Or maybe the current human perception of love is limited, maybe we can love more than one person at the same time.
We love our kids and you can have several kids and love them all equally like a parent is supposed to love their children.
OK, now you've gone too far. You can think about a subject until it becomes absurd, and you are there.
Before marriage, one might love more than one person with no consequences. But love, by itself, is not the issue here. We are talking about marriage. Marriage is a sexual and a financial relationship, and many would argue, has nothing to do with love. (Or, as my old boyfriend used to gleefully point out, marriage is the cure for love.)
Are you advocating polygamy? I hope not. It's illegal in this country. We don't seem to have any posters from countries where it's legal. Why is that?
As for loving all the children we have and providing for them, yes, most parents can do that. But are they going around taking in the neighbors' kids and sending them to college? No, love is not that magnanimous.
Seriously I'm thinking out loud and I'm not advocating anything, all I'm doing is looking at the state of affairs as they exist and commenting on them accordingly.
Calling marriage a sexual & financial relationship is part of the problem. If that's all it's really for, what the heck are we spending time on these forums looking for assistance, support & possible solutions to our problems? If all we're trying to do is save "sexual & financial relationships", I'm sorry, it's no longer worth it for me & probably the bulk of most of the people here.
The sad thing is that me honestly putting an idea out there that maybe we all have an outdated perception of love gets the typical response it would get if it doesn't go along with the popular opinion & belief that society pumps out. Why is it that people get attacked for mentioning an idea? Is it possible there is some truth to the idea? I'm not a supporter of polygamy, I don't want to share my spouse with anyone else. But the fact that polygamy exists means that some people believe & agree with it but because we don't agree with their ideas & viewpoint that makes them sick & bad people. What does that say about me for passing judgement on people that I don't even know?
I never said that I liked the idea that our perception of love is outdated, I'm trying to grasp why it's so easy for people to have affairs and to leave "committed" relationships. This behavior also seems to be on the rise as well and yet no one seems to be asking why it's on the rise.
Why is it easy for married people to have affairs, why is it easy for people to fall in love so easily with people they just meet and why is it easy for people to forget the idea of committment and easily throw away many years of marriage & family life just to have an affair with someone?
Don't any of these questions make anyone question this thing called love? How can something that is supposed to be so strong be so fragile?
Why is it easy for married people to have affairs, why is it easy for people to fall in love so easily with people they just meet and why is it easy for people to forget the idea of commitment and easily throw away many years of marriage & family life just to have an affair with someone?
I think that with the rise of self-help, entitlement, self-fulfillment, the notions of loyalty and commitment are being tossed out like yesterday's fad. Seriously, it is getting really dog eat dog and people feel very inclined to do what "feels" good or right at a given moment. Even self-help gurus espouse this and people eat it up.
If you don't value marriage as its own entity and feel loyalty and devotion to the marriage itself, it is easy to piss it away for some gratification (ego, sexual, monetary). It is all about the BBD (bigger better deal)...aargh.
Plus, with the decline of religiousness, I think it loses some value. I am not religious at all but marriage is a no matter what commitment to me (thus my inability to pull the D trigger even though it is probably warranted)...
Who can say what the threshold should be for sticking it out? Is it just, hey, someone else turned me on so I left? Or is it, heck, I DB'd for six months and my H is being a putz, or is it never D like it seems it may be for some here?
Point is, IMO, you're right. The apparent value of marriage is being eroded and I'm not sure how that will be rectified. And, of course you can love more than one person at a time. We may not like it but it is true. Marriage is a choice to focus and devote that well of love that we have on one person. A choice.
Is infidelity really on the rise? Or is it just out of the closet? Wasn't it really always going on, just that most people turned a blind eye to it? Especially when it was a man cheating on his wife? Didn't that used to be considered just common, but also considered very hush and "private"?
Too bad there are not real statistics about this, since most people in the past would not have tried to create this type of statistic, being that many of them were having affairs themselves and wouldn't have wanted to answer any such questionaire, even if their identity was promised to be concealed.
In other words, I doubt that infidelity is on the rise. I think it is just out of the closet.
The recent Time magazine article made the point that Infidelity is on the rise, but that it is not due to the fall of morals or the reduced status or religion or any of that - it is due to opportunity.
