If you pay for it, is it adultery?

[exploited]

[Aaron]

[Libertarian602]

[Spider]

[Aaron]

[eric]

Well I would say everything is subjective and relative and you can justify anything. We're all just operating within established social norms.

[Spider]

[exploited]

To be fair, cheating is nowhere close to the worst thing that a person can do to their partner. And while I find Aaron's position to be shockingly immature, I think you are engaging in quite abit of hyperbole, Spider. Cheating in a relationship defined by monogamy is obviously an immoral and unfaithful thing, but it doesn't even step to shit like purposeful emotional/physical abuse.

Hell, there are even times when cheating can be a revolutionary, enlightening experience - like when an abused wife hooks up with a genuine nice guy and gets to experience sex with someone decent.

Where Aaron goes off the rails is trying to portray cheating as something that isn't important as we think it is because it's "just sex," and most sex doesn't have inherent harm. But the real issue with cheating has nothing to do with sex - it has to do with trust and respect.

As in my example about not talking about our marital problems with others, most relationship issues revolve around whether or not a partner can be trusted to abide by the rules you establish together as equals. The reason that is important is because it signifies respect. If you respect someone, you will not betray their trust, even if you disagree with them. I won't talk about my marital problems with others because I respect that my wife is a private person, and she trusts me with that. In the example with a cheater, she trusted her husband to be monogamous, and he respected that trust enough to bang a hooker for seven years. It is obviously immoral in that particular context, and undoubtedly unfaithful/adulterous.

[Spider]

Thing is that I view it as purposeful abuse. Its not like losing your car keys. Its a decision that you know will do tremendous harm to the one person who is supposed to trust you implicitly. The person who is most vulnerable to the consequences of your actions. And you go ahead and pull the trigger anyways. I would much rather be beaten half to death with a golf club than cheated on, in all honesty. You can beat up anybody. You do harm to anybody. But you can only really hurt someone to that degree if they are your spouse, or even just a significant other, and you cheat on them. It is a uniquely deep and harmful way to do damage to someone. To give them a scar that will never really heal. Its its own special level of awful.

Obviously if someone is already in a relationship where they're getting beaten, anything up to and including shooting the f**k dishing the abuse doesn't bother me much.

Its possible I'm a bit extreme on issues of marital abuse. I've seen enough it, very little room to budge on my reactions to it.

[Aaron]