Thanks for following up on this philosophical debate. By "debate", I don't necessarily mean between you and me so much as the debate I continue to wage within myself over these unanswered questions. Questions I'm sure we all struggle with as we try to come to grips with this turn of events.
I don't think we're far off in our positions. I do believe it is indeed by the choices of our spouses that they betray us. I think we can argue as to whether and to what degree each of these WAS either do so out of their nature or out of their free will. We can argue to which end of the spectrum -- the predisposition of their nature versus their free will -- drives their actions. And it may certainly vary with the individual.
What I think we can agree upon is that, however you slice it, the WAS is ultimately responsible for their own actions. "Every man's (or woman's) soul is his own", to paraphrase Shakespeare's Henry V.
Quote:
When my wacko exW was spewing her cr@p, she made MANY "Me" statements....
It is time for me to have fun....... It is time for me to be happy.......
My STBX said practically the same thing, and many more. In fact this and many other actions and utterances by any one WAS are very often echoed by countless other WAS's, though there is no direct relation between these individuals.
That brings up the other part of the WAS' behavior that is intriguing, that their words and deeds tend to be so similar while being independently derived that we, the LBS' comparing notes afterwards, will remark about the seeming "playbook" or "script" they appear to be following. You can see where the wonderment from this observation naturally leads to asking just who (or what) wrote this "script" and how is it being delivered to them. That's where the "alien mothership" or "Beelzebub's minions" tend to get offered.
Now, I know that there are very few original thoughts anymore, even in general, but it is continually amazing how uncannily similar some of the words and rationalizations these WAS come up with. And as a Christian, I don't really have to look too far to understand how there might really be a common source for these coincidences. I'll just say that Satan has obviously been playing this one card for so long that he doesn't bother to come up with any original material anymore.
Having said that, I still firmly believe that it is still the responsibility of each of us to resist temptations in life, and so it matters not that the Devil is leading these WAS' astray -- they have the free will and they have the responsibility to use it wisely, to ignore the lies of the Great Tempter and to hold to the commitments they made before God. There are no excuses. Even if (big if) it should happen to be more due to nature than nurture -- there are no excuses.
