First time cheater, why did it happen after I'd finally got married???!!

My point about all this was that one's behaviour is not determined by the presence or lack of children but by one's own basic code of integrity. Having children or not should not make a difference. You should operate at your highest level regardless.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It may be regardless however the possible harm that your actions could cause go up greatly when there children in the mixed.

Beside your vows you a have a strong duty to protect your children that should be a greater duty then even the one to your partner or anyone else for that matter.

To take the risk of breaking up a good home and therefore causing harm to your
children is a far worst sin then just cheating on a mate in my opinion.

Not this thread. This thread is about a confused, self-centered woman who's married and sneaking around. I'd hardly call that rape, and she's obviously not passively lying down and thinking of England.

Exactly.

You have it the wrong way round Gala. The instinctual hereditary drives of what Freudians call the Id are never raped. It is the lying back and thinking of England (duty to some abstract concept not rooted in the organism such as Christian morality or community mores) that Ms Greer had in mind. That's why I asked the question about a woman's right to choose her lovers in all circumstances.

I'm toying with the idea of taking conflicted's side. It's all very well saying that she is confused but it doesn't allow that she may have been even more confused before these events.

Don't forget that I offered two walls to put her up against.

Don't forget that I offered two walls to put her up against.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
LOL what are you planning on doing to the lady once she is up against one of your walls?

I think if Conflicted were single, we'd all be telling her to go have a good time. The issue is not a woman's right to seek her own lovers, it's the responsibilities she willingly accepted and is now treating lightly. Were she a man, the issues would be the same.

Suppose one imagined a whole host of the unborn sitting on a shelf waiting their turn to join us in this wonderful world.

conflicted could tell her kids that they ought to be extremely grateful that she picked them off that shelf in middle class America rather than someone else having done on a windswept and frozen plateau in an earthquake zone in northern Iran, say, or someone else having had them extracted at 20 weeks in a clinic with an abortioner's stainless steel implements as many have done who have not been subjected to the villification she has been subjected to.

Not with Mr Penis we wouldn't be! Or, at least, I wouldn't be.

Lots of young bucks out there in the world she could choose to frolic with. They aren't all married with three small children and an unsuspecting wife at home.

Otherwise, I agree, a married man with or without children rutting with a married woman with small children and an unsuspecting husband would get the same treatment.

I imagine that any woman coming here discussing her abortion would be vilified by at least some. Any woman who came here and discussed telling her children that they were lucky to have her (whatever her faults) instead of growing up in Iran would also be vilified by some.

Face it, spendi. This group of attack dogs can salivate over just about any piece of new meat.

I think Conflicted came looking for advice and for the most part she has received heart felt advice. That some have not felt the need to restrain themselves is par for the course. Like all advice, it's worth what you paid for it.

What has struck me is who out of A2K's actives has stepped forth to offer advice and guidance.

It doesn't take much nerve to offer advice about black holes, big bangs, Cambrian explosions, fossil records and putative common ancestors. One can be sure of finding evidence in support of one's opinions from all manner of scientific authorities on any of those subjects and thus never having to risk being wrong or even taking any risks. They are safe subjects.

Work place adultery is a different matter entirely. Despite my opponents on the evolution threads being actively engaged in trying to render work place adultery a commonplace, which the atheist materialist necessarily must do given the natural drives at work in mixed company, they are strangely silent on the issues with the honourable exception of TKO, one not very useful and subjective post from the dude farmer and the odd chirp here and there.

What have we got? Ladies taking the lead with a Limey and an obvious non-WASP is what. It's tempting to say that it's a bit like Fort Hood.

And adultery is a 100% religious matter. Christian at that. To not discourage adultery is to encourage it because it is natural.

11 pages in a few days must have resulted in the appearence of this juicy title on the New Posts front end and it is hardly credible that the scientific, forward thinking, Brave New Worlders, who hang on the words of the three-wived professor Dawkins, have not seen it.

I didn't see the walls you put up.

I see your point with women having control of their body under any circustance. It appears to me Conflicted has expressed her motive-- great sex, so she's lived up to the standard. However, your observation about this being a feminist issue, while correct, veres away from the issue itself-- she's married, so regardless of her "I am woman hear me roar" tendencies, she's married but sleeping with someone she's not married to who's married himself with 3 kids under the age of 4. Her being liberated gets tossed out the window.

That's the patriarchal position Gala and notice how it protects the husband no matter how inadequate he is. And I am not saying this particular husband is inadequate in any way which most husbands are not also. Husbands have a well deserved reputation for coasting along. A great number even require their wives to take poisonous pills and insert rubber or plastic contrivances into their bodies in order that they are not inconvenienced. A $10 card on certain occasions with sentimental verses printed on it is hardly sufficient recompense for those.

James Joyce deals at some length with the cuckolding of Leopold Bloom by his wife Molly. The analysis, as I read it, is that if a man claims to love his wife then he must do unconditionally. It is easy to declare that one loves someone who is doing one's bidding. Unconditional love is a grand theme of art. Ted Hughes's great book Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being is a fine explanation of it. Shakespeare only loved his wife so long as she sat in Stratford for months on end while he swanned it in theatrical circles up in London. Her cuckolding of him with his brothers (so it is said--and I believe it) distorted his whole output. Which is to say that he didn't love her at all. He loved himself.

It's a feminist issue alright. The BIGGY.

Take this for example from the first page of the thread-



And from a man who attacks Christianity which is the precise instrument that has made such a selfish view respectable. What he means by "I really like trust" is that he wants the world to be at his convenience. No challenge.

Then it's a patriarchal viewpoint. I don't really care. I think she ought to be just having her affair and at least enjoy it. I don't think she'll get caught and her children won't really suffer, nor will her boyfriend's children.

Without the premise of unconditional love art would suffer. In many respects the artist demands so much from himself/herself that their expectation is to find people who will nurture those expectations, their genius. I've known a few artists, married men, and they're quite good at extra-marital affairs mostly because they need the awe and the attention of the mistress. For whatever their spouses don't see them with fresh eyes.

I don't think that's her motive at all. It may be why she isn't giving up the relationship but it isn't why she started it. Actually, I don't think it's why she isn't giving it up. There's something missing from her life. She can't define it (yet). I highly doubt it's just great sex.

Notice that Conflicted hasn't been here in quite some time? Guess she got the permission/justification she needed and moved on.

I get your point. Most married people who go out of their marriage for companionship are doing so for more than the sex, otherwise, they'd just find a prostitute. It's got to do with the companionship, the person, the kind of connection they have with them. Maybe she's bored out of her mind and finds the intensity of a guy with three toddlers to be a thrill. Who knows. What seems to be typical is, she's staying in her marriage for the long haul.

What seems to be typical is, she's staying in her marriage for the long haul.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is only up to her if her husband does not find out and him not finding out one way or another over the long haul is very small in my opinion.

Bill, people go through their lives deceiving their loved ones right up to the grave.