How much freedom do you give to your partner ?

[Elizabeth]

Hearing a sentiment like that is just one more reason to loose faith in marriage. Why bother getting married if that's how it's going to be? For money? For stability? I'd need a little more than that to marry someone. Like trust? Fidelity?

The sad thing is that a lot of people enter marriage thinking that way and not taking their vows seriously. Those people shouldn't get married.

It isn't so much a matter of marriage as an institution per se the people in it.
If you can keep your wife happy and she stays an honest woman, that's great. If you're a Japanese couple to whom the worst thing imaginable is an argument with your spouse and the only way to show your discontent is refusing/disliking sex with them, then it doesn't necessarily mean your spouse is dishonest at all or shouldn't have gotten married. Simply that they are highly likely to cheat. In general, my sympathies error on the side of not knowing makes it alright -- but then I'm not coming from the perspective of marriage either....

[Brooker]

I don't know where to begin...

Elizabeth wrote...

If you can keep your wife happy and she stays an honest woman, that's great.

So keeping your wife honest is dependant on figuring out how to keep her happy? That's not honesty. "Keep me happy, OR ELSE."??? Following that logic, the cheating wife could blame the husband for her own actions because, "He forced her to do it by not paying enough attention to her," or something. What kind of Jerry Springer nonsence it that?

it doesn't necessarily mean your spouse is dishonest at all or shouldn't have gotten married. Simply that they are highly likely to cheat.

YES IT DOES!! If you cheat, you are dishonest, and you shouldn't have gotten married. Cheating is not an OK thing for married people to do. I don't know how else to say it. I just kind of thought people took that as a given. Maybe I'm idealistic, but I think more married people should try to live up to the rules they agreed to instead of trying to justify their actions or blame it on others when they break the rules.

my sympathies error on the side of not knowing makes it alright

That's a strange take on ethics. So, if you didn't know about the Holocaust, it didn't happen? The damage has been done, whether the other person knows about it or not.

[Elizabeth]

I don't know where to begin...
Maybe I'm idealistic, but I think more married people should try to live up to the rules they agreed to instead of trying to justify their actions or blame it on others when they break the rules.

Probably, but for the final time in this thread no amount of railing against it or living in a constant state of vigilance is going to change the actuality of many situations. Cheating on your spouse obviously isn't an ideal situation for anyone, I was simply trying to explain, from my own observations of Japanese life, why it happens so frequently (it may make life more bearable in certain ways for the infidel party and the other woman). And when it does inevitably go on, I think it can be better managed if the spouse doesn't find out.

[ragedaddy]

Orignally posted by Maciamo
I don't want to sound too cynical, but how do you really know if your partner is someone "who think cheating isn't wrong, or who feel it's something they'd never do" ? The problem with the first type is that as long as you don't find out, you won't know it if this person does not feel emotionally troubled about what they have done, justly because cheating isn't wrong for them (as long as their partner doesn't know). As this kind of people does not feel guilt, it is almost impossible to tell whether they cheated or not, unless you follow them everywhere and try to catch them red-handed.

Ok, maybe I can never know 100% that my wife will never cheat on me. I'm basing these beliefs on my own. I'm not a cheater, I don't believe in cheating, and that is how I was raised. My morals are obviously more strict than others, and I feel to me cheating is about the equivalent of commiting murder, it's that serious. This is just for me, if one of my friends happen to do this, I would not hold it against them. Yes, there is a plethora of people who don't think cheating is wrong. That is there choice, and they have to deal with the consequences that come around with it. I know that if I am able to posess these beliefs, there are others that feel the same way. I don't believe that if I cheat I'm going to hell or anything, but that is how I feel about the matter. My wife was raised Cathoic, and I guess you could say we share similar views and we also have different views. Sure it is impossible to know 100%, but at the same time it is not illogical to say through spending time together, and going into in depth chats about many aspects about life that you can't get a good sense of a person.

But what if your wife was the kind of guiltless person that you trust but cheats anyway without you knowning anything ? I am sure this has happens to millions of people in the world, and it could also be you (why should it only happen to others ?). So I guess you would also have "no respect what-so-ever" for these types of people who stab you in the back by abusing your trust. As there is little chance of you finding out, you could be married to a person who you trust and love and don't cheat on you, or to someone who you trust and love but cheats on you secretly and without guilt. In that latter case, he/she would be the most despicable kind of person who would never ever regain your trust in the future. That's a pretty sharp contrast.

The worst of all is that you or me or most people cannot be 100% about their partner, especially if that person is attractive, sociable and like having fun.
So I find that unconditional trust is like being sure of the existence of god or heaven in the afterdeath. It's a matter of believe, but that does not prove anything just because we believe in it. That leaves people (like me) who do not want to trust what cannot be proven 100% in the same angst as some people have wondering about the existence of god or the deep meaning of life. Especially when one thinks that people who cheat without guilt and don't get caught are also more likely to have unprotected sex with lots of different people because they lack a fundemental moral conscience or sense of responsibility.

That means that anyone who is not sure 100% of their partner's strong moral values, responsability toward others, fear of STD's, and complete trust, respect and love for you, has a risk of being cheated upon without their knowing it and thus risk noy just ending up broken hearted and disillusioned, but also dying from fatal STD's for having trusted the person they loved. And don't tell me this hasn't happened thousands of times in the world.

I guess if my wife is that guiltless person that is the chance I have to take. Nothing iin life is risk-free, and so you can't go around worrying about every little "What if" scenarios. That could drive a person to insanity, and so I can't be bothered with all those issues. I mean it's life what if I lose my job, and I can't provide for my family in the future, or what if get into a car accident and I don't survive. This is the bottom line I'm not one of these naive guys that is coming across, "Oh my wife would never cheat on me," because I can't say that won't happen. All I know is that I trust her, and I guess the rest is up to her. I mean if you can't trust a person, why get married? If you can't trust a person, would you become friends with them? I would seriously doubt anyone would want to get into that type of relationship.

You want to know why so many people cheat? The reason is that they shouldn't have got married in the first place, and now that they are trapped in this crappy relationship, it wouldn't be that hard for someone to offer that person a way out. I mean the likelihood that a happily married person would cheat is slim. However, if you look at someone who is constantly fighting with their partner, they can't ever get along, and they are unhappy with their lives then these are the people most likely to cheat. They go out and meet this new person, and it's like hey, why doesn't my spouse treat me like this. It's kinda like you're a little kid again, and you get this warm fuzzy feeling. Then you begin to realize that you deserve better than the life you are living right now. This is where the majority of cheating begins, and there are millions upon millions of people who commit these acts.

Therefore, you either can live in fear your whole life of whether you are going to contract HIV from your spouse, or you can actually trust that person then you guys know each other very well, and are happy with each other. The choice is up to you, and all I know is I'm happy where I am in life. That should be the most important thing of all.