I guess I don’t get why infidelity is a big deal if sex before marriage isn’t

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you agree to marry someone you agree to forsake all others. Cheating is the opposite of that.

That's your definition of marriage and it doesn't blanket-apply to everyone else. Besides, other parts of marriage have more meaning than sex. Legality, asset accumulation, social standing, wealth-building etc.

That’s not a marriage.

This doesn't need your approval.

It doesn’t need my approval to not be a marriage. It simply isn’t one.
I don’t need your approval for that fact.

If it's on a marriage license, it's a marriage

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It depends on what kind of a marriage you have. A secular one which is really just a social contract or a religious one that requires fidelity?

If you only want a contract, don’t lie by agreeing to a religious ceremony in which fidelity is promised openly. Otherwise, you are being dishonest.

Ester Perel is from the Netherlands, correct? She also takes a secular view of marriage and other relationships. So take what she says with an awareness of her perspective.

I mean an Islamic religious marriage explicitly does not require sexual fidelity of men unless so stipulated so let's not pretend marriage is the same for everyone.

That’s not true.

Have you discovered a version of Islam that bans polygamy for men?

Please, elaborate.

The majority over 95% of Muslim men are in monogamous marriages. They hate divorce because men pay for the wedding not the woman’s dad so it’s costly/a waste if she does leave

However, you are correct that Polygamy is allowed but only if a man is super rich or has up to 4 properties to house multiple wives and can take care of them and children . The idea behind this is rich men need to populate more and deserve more women and more children because they’re successful and so the wealth and power doesn’t die out. Thats how the Saudi kingdom has a gazillion people and took pretty much the entire country out of poverty (most people have a female relative who married in) and old money families in the West like Rockefellers or even Windsors are losing people.

Then; you have the religious extremists or immigration fraudster playboys who have an American or Euro wife and a wife “back home” who is clueless . They don’t have any money really but somehow get multiple women to marry them . But again, these people are the fringe. Majority of Muslim men are monogamous and love their one wife and children fiercely

In any way, playboys are gonna be playboys and it sucks

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Humans are not meant to be monogamous.

Some are some aren’t. We are happy in our monogamous marriage.

[Anonymous]

Let’s be honest. monogamy is only possible if you’re attracted to your spouse . If attraction leaves, the marriage is in danger!

[Anonymous]

Lying is bad. Being sexually unfaithful isn’t inherently bad if everyone agrees to it because there are risks to the contractual family unit (health, pregnancy in which one spouse isn’t the parent). If everyone is on board it’s no big deal.

In the same way if premarital sex is a big deal for you, you marry a virgin. If sexual fidelity is a big deal for you, you get married and agree not to cheat.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

The majority over 95% of Muslim men are in monogamous marriages. They hate divorce because men pay for the wedding not the woman’s dad so it’s costly/a waste if she does leave.

The majority of Muslim men are in monogamous marriages because there are not enough women for all men to have polygamous marriages. However, if they were to take another wife, it would not be considered cheating. They hate divorces because it is frowned upon socially but it is not especially hateful, and for men, the process is easy. Remember the Shariah law has no concept of marital property so what a man owns remains his.

Anonymous wrote: However, you are correct that Polygamy is allowed but only if a man is super rich or has up to 4 properties to house multiple wives and can take care of them and children .

That is incorrect. Polygamy is allowed for all men regardless of income. A poor man can marry four women and keep them all as poor as he is as long all of them are equally poor. It is a myth that Muslim men are required to maintain their wives in high style. There are poor Muslim men who are married; there are poor Muslim men with multiple wives and all it means is that wives as are poor as he is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's the betrayal. Sex before marriage isn't harming and deceiving a spouse you've committed to. (I know some ultra religious folks would say it is, but a hypothetical future person is just not the same as one you've already, specifically chosen and married.)

DP. I think there are far worse betrayals than cheating. I also think the attitude is ridiculous.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m kind of with you, OP. My husband and I lived apart for a year a few years into our marriage. It was job related and didn’t have anything to do with our relationship.
If I found out that he slept with another woman during that year, I wouldn’t be thrilled, but I wouldn’t see it as a huge betrayal.

