So once in a while I read a thread, I have responses I want to make, I don't have time to make them as thoughtfully as I would like, I decide to come back to it if it still is on my mind the next day -- usually it isn't, sometimes it is. So this was mostly mentally composed last night, apologies if it is anachronistic, thread-wise...
I am pretty comfortable saying that having an affair is, in my own moral/ethical universe, not kosher. As inethical as stealing a car or mugging an old lady, which is how I phrased it previously, purposely. I can see that there would be situations in which this general ethical consideration would need to be breached. I don't think that negates the general ethical consideration.
Example:
A: Stealing a car is inethical.
B: But what if the owner
gives you permission to steal it??
A: Um, it's not stealing?
B: Aha!! Now, what if your daughter is sick, and your car breaks down, and you're trapped out in the boonies, and there is a car just sitting there, and it has keys right there on the dashboard, and the owner is nowhere in sight, and your daughter is getting sicker, and you there are no phones or any way to contact anyone... what would you do?
A: Um, steal the car.
B: Aha!!
I thought of a sort of ethical scale to help describe how I think of these things.
-10 -9 -8 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 +1 +2 +3 +4 +5 +6 +7 +8 +9 +10
Zero is ethically neutral, -10 is baaaaaaad, etc.
So, a single person sleeping with a married person is usually around 0 to -1 to me. Not that big of a deal, not ethically positive, though. There are ways it can be nudged in either direction... Say the single person is the sister of the married person's wife, and this is specifically an act of agression towards the wife. I'd put that at around -7. Say that a married guy is in jail and his wife is terribly lonely and admits to a crush on a single mutual friend, and the friend agrees to the husband's request to go, um, keep the wife company. Weird, (there's got to be a better example), but that would probably be +2 or so of the single guy.
With affairs, as in Osso's good post, I don't think there is one size fits all. (By the way, I am using "affair" here in the sense we are discussing it, a married person having an extra-marital relationship either without the knowledge or against the wishes of the spouse. If both spouses agree to it, whatever, not an issue.) There is probably some situation that would nudge it into the positive side of the scale, but most of it, IMO, would range on the negative side, from -1 or so all the way to -10. -10 would probably be something like, a man had a horrible upbringing, bad parents, terrible time learning to trust, is just starting to learn how, makes a careful, good choice in a mate, has some young children with her, and is starting to gain equilibrium when she permanently runs off with someone else. Hmmm, even that would probably be more like -8/ -9.
Meanwhile, a person who is married, realizes that he/she is falling in love with someone else, and then goes and deals with his/her spouse FIRST, is more the zero to +3 range. Again, in terms of this discussion, I think the distinction between realizing that a relationship is over (it happens) and continuing a relationship
while starting a new one is important.
I think this has come up in one of our previous discussions, but while the little age digs annoy me, I do think there is a generational aspect to this. Getting married at 16 to "escape", not doing anything selfish ones whole life -- there are, I believe, more options for women today. I felt no compunction to get married, had plenty of life experience before I did so, was pretty much fully myself before I ever signed any contract. The partnership was established on certain principles that allowed for continuing evolving self-ness. Again, I won't presume to say that the partnership will last forever, but for this particular relationship, the discussions we have had and the respect we hold for each other, an affair would rate at least a -5. I think that is as unlikely to happen as me stealing a car, but if it did, there would have to be a doozy of an extenuating circumstance. If not, I'd feel like a total heel (to say the least), and I think (again, in my circumstances), deservedly so.
I do have a great deal of sympathy for the varieties of experience, including beebo. We spoke of how the cheated-upon wife finds it easier to demonize the other woman, what about the daughter whose life is upended? Easier to blame the father or the other woman?
Anyway, high tolerance for ambiguity I said a while back, and a good thing too, since life is rarely anything but.
