Slashdot Mirror
Facebook, Friend of Divorce Lawyers
crimeandpunishment writes "A lot of Facebook users going through divorces have learned a very costly lesson about their privacy settings. In fact, for many of them their Facebook pages helped lead to the divorce in the first place. More than 80% of the members of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers say they've used or run into evidence gathered from Facebook and other social networking sites over the last five years — and some of them have some very entertaining stories to tell. 'Facebook is the unrivaled leader for turning virtual reality into real-life divorce drama,' said AAML's president."
That's all there is to it.
ZipKid
so where's the surprize?
new sig
...attorneys are not interested into people posting on Slashdot. Can you guess why ?!?
Rule 1. of the internet, if you want it private... DON'T post it.
WTF? What kind of @sshole is he? Oh, wait... my ex effectively did that with my daughter pre-facebook...
People who cheat have one thing to blame, and to find it they need only look in the mirror.
FaceBook does not cause divorces. Divorce lawyers don't cause divorces.
Cheaters who get caught and don't change their behavior cause divorces.
If you promised someone your fidelity, and if you have broken that promise, look in the mirror to see whom to blame.
I can't stand hypocrites who don't take responsibility for their actions.
And cheaters.
Ehud
Tucson AZ
P.S. Please don't mod me down. It's my birthday this year.
"WHAT YOU SAY CAN AND WILL BE HELD AGAINST YOU"
"BEWARE YOUR FRENEMIES"
"A PICTURE MAY BE WORTH ... BIG BUCKS"
"PRIVACY, PRIVACY, PRIVACY"
Useful advice, and not just on Facebook. Sorry about the caps, but that's how this advice was posted in the article.
It is simple, don't post anything online that you don't want others to see.
For more info, visit my website. hsa://goatse.cx
Yours truly,
S.E. Goat
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
What about the cheaters who get divorced in order to marry their other lover? Is their partner on the hook for that?
As a rule though, documenting infidelity anywhere is just plain stupid, whether we're talking a bunch of emails, a compromising video, or a credit card charge at a hotel. Facebook is no different.
I am officially gone from
Seriously, for centuries, people carrying on secret affairs would go to great lengths to maintain their secrecy. The Kama Sutra even recommends that cryptography be used, and provides a cipher, to help protect messages sent between lovers. What kind of idiot would post anything related to an adulterous affair anywhere on Facebook?
Palm trees and 8
If that's the type of person they're going after, they'll quickly discover what it's like to be on the "cheated" side.
UTF-8: There and Back Again
As a rule though, documenting infidelity anywhere is just plain stupid, whether we're talking a bunch of emails, a compromising video, or a credit card charge at a hotel. Facebook is no different.
Well unless you have in-person contact with your lover in your day to day life, that can be a little hard -- how else will you arrange meetings and whatnot? The communication will need to happen at some point.
If I were in such a situation, I would immediately look at steganography. Cryptography is a good first try, but the problem is that it reveals who you were communicating with, which is incriminating in and of itself. Thus, steganography, possibly using some public photo sharing service (ironically, Facebook could serve the purpose here). The messages would have to be short, but that is fine for arranging a meeting or sending a love note.
Not that I really see myself being in such a situation.
Palm trees and 8
...that horrible information gathering site. I deactivated my account about 2 months ago - would have been sooner if I hadn't make quite a bit of progress in backyard monsters! Hahaha...
One person I know said it best - "I won't sign up for a facebook account because its like an after highschool popularity contest. And yes - I realize that you can "reconnect" with people from your past, but how much of a reconnection besides of couple of messages back and forth have you had? (rhetorical question - I really don't care)
So yea - if you had an account and deleted it for whatever reason, i'd like to hear.
In most civilized countries, cheating does not help divorce any more than going to an attorney and asking for divorce.
Marriage should not restrict you to have sex to only one person in any way (or have your marriage broken with the person being 'cheated on' getting all your money).
Rest assure, only in exceptional cases including computer hardware life on /. is not really promiscuous. The lawyer may find evidence of marital lethargy though.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
As a rule though, infidelity anywhere is just plain stupid,
FTFY
I am not your blowing wind, I am the lightning.
Why?
Oh yes, because people who cheat are ALWAYS bad, and it has nothing to do with the fact that their partner might be completely unsuitable for them and/or positively damaging to them. I *love* black and white morality. I thought we had some people that appreciate shades of grey on /.
Cheaters who get caught and don't change their behavior cause divorces.
Uh, no. In the same sense that you post above.
People who file for divorce cause divorces.
If you promised someone your fidelity, and if you have broken that promise, look in the mirror to see whom to blame.
As a matter of fact, even the traditional christian marriage vow does not contain faithfulness. Look it up.
Now if your vow actually did contain these words then yes. In which case it is breaking your word that is causing all the trouble, and that could be on sex, but also on a lot of other things.
So on the traditional marriage, one could say that breaking an unspoken expectation of one party is what caused the breakup. Yes, it is a very common expectation. You'd be surprised at the small percentage of people who actually voiced it.
And then, of course, we could go down the road of "it wasn't the cheating, it was the finding out about it that caused the divorce", because there are tons and tons of marriages where one partner cheats or cheated that are still perfectly intact, because the other one doesn't know.
What all that leads up to is very simply: There are no simple answers. Relationships and their involved commitments and emotions are too complicated and interrelated for simple answers. What makes one, breaks another. What one partner sees as the root cause, the other sees as the reaction to something else.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
If you want to have sex with more than one person while married; nothing stops you from laying out your preferences beforehand, why wouldn't you ask your partner and get their ok?
How do you kill that which has no life?
"-- Husband goes on Match.com and declares his single, childless status while seeking primary custody of said nonexistent children."
And THAT amounts to some degree of 'evidence' in court? Really, WTF? Since he's eeking custody, the being 'single' part is assumably correct. As for the childless status. Debatable, since he obviously does not have custody (yet). Besides that, I'm not going to buy drinks for every 'childless' single in a random bar who turns out to have at least one.
And then:
"-- Husband denies anger management issues but posts on Facebook in his "write something about yourself" section: "If you have the balls to get in my face, I'll kick your ass into submission." "
If that, in court, is evidence of 'anger management issues' then I'm VERY glad I live on the other side of the pond. Taking remarks in a profile THAT serious is simply retarded.
'We have no choice in what we are. Yet what are we,
but the sum of our choices.' --Rob Grant
This may earn me some negaitve karma, but so be it. Oh yes, because people who cheat are ALWAYS bad, and it has nothing to do with the fact that their partner might be completely unsuitable for them and/or positively damaging to them. I *love* black and white morality. I thought we had some people that appreciate shades of grey on /.
Why wouldn't they get a divorce first?
How do you kill that which has no life?
As a matter of fact, even the traditional christian marriage vow does not contain faithfulness. Look it up.
"The" traditional christian marriage vow? You're fired.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
As a matter of fact, even the traditional christian marriage vow does not contain faithfulness. Look it up.
forsaking all others...
Actually, it is not.
It may violate your ethics, moral guidelines, religion or what-have-you. But it is not stupid. On the contrary, successful cheating does require considerable mental ressources, especially if you want to keep the affair going (and secret) for a long time.
It is also a built-in drive, the same way that hunger and thirst are. Look up Helen E. Fisher and read a few of her books, she is the foremost authority on the biology that drives lust, love and attachment. Here's a great TED talk of hers on the subject: http://www.ted.com/talks/helen_fisher_tells_us_why_we_love_cheat.html
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Marriage should not restrict you to have sex to only one person in any way
Ummm, yeah, that's what marriage IS. Everybody's not cut out for it. If you want to play the field, don't get married.
(or have your marriage broken with the person being 'cheated on' getting all your money).
If you are worried about someone taking your money, then don't get married. Do we see a pattern forming here? Yes. Yes, we do.
I am not your blowing wind, I am the lightning.
People who cheat have one thing to blame, and to find it they need only look in the mirror.
It's not always the cheater's fault. Why, lots of the times I cheated it was totally the woman's fault... oh, wait, this isn't going out on the internet is it?
Please disregard.
"I love his boyish charm, but I hate his childishness" - Leela
I think that you are understating the power of environmental influences, and the effect of feedback loops.
People certainly differ in their willingness(and quite possibly capacity) to resist temptation; but this means that, on a population level, if you change the ease and availability of temptation, you change the number of people succumbing to it. It's like obesity. Yeah, everyone is, in theory, in control of what they eat, though metabolisms differ; but if the price of corn syrup drops by $1 a gallon, the number of fat people in a population will increase. Facebook is to infidelity what cheap HFCS is to obesity. It doesn't magically cram itself down your throat; but the population effects are clear and pronounced.
Second, of course, is feedback loops. Divorces occur over more than infidelity. If, for example, one or both parties have a predisposition to jealousy, a service that allows them to see all the old-people-from-highschool that their partner never bothered to defriend, and ruminate endlessly about whether they just didn't bother, or whether they are still exchanging steamy messages every day, is not going to help very much. Dealing with someone spiralling into crazy-jealous mode isn't going to be very pleasant. Things can easily spiral down from there, whether to actual infidelity, or just to "I can't fucking stand to be in the same house as this crazy bastard" territory.
Except that in certain countries, such as the US, then your partner can use this as a motivation for divorce and get a larger part of the pie than if he/she simply asked for it without motivation.
Marriage should not restrict you to have sex to only one person in any way
If you said "to the exclusion of all others" or something to that effect when you took your wedding vows then yes it should. Otherwise you are cheating the other person out of what they signed up for.
If you want to have an open marriage then go right ahead and do whatever works for you, but don't tell other people what works for them because that's just dumb.
And if you got married on the basis that you would only have sex with your partner and then change your mind, at least be honest about it. It's the not being honest about it that makes it "cheating".
FaceBook does not cause divorces. Divorce lawyers don't cause divorces.
Nope, outdated legal constructs based on stone-aged belief systems causes divorces by forcing people into "marriages" in order to benefit from tax and legal protections not afforded those who don't proscribe to a system based on religious beliefs.
if we didn't have marriages we wouldn't have divorces.
But why did you mod him down?? It's his birthday this year!!
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
So leave the incompatible marriage first? Not only is it the morally responsible thing to do, but it's also the most legally responsible thing to do (to minimize damages come the divorce).
Cheating is always bad, if for no other reason than it is a betrayal of the vows you made when you get married. The very least you can do in a broken relationship is to end the marriage first before moving on to others.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
I'm guessing that you've never been through the potentially multiple years long and extremely expensive process.
Well unless you have in-person contact with your lover in your day to day life, that can be a little hard -- how else will you arrange meetings and whatnot? The communication will need to happen at some point.
Are you fishing for tips or are you wrong on /. ?
Web-Mail account, registered solely for this purpose. Browser in privacy mode when you access it. You don't need crypto to keep something hidden, you need crypto if you want to keep something secret that you can't hide.
For the experts, or those with much to lose, there are lots of other options, but unless your spouse is a geek, they're overkill.
Disclosure: I worked on some of this stuff many years ago. Our target audience were civil rights activists who in many countries likewise need to communicate with at least plausible deniability. A geeky UN-affiliated NGO built systems where the local military police could confiscate their computers and find absolutely nothing incriminating.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
There are lots of views on morality, but for me personally, I'd say yes, cheating is ALWAYS bad, because above all, it's dishonest. More than that though, you are cheating yourself, and your professed parter, and even your person on the side out of a chance at a real love relationship. If you have real and significant problems with your spouse, get those issues out in the air. If they can't be worked on between the two of you, get some counseling, or get some papers filed. It's really that simple. "Staying together for the kids" only teaches the children that abuse and unhappiness are okay as long as you can justify it to yourself. Besides, they learn almost everything about love relationships by watching their parents. If you don't love someone, but you're staying with them anyway, expect your kids will do the same until or unless they learn better. It's a complex problem to be sure, mainstream media has stressed the fairy tale courtship, where the magic of love is all about finding the right person. Unfortunately most people find out falling in love and living in love can be rather different. If you find the right person though, and you inspire each other to each be the right person for one another then you may wake up every day feeling like you are the luckiest person alive.