A couple living in a small town where they met knew only a relatively small circle of people and had only one car, etc simply did not have that much opportunity to have affairs.
I think the biggest impact of all is the recent rise in cell phones, email, facebook, etc which put anyone immediately in private, intimate contact with anyone anywhere.
Just think of EA's. 20 years ago, to have an EA a person would have arrange clandestine meetings at coffee shops or make hushed phone calls from a locked bedroom or closed office door. Now...
I am now sensitive to it now and notice it wherever I go. I was at the beach last week at a family resort area. It was the middle of the week, so there were mostly women with kids on beach (fathers were at work??) At any given time I could look around and see 1 in 3 of the women on her cell phone. To whom??
Last edited by Thinker; 07/08/0902:01 PM.
Me 42, W 39, S8, S6, S2 M 11y, A & ILYBNILWY 11/08 Walking away from a bad situation.
The recent Time magazine article made the point that Infidelity is on the rise, but that it is not due to the fall of morals or the reduced status or religion or any of that - it is due to opportunity.
A couple living in a small town where they met knew only a relatively small circle of people and had only one car, etc simply did not have that much opportunity to have affairs.
I think the biggest impact of all is the recent rise in cell phones, email, facebook, etc which put anyone immediately in private, intimate contact with anyone anywhere.
Just think of EA's. 20 years ago, to have an EA a person would have arrange clandestine meetings at coffee shops or make hushed phone calls from a locked bedroom or closed office door. Now...
I am now sensitive to it now and notice it wherever I go. I was at the beach last week at a family resort area. It was the middle of the week, so there were mostly women with kids on beach (fathers were at work??) At any given time I could look around and see 1 in 3 of the women on her cell phone. To whom??
I couldn't agree more... Sad that one of the by-products of technological advances is contributory to this problem.
But, what it means is that we (the Royal we) always had it in us (remember Jimmy Carter "lusting in his heart"), but now the tools to act on that perhaps natural instinct make it that much easier to make that misstep...
The truth is that ALL marriages go through ups and downs, but now, when they go through the downs, it's easier to hit the eject/send button on impulse...
Last edited by AlexEN; 07/08/0903:36 PM.
New: What a Weekend
H-48 WAW-49 M-22 S-14,9 D-11 EA disc.-11/07 PA disc.-3/08 EA2?-6/08 to ?
The recent Time magazine article made the point that Infidelity is on the rise, but that it is not due to the fall of morals or the reduced status or religion or any of that - it is due to opportunity.
A couple living in a small town where they met knew only a relatively small circle of people and had only one car, etc simply did not have that much opportunity to have affairs.
I think the biggest impact of all is the recent rise in cell phones, email, facebook, etc which put anyone immediately in private, intimate contact with anyone anywhere.
Just think of EA's. 20 years ago, to have an EA a person would have arrange clandestine meetings at coffee shops or make hushed phone calls from a locked bedroom or closed office door. Now...
I am now sensitive to it now and notice it wherever I go. I was at the beach last week at a family resort area. It was the middle of the week, so there were mostly women with kids on beach (fathers were at work??) At any given time I could look around and see 1 in 3 of the women on her cell phone. To whom??
Yes it is on the rise, globalization, the internet, cell phones and any other new fan dangled way of communicating to other people contribute to this.
The potential may have always been there in the past, but the means to realize that potential to cheat & have affairs is what has activated the increase in infidelity.
Incidentally, after a while when I finally really got sick & tired of the talking & texting to other people by my W (which included other men), I called the wireless provider and suspended the phone. The cellphones we have are both under my name (the account is in my name) and I had realized that I was enabling her to do these things and financing them at the same time, I felt so stupid that it took me that long to realize this. When I did end up suspending her phone so that it no longer worked she did get extremely mad at me ("how dare you?! why are you trying to control me?! etc.), I just replied in a calm fashion that me paying for a cell phone for her to use to speak & text other men was her controlling me, not the other way around. I told her she is free to get a cellphone of her own, buy one, lock in a plan and pay for it herself - that way I don't have to pay for a phone that isn't going to be used to call & text me.
We may not be able to stop our spouses from calling & texting potential affair partners because they can do whatever they want to do and it's in your best interests to promote their free will just remember to respect yourself enough to set a boundary that says "I'm not going to pay for you to be able to do this, you can pay for that yourself".
