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."
...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.
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
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.
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
Oh, and one more thing: Magically somehow force everybody you know to think before they share.
No big deal.
"-- 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
not having a facebook page to start with is a good start.
It becomes somewhat harder to find damaging fotos on your friends' pages if they arent conviently linked in your own page
Still you have a very valid point though...
People, what a bunch of bastards
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?
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.
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".
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.
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
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?
Newsflash : Dumb people do dumb things and get caught. Full news at 11
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
So yea - if you had an account and deleted it for whatever reason, i'd like to hear.
I'm keeping mine. You can find out why on my facebook page :)
Seriously though, facebook is whatever you make of it. Sounds like you made a bit of a mess. If you post anything on there that you wouldn't want _everyone_ in the world to see (not that they'd really care) then you're doing it wrong.
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.
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.
As always the issue here is not the type of information (data valuable to divorce lawyers) but the context in which it is gathered (Facebook search unbeknownst to the poster). And once again the usual responses will be - a) Poster is stupid, and b) Facebook is evil.
I tend to think that so long as you are empowered to share or not to share then all is well. With Facebook this is not the case. My sister shared a reasonably embarrassing photo of me with some mutual friends (some of which I work with) which was then shared with my whole building by whatever networking effect took over - nice!. I was not in control of this. Now you can argue that she could have done this pre-social networking site era - but she couldn't simple because she is not in physical contact with 99.5% of people in my building. Social networking makes ones dis-empowerment that much more pervasive.
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.
You can untag them - if you don't have a facebook page, people can stick your name in, and you'll never know.
You can also remove the photos link from your profile altogether (or make it restricted to friends only, etc).
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.
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.
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.
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.
But photos and comments are still stored within Facebook servers. Add a photo and let it stay in there a day to let it be cycled into their Facebook servers. Find out the link to the stored image [URL]. Then delete the picture.
Use the URL to locate your deleted picture. Not deleted, yes?
Think of it this way instead: once you post something, anything, it never goes away. Never.
Can I watch it at your house? This guy came round and said for 40 bucks he'd enhance the picture quality on my 40" plasma TV, but he hasn't brought it back yet.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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...
You've been talking to CowboyNeal's wife
"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.
>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 *
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.
There are other ways of sharing photos via the internet that do not involve Facebook. If you sacrifice security and/or privacy for convenience, that is your problem (or in this case your sister's).
Amazingly enough, there is not yet a law that states you *have* to have an account with Facebook and you *have* to share every detail of your life on it.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Women will forgive you for treating them like shit because you're sparkly.
How do you police the photos uploaded (and tagged) by others?
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
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.
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.
There damn well is if your child happens to be performing in the school play at the time!
You are "supposed to be out with the children" when they have plays, concerts, etc., not at home playing WOW.
You are "supposed to be out with the children" when they have little league, or parent teacher conferences, not at home playing WOW.
Now, there may be no hard and fast rule about when you are "supposed to be out with the children" and it seems that many people today have your attitude. Your rights to go play WOW do not trump your childrens' rights to an adequate developmental environment.
Either get that or don't have kids.
Regards.
If you have friends who actually know you on Facebook, some of them will post things about you. Tag your name in a picture at a party. Mention that they saw you in Santa Fe. Mention the "business associate" they saw you with Thursday. They won't realize it's potentially sensitive information, because under the right conditions any piece of info about you could be sensitive.
The only way to prevent that, if you're going to have a Facebook account at all, is to not have your picture there (a lot of people don't post their pic, some post avatars for their pic). And to have a common name. Multiple accounts helps, especially if your life is compartmentalized (the people you know at work don't overlap with the people you know at home). Posting bogus info helps (not all of my accounts shows the same birthday/city/school). Poison the data well with disinformation, as many incorrect "facts" as you can get away with, and it lessens the trustworthiness of all the rest. Link to random things that have nothing to do with you.
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 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...
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!?
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
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.
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
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
> under the right conditions any piece of info about you could be sensitive.
That can't be. I only ever read in other discussions, that nobody got anything to hide and that people don't care if other's know stuff about them etc.pp..
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
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.
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
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.
Okay, Vectormatic.
What if I create a FB page under your name and put up a bunch of partying, boozing, and drugging photos up, with links to groups like "Fuck work -- seriously", "Getting high at work ROCKS!!", and "[My boss' favorite sports team] are a bunch of LOSERS!"
Good luck with work. You'll never get a chance to explain why it's not you. You simply wouldn't get a call for an interview. You might get everything wrong you do at work slowly documented until they have cause to fire you. "No, it wasn't drug use (since that's a disability and protected, and we'd never do that) but look at these logs. /. 1000 times, he kept taking extra-long breaks, and he was late one time in 2008. We decided to move in a new direction, specifically one without Vectormatic."
I've been impersonated before. That's why I have a FB profile, so that when someone looks me up online, there's my good information out there. My name is rare enough that a GS brings me up as the first hit.
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
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
Amazingly enough, there is not yet a law that states you *have* to have an account with Facebook and you *have* to share every detail of your life on it.
Whether or not the OP had a Facebook account wasn't actually mentioned. It was his sister who shared the pictures.
How exactly do you prevent this from happening?
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