Crusty's Journal

   I responded to a post on Cheaters Anonymous with the following.  I thought it would be interesting to post it here too, just to see if anyone else has any ideas on the subject.I would not tell anyone of an outside partner if I had agreed to monogamy, unless I planned to end them both.

   The depth of a commitment varies greatly from one person to the next. The range runs from someone who watches a partner have sex with someone outside their partnership, to those who have open relationships but never want to meet the other persons, to those who know of a partners affair and accept it, to those to whom a partner even  thinking about having an affair would be a deal breaker and signals that the relationship is over. 

    The reasons we have affairs varies greatly from one person to the next.  Some people want self pleasure and really regret that doing so may cause their partner pain.  Others want to satisfy themselves and they know the partner may find out and be hurt.  Some people have affairs because they want to hurt their partner, or retaliate to a partner having an affair by having one of their own.  Some people have a sexual relationship outside their marriage simply because the other person is available and they may have turned down a number of such possible partners before deciding to allow one to progress. A man or woman today sees hundreds of more possible sex partners each week than did their grandparents.

    The commitment to a relationship by a person may have nothing to do with that persons desire to be totally committed..  There are a long list of environmental factors which can prevent individuals from having the ability to form anything but shallow relationships.    Usually the individual never knows the actions they are taking are a response to the environment in which they were raised, rather then a response to some defect within themselves.  They feel full of shame. 

   The people are shamed by society too.

   I don't know how to fix the situation, but, as far as I am concerned some people who are in a secret relationship outside their primary relationship should not be shamed, nor praised.  The more we know about history, the more we learn of leaders who had more than one romantic partner at a time. If having sex outside a marriage or a promise, is so bad, why has it been a way of life for at least one third of western society for thousands of generations.

    There are many many factors which contribute to a good or not good relationship.  Sex, is only one.  We all know people who are married to their job  hobby,  church, or  books.  They prefers pending time with any of those rather than with their mate.  Their marriages also suffer because of where they have their priorities.  Are they any more or less moral than others?   Does society shame them the same way it claims to shame someone who has sex outside the marriage?  Should it?

    Is it possible to have a good relationship if one or both of the partners also have other sex partners, secretly or openly?    I think it is, but I doubt that society will see it that way in any of our lifetimes.