Yes...you are always bad if you are cheating on your spouse to whom you are married. This of course doesn't apply to so-called "open" relationships, where you can have relationships with whomever you want while you are married. Let's look at it this way...marriage is one of two things, either a religious construct going back thousands of years, or a social construct for the purpose of seeing a distinct benefit in being with someone else. In the religious side, adultery is bad. On the social side, if you aren't deriving any benefit from the marriage, why stay married? All the b.s. Lifetime movies (Bridges of Madison county I'm lookin at you) are fantastical stories where the women are strong for cheating on their husbands because they aren't getting what they need emotionally, and the men are pigs when they cheat on their wives.
As a matter of fact, even the traditional christian marriage vow does not contain faithfulness. Look it up.
Let's see....something in Genesis if I recall pertained exactly to this. Something about adultery....I think it was one of ten ideas, or laws, or fuzzy warm feelings, or something like that. Maybe commandments? Who knows, the Bible isn't really worth anything really to a Christian marriage....
"Why wouldn't they get a divorce first?"
I can think of a few reasons. Maybe there are children involved, and the divorce would harm the children emotionally or possibly deny one parent access to their children. Maybe there is a risk of alimony payments. Maybe there is a risk of losing a house, car, or other very valuable property.
Divorce is not like breaking up with a boyfriend/girlfriend. It is a legal process with legal and financial ramifications.
Palm trees and 8
Oh yes, because people who cheat are ALWAYS bad
That's pretty much my opinion.
, and it has nothing to do with the fact that their partner might be completely unsuitable for them and/or positively damaging to them.
If the marriage isn't working out for you and you think there is no way it's ever going to work then grow a spine and be upfront about it _before_ you go chasing someone else. Don't go behind the other persons back because that's what makes it cheating.
I *love* black and white morality. I thought we had some people that appreciate shades of grey on /.
I like to think i'm not so black and white when it comes to this sort of stuff but I can't think of a situation where sneaking around behind someones back is anything but the wrong thing to do.
Except that in certain countries, such as the US, then your partner can use this as a motivation for divorce and get a larger part of the pie than if he/she simply asked for it without motivation.
I was thinking more along the lines of a contractual ok. For that matter, would you agree that if your partner is asking for divorce, they are dissatisfied?
How do you kill that which has no life?
It's called a Tracphone.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I'm guessing that you've never been through the potentially multiple years long and extremely expensive process.
You're saying that it makes more sense to go behind your partner's back than to tell them because it's too hard to be straight?
How do you kill that which has no life?
NOTE 1: I'm divorced
NOTE 2: I live in Estonia (EU)
Not all may apply to you, but this is what I noticed in the local law:
Infidelity is not illegal. In the laws that govern matrimonial rights, infidelity is never mentioned.
Moreover, the law specifically states that by marrying one cannot demand the other to agree to things that would limit their rights. This open an interesting question, can a husband/wife demand that the other would not be infidel? or would that be "limiting the rights of the other"?
Most divorces are because of love fading away (my case), and not necessarily infidelity, though probably large part involves infidelity. But since that was not my case, I never got to ask this question in court.
Though I now that courts here wouldn't care at all if you said that you oppose divorce from religious reasons. That, too, is not in the law.
Therefore, I guess, infidelity only enters the decision making process when custodial rights are decided (or division of property?), when it's decided who is more suitable to take care of the children.
And I wonder what kind of photos people post on FB to be able to infer from them that someone is infidel? Dancing in a party? Hugging someone? Would people scream "infidelity!"?
My job is to take photos, so I know how easy it is to get a photo that "looks bad". Tons of photos with people with drinks in their hand, for example, though they would swear they never drink alcohol (!), and they don't, because those photos are taken right after some friend goes "hold this, I have to..."
"Why wouldn't they get a divorce first?"
Maybe there are children involved, and the divorce would harm the children emotionally...
You mean, emotionally other than growing up watching their parents be part of a loveless relationship filled with lies and deceit?
Maybe there is a risk of alimony payments. Maybe there is a risk of losing a house, car, or other very valuable property.
So money is more important than ethics? You sound ripe for a CEO of a major corporation. You'll go quite far!
If you tried any of that shit with a mistress, I guarantee she would not be your mistress for very long. "Just download this program, configure it, and view this random TinyPic hyperlink if you ever want to be honored by my presence and average-sized penis." What a joke; most mistresses are in it for your attention, and the more they feel they are being hidden, the better chance there is that they will drop you like a used rubber.
You must watch a lot of Lifetime movies....
I can think of a few reasons. Maybe there are children involved, and the divorce would harm the children emotionally or possibly deny one parent access to their children.
So it's better for the children to see you cheat on their other parent?
Maybe there is a risk of alimony payments. Maybe there is a risk of losing a house, car, or other very valuable property.
This won't happen if you get caught and sued for divorce?
How do you kill that which has no life?
I'm saying that while you are "separated" and no longer in a sexual relationship with your legal spouse, you can still be accused of cheating in a court of law.
Nothing says you can't be married only for the tax and legal reasons.....I don't agree with it, but it's not illegal.
Actually, marriage has always been a legal matter; the only reason religion ever became involved is that at one time, religion was the way laws were defined. Marriage is nothing more than a way to codify family units into the law, thus simplifying things like inheritance, access to land and property, and so forth.
As for the issue of cheating, well, keep in mind that humans are not known to be naturally monogamous. People can start out a marriage with strong feelings of love and devotion, but things change. Sometimes an affair can be a temporary thing, just a couple of weeks, and then the devotion to the marriage takes over again. Sometimes the feelings that were so strong at the beginning of a marriage can fade, and sometimes only for one of the people involved. Leaving the marriage behind is not necessarily the best answer in all situations, especially in situations involving children.
Things are not black and white.
Palm trees and 8
Ummm, yeah, that's what marriage IS.
Weird definition of marriage. I don't think marriage is only and strictly a pledge of monogamy. Marriage, strictly speaking, is a binding contract. Beyond that, it's up to the couple to define what it is. Marriage vows vary, even if held in a religious institution the official (minister) are fairly flexible about what the couple wants in the vows. I know a number of couples with open marriages; are they not married? Some have been married for decades and have kids and great relationships.
I'm saying that while you are "separated" and no longer in a sexual relationship with your legal spouse, you can still be accused of cheating in a court of law.
This seems like a hard sell if you already have divorce papers being filed? Can it still make a difference?
How do you kill that which has no life?
From the article:
Think of Dad forcing son to de-friend mom, bolstering her alienation of affection claim against him.
-- Husband goes on Match.com and declares his single, childless status while seeking primary custody of said nonexistent children.
-- Husband denies anger management issues but posts on Facebook in his "write something about yourself" section: "If you have the balls to get in my face, I'll kick your ass into submission."
-- Father seeks custody of the kids, claiming (among other things) that his ex-wife never attends the events of their young ones. Subpoenaed evidence from the gaming site World of Warcraft tracks her there with her boyfriend at the precise time she was supposed to be out with the children. Mom loves Facebook's Farmville, too, at all the wrong times.
Three examples in a row of husbands/fathers being in the wrong before we finally get one where the wife is the lying one (and in that one, the mother's guilt is established at the end of the paragraph)? Here's a hint, journalists: don't make your readers wade through half an article of one-sidedness before tying to inject a little balance. Had I not kept at it, I would have thought that this was yet another hit piece on fathers, who seem to have no way of standing up to the pro-wife, pro-mother, pro-woman mainstream media. Fathers don't cheat any more than mothers do, and don't deserve the bad press they always seem to get. No wonder young men are refusing to get married these days.
That's why our wedding vows had notihng about forsaking all others...
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
It may violate your ethics, moral guidelines, religion or what-have-you. But it is not stupid.
Cheating is not about ethics or morals or religion. It's not even about sex. Its about your commitment (or lack thereof) to your spouse, and to all of the other people in your marriage (kids, in-laws, parents, neighbors, etc.). And if you are not smart enough to find an acceptable outlet for your biological urges, I would have to say that's pretty stupid.
I am not your blowing wind, I am the lightning.
As I've stated above, you are technically cheating when you sleep with someone during a legally mandated separation. Are you saying that people should put their emotional/sexual lives on hold for a dead relationship?
Please don't mod me down. It's my birthday this year.
In fact, mod him up some more. Not because it's his birthday, but because he's 100% correct. I should have divorced the adulterous Evil-X the first time I caught her. There are two kinds of people in the world, those that are faithful and those that aren't. If they do it once they'll keep doing it; they're not going to change their behavior.
Oh, and happy birthday, gavron.
Free Martian Whores!
Sanctimonious people who don't realize that if people choose to live in an open relationship, even when married and do not promise sexual fidelity - only financial and emotional fidelity - everything works out much better. Fifty percent of couples cheat and fifty percent get divorced. They never tumble to the conclusion that if they make their relationship about an act, like sex or skydiving or hacking or whatever, they are statistically doomed to failure. Define the relationship differently and the divorce rate drops.
Happily in an open marriage for 15 years.
Thank you BUTU, you've restored (some) of my (completely non-denominational) faith in /.
"You mean, emotionally other than growing up watching their parents be part of a loveless relationship filled with lies and deceit?"
Plenty of people manage to hide that sort of thing from their children, that is really nothing new. It might come out eventually, when the children are older (perhaps after they have moved out), but there is no reason for a 10 year old to know that his parents' relationship is falling apart.
"So money is more important than ethics? You sound ripe for a CEO of a major corporation. You'll go quite far!"
It is somehow more ethical to end a marriage, after taking a vow to stay with your spouse until death? Yes, incidentally, money is an important factor for someone who is considering anything related to marriage. This may come as a shock to you, but marriage is primarily a legal proceeding, with a lot of financial ramifications.
Palm trees and 8
I hope the government can solve this problem for us.
It's too bad we can't deal with this ourselves. If only there were a way not to post stuff on Facebook...
It doesn't matter how well the cheater ties down their site and cleans up tags of themselves with their side-S.O., if the side-S.O. posts any non-tagged photos publicly, divorce lawyers and P.I.s will find them in less than a day.
All people that replied to this message missed the point.
I'm talking about what the marriage contract entitles, not about any moral idea of what marriage is.
There are two ways to break out of this contract:
- someone chooses to break it
- someone failed to comply with the obligations of the contract
The problem is that in the second case, the breaking up is beneficiary (financially) to the person who did not fail to comply with the obligations.
What I am claiming is that being faithful be part of the obligations is ridiculous and old-fashioned, and shouldn't be part of the laws of a modern country.
The US laws hardly qualify as modern anyway.
It's not just for divorce. I have two friends with issues like this going on - one going through a divorce and one going through a custody battle with her ex over their son.
In both cases one of the first things their lawyers recommended that they do is delete their Myspace and Facebook accounts immediately. Far too much stuff that you don't want out there is available and it's a poor time for that stuff to be leaking out.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
"For the experts, or those with much to lose, there are lots of other options, but unless your spouse is a geek, they're overkill."
It is not the spouse that I would worry about -- it is the people the spouse may hire to go looking around.
Palm trees and 8
Ummm, yeah, that's what marriage IS.
No, it isn't.
Of course I have no sympathy for people being unfaithful. But there is the question to people who have open relationships (which doesn't have to be "playing the field", it also includes long term multiple relationships with perhaps just one other person, rather than with large numbers of different people) - even though it's open and consensual, if the relationship then turns sour for other reasons, could the existence of a relationship with someone else be used against that person?
Saying "they shouldn't get married" isn't an answer, as that means they can't get the rights that other married people are entitled to.
That's not really an appropriate counterpoint. Marriage is about being with one person romantically to the exclusion of all others. If you don't like that then you shouldn't be married. Or I suppose move to a part of the world where polygamy is legal. If you think it's expensive to get a divorce without cheating, you'll be pleasantly surprised to find that cheating makes the whole process even uglier than before.
And yes, people that cheat are always in the wrong here. I don't think that there's a way in which making this sort of massive life long commitment then sneaking around behind the spouses back is not wrong. And people do frequently get caught doing it, and it does tend to lead to costly divorces.
