'Faithfullness' - society is wrong

Right, evryone knows that when two people in a relationsip, if one goes off for the night with someone else they have done something wrong and the other has a perfect right to feel upset and possibly even end the relationship. This is a pretty standard view which no one ever stops to question. Of course if both parties have promised ‘faithfullness’ before hand, it seems fairly reasonable to expect that the promise will be kept and if it is not than the ‘cheater’ has done something wrong. no matter how silly the original promise was, they should have kept it
Without actually promising beforehand though, the generally held consciencious is completely wrong. If one partner has a bit of fun with someone else, they are simply asserting thier rights as an indidvidual, and no one should interfere with that. What the partner does by expressing shock and blame, on the other hand, is selfishness and jealousy. They want to control the other persons life and take all thier affections in a way in which they have no right. They are envious and greedy, and entirely in the wrong. well, not entirely. it was a little thoughtless of the other. They should have explained the situation before they had entered a serious relationship.

I couldn’t disagree more with this.

If you’d prefer to be in an “open” relationship, so you can run around sleeping with whomever you like, then that’s up to you. Just be sure you tell your partner, in case she’s expecting a stronger individual with more commitment and respect for your relationship.

People don’t embrace the idea of being faithful to their partner just because they think society insists upon it. They do it because they’re devoted to each other. When you share a strong connection with someone, it’s only natural that you’d feel hurt if they looked elsewhere for affection and intimacy.

I removed the final sentence from your post, because it was needlessly vulgar, and may offend people who disagree with your argument (which I sincerely hope is every member of this forum).

Awww, I awlways get here to late to read the vulgar posts! Poo-poo!
But, in my experience, wanting your partner to remain faithful is not just some socical preconception. Like Athiest said, it’s devotion. I’ve been in an open relationship before, and we actually ended up being faithful to each other, but every time she would tell me about a situation she was in that might lead to sex with someone else, I’d get that twinge of jealosy and wanting her. Sex can play many roles, and I percieve three: recreation, love, and divining. Now I personally, would not be too angry, though I would a little bit, with my hypothetical lover for having recreational sex with another person, but true “cheating”, I think occours when my hypothetical lover has feelings of love for another person and acts upon them. And sex used for the purposes of divining is not meant to be discussed in this context, it dosen’t fit the traditional model for sexual relations, and is probably best discussed outside this thread.

‘True Love in this differs from gold and clay,
That to divide is not to take away.’

im not saying i would run around screwing who evers going two minutes into a realationship, im just saying its not necassarily wrong, and no one has any right to suggest less. commit is not an argument, for (as Shelley says) to divide ISN’T to take away. respect for the other persons feelings is, as long as they are are ok with the fact that it is, essentially jealousy (though, lets be fair, its only natural). Devotion of course is a sound argument since, if not anything else, at one stage no one but your partner would ever do.
ifi am to marry, it must be said, i would definitely have an open marriage for, in my opinion, any other kind seems absolutely ridiculous.

Dude, what the heck?! That is one of the strangest stances on anything that I’ve ever heard of, I really hope you’re joking. :eek:

im just trying to rationalise
think of me as a Socrartean figure, challenging previously held conceptions

or a new user trying to get his post count up… seriously that doesn’t even make sense.

im not that insecure about my post count! its just a conclusion i came to this morning and had to get off my chest. of course, things seem a lot clearer in the mind. there really is no fetter to ideas like correct grammer and phraseology.

but to surmise - what is jealousy? bad.

how does ‘cheating’ hurt your partner? by provoking jealousy.

it’s the problem of the so called ‘victim’ not thier partner. all though that is, of course to simple. If you are willing to overlook fairly inescapable flaw, allowing your partners more egotistical side win this time, and continue with the raltionship, you really shouldnt hurt your partner in any way.

after all, it could be said that the one doing the cheating is creating jealousy, and the partner has no control of it. since jealousy is wrong, so is creating it, thus as the creater the cheating partner is in the wrong. of course, that probably didn’t make much sense either…

what exactly do you mean by ‘divining’?

ok, back again.

Jealousy really is a terrible facet of human emotion. we must fight to overcome it at all times, and not allow it a free reign. unfortunately in the area of relationships, all society gives it a free reign, and actively promotes doing so.

clearer?

