Senate Cheating on a significant other or spouse

I wasn't playing semantics, his post was very absolute meaning that he completely believed that, but whatever. Tomatoes, right?

And I accept being called a bad person by you guys if that's what you believe. I'm not very interested in changing your minds nor do I think I should change your minds. You seem very certain of it, but I just want to point out: I'm not choosing to not feel bad, its that I just don't. Serious question:Should I have pretended to feel remorse? Would that make me a better person?

 

guise you all have one big problem that's pretty easy to solve. just do what i do. i promise you will find this new approach helpful in almost all human interactions: expect little to nothing from other people. possibly even less from yourselves (i do that).

oh this guy is immoral? no surprise there.
so someone cheated? well, i didn't expect more from them anyway.

 

Generally I feel that the greatest measure of whether something is "right" or "wrong" is whether it damages or causes injury to others. In relationships, a lot of this has to do with what the mutually agreed upon expectations of the relationship are (not, importantly, just whether you think something is okay). If you're cheating in a monogamous relationship where your partner expects you not to be with anyone else, then you are hurting your partner.

The argument of "but if they don't know then it won't hurt them" is inaccurate in most cases because it still damages the way you treat your relationship, your partner, etc. Rogue_Ten detailed this well. I'd say that if you cheat on your wife and hide it from her, you are in fact acknowledging that you already know she would be hurt by your cheating (and probably will be whether she finds out or not).

Now, as others have said, you shouldn't have to conform to monogamy outright just because it's a perceived societal obligation. Unless your manner of relationship is somehow harming others, consenting adults can and should do what they want. If you both want to be in any of the many kinds of open relationships, that's perfectly fine. As long as all parties agree that this is the nature of your relationship.

That being said, of course people cheat for a variety of reasons, just like people do a lot of selfish, careless, vengeful, etc. things. We're human. I don't think that cheating necessarily deserves a blanket stigma as a larger breach of trust than other things. It can be worse, but that depends on what damage you are doing to someone else. Which depends again on what individuals value and what harms them personally. Maybe your partner is someone who wouldn't be as hurt by cheating as they would by, say, you spending a lot of jointly-held money without telling them. Each person is different and you should probably know what things harm your particular partner(s) and avoid those things as much as possible.

And if you genuinely don't care about cheating on someone you are in an understood monogamous relationship with, then maybe this is a sign that you don't actually love them and shouldn't be in this kind of relationship with them. Or maybe you're just a sociopath.

 

In that scenario, Rogue, I feel like your boyfriend should already know you're a time travelling secret agent/agent provocateur

 

I've had the Ross/Rachel "We were on a BREAK!" cheating experience. That was a sucky situation (lol). I've also dated some girls while going out with others, but exclusivity was never implied by any party.

But I would agree that as long as the expectations of the relationship are being met, then everything is fine. If exclusivity isn't implied, then polygamy it is. But actively cheating on a partner is pretty grimy imo.

 

Are you 15?

 

Zapdos whassup gurl?

well if you're, like, a sociopath, then im not sure you can become a better person. recieved wisdom in psychology seems to be that it cant be "cured". you will always desire to game the system and avoid consequences for your actions, even if others around you must absorb those consequences for you. researchers have yet to devise a way to even convince a sociopath to consistantly behave as if they have the ability to empathize with others the way the average human being does, let alone actually install a conscience in them.

the good news is that up to 1 in 100 people are sociopaths, and many human societies (including contemporary american late capitalism) are organized in ways that seem to favor and reward those who lack a "conscience" or "feelings" in the traditional sense. for instance, research suggests that sociopathy is four times more common among Fortune 500 ceos than in the general population

 

Okay, see, this is literally the issue - you're assuming that there's one "secular" way of doing things, and you're trying to ape it, but you're not actually aping anything (Even legitimate moral relativist positions) so it's just coming off as a caricature or strawman. Normative ethics is a broad field with three major camps (Deontological theories, Consequentialist theories, and Virtue Ethics) subdivided into a lot of different classifications - and that's before you get to metaethics which is actually where you can start arguing "Oh, well, morality is a social construct" or "Morals are handed down by a deity." No crap that in a Christian moral system such and such is wrong because God said so - you can still talk about why you think it's wrong without a bunch of lazy "Because God said so" fallbacks. Maybe God says it's wrong because the action itself is intrinsically wrong, or because it harms others, or because it does both. Are people going to disagree with you because you're relying on theism to make a metaethical point? Duh. In that case maybe try explaining why the point you arrived at from a theistic or religious perspective should still make sense to other perspectives.

