Another WTF? moment

[Lucifer_Carroll]

Another problem of morality is that it's hated by most people. Sure, they will deny this fact angrily and wax mightily for hours about it, but people don't like meeting truly good people. Meeting a Mother Theresa only sheds light on how greedy and pathetic a human's life truly is. It feels them with insecurity and a feeling of being worth less in the eye's of eternal justice. This feeling is not nice and happy.

A better feeling is the one derived from seasonal volunteering or comparing one's self with monsters, demons, and fucked up lives. People love hearing tales of infidelity, dysfunctional families, and Hitler because they can feel good compared to those people. "At least I'm better than them" they intone.

This drives reactions like the hatred fuckers and assholes have for the empathic and kind (you've likely heard them referred to as "wusses" or "losers"). Similarly the ethical are villified in businesses for not recognizing the pragmatic neccesities of the modern economy or some other bullshit.

It is the dream of these sinners to eventually drive all people with better souls than them to suicide thus leaving them morally satisfied and smug. Naturally, they deny this and claim a love of morality. Usually this morality they love involves how they are better than other people because of reasons that aren't directed by personal Jesusian action (such as "wars against immorality", personal belief structures, political activism, hatred of others, etc...).

Money and power are just tools and incentives for this action.

-LC (who's developed just a slightly negative view of most of humanity so far)

 

[rgraham666]

I don't hate 'em. I feel sorry for them.

All that activity, making money, talking on their cells, driving here, driving there; and they still don't feel good about themselves.

I admit, sometimes it real difficult not to hate them.

But I don't want to be an addict on top of all my other problems so I put it aside.

 

[CharleyH]

Moral and ethical onsiderations aside, this shouldn't be surprising. Prostitutes garner a lot more bussiness from married men than singles I am willing to bet. Where there is a market, someone will offer the service. If infidelity is a good market, people will compete to handle all your illicit sexual needs.

Money drives the world. Like it or not, that's a simple truth. anyone who has found themselves without money will attest to it's validity.

It should't surprise anyone. Callow, greedy, tawdry don't really make much impression when there are tons of greenbacks involved. At least not for a lot of people.

-Colly

Thank god you said it. I was just about to in a much more blunt form.

 

[rgraham666]

I'm not for sale.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Thank god you said it. I was just about to in a much more blunt form.

I can generally state things pragmatically, I do however lack your flair for stateing them elquently and bluntly at the same time

 

[fifty5]

I'm not for sale.

Succinct.

The difference between 'for hire' and 'for sale' is huge.

They can hire me, but not buy me.

Eff

 

[MarieaWishAway]

delete

 

[oggbashan]

Infidelity....

Would some one please explain the definition of this word to me? How do you define it, how do you get the point across to someone who obviously doesn't get it?

It is all about confidence. If you have confidence in your partner then him/her flirting with one of your friends (or you doing it with one of his/her friends) wouldn't matter because both of you would know it was just in fun.

Once that confidence is lost it is almost impossible to retrieve. Trust is easily destroyed even by words.

Og

 

[SummerMorning]

The experience of happiness is socially mediated.

or, to put it in a more new age light:

We can only experience happiness through other people.

 

[Guest]

The experience of happiness is socially mediated.
or, to put it in a more new age light:
We can only experience happiness through other people.

I don't know, Summ, I've had moments of exquisite happiness in solitude. I believe we can be happy alone (with ourselves), in fact that we must be, or have that capability, before we can find happiness in or with others.

Perdita

 

[MarieaWishAway]

delete

 

[BlackShanglan]

I don't know, Summ, I've had moments of exquisite happiness in solitude. I believe we can be happy alone (with ourselves), in fact that we must be, or have that capability, before we can find happiness in or with others.

Perdita

Agreed. When I think of a soul truly at peace and in the presence of beauty, I think of Wordsworth's daffodils that "flash upon that inward eye / Which is the bliss of solitude." The heart that has that peace to seek, and knows where to find it, is the one best proof against the shocks of the world and the pain that human relations can bring. Or as Yeats says, "If there's no hatred in a mind / Assault and battery of the wind / Can never tear the linnet from the leaf."

There is, of course, much great art wrought of pain and suffering. But some of the best, as well, is wrought from peace and beauty - high laughter, loveliness, and ease, as Yeats would have it. There is a place for such things.

Shanglan

 

[cantdog]

You speak very well, o horse. Have my apple; I shall do without this day.

Ulysses Cantdog

 

[Guest]

You're a real gent too, Cant. P.

 

[BlackShanglan]

You speak very well, o horse. Have my apple; I shall do without this day.

Ulysses Cantdog

My grateful thanks, Cantdog. I am pleased to have pleased.

Shanglan

 

[cantdog]

I find you more and more congenial, in fact.

Back to the topic.

Human behavior is difficult to generalize, more than most people imagine. I was on an ambulance, as the attendant, for ten years.

When folks have company, they spruce up a little. But an ambulance sees a real slice of life. I'm here to tell you, people live radically different lives from one another. All the conformity is a veneer, very thin, and put on for the sake of the hoi polloi.

The houses look the same, but the lives people lead in them are so various! Cops see the same thing.

For example: infidelity would never turn a hair, for me. I wanted a line marriage, or something open, right from the beginning. She was a member of a weird ass religious group, and she always had a miniscule sex drive to boot, so nothing of the sort ever happened.

But the fact remains that I have the opposite of jealousy. I would actually welcome more complexity in our love life. Complexity is fun, and variety is fun. There you are.

And my experience tells me I'm not so far off the beam as you might imagine. Behind their doors, a great and unclassifiable range of behaviors apply, among our fellow creatures.