Yes, jealousy is bad, but I’m not getting how you can say that the person who was cheated on is entirely in the wrong because they’re upset or “jealous” as you call it, because their parter cheated on them and we shouldn’t “no-no” the cheater at all. WTF? A: You’re making no sense, and B: You’re spamming.

true, i am to all intents and purposes spamming, but like you said - its so hard to make clear sense…

anyway it can only truly be considered cheating if it has been agreed that it is closed relationship. in which case, the cheater is going back on thier word and therefore is plainly doing something wrong.
i have also said repeatedly that the cheater does have responsibility for explaining thier actions and beliefs and shouldnt go round having sex willy nilly without making his intentions clear first. but lets be honest, if no pact of faithfulness, what right does one partner have to expect the fidelity of the other?

also, i havent mentioned this before, but it goes without saying (possibly the reason for my not mentioning it that in any open relationship protection should be worn at ALL TIMES. I am of the belief that any unprotected sex outside of a stable and closed relationship is DEEPLY IMMORAL, and i sincerely hope that only religious nuts will shout me down on this one (infact even they should’nt, considering that ALL sex outside of stable and closed relationship - marriage - is immoral to them anyway)

and also you should not put jealousy in inverted commas, no one is blind enough to deny that that is what it boils down to (except when a promise is broken, and even then it was jealousy behind the promise anyway)

hm, the only saving point for you on this topic is that you are agreeing that if there is a promise made then cheating would be wrong. I personally believe cheating is wrong in all ways and find a open relationship distasteful, but that is personal preference.

Now, the biggest flaw I see in your argument or thought process is your constant reference to jealousy. I see jealousy as meaning that you want something someone else has gotten. And so I dont see how this would come up if both people had agreed on an open relationship. The only reason one would be jealous is if they were expecting devotion, which they wouldnt be if it was truly a mutual agreement on an open relationship.

In other words, I see your disapproval of people beating up on a cheater as a moot point. If they are in a devoted relationship than they shouldnt cheat and they should be looked down upon. And if they are truly in a mutually-agreed upon open relationship than the “cheating” would be non-existent since no comittment was made. The closest to what you are complaining about that I can see is if someone got the other’s hopes up and then went out, had sex, and said “hey, I never agreed to be comitted”.

Well, there are my thoughts, sorry if I chased myself in circles.

Edit: I just realized you wrote that the origin behind a promise is jealousy. I must say I find that incredibly offensive. A promise is made by both people. and it is made when they want to do everything they can for that person. The promise is NOT made so that you may hold the person all to yourself and demand them to be yours. The promise is that you, yourself, wish only to be with that person. That you devote yourself entirely to that person, not that you want them to be devoted to you.

laughs Well, I’m one of the “religious nuts” that think sex outside of marrige is wrong. :wink:

rarebreed said:

That’s exactly what I mean, points up I’m just not very good at explaining things. :tongue: I pretty much agree with their entire post. The reason I put “jealous” in quotation marks is because I really don’t think jealousy would be the real problem. is very confused at this point But mostly because the way you’re defining jealousy is way different then I, (and probably a lot of other people), define it. I’m not angry or upset with what you said or anything, I’m just truly baffled. :nuu:

Wow, so Im better at explaining things? Im impressed, usually I just go in circular logic. But yes, that is what I didnt like, the whole use of jealousy made no sense to me; as to whether sex should happen outside of marriage…I am still in the process of making up my mind about that one. Im not very religous…well, not as in belonging to a major religion.

Im kinda on both sides of that issue. If you really love someone then you want to share everything with them, including sex, and if you are planning to get married anyways… On the other hand in case something goes wrong in your relationship, it seems right to withhold sex until you are with the one you expect to be with for the rest of your life.

Promethean, you’re not rethinking any concept here. :smile: You’re just being confusing.

No, jealousy is not evil, it’s natural. Even people who settle upon open relationships (I have my own experience on the subject, and Daniel mentioned he does too and in the same sense) are bound to feel jealous or to at least tend to faithfulness. Call it human nature, call it biological drive or call it culture, the fact is even Sartre and De Beauvoir admitted to feeling jealous, and there’s nothing wrong about it. If you don’t feel jealousy, well, congratulations. I’m rather skeptic about this applied to most people, but if you tell me you particularly don’t experience it, I’ll believe you.

