Pikko Pots wrote:
One of hubby's friends came home to visit and when we went out to eat he asked us what he should do about this married woman he was "almost dating". I guess he felt really strongly about her and she was very unhappy with her husband. My advice to him was that he shouldn't lay a single finger or lip on her until she was divorced. I'm happy to say that he listened and that they're married now.
This is always a tricky situation though. Straying sexually in a marriage often has less to do with the sex then with some other disatisfaction in the relationship. In a broad way, there isn't a whole lot of difference between someone falling for a married person but waiting until that person gets a divorce to start up a sexual relationship and going right into it immediately. I agree that it at least shows a degree of restraint, but ultimately the other person is leaving her husband for the "new guy" in both cases.
The more critical question is: If your friend had approached her sexually, would she have had an affair with him while still married with her husband? The fact that she didn't because he didn't make the attempt doesn't change her one bit. Obviously, I don't know these specific people personally, so I'm just generalizing. I admire that he respected her marriage (and by extention her), but did she leave her husband because she was unhappy? Or did she leave him because she knew she had someone else waiting in the wings?
If the latter is true, then there's not a whole lot of difference whether they had sex prior to the divorce or not. Maybe I'm old fashioned (yeah! Go figure.), but leaving your husband for another man is just as much "cheating" as banging the other guy while married. The intent behind the action is the same. Heck. I'd almost argue that banging the guy and staying married to your husband is less a violation of your marriage then disolving it because someone "better" came along...
But them I'm not opposed to the whole open marriage concept either. Call me a wild hippy liberal or something, but I see sex and love as intergral, but not necessarily exclusive, with marriage being more about long term commitment and love then about purely physical desire. If your marriage relies on you always desiring your partner exclusively and totally, then you're in for a lot of trouble.
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IMO it takes a special kind of selfishness to ***** someone else's husband. And how is a cheating man showing commitment? I'm with Flea. If you aren't going to test his commitment to you before opening your legs then yeah, you're a *****.
Depends on what the woman in this case wants. If she's just interested in sex and has no intention of forming a relationship with the married man beyond that, then it's kinda silly to expect her to care about anything other then that. In that case, I do place the blame on the man (the married person in this case). He's the one in the commited relationship with his wife. He's the one who's taken vows to his spouse. How she and he do that is their business, but ultimately its his choice and his responsiblity to uphold that relationship.
I'll parallel my earlier statement. If your marriage relies on strangers *not* making sexual advances on either partner, then it's not much of a marriage. You can't place the blame on the third party. A marriage is an agreement between two people. It's their relationship. And their choices and actions will affect it. What someone else wants or does is irrelevant (or should be IMO).