Life Is Short; Have an Affair

[Catholic_Lady]

I will agree with Rhythm though, that it seems kind of fickle for someone to turn their backs on an entire religion, political party, or any group in general, based on the actions of one bad leader.

There are bad people from all groups and all walks of life, regardless of which group you turn to. Yes, Bush did a horrible thing by going to war without a justifiable cause. But the man before him, Clinton, also did a horrible thing by cheating on his wife, sexually harassing/borderline raping other women, and then repeatedly lying about it under oath to the whole country. One Republican, one Democrat. You'll find similar examples, regardless of what group of people you look into.

[thesummerqueen]

Catching up to all this, so apologize if I run across similar answers as I continue reading and responding.

I wonder how many people here are incapable of letting their partner sleep with other people under any circumstances? Something like that, especially when people are safe about it, isn't cheating and maybe could satisfy that cheating desire that people get.

I literally just had this conversation with a friend last night. We have several mutual friends who are in open marriages. This friend is not in an open marriage, but there have been times in this person's life where it would have made things easier. Not for cheap thrills, but because our friends and loved ones don't stop at hard lines as defined by people usually associated with the Family Values groups in America. I really think that the reason we're incapable of acting like you describe is due to jealousy and insecurity. It's something I've been trying to explore, root-out, or at least define and manage in myself, lately. Maybe we should all be better not just at communicating our wants, but also in communicating to our partners why we need them around as much as the other people we want intimacy with.

I'm not a hacker but I think hacking has done some really good things along with the obvious theft and stuff. When government websites get hacked to reveal that they are a bunch of shitheads who are doing immoral stuff, that's good. I think this is much the same. If it takes something illegal to reveal something immoral, I'm all for it.

"Perhaps on the rare occasion pursuing the right course demands an act of piracy, piracy itself can be the right course?" - It's rare when a Disney movie can be so relevant.

Just never agree to monogamy in the first place.

I think this is a bad position. I'm not the same person I was 10 years ago. Why should I expect that my values or needs or wants should remain the same, even if I do want to continue devoting most of my life to the same person? 10 years ago, I could have said yes to monogamy. Now, maybe I'm not so sure. You should always be able to discuss such things with your partners.

[Whateverist]

I will agree with Rhythm though, that it seems kind of fickle for someone to turn their backs on an entire religion, political party, or any group in general, based on the actions of one bad leader.

There are bad people from all groups and all walks of life, regardless of which group you turn to. Yes, Bush did a horrible thing by going to war without a justifiable cause. But the man before him, Clinton, also did a horrible thing by cheating on his wife, sexually harassing/borderline raping other women, and then repeatedly lying about it under oath to the whole country. One Republican, one Democrat. You'll find similar examples, regardless of what group of people you look into.

Apples and oranges.  Both may have sinned in the eyes of your church but only one of them did anything which should concern a secular government or its justice system.  Oddly, only the one who did not cost us thousands of lives lost on our side and many more on the other as well as billions of dollars was prosecuted.  The other one remains at large.

[rexbeccarox]

I have friends who got married into monogamy, eventually decided it wasn't right for them, and had an ongoing conversation about an open relationship. The were honest with each other the whole time, and when she got pregnant, they both decided the open relationship thing wouldn't work anymore, and they stopped. I can see them having the conversation again when the kids have grown, and the two of them enjoying an open relationship again.

[thesummerqueen]

If I hacked the limbs off "non-innocents" I don't think I'd get any sympathy on that count.  If I did, justice would demand that said sympathy be ignored.  Excusing a breach of privacy because those affected belong to a group that we might attach a negative moral value judgement to says nothing even remotely generous about us.  Bunch'a fuckin busybodies, if you ask me.  

Carry on.

The only reason I care at all about this is because of people like Josh Dugger. It's infinitely satisfying to see moralistic preaching assholes revealed as people completely opposite to what they demand other people be. 

Otherwise I wouldn't give a fuck what was going on in the AM crowd's lives. Not my circus, not my monkeys.