I'm still amazed by the Facebook users I meet who are complacement about or ignorant of the issues surrounding Facebook.
I rarely post anything in my account anymore as result of Facebook's actions.
Once the alternatives like Diaspora come out I'm going to encourage my Facebook friends to join me there and delete my account.
I admit I was stupid pursuing another relationship at that time, but the one I was legally in was empty and soul destroying.
Unfortunately the situation is a lot more complicated. There are kids, if you have any, but even looking past the potential moral hazards, a huge problem we still have, at least in the US, is this whole idea of combining finances and property. It makes divorce a lot more complicated(and for divorce lawyers a lot more profitable) than it would otherwise be. Spouses need to get rid of this idea that they have a "right" to a portion of the other spouse's salary in perpetuity. Divorce would be a lot less caustic if everyone would sign a pre-nup and be civilized towards eachtother when it's clear that the relationship is going nowhere....but if that were to happen the lawyers would lose out big, so it's pretty much in their best interest to convince newly separated people that they have been done a great injustice and are thus entitled to great sums of money.
Monstar L
I'm not a fan of black and white morality either. I am also a human being who has made mistakes and done things he regrets. People do end up with unsuitable partners and unmet needs. The thing to do is to end those relationships before taking up with someone else. Cheating is a choice.
Ummm, yeah, that's what marriage IS. Everybody's not cut out for it. If you want to play the field, don't get married.
No, that's what marriage is to an individual with a religious background. For the rest of us it's a legal agreement between two people which supposedly brings some sort of perceived tax benefit which I have never seen (we pay out far more now that we're married), rights to share insurance, and rights of property and debt exchange after death.
Stop trying to confuse what marriage really is with what you want it to be.
Plenty of people manage to hide that sort of thing from their children, that is really nothing new. It might come out eventually, when the children are older (perhaps after they have moved out), but there is no reason for a 10 year old to know that his parents' relationship is falling apart.
So it's better if the kid realizes at 16 that one of his parents systematically deceived him and his other parent for years?
It is somehow more ethical to end a marriage, after taking a vow to stay with your spouse until death? Yes, incidentally, money is an important factor for someone who is considering anything related to marriage. This may come as a shock to you, but marriage is primarily a legal proceeding, with a lot of financial ramifications.
If you stick with the marriage for financial reasons, but reasonably suspect that your partner would divorce you if they knew that you were cheating, aren't you just doing it for your own sake?
How do you kill that which has no life?
Adultery is one of the two grounds for divorce from the christian bible, but you would be hard pressed to find a verse that required it. Adultery is a sin, but like so many sins it is forgiven, and does not appear to the biggest reason why people get divorced. Take the public officials in he US. Many of the men have multiple wives, and many got divorced just because they wanted a divorce. According to the christian bible, in a strict sense these men are adulterers because they are having sex with someone else while their real wives are still alive, yet they are forgiven and are seen as moral enough to hold public office. Therefore adultery is regularly forgiven as a sin, and divorce is likely caused by other problems of which adultery is symptom. In this case I suspect that one spouse is spending too much time playing on facebook and ignoring the other spouse.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Nothing says you can't be married only for the tax and legal reasons.....I don't agree with it, but it's not illegal.
I think the point was the reverse - why should you have to get married to enjoy tax or legal benefits when marriage is based on religious moralities from the stone-age?
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
There are alternatives to cheating and total monogamy also. The big difference between cheating and open relationships is that the cheater cheats without their partner knowing, whereas the open relationship partner knows what's going on.
I am officially gone from
I take your point about people being upfront - but be careful of holding people to their vows legally.
Consider, for all those who didn't strike the vow for the wife to obey the husband; is simple disobedience from the wife grounds for divorce? Whilst obviously I'd hope that all sensible people should be striking that for the vows these days, I'd think that we'd still consider such a divorce case to be rather ridiculous.
coincidence! i have my birthday this year too!
xD
He did say "vows" not "bible".
People who cheat have one thing to blame, and to find it they need only look in the mirror.
I don't seem to have a reflection...what does that mean??
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Well indeed, but the problem here is conflating definitions of cheating. It's mad that you can still be accused of cheating, and that it might well stick; but I wouldn't call it cheating.
OK, so *your* definition of marriage is the only one? Monogamy is an implied principle of *most marriages, but I do have a fair number of friends that play the field while married, under various rules. Don't try to restrict everyone else to your definition of a societal norm.
Actually, I doubt this statement. Humanity is not, by nature, only interested in a single partner - as should be quite evident. Forcing people to "promise fidelity" in relationships for them to be socially sanctioned is one of the modern social fallacies. Cheating is no less or more rational than having sex or offspring - it is all instincts.
Just because societies of old were incapable to control diseases (which apparently easily transmit during sexual intercourse) and organize good care for kids or alternatively do safe abortions by other means, it does not mean monogamy is a law of nature or should be a rule in modern society...
"Oh yes, because people who cheat are ALWAYS bad, and it has nothing to do with the fact that their partner might be completely unsuitable for them and/or positively damaging to them."
Yes, of course there are good reasons why people might want to end a relationship. Then you DEAL WITH IT, by either going through the legal process of getting out of the arrangement you had previously made a commitment to keep, or by trying to repair the relationship. Anything less is dishonest and is not a justification for cheating on your partner.
Yes, people who cheat are always making a bad choice (that doesn't mean they're generically "bad"). They may have perfectly good reasons for doing *something* drastic about a bad relationship, but I can't think of legitimate justification for that particular choice. Anything I've ever heard is a rather pathetic rationalization after the fact. Yes, I know all about the bizarre nature of the psychology of human relationships and human biology, having been happily married for almost 20 years, but I still can't understand why people would cheat *AND* simultaneously think it was justified in any circumstances. It's wrong. If a relationship is harmful you get out of it first.
In court? Yes. Lawyers and infuriated ex-spouses will use *anything* to hurt you.
I mean you can have an open marriage and not cheat on your partner yet still have sex with other people. Just takes some communication
You've been talking to CowboyNeal's wife
If the relationship is over in every sense except the legal one, and you aren't going behind your ex's back in pursuing another relationship (eg it was well understood by both parties that the relationship was over) then you don't fulfill any of the requirements of 'cheating' in my book, and i'm sure most would view it the same way (except the legal system, for some reason).
Hope it worked/works out for you :(
How is this credible evidence?
Subpoenaed evidence from the gaming site World of Warcraft tracks her there with her boyfriend at the precise time she was supposed to be out with the children.
First, citation please. Has Blizzard ever caved to such a warrant?
Second, who says SHE's playing.
Third, who says SHE's playing with her boyfriend?
Fourth, who determines when a parent is "supposed to be out with the children". As a parent, if I want to sit at home and play Warcraft, there's nothing wrong with that and that is no indictment of my parenting skills.
In short, this article is bunk. Most of this stuff is not admissible in court. Divorce cases generally don't care when one side is cheating on the other or if one side is a total slacker.
"Cheating" is called cheating for a reason. Cheating is breaking the rules. In marriage, there are a number of rules, some traditional (the vows), some legal (pre-nups, adultery, alienation of affection), but most of the rules are agreed upon by the spouses (you take out the trash, and I do the laundry).
If the spouses agree to an open marriage, then sex with other partners is not cheating. By agreement, the rules allow for it. In this context cheating is when you do something that you said you wouldn't do.
In which case it is breaking your word that is causing all the trouble, and that could be on sex, but also on a lot of other things.
Agreed.
There are no simple answers.
I respectfully disagree. The simple answer is "Keep Your Word", or even more simply "Don't Be an Asshole".
I am not your blowing wind, I am the lightning.
Yes, it can.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
"So it's better if the kid realizes at 16 that one of his parents systematically deceived him and his other parent for years?"
Maybe you missed the "perhaps after they have moved out" part. It is a lot less damaging for your offspring if you wait until they are no longer dependent on you for food and shelter to get divorced.
"If you stick with the marriage for financial reasons, but reasonably suspect that your partner would divorce you if they knew that you were cheating, aren't you just doing it for your own sake?"
Yes, you pretty much are. The financial aspect of marriage is not the rosy picture that the media paints for all of us, but it is an important factor, especially when someone is in a situation where their marriage might end. Perhaps it is not the moral high ground -- certainly not with the deceit involved -- but it is a relevant issue for a lot of people, and it is an issue that may be orthogonal to emotions. Someone presented with three choices, staying faithful to their marriage despite faded emotions, getting a divorce and possibly losing their entire financial base, or staying married and finding emotional fulfillment in an extramarital affair may simply set the moral standards aside, have an affair, and try not to get caught. The affair may even be a temporary thing, a phase which eventually comes to an end at which point the person returns to their devotion to their marriage (this does happen) -- would it be better for those people to get divorced to?
Palm trees and 8
>What about the cheaters who get divorced in order to marry their other lover? Is their partner on the hook for that?
Sometimes.
There is no real universal here. Imagine X and Y are married. X is abusive. Y meets the very cute Z and sees just how different things can be with somebody who actually respects and cares for you. X lashes out once more one night, Y jumps in the car and drives off to seek comfort with friend Z. Holding each other, crying and consoling and maybe having alcohol- one thing leads to another and Y sleeps with Z.
Y comes home and demands a divorce from X.
Do you really want to tell me that Y and Z did anything wrong here ? Technically they cheated but I lay the blame for their failed marriage squarely before the door of X.
And before you ask, not only do I know several people who went through this exact story, I'm one of them.
Of course I'm sure my X (see the clever pun there) would have a different version, but then X was never particularly good at telling the difference between reality and wishful thinking. The abuse in that case in fact, was most frequently based on the believe that you can turn the real world into whatever you demand it be by shouting, hitting, dehumanizing and withholding sex from anybody who dares to love you.
Well suffice to say - sooner or later, that person stops loving you if you do that, and realizes that whatever the hell you may feel for him or her isn't love. If it takes another kinder, gentler person to show him or her that - then I still fail to see how you can blame that divorce on the people cheating.
I'm not concerned with privacy writing this - male abuse happens as much as female abuse but is hardly ever talked about, so I make a point of talking about it, because it may encourage somebody else to do the right thing and leave before the day you hit back. Hell I wrote an article (under my own name) for a major woman's magazine about it.
Besides, my divorce is long finished and hardly a secret so it's not like it's going to have any negative consequences for me.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
coincidence! i have my birthday this year too! xD
lucky sod. It's not my birthday until next year.
In general, infidelity is a non-issue in divorce cases. I've been divorced twice, both times because of a cheating spouse. As I may have tried, none of the infidelity claims (with proof AND admission) was taken into account.
> Nope, outdated legal constructs based on stone-aged belief systems causes divorces by
> forcing people into "marriages" in order to benefit from tax and legal protections
> not afforded those who don't proscribe to a system based on religious beliefs.
>
> if we didn't have marriages we wouldn't have divorces.
>
Nonsense. There is no shortage of people willing to completely abandon the old marriage framework.
No one is forced into a conventional marriage.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
if you have issues with your partner, you should discuss them together or decide to leave on your own, not go around their back and cheat on them...
I've been through it twice. Both times it cost less than $200. Both times took less than a week. Divorce is only as messy as the two parties make it.
Yes, but "adultery" in biblical terms doesn't mean the same thing in modern terms.
Women will forgive you for treating them like shit because you're sparkly.
Their story, your story, the judges idea of a story... and the "truth".
The "traditional" Christian vows are an exchange of ownership of the woman from her father to her husband. That's what the legalese "to have and to hold" means... the phrase is used in legal documents to execute the transferal of title. It's even still used in some property title sales if you look in a land records database.
E pluribus unum
But what if your word is "We will have an open marriage" and your spouses is "I'll agree to that while it is convenient to me"?
However, you're right that it's not black and white. I think if kids are involved then divorce is a much worse option than one partner or another sleeping with someone else.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Divorce attorneys Ken and Leslie Matthews, a husband and wife team in Denver, Colo. ..... [say],"You can't really fake a page off of Facebook."
OK then guys. One of you be Ken and I'll be Leslie. We just need someone else to play "the other" and I think we can convince them that this is not quite true.