On the other hand, if we were living together and raising kids together, and he just wasn’t showing up for parenting obligations, he was regularly lying to me about where he was, and he wasn’t treating me nicely, then it could easily be marriage ending.

Then just divorce. What was the point of being married if you didn’t mind if he slept around?

DP. I feel the same way as the PP. Because marriage is a lot more than sex. It does not matter in the grand scheme of things.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Humans are not meant to be monogamous.

Then don’t get married and say you will be and then sneak around sleeping with other people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's the betrayal. Sex before marriage isn't harming and deceiving a spouse you've committed to. (I know some ultra religious folks would say it is, but a hypothetical future person is just not the same as one you've already, specifically chosen and married.)

DP. I can see that.

On the other hand are:

sexless marriages.

When one spouse (of any sex) has desire for regular intercourse, but the other spouse (of any sex) has zero desire, why would there be any issue at all about sexual activity outside the marriage?


In other words: if you don’t want sex with them, why can’t they do it with other people?

People who are in sexless marriages should divorce their spouses. My youngest sister was married to a man who physically abused her and then complained that she wouldn’t have sex with him. It was bizarre.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:so you equate my husband and i living together and having sex together before marriage, as the same as my husband sleeping around and cheating on me? those sound like opposites to me, what am i missing.

No they are saying you live your h even though he had previous partners.

So if he cheats why is it so hard to bang him again.

so theyre saying because he had a girlfriend that he slept with before he met me, thats the same as him cheating on me? i still truly dont follow this train of thought.

These are hard-core religious folks that throw people into "before" and "after" buckets related to sex. Sex is considered so sinful that once you've done it, welp, that's all she wrote. So why not keep doing it and what does it matter, marriage be damned, and you as the partner shouldn't care either because they're already tainted, so to speak.

It doesn't make a lot of sense. See also, the high number of religious types caught up in sex scandals, abuse, and overall power dynamics in sex. It's a believe system heavily rooted in shame and blame.

No. Your entire post is inaccurate and should be discarded by readers. This is not at all correct.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's the betrayal. Sex before marriage isn't harming and deceiving a spouse you've committed to. (I know some ultra religious folks would say it is, but a hypothetical future person is just not the same as one you've already, specifically chosen and married.)

DP. I think there are far worse betrayals than cheating. I also think the attitude is ridiculous.

Who gives a fk? You aren’t ranking them when it happens to you.

when you go to a Gyn and found out you have an Sti in a monogamous marriage that seemed happy and nothing out of sorts…to find out your spouse had been carrying on a double life in an affair behind your back even though there seemed there could be zero time in the day since he never went on trips and was gone in time for dinner…and then you have your kids’ lives to think about while you can’t sleep or eat and going through every detail, e-mail trying to piece your life together and find out what was real.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you agree to marry someone you agree to forsake all others. Cheating is the opposite of that.

That's your definition of marriage and it doesn't blanket-apply to everyone else. Besides, other parts of marriage have more meaning than sex. Legality, asset accumulation, social standing, wealth-building etc.

That’s not a marriage.

This doesn't need your approval.

It doesn’t need my approval to not be a marriage. It simply isn’t one.
I don’t need your approval for that fact.

If it's on a marriage license, it's a marriage

Nope.

[Anonymous]

This has nothing to do with sex. An affair is the ultimate betrayal of trust, right up there with a parent abandoning you at a young age.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m kind of with you, OP. My husband and I lived apart for a year a few years into our marriage. It was job related and didn’t have anything to do with our relationship.
If I found out that he slept with another woman during that year, I wouldn’t be thrilled, but I wouldn’t see it as a huge betrayal.

On the other hand, if we were living together and raising kids together, and he just wasn’t showing up for parenting obligations, he was regularly lying to me about where he was, and he wasn’t treating me nicely, then it could easily be marriage ending.

Then just divorce. What was the point of being married if you didn’t mind if he slept around?

DP. I feel the same way as the PP. Because marriage is a lot more than sex. It does not matter in the grand scheme of things.

It absolutely DOES matter. People divorce over dead bedrooms, multiple religions permit divorce over dead bedrooms.