eoe, Now that it's over, why not just ask her? 1) Did she know? 2) Would she have accepted and appreciated her friend's telling her?
Lost contact. I'm not even sure if I could ever ask her tho. Admitting even now that we knew about him would be dicey.
They say "love is blind," but I think people have an internal radar that "sees" these things. Since it was "common knowledge," I don't know how dicey it would be. It's not like it was ever a "secret."
Have you ever broken up with someone and your 'friends' then come out of the woodwork to tell you how they didn't like the person you were with and they start telling you things about them that they kept from you before? Like they saw him/her at the club in someone elses' face, that sort of thing? It's very unpleasant even way, way after the fact. When that happened to me, I was more offended by the 'friend' bringing completely useless but still painful information to me, then the information itself. I found myself questioning where my 'friend' was coming from.
I wouldn't want to admit it to the ex-wife at this late date. But that whole incident comes to mind from time to time and I wonder if there was any way that some of that pain could have been avoided. Probably not.
Take a bow Blatham.....
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The "line" issue isn't about talking to me, when it reaches that point it's pretty easy to work things out.
What I'm talking about is the completely unwarranted assumptions of exclusivity.
Say, if you meet someone in a club, and end up sleeping together and wake up the next morning next to someone who thinks they just landed a boyfriend.....
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P.S. some people here talk of "commitment" as if it were an obligation or virtue.
The serial "use" of partners is really low, but is there any murky ground in which the "use" occurs simply because of vastly different goals?
What I mean to say is that if someone is intenetionally allowing their partners to think there is something serious when there isn't it's simply callous and spiteful.
But I think something at least as common is a mere incompatibility of goals, where one expects monogamy when the other has no intention of such a restriction.
I guess I just want to stand up for the non-malicious womanizer for example.
Like Blatham I see the problem as in the feckless infliction of pain. And the bed-hopper who doesn't break hearts doesn't get my censure.
Commitment is a choice, and society has, for far too long, treated it as an ideal.
blatham wrote:Quote:I am also far less tolerant when someone's behaviour hurts someone
Quick note...haven't had the chance to read much here at all...
My negative valuation of a person in ANY situation is engaged most acutely where I witness a facile insensitivity - a ready willingness to cause hurt. I don't care if someone has twenty on-going liasons, or if someone is less or more monogamous.
Agreed Blatham. And, faithfulness creates unfaithfulness - if you see what I mean.
Problem is that, as I observe it, we seem - whether through nature or nurture - to find a truly open relationship difficult, as a species. So, I am usually as unmoved by talk of freedom and its value as I am by talk of utter faithfulness, and its.
My singleness is starting to make more sense.....lol!
Telling people? Oy veh!
Such a minefield.
Will they listen? Probably not.
Is it your business? Hmmmmmmm.......
Will it break the friendship? Possibly. Therefore, can you be there for them when it hits the fan?
Decisions, decisions.....
Lola wrote:come on you guys, (Montana and Beth) you can go ahead. It will further the discussion.
Maybe later Lola. I'm still recovering from the last thread, LOL ;-)
OK, I attend now, having read each of the posts preceding. Thus I am legally granted full licence to say disagreeable things.
The range of opinions and apparent emotional responses above really seems to point right at the dilemma - variation. Whether one attributes such variation in values/needs to inborn tendencies or cultural overlay or to life experiences (or some combination), variation is the fact of it.
Variation in humans is a good thing (as any geneticist or Millian social philosopher will argue) but it causes problems in group life as it is disorderly. One commonly attempted group strategy is the totalitarian trick - one rule for all cases. It's no great surprise that biblical literalists, for example, have firm ideas regarding how others' sexual/marital relationships ought to be arranged. And it's equally no great surprise that 'promiscuity' (I detest that term) might be evidenced more frequently in communities of artists, or at least that such a community will be less happy to respect some singular vision.
So, given the reality of great variation, and the further reality that we, each of us, wishes our relationships to unfold in fairly unique ways, then it becomes a matter of locating some partner who's own wishes approximates ours.