Actually, the men in Genesis frequently took on concubines. You need to look at Exodus and Leviticus for the laws pertaining to adultery, which incidentally do not explicitly forbid concubines. Frankly, the definition of adultery in the bible remains unclear, as do most other things -- likely because the bible was not originally a single book, nor did it come from a single source.
Palm trees and 8
Does it get chilly up there on the moral high ground?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Maybe you missed the "perhaps after they have moved out" part. It is a lot less damaging for your offspring if you wait until they are no longer dependent on you for food and shelter to get divorced.
Even if you systematically lie to them the entire time?
Yes, you pretty much are. The financial aspect of marriage is not the rosy picture that the media paints for all of us, but it is an important factor, especially when someone is in a situation where their marriage might end. Perhaps it is not the moral high ground -- certainly not with the deceit involved -- but it is a relevant issue for a lot of people, and it is an issue that may be orthogonal to emotions. Someone presented with three choices, staying faithful to their marriage despite faded emotions, getting a divorce and possibly losing their entire financial base, or staying married and finding emotional fulfillment in an extramarital affair may simply set the moral standards aside, have an affair, and try not to get caught. The affair may even be a temporary thing, a phase which eventually comes to an end at which point the person returns to their devotion to their marriage (this does happen) -- would it be better for those people to get divorced to?
You're still saying you should lie and deceive for personal convenience. I'm not debating that it would be easier to set aside moral standards and lie like a weasel. As I understand it, you're posing a situation where someone hides their infidelity, knowing they would be divorced, and does it so that they won't be divorced; for their mutual good? If they know that their partner would divorce them, then it's not for the good of the family that they're hiding it.
How do you kill that which has no life?
Romantically? The belief that marriage is a romance-based commitment is probably the reason most of them fail. Why should one expect a marriage to survive only as long as a particular brand of hormone-based euphoria?
If you can't live with a person after the blinders are off, you shouldn't have gotten married to them in the first place -- so making that commitment with blinders on (and being "in love" is unquestionably blinding) is the first mistake.
Inasmuch as "cheating" involves breaking a promise, absolutely, every time. I never asked my wife for exclusivity -- and so while she's never broken it, neither would such be a dealbreaker.
Except that in certain countries, such as the US, then your partner can use this as a motivation for divorce and get a larger part of the pie than if he/she simply asked for it without motivation
Maybe in certain states, but those states that have no-fault divorce whether you cheated or not has nothing to do with how the marital property is divided or how alimony is ordered.
That's fair enough. So then people should avoid cheating then?
How do you kill that which has no life?
No it says do not _covet_ thy neighbours wife. There is noting about not having having her or him in a rollicking good time. The problem with coveting is jealousy, if you remove that part you can have healthy relationships. It is not like there was a shortage of orgies in the biblical times.
No one is forced into a conventional marriage.
Try submitting joint tax returns if you're not married and watch out for inheritance tax.
And don't even think about adopting in most states...
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
Legally, yes... but that isn't always a practical solution. Humans may go thropugh a legal separation and still experience emotions. Would you deny someone what is possibly love simply because of bad timing?
Dammit... through*
It is somehow more ethical to end a marriage, after taking a vow to stay with your spouse until death? .
In the same promise of marriage, you most likely made it a point that faithfullness was a part of marriage as well. Is it more ethical to end a marriage after your vow to stay until death, or to cheat behind their back?
People who cheat have one thing to blame, and to find it they need only look in the mirror.
FaceBook does not cause divorces. Divorce lawyers don't cause divorces.
Cheaters who get caught and don't change their behavior cause divorces.
No, but it makes documentation and substantiation of claims easier. The polaroid camera didn't cause people to have more sex and cheat on their wives but it did provide the temptation to take snapshots. A wife can suspect she smells perfume on your shirt but a polaroid of the other woman in the buff is a smoking gun. You can only imagine the increase in smoking guns once VHS camcorders became affordable. Sexting and digital cams only increases the amount of data to turn up. Before now a suspicious wife might have to hire a PI to get incriminating pics of cheating husbands.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
There are more options than that as well. When we were discussing parameters for our marriage, one of my wife's early proposals included the following: I was allowed other sexual partners, only if there was no substantial risk of emotional attachment and I avoided letting her know.
These aren't the terms we've operated under, but I can appreciate how for some people they might work.
Open relationships: the wonderful understanding that sex != love.
it blows my mind when I meet people that don't get the concept. fortunately most people understand and grow to like the idea more and more as they exist.
at least that's been the case for me my whole life.
And he specified Christian, therefore implying Bible. A legal marriage is complete a separate thing from a religious one. If you choose to take Christian vows, then you are also following the Christian bible. Can't really have one without the other, unless you are going to be a complete hypocrite. A legal marriage can be whatever two people agree on with whatever vows they want, and therefore are not also bound by the bible.
Yes, if the situation was that the emotions that led to the marriage had started to fade. The options become:
In option 1, you are forcing children who are not mature enough to understand why the divorce/separation happened to cope with the situation. In option 2, you are waiting until your children are mature enough. Which one of these options seems more sensible? Which one of these options is the least harmful?
"You're still saying you should lie and deceive for personal convenience. I'm not debating that it would be easier to set aside moral standards and lie like a weasel. As I understand it, you're posing a situation where someone hides their infidelity, knowing they would be divorced, and does it so that they won't be divorced; for their mutual good? If they know that their partner would divorce them, then it's not for the good of the family that they're hiding it."
What I said is that this is what happens. When the moral options are spending the rest of your life emotionally unfulfilled or possibly losing the ability to financially support yourself, setting some morals aside starts to look pretty damned good.
The real problem is that marriage does not properly encapsulate human emotion. It is not at all clear that humans are monogamous, nor is it even clear that humans can only feel emotions for one person at a time. Marriage is rigid, but the emotions that it is supposedly based on are not at all. The emotions that two people have are not necessarily synchronized -- one person may feel devotion to the marriage long after the other person does not. Some people develop their own solutions, like open relationships (the rules of which are widely varied), but that is not always something that people are willing to agree to.
I am not saying that it is morally right or morally acceptable for people to lie to their spouses. The original question was why would someone not just seek a divorce -- and the answer is that a divorce is not just a matter of ending the emotional aspects of a marriage, but also various financial and legal aspects.
Palm trees and 8
Seriously? Go read the ten commandments again. Coveting thy neighbors wife is in there, and so is adultery. Hell, it has its own commandment specifically stating such....
This is true, and many people overlook this, saying that an open relationship is no different from cheating.
What hurts about cheating isn't the sex so much as the dishonesty.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
Thank you.
That's one of the most human posting's I've read in a while.
similar stories have happened to close friends of mine, and every single time I defend their actions, because I know how hard a decision like that can be, yet how required it can be to make.
You can't cheat in an open marriage....
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Certainly not in the state I'm in. Family law varies state-to-state a great deal.
I think that ethics fall out of the equation when those are the only two choices. In reality, there is a third choice: stick to all your vows, and live a life where you are emotionally unfulfilled. That third choice is the only one that truly satisfies modern ethical standards: you made a vow of lifelong faithfulness, and the ethical thing to do is to stick with it.
Given that framework, of course, it is difficult to justify marriage at all. How could someone possibly know that they will always love another person, especially in light of the large proportion of people who ultimately find that the feelings they had at the beginning of their marriage fade over time?
Palm trees and 8
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How'd you pull that off? Leap day's this year, after all.
strangly here in canada, there's a LOT of swing if one partner has "been unfaithful to the other". most divorces here require 12 months of living quarters separation, unless one partner sleeps with somebody else, then the other partner can proceed with divorce filings themselves and get a larger part of the settlement in a matter of weeks.
and if you have kids in these circumstances, the "non-cheating" partner get's their way with them. without so much as a question.
it's fucking sad that people would EVER think this was right.
You don't need to avoid using facebook, just avoid marriage.
What the point of getting married, considering the high probability of catastrophic ending ? Oh, it will not happen with you, only others...
"Conventional" was a key word here. You can be married[*] but with terms other than the traditional closed marriage between you.
[*] - ...presuming, in many places, a "traditional" heterosexual couple... *sigh*
How'd you pull that off? Leap day's this year, after all.
If you think I'm clever you should see my wife. She has -1 birthdays a year!
yet they are forgiven and are seen as moral enough to hold public office.
I sat here for a full freaken minute trying to figure out how I could respond to this statement that would encompass the sheer...amazement...I have at this statement. "moral enough" and "public office" - now there are two phrases that I never thought I would see linked together...
Or at the very least, be an unrepentant asshole. Be an honest asshole. Be an honest non-asshole. Don't be a cheater. Then you can fully enhance your social life by using the tools the internet provides, without having to worry about who may see your life, because you have no shame. Live free.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
sure, if you look back far enough into the past, lot's of incorrect "factual" information is "true".
just because somebody used to interpret something one way doesn't mean they always will.
to me, the line "to have and to hold" is STILL true if you make certain arrangements ahead of time with your partner. they key to anything is communication, as long as you're both comfortable with what you're doing, there's no discomfort,
and if you're both not comfortable, why the fuck are you getting married!?
Well, you are correct, those are your choices if you don't like your marriage. Stick with it and don't cheat, end it, or stick with it but cheat. You now are making a very good case about the entire construct of marriage and what it entails. I won't argue that point because I will agree to some extent that many people will have varying feelings over time. My answer to that is, don't get married, or get married with that understanding with your partner going into it well in advance if you are worried about the fading feelings. The 7-year contract probably would work for a lot of people out there.
The US laws hardly qualify as modern anyway.
I wish I could second that more so than just saying THIS.
So it is, so someone please mod me into oblivion.
If the spouses agree to an open marriage, then sex with other partners is not cheating.
Which is why I left that out of my argument, yes.
In marriage, there are a number of rules, some traditional (the vows), some legal (pre-nups, adultery, alienation of affection), but most of the rules are agreed upon by the spouses (you take out the trash, and I do the laundry).
And my argument is that a lot of the rules are never made explicit. Adultery is not a legal concept in most of the civilized world anymore, and it is not part of most marriage vows, at least not the traditionals. It is part of the cultural context since it's been only comparatively recently that free sex has become openly acceptable (don't think medieval people didn't cheat as much or more).
The "cheating" part is regularily implicit. Which leads to interesting cases of differences in interpretation if intercourse didn't happen, but the partner feels cheated anyways.
I respectfully disagree. The simple answer is "Keep Your Word", or even more simply "Don't Be an Asshole".
If it is "keep your word", then in most marriages, cheating would be a non-issue since exactly that never happened - an explicit word (or sentence) to the effect of "I won't cheat on you".
That's the problem I was trying to point out. That we have unwritten and sometimes unspoken rules, too. And "be faithful to a promise that you never really made, but that is implicit in relations of this kind in your specific culture" is a lot less simple than "keep your word".
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Who knows, the Bible isn't really worth anything really to a Christian marriage....
The traditional marriage vow does not contain a reference to the bible, the ten commandments or anything like that. In case you are particularily dense, it's the phrase with the "in good days and in bad days" and the "till death do us part".
So, in fact, if you want to play it legal, the partner filing for divorce is actually the one who is breaking the vow.
Yes, adultery is a sin that you should be stoned to death for on the market place by the rest of the village, according to the bible. Which is precisely the point I was making: It is not an explicit word, vow, promise, whatever that was given. It is an implicit content of the cultural background.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Most of what you are going on about is something that the two individuals should discuss BEFORE getting married. If they haven't had that talk with one another about what the expectations of the marriage are, what it means to each other, etc., then you SHOULD NOT GET MARRIED to that person. If you haven't talked this over, then I am sorry to say that you probably are not mature enough to be married....i.e, you aren't "ready" yet, because you haven't thought to discuss these points, which are all very important. This discussion would save MANY marriages from divorce because the marriage would most likely not happen in the first place
If someone questions your motive, that doesn't mean they're tolling.
P.S. Please don't mod me down. It's my birthday this year.
This isn't a Leap Year, is it?