I can't speak for every atheist on the boards (Certainly not timmo) but I would much, much rather you were just honest with us about your moral opinions on a moral topic than trying to equivocate and arguing in bad faith. Am I going to disagree with you? Maybe, perhaps even probably, but I'm also a lot less likely to think you're just attempting bad satire, which is very literally what I and several others assumed was your goal precisely because of how inauthentic your arguments came across. And if you really are concerned that religious justifications aren't strong enough to create a convincing moral argument, try reading up on ethical theories and seeing what people have to say about a variety of situations. You might even find a "secular" philosophy you agree with that isn't incompatible with your faith.

 

The word play was present and if I hadn't acknowledged it, someone else would have.

 

So you just expect everyone to be blubeast?

 

wtf is blubeast


just chillin. sup with you Rogue_Ten

 

The reason I adopted my stance was because near EVERY thread I posted it derailed into a religious debate. So I tried to stop that from always happening by taking my religious views out of consideration when making moral judgements on issues. But now even doing that it just derails. This wasn't me attempting bad satire, this was me honestly thinking that is how modern society was supposed to look at moral issues. But I thank you for enlightening me.

 

chillin. watchin weird **** on youtube. same old

 

what if you were cheating on your spouse or significant other? like, on top of them. physically. during

 

This thread makes me want to cheat on the JC.

 

Actually I think I'm implicitly somewhat sympathetic towards virtue ethics vis-à-vis Captain Nazi Der Philosoführer Heidegger's characterization of authentic Dasein.

 

nazi

 

I always liked Dead Philosophers in Heaven's take on the matter: "Sure, we’ve all grown a beard and then shaved it off piece by piece to see what we’d look like with a goatee, chopper, full-stache, and finally the Hitlerstache, or Chaplin. That’s one thing. It’s quite another to leave the house like that. It’s quite another to sport this look proudly for the better part of two decades. It’s quite another again if those decades are the thirties and forties, you live in Germany, are a card carrying member of the Nazi Party, have a history of denouncing Jewish academics, and your official position at the university where you work is that of 'Führer-rector.'

I’m just saying, Martin — on paper, it doesn’t look good."

 

You'd love my grandfather.

 

Is he a Nazi or just big on bowties?

 

Really conservative Catholic philosophy professor who is into virtue ethics.

 

That probably would make for a fun chat or two.

 

I'm happy ramza brought up normative ethics because it opens the door for a totally different way of viewing cheating. (Once again I have to say I'm not justifying cheating nor am I saying that I agree with this sentiment)

If you agree with utilitarianism... Technically if a cheater is successfully cheating without his partner's knowledge, but maintaining a healthy relationship with his partner... then he's actually doing the right moral thing, since everyone is better off. lol. I guess that's a little Mill humor on this kind of heavy topic.

As far as me being a sociopath, I don't know if I can go that far, but I will say that I have no intimate understanding of empathy. I've never been diagnosed and I'm not big on self diagnosis, so maybe I am or maybe I'm not. I'm done with this topic for now, but I would like to point out to Rogue_Ten that if your understanding of what makes a "good" person works for you and satisfies that part of life, then please don't change it, but I think you could use either some more learning or maybe more inner contemplation on the matter. I think that when you called me a bad person you meant I'm a bad partner in a relationship, because you don't know the other aspects of my life where I do, what some might consider, some good. Its true: I can't empathize with others and most of my emotional responses are guesses or imitations of what I've seen others do. But I'm starting to ramble...

Tl;dr version: I might be a sociopath or I might not be, but it doesn't occupy a large part of my time trying to figure it out. I do good and bad just like other humans and I think calling me a bad person based off one aspect isn't bad, just very limited.

 

You probably aren't a sociopath. Sociopaths tend to learn to hide their lack of empathy from others by adulthood, or at least they try to. You're just (highly) dysfunctional when it comes to being faithful in relationships.

There aren't any official criteria and neither "sociopath" nor "psychopath" appear in the DSM, so you'd be safe from any worthwhile shrink throwing those labels at you. There's "Antisocial Personality Disorder," but it's not quite the same thing.