Above that, sits the issue of agreement and trust. Here, we seem to all be pretty much in agreement - it's not a happy thing to violate a trust, whatever the parameters of that trust or agreement might be.
But even that one is messy. On the preceding thread, I brought up the example of the play/movie "Shirley Valentine". A woman of middle years, in a long term marriage to a man who hasn't been cruel or vindictive or guilty of infidelity or alcoholism, but who is oppressive simply in his lack of zest or creativity in life, leaves the relationship - and must, we know - in order to grow as a person. She just packs up and heads to a greek island. In a phone call with her husband later, she says, "I don't want to live a small life".
It's a drama, and so the husband's hurt and Shirley's inner turmoil aren't real, as they would be if this happened with dear friends, but we all know people in such a stultifying situation, and we recognize that holding to a notion of lifetime committment is a pretty stupid and oppressive idea.
And an important element to Shirley's situation is that she knew something about her relationship was wrong, but it took the leaving AND the violation of fidelity to understand how that was so, and where her future growth would be allowed.
We cannot, as nice as it would be, always go though life as if there is a clear path with right over here and wrong over there.
Further, we don't get to choose whom we fall in love with.
Proviso...all of the above relates to folks who actually do seek to minimize the hurt they cause, and who seek to be as honest as they can manage.
ps
I confess that I really don't much like talking about love in the manner above - the sort of 'legalese' of it. It has all the thrill and life to it of a software manual (sorry craven).
Love worth its name is properly understood by Cohen and by Shakespeare and by Dickenson...not by folks who write bylaws.
No need to apologize, 'twas my point! There is ample room for confusion short of a written contract. And that would really be a killjoy.
"My Lords, if you would hear a high tale of love and death.."
[Opening sentence, Joseph Bedier, The Romance of Tristan and Iseult, translated by Hilaire Belloc, London 1913.]
"Habet acht! Habet acht!
Schon weicht dem Tag die Nacht!"
[Transl. : Have a care! Have a care! Now night gives way to day! Wagner, Tristan und Isolde, Act II]
Finally on this list (and yes, I will mail the book to Blatham!) a passage from Gottfried of Strasbourg's Tristan:
"Love haunts the deserts.
The road that leads to its retreat
Is a hard and toilsome road."
Btw, the book is "Love in the Western World" by Denis de Rougemont, 1956 edition.
craven
LOL...I realized that was your point...I was putting in a little dig because I suspect you find more joy in a software manual than do I.
P.S. Bernie - travelling as usual and don't have personal address book with me; could you pls e-mail me your street address again? Thanks.
HofT
My heart soars like an eagle. Or perhaps like a smallish budgy, but it's soaring. So nice to see you!
In some short while now, I shall be more available...I promise.
HofT
Hold on a bit and I'll give you a new one.
cjhsa
Please refer to a good Shakespeare dictionary.
We don't get to choose whom we fall in love with.
We DO get to choose how we act on that.
This is the central thing I have been arguing that seems to keep being pushed aside in favor of "well, if the relationship is not a good one, it's not realistic to stay just because society..." Yes, yes, I understand, not a good idea to continue with it. Don't. End it. Do whatever you want once it's ended.
It is the violation of trust that bothers me. In Craven's examples of mutually understood one-night stands, whatever. In terms of open relationships, whatever. In terms of spousal "understandings", whatever. (The current issue of the New Yorker has a story that goes into this one.)
But if a married couple who have made explicit commitments to sexual exclusivity violate that commitment, it is inethical. Maybe more, maybe less. There may be extenuating circumstances. But inethical, yes. Just like stealing a car is inethical.
People can do things that are inethical and still be good people. (Indeed, they do all the time.) I just don't have a lot of patience for rationalization, and if I think something is inethical, and am told "no it's not", I will continue to say it is inethical until I am given some information that will change my mind. And my mind is certainly open to change. Is it my business? Hardly. But once the subject is brought up, my opinion solicited explicitly or implicitly, it is certainly my right to say I think it is inethical.
For it seems that part of what is being said is, it's bad to say that something is bad. Which, if you note, is rather paradoxical.