Not only that, but the capacity for rationalizing is nearly infinite. People can make excuses for any damn thing, and convince themselves to believe them.

cantdog

 

[BlackShanglan]

Not only that, but the capacity for rationalizing is nearly infinite. People can make excuses for any damn thing, and convince themselves to believe them.

There's the rub. I think half the reason some people espouse "hard and fast" / "no exceptions" rules about marriage or human relationships is that charming human ability to rationalize. Once you step outside of the "never" rules, you enter the quagmire of "sounds reasonable to me." Of course our own desires have a way of sounding reasonable.

Your story of your marriage intrigues me. I am trying not to read too much into your brief statement, but it suggests an intriguing level of restraint and self discipline. So does your writing in the post above; I shall look back to it when I am attempting to weed the verbal undergrowth out of my own work.

Shanglan

 

[sw33t gurl]

-

 

[BlackShanglan]

I do not doubt that in many cases it is easier and more convenient to be dishonest. In fact, "I had to lie or else I would not have gotten what I wanted" is a very popular defense. I certainly don't think that honesty is without consequences. I would only argue that it is worth those consequences.

What is right was never intended to be defined by what is simple and gratifying. If, indeed, one's partner is utterly opposed to an "open marriage," then admittedly there are difficult choices to be made, especially if children are involved. However, I might suggest that if one is truly desperately concerned for one's children and the stability of their home life, then one might choose the noble sacrifice and delay the gratification of one's sexual tastes until such time as the children are mature enough to accept their parents' seperation.

Certainly, the last thing I would suggest to anyone genuinely in fear of physical violence from a spouse would be to cheat on him/her; cheating is really not difficult to detect, and spouses of markedly possessive and jealous natures are usually the first to suspect it. I can hardly imagine a more fearful risk to life and limb than being caught cheating by a violent spouse. Far better, if the situation really is such, to get out of the marriage than to sneak about hoping that s/he somehow will not notice.

Shanglan

 

[cantdog]

Well, sw33t, you make a good point. After a few years, let alone twenty, the task of breaking up becomes just monumental. Nothing, hardly, can be said to belong to just one partner any more; you have married your fortunes to each other, as well.

Even in the absence of festering emotional incompatibilities or changes in sexual abilities or any of that, neither of the partners is the same person they were twenty years gone. If there is a healthy love it is between these new people, and is very little like the love between the other people who began the marriage.

So, taking it all together, there may be several excellent reasons to end it. "Just leave," though, is impossibly simple. Just to leave would be bound to result in inequity. Might be a sacrifice worth making, if things are nasty enough, but it's a lot of inertia to overcome if you are going to take apart a joint household.

 

[impressive]

I am at the point in my 20-year marriage that if faced with an overwhelming desire to be with someone else, I would simply tell my spouse -- in advance. At that point, we could either enter a new phase in our relationship or end it. The former would be more "convenient," the latter (perhaps) more comfortable in the long run.

 

[BlackShanglan]

I think Impressive has the right way to handle it.

 

[rgraham666]

Re: Re: Another WTF? moment

I cannot comprehend how some people can think in this kind of rose-tinted and blinkered way. Perhaps the cheating partner doesn't get what they need at home, either emotionally or physically. Some people change after years and years of marriage and things either begin going wrong or merely get stagnated, but it's also too difficult to walk away. What if there are children involved and the cheating partner can't face the thought of breaking up their seemingly happy family life? What if the married couple involved are perfectly happy in all areas, except sex? And what if the husband might get violent towards the wife, if she even approached the subject of them having a somewhat open marriage. What if he beats her up during sex, but is a very quiet and kind man the rest of the time? What if she tried to leave him before and he emotionally blackmailed her to stay? There are many what ifs.

Nobody can sit in judgement of others if they don't know all the facts about the lives of others, especially if most of the time the details are very private and closely guarded.

Possibly I speak the way I do because it's been over a decade since I've been in a relationship and, to speak truthfully, have little hope of ever being in another one ever again.

I look with a great deal of envy on the people who do have relationships and can't help but wonder why they don't put the energy they put into cheating into making their relationship work.

And there's the matter of ethics. If you have made a commitment to someone, betraying that trust is not a good thing to do.

And as regards the various scenarios you posited, I doubt they make up a majority, or even a significant minority of the people who cheat on their SOs. If things are that bad in your relationship, it's time to end it, not make it worse by involving a third party.

Rose coloured my glasses may be, and I might be blinkered. But I'm not going to excuse unethical behaviour.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Re: Re: Re: Another WTF? moment

Possibly I speak the way I do because it's been over a decade since I've been in a relationship and, to speak truthfully, have little hope of ever being in another one ever again.

I look with a great deal of envy on the people who do have relationships and can't help but wonder why they don't put the energy they put into cheating into making their relationship work.

And there's the matter of ethics. If you have made a commitment to someone, betraying that trust is not a good thing to do.

Perhaps you ought to post this wherever people who pique your interest congregate, with a phone number. It's a damned good advertisement.

Shanglan

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

Re: Re: Re: Another WTF? moment

Possibly I speak the way I do because it's been over a decade since I've been in a relationship and, to speak truthfully, have little hope of ever being in another one ever again.

Hmm, it might just be me, but I've noticed that the people with the most faithful tendencies in relationships, the most beautiful views in terms of women, and have the most overall "nice guy" personas are also the ones with the most difficulty in attracting women.

The why of this is hard to pinpoint depending on which brings which about. A decent sort is unlikely to go on the type of mass-mail seduction campaigns that get assholes their pussy count, they're likely to be shyer only asking a handful of women out a year and taking every rejection personally.

Or you could look at it the other way and that people starved of a relationship and with no perceived hope of getting a gf will tend to develop a more important view of what a relationship consists of and a more caring view towards women in general.

Personally I suspect the former, but either way it is an interesting correlation. Depressing as all shit, but neverless interesting.