=P
it's a legal agreement between two people which supposedly brings some sort of perceived tax benefit which I have never seen (we pay out far more now that we're married)
See an accountant. The tax benefit is highest for those in "traditional" marriages, meaning ones in which only one spouse works. Then, if you file a joint return you get twice the deduction you normally would have gotten. The math may also result in less tax even if you both work, depending on how disparate your incomes are. There are also certain deductions that you may qualify for but your spouse doesn't (or vice versa), but if you file a joint return it will apply to both of you (sometimes at twice the amount it would be for just one of you).
Generally, unless you are a one-income household, the tax benefits to marriage are fairly modest and sometimes nonexistent depending on your individual situation. But then, if you're looking to get married because you want a lower tax bill you may not be in the right frame of mind to get married at all.
The ten commandments aren't marriage vows. Nice straw man you have there.
Ok, if the bible is an implied part of the marriage contract, then I shall proceed to take all married couples to court for not following through on a lot, and I mean a whole freaking LOT of other stuff that's in the bible.
Like putting witches to death. Stoning homosexuals. Killing everyone who dares to work on a sunday.
Or are we at the "pick and choose" game again, when it comes to the bible? As in "yes, it is the holy book, the word of the unfailable god himself, but we don't really use all the parts..." ?
And before it comes - all the adultery stuff is part of the old testament. You know, the one that also contains all the killing for ridiculous offenses. And the parts where you're instructed to put entire populations to the sword. Except for the young women which though shalt rape. The new testament actually says something on adultery. Interpretation open, but one way to read it would be a hippie approach of "dude, we're all doing it, so what?" - which is pretty strongly supported by statistics. Throughout their lives, the vast majority of us humans cheat at least once. If we'd really kill everyone that does, we'd have a highly effective technique for population control on our hands.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Thank you for putting that into words worth reading. I went through that too, am now divorced, and life is much better.
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
As random as this may be,
as a world of warcraft player (several times in the history of the game) there was a well known player that went by "Tyrannt". great guy, little bit abrasive, but his point was always: Don't Be an Asshole.
people hated him for being straightforward about it, they resented that he KNEW what he wanted, they still to this day bitch and scream about how "terrible" he was, and yet every single one of them (hopefully) knows that he just played the game to have fun, LIKE WE ALL DO. (players that is, I don't suggest people get sucked into a game, but rather that people admit to what they want and be straightforward about it.)
source, please. I did look up some variants of the traditional vow (e.g. the english version on wikipedia) and it was not in there.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
You were referring to a Christian marriage. True, the vows are not in the bible, but the ten commandments are. Now, if the you misspoke and weren't referring to a Christian marriage, then the bible means f*ck-all to that marriage. But, in a Christian marriage, regardless of the vows that are said, there is a very EXPLICIT outlining of what you should and shouldn't do in this case. Bible says, don't commit adultery. It doesn't have an asterisk stating that it only applies to a marriage. The two are not exclusive in this context. By being a Christian you are saying you won't do those things. Yeah, people sin, it happens, but that doesn't mean they still aren't wrong. So you may not have said in your vows you wouldn't cheat, but by being Christian you shouldn't be cheating, so forgive the spouse for expecting that....
Posting to the internet that one should never post anything to the internet?
I think it counts.
I've been through it twice. Both times it cost less than $200. Both times took less than a week. Divorce is only as messy as the most stubborn of the two parties make it.
FTFY.
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
Most women are brainwashed at an early age to believe that sex and love are comparable. You can thank the cheesy romance novels, tabloids, magazines, and TV shows for that. In America, you can also thank your Purtanical roots for the messed up way we view sex.
Personally I can't wait for subpoena'd e-mails to be massively used in divorce cases...since nobody ever got anything to hide 'n all. :-)
Oh yes, because people who cheat are ALWAYS bad, and it has nothing to do with the fact that their partner might be completely unsuitable for them and/or positively damaging to them.
If that's the case then get out. Say you are done with the relationship, but don't pretend to still be in a destructive one and then proceed to cheat outside of it.
It doesn't even mean the divorce or separation has to be final, but basically let the other person know the relationship is done and then MORALLY you can do what you like. But it is in fact simply bad to lead another person to believe you are committed to a relationship when in fact you have given up on it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Cheating is not about ethics or morals or religion. It's not even about sex. Its about your commitment (or lack thereof) to your spouse,
So it says that if I put my penis in a vagina that is not attached to my wife, that somehow magically influences my commitment to my wife - but at the same time, it's not about sex?
Sorry, that is very hard to parse.
So what exactly is commitment? And how exactly does it get impaired by sleeping with someone else? I'm not trolling. It simply doesn't make sense unless you see a causal connection that is not automatically a given. Imagine the borderline case of a simple one-night-stand during a business trip. Nobody was deprived of time with you, there are no romantic implications, no danger of you leaving your wife or family - and still you'd argue that this affects the commitment? Why? Aside from hurt feelings, can you provide a rational argument?
And if you are not smart enough to find an acceptable outlet for your biological urges, I would have to say that's pretty stupid.
You really should follow the hint I posted in the other reply. There are scientists on this planet who have devoted their entire lives to this topic, and I find it a bit difficult to throw their judgement away in favor of a random comment on /.
The current state of knowledge indicates that humans actually do have a system for cheating built-in. There are good biological reasons (gene diversity) that may have created the selection process for this. But there appears to be more to it than just that. The very common "he couldn't keep his penis in his pants" accusation is almost certainly very short of the truth. It's not a matter of pure sex-drive. Again, I don't feel like summarizing several books. If you're interested, I posted the reference.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
You keep on believing that if it makes your marriage work -- it doesn't make your statement true, but at least you're happy that you are living in The One True Marriage.
Of course not. In this hypothesis, where divorce proceedings are occurring and the couple is no-longer seeing each-other, I certainly wouldn't consider it cheating for one party to see the person they love.
How do you kill that which has no life?
What I said is that this is what happens. When the moral options are spending the rest of your life emotionally unfulfilled or possibly losing the ability to financially support yourself, setting some morals aside starts to look pretty damned good.
Of course, when things get tough, people are tempted to ditch their morality.
The real problem is that marriage does not properly encapsulate human emotion. It is not at all clear that humans are monogamous, nor is it even clear that humans can only feel emotions for one person at a time. Marriage is rigid, but the emotions that it is supposedly based on are not at all. The emotions that two people have are not necessarily synchronized -- one person may feel devotion to the marriage long after the other person does not. Some people develop their own solutions, like open relationships (the rules of which are widely varied), but that is not always something that people are willing to agree to.
If the party doesn't agree, then does that validate your deception? If humans are not monogamous, does that validate cheating?
How do you kill that which has no life?
Most of what you are going on about is something that the two individuals should discuss BEFORE getting married.
Bingo! :-)
If you haven't talked this over,
I don't remember using first person singular in my posting. Then again, I don't have divorce lawyers chasing me on Facebook either, so why are we talking about me?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
It is generally accepted in Christianity that the five books of moses contains moral, ceremonial, ritual and civil laws, and that Christianity are bound by the moral laws (i.e. ten commandments, etc). Now if you want to go on and debate about the hypocrisy of Christianity and picking and choosing what is to be followed, and what is to be left behind and why, then that is most likely an unanswerable debate....
Throughout their lives, the vast majority of us humans cheat at least once. If we'd really kill everyone that does, we'd have a highly effective technique for population control on our hands.
Either that or breeding a superior (?) race of serial monogamists.
I was referring to the communal "you"...
True, the vows are not in the bible, but the ten commandments are.
As is the instruction on what to do with adulterers. Funny, I don't see people following through on that. So please don't start arguing with content of the bible, unless you're willing to either take all of it, or admit that even the most devout christians are picking and choosing. In which case you lose the strength of the argument, because if you are allowed to pick "no adultery" and leave out "stoning of homosexuals" then please explain why someone else can't make the opposite choice?
Bible says, don't commit adultery.
It also says that if you just conquered an enemy tribe, you shall kill all the men and children and then rape the women. I guess that doesn't count as adultery. ;-)
So you may not have said in your vows you wouldn't cheat, but by being Christian you shouldn't be cheating, so forgive the spouse for expecting that....
No, perfectly ok. My argument isn't that cheating is fine. My argument is that it's an implicit agreement, based not on anything you actually promised, but on the context in which the promise was made. On that point, we don't really have a disagreement, I just considered it vital to point it out since the OP that I replied to was so insisting on words and promises and vows.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
If you are going to be this literal when reading the bible, then it actually serves as a contract between yourself and god, not yourself and your spouse. So yes, if you commit adultery you are a sinner, but you by no means had that same obligation to your spouse.
I’m sorry? If you deem your partner unsuitable, then the fuck stop being with her/him!
And then get someone else.
I can see some women do this because they just have too much fear of being alone. Which still is their failure.
But if a man does this, that’s no excuse, but only proof of how little spine and balls he has.
I’m an expert on shades of gray (and multidimensionality, and distribution functions over that space, etc), and this has nothing to do with it.
Of course there are shades of gray. But in this case the only cases that aren’t deep in pitch black are freak events like getting hit by lightning on an open field while seeing a white raven win the lottery. ;)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
My girlfriend was cheating on me on and off with the same guy during the first year of our relationship. No one ever told me. Many of her friends knew, in fact possibly all of them knew. They didn't think it was their business, and in the context of my interactions with them there was no reason for it to ever come up. There is nothing like seeing your girlfriend tagged in someone else's photo wearing the necklace you gave her and realizing, "hey, I am not that guy she is with!"
Once you truly suspect, a terrible door in your mind opens. At the first opportunity alone with her computer I was into every account she has and had dug up months of chat logs between her and various other people discussing the situation. Very little was actually incriminating, but there was of course enough. I know, what a bad person I am for spying on my girlfriend like this. I violated her privacy.
I never told her.
With this knowledge it became easy to detect the next time she lied to me, I confronted her on it and leveraged it into a confession that she was cheating on me.
The details from there are not relevant, but I will say that everything worked out in the best possible way for us.
The moral of my story: Never forget that the idiot may be you.
I have a few very small business in two states and I have had friend requests from lawyers in both who were looking for a payday, er some reason to sue me (not me, my business) over. I have my privacy settings as tight as possible, post nothing about "work" and really post nothing of substance (and don't play stupid games). I only use FB to keep in contact with a wide spread group of friends.
6.8SPC TR of 550, l xwind at 6, drift rt at 26" drops 77". AT has 503 ft-lbs at 1403 fps. FT 0.86
> Marriage, strictly speaking, is a binding contract.
Don't worry too much about it. As we enter the age, where women are more and more the main bread winners while their male counterparts sit down-sized at home resenting each minute of it, you will see a dramatic drop in marriages. Women will know better than to put themselves in a position where they might have to support the ex-husband because of their now higher income and the rest of the guys still holding onto their balls will refuse to marry because they have realized it to be a poison pill fluffed in romantic rhetoric that has put men of the current and last two generations into a lose-lose situation...triple that if kids are involved.
We're now in a situation with 1 child and a SAHM so the tax benefit next year better be fucking huge or I'm coming back to this thread to berate you ;-)
In general, infidelity is a non-issue in divorce cases. I've been divorced twice, both times because of a cheating spouse. As I may have tried, none of the infidelity claims (with proof AND admission) was taken into account.
Welcome to the magical world of no-fault divorce.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
So what exactly is commitment?
"Commitment" is one of those code-words people use, like "morality" or "good". In each case they implicitly attach a very specific, concrete meaning to a very abstract term, and for the most part are unable to grasp that anyone else might have a different concrete instantiation of that term.
In the case of "commitment" they generally mean "commitment to not have sex with anyone else." Sexual monogamy is so deeply embedded in people's heads that they can't conceive of a notion of "commitment" that doesn't include it. They also, as other posters have pointed out, identify sex with love, and sexual fidelity with "true love".
In fact, those of us who have discovered true love know that sexual fidelity has nothing to do with it, and may even be opposed to it. Being in an open relationship only works if your love for each other is absolute, because only then do you trust each other to go have fun however you please, secure in the knowledge that at the end of the day (or night) you'll come back together, in no small part because the sex is so much better with someone you genuinely love (and even moreso when it's not the only meal on the menu...)
