<p>Exactly, emeraldkity4! Sure, people make mistakes and act in really horrible ways and probably don’t think as much as they should when they are young, but that doesn’t make it OK. The point is to tell kids/family memebers/peers that it’s not OK to behave that way and the expectation is that they won’t and you won’t support their choices if they do. I don’t have kids, but for what it’s worth, my friends and I have said to each other (when this topic came up) that if any one of us ever cheated on his or her boyfriend of girlfriend, we would tell that person, even if we are not really friends with them. That’s what we expect of each other. I hope my parents would do the same for me and my future partner/spouse.</p>
<p>Also, is it OK to flirt with married men/women and try to get them to leave their spouses as long as it’s not sexual? Or is it OK just because the couple is in a committed relationship rather than married and of a certain age (less than 23?). I don’t buy for a second that someone who doesn’t respect boundaries with a guy/girl in a relationship will respect them in someone’s marriage, or in their own, for that matter.</p>
<p>Emerald, you listened carefully to your parents’ “hard won voice of experience” when you were a teen, I’m sure. Well, my kids aren’t quite so compliant. Although they tolerate some degree of discussion with me, they more or less insist on winning their own voice of experience. And they are good kids.</p>
<p>As for my own hard-won experience: I don’t have one-size-fits-all rules that I apply to judge other people’s lives. I’ve seen lots of people’s first marriages fail because of cheating by one or both partners, to be followed by stable, loving, long-term second marriages. And those were marriages! People got hurt, people behaved terribly, but looking at the whole of their lives you would quibble with the details of how they handled things, not the large outlines of what they did. I have also seen a bunch of marriages and relationships survive an episode of cheating, or more than one. It’s always a complex situation, and rarely completely one-sided. And I’ve seen marriages and relationships where, looking back, one could only wish that one or both partners had done something definitive about their ambivalence, like cheating, rather than letting things fester for years. </p>
<p>At the level of teens – I think they have to find out who they are. Sometimes – often – I think they find themselves in relationships they don’t want to be in. Sometimes they handle it well, often not. They have to learn what kind of people they want to be, how they want to treat others, how they want to be treated. It’s easy to give them a list of rules about that, but impossible to give them a sense of how living those rules in a state of uncertainty feels.</p>
<p>And if sex wasn’t part of the situation, in either of the two relationships? It was more along the lines of the “other” girl becoming a best friend while the romantic relationship of bf/gf was unknown to the “other” girl. </p>
<p>* you listened carefully to your parents’ “hard won voice of experience” when you were a teen, *</p>
<p>My parents both had severe health issues- and my father died when I was 17, but if I had had adults around me that were willing to share their experience, I would have appreciated it.
I didn’t get that the situation was involving children, but my observations towards motivation & behavior are still applicable whatever the age of the person- the key is, if they learn from their own mistakes and adapt their behavior accordingly.</p>
<p>@emeraldkity4: I’m definitely trying to learn from others’ experiences. I love both of my parents but as an immigrant family–some bridges just can’t be crossed and it’s hard to navigate life by myself when sometimes the boundaries get really blurry. But I do agree with you on that the key is to learn from mistakes, not to repeat them.</p>
<p>I never understood this either. I love the story of how two girls found out they were dating the same guy back in my college days, and they ganged up on the guy and gave him a big ol’ heave ho and humiliated him terribly. More women should do that. </p>
<p>But then I have seen some Judge Judy excerpts where some really lovely looking girls who look like they have it together have been involved with some real losers. No, I don’t get it at all.</p>
<p>@cptofthehouse: those revenge stories are definitely fun to watch. Judge Judy…not so much. It’s just always baffled me because for teens, sex may not even be involved and yet the label of sl<em>ts and wh</em>res still abound.</p>
