anything but brief. However, I hope that helps some. I’ve been trying to keep up with this all day and need to eat before I evaporate. Let me know what else I can do or shed light on. Thank you all for speaking openly and honestly and for discussing something that is always timeless.
The reason your analogy is flawed is that there is no situation in which armed robbery is justifiable, where there are situations in which someone can be legally married but effectively single.
Look, I’m not arguing that people should seek out married folks who have children and try to date them. Nor am I saying that marriage vows are not important, quite the opposite. I think that marriage vows are serious enough that it is insulting to imply that anyone else could be held even partially responsible if they are broken.
I’m not defending dating married people. I think it’s wrong to date married people (in the relationship sense, not the legal sense) because I think it’s wrong to date bad people, not because it’s your job to maintain their wedding vows for them.