I think for many couples sexual fidelity involves a kind of reversal of cause and effect. People in open relationships stay together because they want to be together, and their love is not threatened by the involvment of others. Many people in closed relationships try to emulate that by creating artificial boundaries against anything that might tempt them to leave. But people who genuinely love each other don't need those boundaries or artificial constraints.
In my mind the "open" in "open relationship" means more than just being free to have sex with other people: it also means a commitment to be open with each other about who you are, what you want and what (or who) you're doing. That "commitment to openness" is what I mean by commitment, the exact opposite of the "commitment to closedness"--in every respect--that so many people seem to mean by it.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
This may earn me some negaitve karma, but so be it. /.
Oh yes, because people who cheat are ALWAYS bad, and it has nothing to do with the fact that their partner might be completely unsuitable for them and/or positively damaging to them. I *love* black and white morality. I thought we had some people that appreciate shades of grey on
Why wouldn't they get a divorce first?
Or at the very least state to your husband/wife your current emotional status in the sense that you no longer consider them your life parter, and that you reserve from that point onward, the right to sleep with other people if you like.
Seriously, to legally end a marriage is a bit of a drag, but that's no reason not to end the "relationship" and let the other person still think they're in one. That's outright unethical.
As for Parent, well, if that person is completely unsuitable for you, then I guess you shouldn't have married them in the first place, no? No, people don't really change over time, and yes, the signs are there from the very beginning. There are exceptions to this, and the few people who DO change over time, don't do so on their own, they do so in the process and context of their marriage (ie, it's partly your fault). There still might be some extreme cases, but nothing that can justify the almost 50% divorce rate in western countries. And definitely not something you want to base your life philosophy on.
"Do you really want to tell me that Y and Z did anything wrong here ? Technically they cheated but I lay the blame for their failed marriage squarely before the door of X."
Um, yes. It means Y did not end the pre-existing relationship before engaging in a new relationship with Z. It's not a "technicality", it is cheating unless the pre-existing relationship allowed for such things by mutual agreement. The blame for the failed marriage may indeed be placed squarely before the door of X. It doesn't change things. Y and Z are still cheating.
End the pre-existing relationship first, and it isn't cheating. Fail to do so, and it is. It's not complicated. Justification and blame *for* the end of the relationship is an entirely different and deeply complicated matter.
For most people, religious or not, marriage is a commitment between two people that has a basis more in emotion than in tax codes and legal ramifications. The specific terms of the commitment may vary depending on the individuals, and while some people are happy with open marriages, the expectation of fidelity is not restricted to those with religious beliefs.
If you got married strictly because of tax codes and legal ramifications, then that's a shame, because you're missing out on a lot of the good other reasons to get married.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
Let's see....something in Genesis if I recall pertained exactly to this. Something about adultery....I think it was one of ten ideas, or laws, or fuzzy warm feelings, or something like that. Maybe commandments? Who knows, the Bible isn't really worth anything really to a Christian marriage....
The commandment is not to sleep with a married person. There is nothing about a married person himself sleeping around. At least, that is how the original (Hebrew) has it. I don't know how it's been translated into Greek/English, though.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
A friend of mine is in that position right now - she's the bread winner, he's the stay-at-home dad - and they're going thru a divorce. They just had their initial proceeding - he gets the house and the kids, and she's paying the child and spousal support.
I'll try for a more "modern" answer than gene diversity. It's not about the sheets. It's about safety, finances, and power trips.
The cheater likes the Dopamine surge from the thrill of the hunt and being a wildcat. The Forsaken feels threatened that valuable household resources will be squandered, up to even health.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Wow, I have a birthday this year too. What are the odds?!?
Unless your mistress has no idea whatsoever that you are married, I doubt it would be too much to ask her to take certain measures to keep things private. There are plenty of women willing to date married men, and willing to accept the need for secrecy in such a relationship.
Palm trees and 8
Well, I suppose if you see emotionally scarring everyone close to you, and ostracising yourself from everyone in doing so as a good thing, then go for it.
Otherwise, some of us see the benifit in not ruining the lives of others around us.
This isn't really about cheating, and in most states, cheating isn't relevant in a divorce settlement. Welcome to the wonderful world of no-fault divorce.
Where Facebook can really cause problems is in custody battles, or in lying to a judge. Consider how this might work.
gavron: No, your honor, I don't have a drinking problem. I'll enjoy a glass of wine with a meal from time to time, but I don't have a drinking problem.
Meanwhile, on FB: gavron is so fucking hungover right now and doesn't remember a goddamn thing from last night. It's just as well, as he really doesn't want to know if the new urine stain on his carpet was created by him or his miniature schnauzer.
gavron: I can't afford such a high child support payment. The economy is so bad, I was forced to accept a job delivering pizzas. I can't find work in my field, despite trying as best I can.
Meanwhile, on FB: gavron just got a great new job at Initech as a middle manager. He is so excited that he doesn't have to deliver any more goddamn pizzas!
Even if you are not so stupid as to hang yourself like that on facebook, you can't be sure that your friends will be equally clever. ([gavon's drinking buddy] wants to congratulate gavon on his new job. Don't forget those TPS reports, man! Happy hour tonight?)
The problem is that divorce cases can get complicated, and it's very easy to let something slip. It's one thing to say the wrong thing; it's quite another to post the wrong thing publicly.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Prepaid phones
"Going to war without the French is like going deer hunting without your accordion." ~General Norman Schwarzkopf
LOL dogma fail!
Look into Genesis all you want. You mean Exodus, either the first set of ten commandments in Exodus 20 or the second set in Exodus 34 which are the same, except they are not.
BTW, it only cares about banning you from taking another man's wife/daughter, trespassing their property as all women must belong to some guy. It says nothing of taking multiple wifes.
Oh yes, because people who cheat are ALWAYS bad, and it has nothing to do with the fact that their partner might be completely unsuitable for them and/or positively damaging to them.
Get a divorce first, a girlfriend afterwards. It's not brain surgery.
Because they don't realize how the emotional negelect is affecting them. Of the guys I know hwo have cheated, 70% or so have been douchebags. However, there are some good guys who get neglected by their career oriented wives, and then when some good decent looking lady gives them the emotional interationc that guys need, they give in. It's not that they intended to cheat; their wives set them up. But, in our PC world, it's always the guy's fault.
Do you really want to tell me that Y and Z did anything wrong here ? Technically they cheated but I lay the blame for their failed marriage squarely before the door of X.
You're right, but you're still confused (as pretty much everyone else seems to be) about what, precisely, constitutes "cheating", so if you'll allow me to get on the soapbox (and this is intended for everyone, mind you, not directed at you):
It's not actually sleeping with someone else outside your relationship that's the problem: quite a few people (myself included) are fine with their partners doing that. What is NOT OK and what DOES constitute cheating is lying about it, or doing it when you know or at least suspect your partner is not OK with it.
There's all kinds of different people. Some are monogamous; some are poly (and polyarmory comes in all sorts of different shapes). Some have open relationships; some have closed relationships. None of this is better or worse than any other option: it all depends on what the people involved want.
So if your partner(s) do(es)n't want you to sleep around, don't do it. And IF you do, learn from it, and don't do it again.
At the very least, all this is true when you actually want the relationship to continue: if you don't, that's another matter. And it might well be that you end up finding someone else and only then realizing that the relationship you're in is not what you're looking for after all: that's OK, too. But in that case, you still have a responsibility (as do(es) your partner(s)) to end things gracefully.
We're all mature adults, after all. Right?
(Oh, and on a side note, do you have a link to that article you mentioned? I'd be interested in reading it, especially since I agree that the problem of female abuse is vastly underreported.)
ok, my bad. English really gets me again and again on this "you" and its multiple meanings. :)
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I'm not into justifying my own behaviour, I talk about that with my partner, not with guys on /.
But I am seriously interested in the rational argument.
In my example of the business trip, the actual sex does not hurt anyone. Well, depending on what kind of fetish you're into... err, I disgres.
What does hurt is telling your wife. But what exactly is it that hurts? That is my question on rational analysis. Also, you can apply game theory and come up with the rational choice being not telling. At least that's what a payoff matrix comes to.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
OK, Socrates, it's pretty clear by this point that you think cheating is (on its face) less ethical and thus worse than divorce, regardless of the relative developmental, social, financial, or emotional costs of divorce - you really don't like those filthy, dirty liars, do you? It's also pretty clear that the other guy thinks that sometimes cheating is "better" than divorce based on a comparison of said divorce costs with the costs associated with lying - I mean, think of the children! So since you're doing little more than begging the question (with a question - nice!) with each reply, I'll give you points for style but award the think-of-the-children guy as the winner of this particular debate, since he answered your questions with actual answers. Besides, I'm a sucker for debaters who sneak in some discussion of evolutionary psychology. Anyway, congrats, think-of-the-children guy! You win!
(I guess you could say that Socrates' dialectic broke down, and he lost the capacity to empathize. Still, I kind of got a charge out of his arguments. It's too bad he resisted his debating partner's attempts to induce a new current of thought in his line of reasoning.)
I'm proud of my Northern Tibetian Heritage
Thanks.
Yes, that does make sense. One could argue precautions, commitment that goes beyond sex, etc. etc. - but the most simple and secure position to take would be faithfulness.
I would also add that an unrealistic (biology, psychology) mutual commitment creates a strong bondage and requires considerable trust, which again is a good foundation for a long-lasting partnership.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Saying "they shouldn't get married" isn't an answer, as that means they can't get the rights that other married people are entitled to.
That isn't removing or preventing the use of a "right". That is not agreeing with the institution of marriage and choosing not to participate, which is much different than a gay person not being able to marry. Banning a class of people from marrige is a crime; some people not conforming to the traditional definition of marriage (in this case, having multiple sexual partners openly), yet still retaining the right to marry is freedom.
No comprende? Let me type that a little slower for you...
Wow.
Thanks for reminding me why I still come to /. after all these years. That comment just blew my mind. You put into words exactly what I feel, but I'd need a page for every paragraph you wrote.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
So people cheating is the ONLY cause of divorces? Never arguments over finances? Never drug abuse? Never a difference in beliefs, etc.....?
Web-Mail account, registered solely for this purpose. Browser in privacy mode when you access it.
Put the whole thing in a VM on a flash drive, and that's my setup.
Posting anonymously for obvious reasons.
You are missing my point completely.
The basis for marriage which is shared amongst all those (at least Americans) who are married are the legal rules which require persons to be married in order for them to become available. The rest are all personal choices which do not apply to all people and thus they are irrelevant to the discussion.
If X treats Y as chattel, or as the target of abuse, one might argue that the relationship is no longer one of love and respect; all that remains is the legal aspects of marriage, rather than the moral ones. I agree that it's better to end that too before starting anew, but most humans tend not to do that.
When the child flat out says "Don't go. It's crap. I'd stay home if it didn't affect my grade."
Oh yes, because people who cheat are ALWAYS bad, and it has nothing to do with the fact that their partner might be completely unsuitable for them and/or positively damaging to them.
Perhaps someone in those circumstances should get a divorce.
For great justice.
If I were in such a situation, I would immediately look at steganography.
Which is precisely why you will never be in such a situation.
If you've cheated your partner, at business or love, you should get less out of it. It's called cheating because it's implicitly done behind your spouse's back. By definition they don't know about the health risks they're being exposed to, etc.
Wouldn't reckless endangerment be a good reason for a biased settlement?
Cheating is not about ethics or morals or religion. It's not even about sex.
Great. It's good to know that if I fuck someone (hypothetically speaking of course), I'm not doing it for the sex.
Please, stop talking about commitment like you know what it means. If you ever learned about commitment, you would know that it is an (mostly implicit) agreement about trust and caring between two people. And excuse me for being the eternal moral relativist, but where do you find the arrogance to decide how other people should define (and effectualize) their love and care?
As for me, I'm not married. It's only a financial construct to us, and we don't see much benefits in it (right now). Our relationship is not defined by sex, it is defined by our mutual understanding, and by the way we plan our future together and assist each other in the present. I've had multiple sex partners during my relationship, and so has she. I still know that we'll grow old together, and as long as she knows the same, we're good.