<p>I was the other girl when I met H. We met while we were away on a study group in college. H had a GF in school. I only found out after we started to spend time together. We wanted to go out, but he felt he owed it to his GF to deal with it face to face. When we parted after the study group, we decided he would have 2 weeks to make a decision. If he were to break up with his GF then he would call me at an agreed time. If he didn’t call me then it meant it was over with us, and he would never contact me ever again. </p>
<p>I don’t know what happened during those 2 weeks. H called me exactly on time after 2 weeks. When the phone rang, I knew, and we never discussed it again.</p>
<p>It’s simpler when one is not married with kids. If I were to meet H when he was married with kids, I would have walked away. I don’t know if I could trust a guy who could leave his kids (family), even if he was madly in love with me.</p>
<p>"lso, is it OK to flirt with married men/women and try to get them to leave their spouses as long as it’s not sexual? :</p>
<p>I don’t think that’s OK since the person has made a legal commitment to their spouse. I also wouldn’t want someone who’d dump their spouse to be with me. I figure if they’d do that to her, they’d do the same to me.</p>
<p>“I don’t think that’s OK since the person has made a legal commitment to their spouse. I also wouldn’t want someone who’d dump their spouse to be with me. I figure if they’d do that to her, they’d do the same to me.”</p>
<p>I think the exact same thing applies to relationships. 20-something is really old enough to know better.</p>
<p>Dating someone is a lot different than being married to someone.</p>
<p>I don’t have a problem with people using flirting to try to lure someone who’s unmarried and doesn’t have kids with their romantic partner.</p>
<p>By “flirting,” however, I don’t mean having sex or doing sex acts with someone.</p>
<p>In fact, I lured my husband away from his girlfriend. I flirted. My husband and I didn’t date, however or have sex untll after he’d broken up with his girlfriend. He was honest with her – told her he had fallen for someone else. I also didn’t pressure him into breaking up with his girlfriend. Both he and I at the same time realized our friendship was turning into a romance, and he then broke up with his girlfriend.</p>
<p>If he hadn’t chosen to do that, I wouldn’t have continued having any relationship with him. Someone who cheats with you will cheat on you.</p>
<p>I’m happy married now, but I remember those single guy days. My feeling then and now was a person cannot cheat on another person unless there is a promise of fidelity first.
In marriage, certainly that promise is made. But what about just dating?
One may use the phrase “going steady” or “exclusive” or other phrases, and those indicate a promise. What I don’t get is someone assuming a promise when no discussion of such a promise is made. If you make no promises then you cannot break promises.
3 dates? We must be exclusive.
Had sex? We must be exclusive.
We’ve dated for a month? We must be exclusive.
Sorry, I don’t buy it.
A person could date 10 different people in ten evenings and not be cheating(remember a date does not necessarily mean sex)
Yes, cheating is wrong, but I feel some misunderstand what is cheating.</p>
<p>I have been married to H for almost 29 years and have two lovely daughters.</p>
<p>I met him when I was 18yrs old- 4 months after he had broken up with a girl that he had been dating for 3 plus years. ( he was 21) I wasn’t looking for a big romance- I had just broken up with a live in boyfriend a month earlier. ( I had been on my own since i was 17)
My mom liked him, my grandparents loved him and my friends held judgment for a long time, but eventually liked him.</p>
<p>But his parents still don’t accept me, not only do I have different values than they do ( we expected our kids to attend college… such meanies!), but they were convinced that I broke up his prior relationship-with a girl that they adored.</p>
<p>This has caused conflicts over the years-( not the breaking up with his girlfriend- but that they don’t like me) just to keep in mind that it isn’t only your sig other you have to deal with, but their friends and family as well- I wasn’t aware of the level of animosity until I was well into the relationship, and as other boyfriends parents and friends adored * me* I kept telling myself " it was just a matter of time".</p>
<p>In any love triangle, there’s plenty of blame to go around. The woman being cheated on is a fool for not recognizing that the man is unworthy of her loyalty. The “other” woman is stupid for thinking that any good can possibly come of the affair, and also selfish for putting her own desires ahead of the feelings of the woman who came first. And the man is a selfish coward for not having the ■■■■■■■ to end one thing before beginning another. I wouldn’t feel too sorry for any of them…although if anyone deserve some sympathy, it’s the woman being cheated on, because she’s the only one who didn’t choose to be in the situation.</p>