[rexbeccarox]

If I hacked the limbs off "non-innocents" I don't think I'd get any sympathy on that count.  If I did, justice would demand that said sympathy be ignored.  Excusing a breach of privacy because those affected belong to a group that we might attach a negative moral value judgement to says nothing even remotely generous about us.  Bunch'a fuckin busybodies, if you ask me.  

Carry on.

The only reason I care at all about this is because of people like Josh Dugger. It's infinitely satisfying to see moralistic preaching assholes revealed as people completely opposite to what they demand other people be. 

Otherwise I wouldn't give a fuck what was going on in the AM crowd's lives. Not my circus, not my monkeys.

I probably wouldn't care at all either (except about the Josh Duggar part) if I hadn't been exposed first-hand to it, to be honest. My schadenfreude admittedly comes from my own experience.

[Catholic_Lady]

I will agree with Rhythm though, that it seems kind of fickle for someone to turn their backs on an entire religion, political party, or any group in general, based on the actions of one bad leader.

There are bad people from all groups and all walks of life, regardless of which group you turn to. Yes, Bush did a horrible thing by going to war without a justifiable cause. But the man before him, Clinton, also did a horrible thing by cheating on his wife, sexually harassing/borderline raping other women, and then repeatedly lying about it under oath to the whole country. One Republican, one Democrat. You'll find similar examples, regardless of what group of people you look into.

Apples and oranges.  Both may have sinned in the eyes of your church but only one of them did anything which should concern a secular government or its justice system.  Oddly, only the one who did not cost us thousands of lives lost on our side and many more on the other as well as billions of dollars was prosecuted.  The other one remains at large.

Well, I think what Clinton did was a bit more than just "a sin in the eyes of the Church." Cheating on your spouse, lying to your country under oath, and sexual harassment, are unacceptable behaviors in our society in general, and a couple even illegal.  

Perhaps Bush's decision to go into war was done purely for selfish reasons, perhaps he really did genuinely believe the war was necessary and justifiable. In my opinion, only Bush himself and God know for sure. Either way, it was reckless, and stupid, and wrong. With that being said, I agree the wars caused much more damage and loss than Clinton's behaviors. 

My point was only to show that there are people behaving badly in all groups. And leaving he Democratic party solely due to Clinton's wrongdoings would be just as fickle as leaving Christianity solely due to Josh's wrongdoings, IMHO.

[thesummerqueen]

I probably wouldn't care at all either (except about the Josh Duggar part) if I hadn't been exposed first-hand to it, to be honest. My schadenfreude admittedly comes from my own experience.

I totally get that. I really do. On the other hand, I kinda get what Rhythm is talking about. I had an ex whose uncle, before marrying into the family, carried on an affair with someone as discreetly as possible while still married to a woman who was very ill both physically and mentally. He couldn't just divorce her and dump her, and she was clearly declining so "abandoning her before death" seemed shittier to him than having the affair for companionship and comfort. So he did. And was condemned for it. After his wife's death, he eventually remarried - into my ex's family, and his aunt was not the woman he was having an affair with. The other lady was just someone who was helping him get through things at the time, in the only way he knew how without going crazy.

Not my circus, not my monkeys.

Hate your ex all you want. Hate the people who talk out both sides of their mouths. If you individually confront someone and find they're cheating for extremely stupid reasons, then fine, condemn them as well. But sometimes, just sometimes, people are stuck between a rock and hard place, so they do some damage to the hard place, it being the easier of the obstructions. That's all.

[The Grand Nudger]

As an interesting sidebar, there's a sort of line that's been put out there with regards to cheating.  You love someone, you think the world of them, you might defend their actions or decisions against others who criticize - and then, whamo, they cheat.  No more love, no more understanding, no more defense or rationalization "everything we know is wrong forever".  How does that happen, or does it?  Any of you ever take a softer view of unfaithfulness as expressed in the person(s) you've entangled yourself with?  Has anyone ever found themselves leveraging that "friendlier" understanding to their former partners -after- they cheat? If you found your partners name on AM's list......which way would you go with that?

Bare your souls folks...

[Longhorn]

I would say it might not be fair to condemn the huge Duggar family as a whole for the actions of one person, though. The rest of them could very well be great people who actually do a good job of practicing what they preach.

Practicing what they preach is precisely what made Josh a molester.