I have an acceptable outlet for my urges. It's called sex. Are you telling me that I'm somehow less committed to my lover than people who have only one sex partner in their lives? That I'm less faithful to my "wife" than people who are bound to each other by risk of financial ruin?
If you really did cheat, as in lie to your partner about having sex with someone else while supposedly monogamous with them, and risk infecting them with something, then you wouldn't be a very good parent.
The problem seems to be treating all sex with others, which you may be having openly (especially during this separated year), as cheating even if it is not.
Ok, well if that's your point then you probably should have said that. But either way, I fail to see how the fact that people differently prioritize the various aspects of marriage makes all of those aspects irrelevant.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
In most if not all states, the test for which parent gets custody is "best interests of the child," which seems a better method than "who cheated?"
Don't you have e-mail or a web page or a chat account? They're available all over the place free of charge and using open protocols so you have free choice of clients.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Oh yes, because people who cheat are ALWAYS bad. . .
Yes, cheating is always bad. That's part of the definition of cheating. I have plenty of friends in non-traditional relationships. You know, it's even possible to cheat in an open marriage?
In the article she says "you can't really fake a facebook page" Of course you can! Wait..... I think I see a whole new industry!
http://wwww.zerospeaks.com
From what I can tell, there is a tax PENALTY for marriage, not a tax break. If it was up to me, I wouldn't have married but just live with my current wife as a girlfriend for the rest of my life. I would still have been faithful, but I just wouldn't have signed up for higher taxes. The way I see it, if marriage is about avoiding "living in sin", then why does the government have anything to do with it? Why do I need a marriage license. Was it not God who gave men and women to be married? So why not just go to the Church and get married, and not bother telling the government about it? It is not their business. They can go ahead and handle the non-religious marriages and the civil unions, and let God handle the religious unions.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Book of Common Prayer, p220. This is the traditional Anglican (Episcopal) marriage service.
As a person who grew up with two parents who hated each other, I can say with experience that you're an idiot. You obviously have no idea what's actually best for a child. Years of seeing only how to make a marriage fail and how to completely disrespect and resent those around you aren't exactly helpful when making your place in the world.
All a child learns in your world is that it's okay to sleep around and treat other people like shit despite the promises you make.
Ten laws?!? I thought there were only three.
I need to get out more.
It's also very hard to do when the abuse stays in the verbal and mental area and when it escalates to the physical the police laugh at you for calling them. Especially when there are children involved. The court system is stacked against men and no one takes women's abuse of their spouses seriously, so you are pretty much guaranteed that you will not only lose half of everything that you've worked for but also any sort of normal time with your children. Not to mention that when you leave you are no longer there to try to shield them from her wrath.
I live this hell.
> and if you're both not comfortable, why the fuck are you getting married!?
Because her father is paying you a boatload of money to take her off his hands (she did bring a dowry, didn't she?)
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Let's not forget the "forsaking all others" part.
If we'd really kill everyone that does, we'd have a highly effective technique for population control on our hands.
Your ideas intrigue me, and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter...
Do you really want to tell me that Y and Z did anything wrong here ?
Yes. Two wrongs don't make a right. Didn't your parents teach you that? You can argue it's a lesser wrong, but it's still very clearly wrong.
People who insist fidelity is a necessity for marriage and think founding a family and an exclusive sexual relationship obligatorily go together cause divorce.
If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
People can get hurt by one night stands on business trips ... STDs.
ok, my bad. English really gets me again and again on this "you" and its multiple meanings. :)
German has as many variants of "sie" as English does "you", you know. ;)
"If you see a man on a horse, he is likely an enemy. Kill the man and eat the horse."
Given that framework, of course, it is difficult to justify marriage at all. How could someone possibly know that they will always love another person, especially in light of the large proportion of people who ultimately find that the feelings they had at the beginning of their marriage fade over time?
If we are talking about marriages that don't have fundamental flaws like abuse or other harmful aspects, and only about the cases where the spouses "drift apart", then it is very possible to justify marriage. The key to remember is a marriage, just like any other close relationship, requires some emotional investment from both parties in order to be meaningful. By "emotional investment" I don't mean the initial euphoria, I mean the mutual kind acts and sacrifices of both time and effort that build trust and renew commitment.
An analogy would be the process of creating a very close friendship. Acquaintances and "fair weather friends" are relatively easy to find for anyone with rudimentary social skills. However, you won't get much beyond that without both you and your friend expend time and effort on the friendship, e.g. doing things for each other or one just being there when the other really needs them. It won't always be fun or even pleasant, but many people find it worthwhile to do this with at least one person. Of course, for most people marriage involves different and more profound types of commitment than even the closest friendships so the analogy is inexact, but close enough to be useful.
My own parents will be celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary next year, with over a decade of the "nest" being empty. Their marriage is the only serious romantic relationship either has had in their lives, and while they have had both significant highs and lows along the way the vast majority of their relationship was (and continues to be) one of love, trust, and contentment. IMHO their experience is proof enough that a successful marriage can be its own justification.
I'm not implying that everyone can or should be willing to make the necessary commitments for a truly life-long marriage, just that for some people it is both possible and worthwhile. I've seen some horrible marriages, both those that started out that way and those that had promise but fell apart due to disillusionment and apathy. For my own part, I'm not sure I can replicate my parents success in my own life, but at least I know that with the right attitude, commitment, and perhaps some favorable circumstances it is possible to have a long and happy marriage.
Let's assume that, as it is the case in a typical marriage, your having sex with another woman is very nearly the last thing that your wife would like to happen. Let's further assume, again as is normal in a marriage, that she entered this relationship with you and continues it with the understanding that one of the conditions is that neither of you will have sex with somebody else.
Then, well, fuck yes, sticking your dick in another woman's vagina is a very severe breach of your commitment to the relationship. It's got nothing to do with magic--it's all about trust and expectations. She trusted you to meet certain expectations that she had of you, and you didn't meet them.
And guess what, if at that point you pulled out your self-centered "fucking doesn't do magic" argument, what you would demonstrate is that what your wife wants doesn't matter to you. It doesn't even matter if we assume that your attitudes toward sexual encounters are superior towards her, because you led her to understand that you'd meet her expectation of fidelity, and then just did whatever you wanted because you thought getting your rocks off was more important than what she wanted.
Are you adequate?
Romantically? The belief that marriage is a romance-based commitment is probably the reason most of them fail. Why should one expect a marriage to survive only as long as a particular brand of hormone-based euphoria?
All emotion has a bio-chemical component so does that make things like happiness and sympathy invalid or relationships like friendship not worthwhile? Furthermore, while I think you are right that most people are wrong about marriages always being like the initial attraction and infatuation phase, you are just as mistaken about the nature of romance. Romance has as much to do with intentional actions as it does with emotions, and certain actions can foster certain emotions. Ultimately how romantic a relationship is a function of the intentions and actions of the people in that relationship.
If you can't live with a person after the blinders are off, you shouldn't have gotten married to them in the first place -- so making that commitment with blinders on (and being "in love" is unquestionably blinding) is the first mistake.
Personally, I often regret how many different uses the English language has for the word "love", it really cause a lot of potentially unnecessary confusion. Anyway, I consider the blinding euphoria phase you speak of to be infatuation, not love. You can be in love with someone and simultaneously be able to honestly recognize their faults. Indeed sometimes this is one of the most beneficial things about a loving relationship, knowing there is a person who acknowledges your imperfections but feels it is better to share their life with you than the alternatives (and of course vice versa).
However, as before you do have a point about making commitments before you know what you are getting into, this is why I'm in favor of length engagements (at minimum a year, preferably more) before an actual marriage. By then the initial euphoria should have worn off and the couple should be better able to judge if they can live with each-other the rest of their lives and if they still want to do so.
Inasmuch as "cheating" involves breaking a promise, absolutely, every time. I never asked my wife for exclusivity -- and so while she's never broken it, neither would such be a dealbreaker.
While I disagree with some of your statements broader statements, I'm glad you and your wife have a seem to have a clear understanding of each others expectations about your mutual commitment. I think we can both agree that regardless of the exact nature of the commitment made, both spouses must be aware of and willing to uphold their vows, or else the marriage is doomed to failure.
Facebook is to infidelity what cheap HFCS is to obesity
This is so true. Facebook is reviled on Infidelity websites/support groups. It makes it way too easy to find that friend of a friend that you had a one-night stand with in college or that former co-worker that was kinda cute. Granted, you can still find people to fool around with using non-internet methods. It's a catalyst, it lowers the energy required to do something.
Numpty - it's right in there.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
Except that 'best interest of the child' is defined as custody to the mother, father gets only weekly visitation barring evidence of significant psychiatric issues in either party.
Oh, my god. You just wrote the story of my life. I was raised in a "normal", healthy family around people who loved each other and acted like it. My wife was raised by a passive-aggressive bitch of a mom and a flat-out abusive dad. I treated her the way I was raised to: with love and respect and compromise. She treats me the way she was raised to: as a hated enemy who must be made to lose at every opportunity and at any cost.
Yeah, looking back, I can see how it evolved over time. I think the original problem was that I was naive and ignored the warning signs because I had no experience with them. After all, why would you abuse someone you claim to love? Well, she didn't see it that way.
After about a decade of this, I met someone else. We don't even live in the same city, so it's certainly not a (solely) physical relationship. She gets me. She treats me like a king, and she lets me treat her like a queen. I love this woman and she's the person I want to spend the rest of my life with. The only problem is that I'm still stuck with the soul-sucking harpy who makes fun of me to our friends and who threatens to kill herself every time I try to tell her that I'm unhappy with our relationship. Honestly, at this point, I don't care if she does. I know I must sound like an asshole of the highest order to anyone who's never been in the situation, but I could walk away from her grave and never look back, except to regret the years of my life I lost to her.
I'm in love with and actively seeking to start a new life with my dream woman, but technically I'm cheating. Honestly, I don't care if I am. My spouse betrayed our vows from the first day. She just never had the decency to walk away, and spent the next decade beating up my mind and my heart for having the nerve to think I loved her. I won't feel a pang of remorse or shame on the near day when I say goodbye for the last time.
Marriage is about being with one person romantically to the exclusion of all others. If you don't like that then you shouldn't be married.
My wife is abusive. I happened across one of those checklists, like "does your partner do [....]", and it felt like someone had punched me in the stomach. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't eat. I felt guilty for "letting" her do all those things to me, then rage at her for doing them.
I'm still with the bitch because we have kids together and there's no way in hell I'd leave them behind so that she could torture them, and she hasn't (yet) agreed to let me have them. The instant that happens, I'm out of here. In the mean time, I'm in the process of rebooting my entire life. If I fell in love tomorrow, I wouldn't feel like I was cheating on my soon to be ex.
This may earn me some negaitve karma, but so be it.
/.
Unfortunately, your pro-lie stance has earned you karma, not taken it away.
Oh yes, because people who cheat are ALWAYS bad,
Yes, they are. They have three choices, honor their vows, break their vows, or terminate their vows. You are advocating breaking them as the best solution.
and it has nothing to do with the fact that their partner might be completely unsuitable for them and/or positively damaging to them.
Then terminate the vows. A "separation" is the same as a divorce for everything except getting remarried. It's quick and cheap. And it lets both know what's going on. And if the partner is so damaging, why are they there? Cheating won't fix a damaging relationship, and can only make it worse.
I *love* black and white morality. I thought we had some people that appreciate shades of grey on
Some things are black and white. Someone isn't just partially pregnant. Despite Princess Bride's claims to the contrary, there is no "mostly dead." You either are or aren't. And there is no "mostly married." You either honor your vows, or you are a lying cheat. If the situation is bad, leave. But to stay there and cheat is worse than staying there not cheating.
Learn to love Alaska
People who say there is no simple answer don't understand the question.
Plenty of people manage to hide that sort of thing from their children, that is really nothing new.
No, they don't hide it that well. They hide it well enough the children join them in denial, but the children do notice, often sooner than the other partner notices.
It is somehow more ethical to end a marriage, after taking a vow to stay with your spouse until death?