What you don’t seem to understand, and Andrew has said that in the very first reply to this topic, and many people have tried to elaborate on the subject after him, is that faithfulness needn’t be a social institution. It has to do with love. Loving a person ain’t just having casual sex with them and perhaps being friendly to them and living together: it’s about sharing a life! I don’t know if you’ll get the impact and the extension of such expression, because it’s beat and used by now, but “sharing a life” has a literal sense which is quite powerful, and which is really true.

/me feels the urge to disclose a couple of things, but decides not to. Especially not in the Lounge.

Alright, listen. I’m not an advocate to jealousy. I don’t think it’s the nicest thing ever or anything, but when it happens, it happens for a reason. It’s not like we, human beings, are brainwashed into experiencing it stronger than our own free will. We can fight jealousy, or try to suppress it, or try to work out the situation with whoever is the source of such feeling. What we can’t do to it, for it is a sentiment, is just dismiss the damned thing.

Now, jealousy shows up for a couple of different reasons. In most infants, it shows up due to lack of self–esteem. When you don’t trust your own ahem when you don’t trust your own pride–and–joy, so to speak, you tend to feel the relationship you’re in was a favour bestowed upon you by the benevolent soul the other party is. And then you fear losing it to, well, anyone you deem better than you. Which is pretty much just “anyone” when you lack self–esteem.

With more adult people, it can happen for anything from “the morals say so,” as you insist in seeing as the only possible explanation, to “loving someone dearly and wanting to share a life with them” which is how come I felt jealous very recently. When you commit to someone and have a project with them, and you kind of plan a future and see yourself with that person doing lots of things (and I’m not specifically talking about sex here): seeing that person valuing such project just as much as they value it with someone else kind of hurts. And seeing them value it as much as they value casual sex with another person hurts even worse, because then you feel you were just the stupid person who was there the whole time caring about someone who didn’t bother caring about you all that much. You feel used. And that sucks.

So seriously. Don’t assume faithfulness to be a subject as shallow as jealousy, and don’t assume jealousy to be a matter as shallow as social conventions. When it comes to love and passions and all those things with turn your mind upside down and make you walk in clouds and tell logics to shove themselves out of your head, things are just not a bit as simple as they might seem.

Is casual sex really free love? perhaps we should open ourseles up to a different, purer kind. i may be wrong, but i don’t think so. but im not sure. perhaps i ought to forgt it for now, or mull the whole thing over quitly.

just consider whether true love might be different from gold anf clay.

I don’t think any subject like this can really be given a blanket answer. (although most belief systems certainly try)

It very much depends on the people involved. As per my own thinking, Christian(and other religious) views on pre-marital sex are absurd. Completely contradictory to natural human instincts, and nigh impossible for most people to uphold, whether they believe in it or not. Therefore, I wouldn’t mind if my partner was unfaithful. However if she wished for me to be faithful, I would be; out of respect and love for her.

It’s my view that people should do what makes them most happy, content, or what-have-you. If they both believe in faithfulness, then odds are they’ll both try their damned hardest to uphold that value. If they both don’t, then there’s no problem.

The only problem occurs when partners have different views. If this is the case then they must compromise, or one or the other must change. If this is impossible for them, then it simply means they’re incompatible, and shouldn’t/won’t be together for very long.

Of course since most people believe in faithfulness, most people will try to be faithful. I DO think that before you become angry, you should know whether you’re doing it because you’ve been conditioned to be, or because you’re truly hurt and offended.

If some people are offended by the unfaithfulness of people who are not their partner(s), then they’re trying to exert force over another individual’s free will. I very much believe this to be a bad thing, since free will is pretty much the only thing we have of any substance. (ironically, free will doesn’t have much substance)

EDIT: I feel I should mention that love, (and all other emotions, for that matter) according to neuroscience, is simply a reaction in the brain. The specific chemicals that cause this are called neuropeptides.

I don’t like the idea of my partner in a relationship taking off to sleep with another woman… even if it “doesn’t mean anything”. It’s a slap in the face on my behalf.

Call me old-fashioned, but I would like, ask, and expect my partner to be as faithful as I am.

In my last relationship, I wouldn’t even think of any other guy… And if I ever did, I felt embarassed in my mind and pushed the thought aside.

Sacred sexuality. Communing with the divine through sexual intercourse and manipulation/repression of sexual energies. I see it as bringing together the two creating forces in the universe, the masculine and feminine, and mimicking and exalting the act of creation. But it’s different for different people.