I didn't take that vow. And you can write your own vows. And both people agreeing to terminate vows is much better than one person unilaterally deciding to violate them.
Learn to love Alaska
This is entirely true to a point. But is not the only problem.
Some people may do something that seems innocent in their eyes, while to another it seems like cheating or flirting.
I know this from experience, from posting a bunch of random jokes on a few friends walls over photos and a couple of acquaintances pictures. My girlfriend was pissed and said I was flirting (I was not). I see her point of view AFTER the fact and from speaking with other male and female friends. Simply though, she may or may not have over reacted, but that's the way it is, since I know I wasn't flirting, but she did not know.
Interestingly enough, all the guys thought it was innocent and funny, all the girls thought it was a stupid comment.
Different interpretations between females and males will always result in trouble, be it on Facebook or in real life. We men just tend to do stupid things randomly and are wired somewhat differently. Facebook is worse for it though, as sadly the fingers type faster than the brain thinks.
As for those cheaters out there... You deserve what you get.
Good.. Bad.. I'm the guy with the gun.
The easy answer is Y should have gotten a divorce long ago. It's a broken relationship that they want out of and, until Z, didn't have the strength to get out of. If support mechanisms for Y were better, then Z would never have been needed.
Learn to love Alaska
How quickly? I have friends at that 10 years without a problem. He was dating someone for a while. He ended it in his mind, but didn't stop because, well, she was cute and it was convenient. He never told her. He wasn't actively "cheating" on her in the sense that he was looking for people to screw on the side, but that he didn't close his mind to the idea. He met his future wife. They started dating, and after a while of that, ended it with the first one. So, he was a verified cheater. She was willing to help someone cheat. And they didn't take long before they were wed. And a few children (and 10+ years) later, they are still very happy and doing well. Sure, it wasn't a marriage that was broken, but it was the same idea.
Learn to love Alaska
As for the issue of cheating, well, keep in mind that humans are not known to be naturally monogamous.
While I think it is both inaccurate and probably not useful to make absolute statements about humanity (beyond a handful of basic biological facts), but from observation and experience I'd say most humans have a strong tendency for serial monogamy. That is, most people may have varying numbers of romantic relationships through-out their life-time, with varying lengths, but usually they only have one at a time. I come to this conclusion because even across different cultures, religions, and times pair-bonding with some level of exclusion is the norm. I think the main reason for this is that despite our expectations of romantic love being a fairly recent cultural development, most humans always preferred to have a significant level of emotional commitment between mothers and fathers, and most people
For instance, because of papyrus it is know that in the Old Kingdom period of Egypt both marriage and divorce procedures were common and relatively easy. Also like you stated in your post, marriage was largely a legal construct rather than a religious one. The basic requirement seems to be somewhat similar to the idea of common law marriage; a man and a woman lived together for a time while treating and referring to each other as "man and wife". The only required formality was to notify the local government official at the earliest convenience so it could be recorded. On the other hand, divorce was usually required a bit more effort to resolve but could be initiated by either spouse for reasons as simple as "I believe I just can't live with you anymore". Yet, the ancient Egyptians still valued exclusivity in their relationships and had some idea of romantic love which, they felt was a worthy ideal if not always achievable.
You may counter that the Ancient Egyptians, like most ancient cultures had rulers and other high-status men with multiple wives and concubines. That is true enough, but that doesn't prove anything about whether these men were emotionally involved with all or most of them, even or if the multiple consorts came about for different reasons. While having many wives is useful for ensuring you have plenty of legitimate heirs in times of high infant mortality, and provides ample variety for the libido, even a despotic potentate only has 24 hours in a day. Most men find being in a serious emotional relationship with one woman is hugely demanding (and reading some of Ovid's works shows this sentiment is not confined to the modern age), imagine trying to have any sort of emotional connection (much less relationship) with dozens at the same time! So either these men didn't bother to have sort of deep emotional relationships with any of their wives (which is certainly possible for some cases) or they only had a few and likely only with one woman at a time. Returning to Ancient Egypt, this last possibility has apparently occurred with evidence that many Pharaohs were significantly emotionally involved with only a few of their wives and some Pharaohs were depicted as proclaiming a special for love only one of their wives (which was often, but not always, their first).
Yes, but that is not what causes the hurt. It's an additional argument, and it can be avoided using condoms, which pretty much drops the chances of contracting an STD during sex to contracting something from the toilet seat.
And again, that is not the reason the wife feels hurt.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
German has as many variants of "sie" as English does "you", you know. ;)
But in conversation, you usually use the informal "du" and the plural "sie". In formal texts, the context usually provides enough information to make the meaning clear, so it's only a problem in conversation.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
the holy book, the word of the unfailable god himself
The vast majority of Christians do not, and never have believed this. Only a relatively small portion of lunatics do.
I don't know how it's been translated into Greek/English, though.
Poorly, in most cases.
X is abusive. Y meets the very cute Z and sees just how different things can be with somebody who actually respects and cares for you.
The letters X and Y were just dancing together with Elmo on TV. Nice to see you patched things up.
I've been through it twice. Both times it cost less than $200. Both times took less than a week. Divorce is only as messy as the two parties make it.
Well, actually one party can decide nearly unilaterally to make it a big deal.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
As a matter of fact, even the traditional christian marriage vow does not contain faithfulness. Look it up.
Let's see....something in Genesis if I recall pertained exactly to this. Something about adultery....I think it was one of ten ideas, or laws, or fuzzy warm feelings, or something like that. Maybe commandments? Who knows, the Bible isn't really worth anything really to a Christian marriage....
Semantic drift. "Adultry" at the time it was written only referred to sex outside of wedlock. It did not mean that one could not have multiple wives. It also applied to premarital sex.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
A geeky UN-affiliated NGO built systems where the local military police could confiscate their computers and find absolutely nothing incriminating.
Oh come on, don't be so vague. Remember where you wrtie this... Details, dammit!
What you describe is similar to the way most people will find a new employer before they resign their existing employ.
who said anything about sneaking?
All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
"parameters for our marriage" WTF???? This is the underlying problem of the whole marriage/divorce thing.
Bravo... couldn't have said better myself.
Go girls, women's lib!!!!!!!
I agree to that! cheaters are the only one to blame..they are the cause of everything..
Looking for a woodworking project? check this out!
woodworking plans | wooden plans
I never asked my wife for exclusivity -- and so while she's never broken it, neither would such be a dealbreaker.
So are you saying your wife is available?
Is this the same christianity that tells me to telepathicaly communicate with a 2000 year old zombie who was sent to earth to forgive me for the fact that a rib woman listened to a talking snake in wonderland?
So is getting married... People should think of these ramifications before they sign a contract with their partner.
C17H21NO4
Let's see....something in Genesis if I recall pertained exactly to this.
s/Genesis/Exodus
And if my Aunt had a penis she'd be my Uncle.
The support mechanisms for women in abusive relationships are still pretty pathetic. The support mechanisms for MEN who are being abused are.. right non-existent.
Anyway, all the trained councilors in the world can't do half as much to restore your image of how people should treat you as ONE person who actually treats you that way.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
+2, Informative!
I disagree, I think it's the wedding vows that are to blame. If people didn't have to make such a huge promise for the rest of their lives, (usually done when they're young and don't really understand what "the rest of your life" really entails) think of how many marriages could be saved. If people didn't have that expectation, they wouldn't feel let down when it happened, people wouldn't have to spend so much energy trying to hide it, and well, they could just get on with their lives. There should at least be a clause in there for if your spouse gets fat, or ugly, or otherwise sexually repulsive. Or what if your spouse doesn't want to have sex with you anymore? I guess that means you'll be sexless for the rest of your life? It doesn't seem fair. obviously divorce is the answer most people choose, but then why have "till death do us part" in the vows?
Divorce is only as messy as the two parties make it.
that's the thing though, isn't it. There's two parties, and you only have control over one of them.
Does it get hot down there in your amoral universe? Apparently; I made no value judgements, and in fact some of us are hard-wired for fidelity and some are hard-wired for the opposite.
Free Martian Whores!
For the majority of people who aren't tied to some sort of misguided understanding of marriage warped by years of indoctrination and/or self-absorption it did make complete sense. Unfortunately it took the OP extra time to have you understand the topic because, well, you're a brainwashed idiot who puts the mystical fairies in the sky and the "Word" they "passed down" to other misguided individuals on this planet who had mental deficiencies and claims of superiority due to their talking to "God", far above those of reason.
Sucks to be you.
What's the underlying problem, again? People who know what their spouse's expectations are?
As an overall standard, yes. Of course.
But if you don't consider that one of the parents is a liar in the decision of who is the best parent, you're doing something wrong.
If you'll sleep around and endanger your spouse why should people believe you wouldn't leave your kids on the sidewalk outside the casino all night, or sell them for crack? Casual disregard for the welfare of others is rarely limited to just one target.
Real life case for you and you black and white accolites.
A woman in a happy marriage lost interest on sex as a consequence of depression and physical pain (due to misdiagnosis of an infection when she was a child).
The man, undesrtandably, became very distraught, nervous and instead of being supportive of his wife he became a liability.
Until he found a mistress with whom he could let steem of and enjoy that part of life that has been denied to him by no fault of his own (or her wife's for that matter).
Suprisingly he became much calmer at home and could support his wife, whom he loves dearly, during her frequent depressive episodes, more importantly, he didn't need to approtion any blame to her since he didn't feel the need to "guilt tip" his wife into having sex when simply she was not ready for it. Some people may say that celibacy or masturbation is a small price to help in order to stay with your partner, some people will disagree with you.
In your black and white world of fidelity and infidelity I am sure that man is contemptable, in real life, where things have many tones of grey, he and his mistress were happy with what they got together and he was capable of help his wife in many more ways because he had found a way to keep with what life had thrown at them.
This guy never told his wife, since he was uncertain about her reaction, and since they seemed to have found an arrangement that was working for them why should he?
Pray (because I am sure you do) that you never find yourself in a situation where shattering your moral certitudes is the best solution to make yourself and other people close to you happy.
I am fully commited to my wife.
The outlet for my biological urges, as you call it, is none of your business, but if you shall know, I have had many lovers without my wife's knowledge.
It is only up to each person to decide how to exercise their own sexuality, and in many situations you would be surprised how to get a lover is the best decision you could ever make for the happiness of yourself and of your partner.
I would not impose my ways on you, so stop imposing your ways into others.
Secretly record the abuse on video. Talk to a lawyer. It's possible she's already abusing the kids while you're away -- we all saw the video several months back of the abusive babysitter, right?
I have no idea how you would get such cameras and storage for the video (not to mention get time to review it) without your wife knowing about it (and thereby modifying her behavior), but if you could, it sounds like it could be some pretty damning evidence.
... do the offspring of the retards in cases like this get executed along with the parents. It's only going to improve the genepool if the whole bloodline is stamped out. If you don't do that, the bad genes will come back into play in some future re-shuffling.
OK, maybe that's a little harsh. The kids are, probably, innocent victims in this. Sterilisation would be an acceptable alternative to execution.
What are you complaining about? It's the American way. And if I recall correctly, it was legal in living memory. My living memory. Mid-1970s.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
(she did bring a dowry, didn't she?)
No, but in lieu of a dowry she's highly likely to transform into a cow at any given point after the marriage. ;)
... wait, what?
"leave before the day you hit back"
It does happen. I did not leave in time, but I didn't go past a slap, and it ended there even though she did not want it to end. I still feel very guilty for that particular action.
However, did it really require sex for you to realize that your relationship was abusive? Did you have to sleep with "Z" before you realized she was kinder, gentler, and better suited to you?
Regardless of the situation, you and "X" had some agreement for exclusivity. You broke that agreement. Does that make what she did any less wrong? Heck no. But her wrongs do not make your actions right. Yes, the actions of "X" may hold the blame for the failed relationship, but that does not make the actions of "Y" ethically correct in any capacity.
ericfitz you little IT "techie wannabe": What is it like being a retarded screwball goof like yourself that tries to act like he knows something and all you are is another undereducated no degree dimwit on slashdot?