If your in a abusive relationship or very controlling relationship or even a dead end relationships......it all depends on each individuals feelings really........
If a person's spouse is missing (legally for seven years) and presumed dead, then yes.
Otherwise, no - and I'm guilty of this sin.
Let's suppose that one spouse loses the ability to make love - maybe due to an accident or illness - the Lady Chatterly's lover scenario. In that case, the kindest thing is for the couple to discuss it. If they can agree, then the disabled one might allow the able one to have relationships which meet that need. If not - their relationship might have to change. Maybe they split up and the able one remains a helpful friend.
Mutual trust is one of the critical needs in a successful long-term relationship. The moment one or both partners start keeping secrets, they risk the very high probability of being caught, and hence breaking the trust. This is not just about sex or love. It covers finances, gambling, drug addictions - any kind of deceit. Once broken, trust is exceptionally difficult for most couples to regain. Permanent hurt and damage is the normal result.
But this view is not always dominant. In some cultures, like France and Italy, affairs are often tolerated so long as the couple stay together to help their children to adulthood. My parents had friends like this. Matcham Skipper, a silversmith and sculptor, had a continual string of lovers until in old age his hormones dried up. Miriam was still there at the end, and their last years together were full of rich friendship.
Usually, it doesn't work if one half of a couple is monogamous, and the other is addicted to romantic intensity and/or sexual variety.
It can, rarely, work if a couple agrees to be each other's most significant other, but both have sexual freedom. I've only known one couple like this. Another variant is poly-amoury. I've known a group with whom that worked too. (I wasn't part of either - just a friend.) In both cases these two different unions worked because the participants were honest and open, and not naturally inclined to jealousy.)
This post was edited by Benedict Arnold at February 12, 2018 7:42 AM MST
Great response!!! There are a lot of polyamorous relationships/marriages that DO work, but as you stated, ALL have to be open and honest without bouts of jealousy...or else, it won't work.
I would say that being "unfaithful" implies deceit. If you are lying to your SO, then no, it's not ok. If you're unhappy or in an abusive relationship, you should go. Cheating is not justified. If you have your spouse's permission, then it's not being unfaithful, IMO, but it's also not something I would do, even with a SO's green light.
With all that said, if your spouse genuinely goes MIA and cannot be located for an extended period of time or is presumed dead, I could understand moving on. If your spouse has some kind of debilitating disease or injury where their cognition is lost and they are no longer married to you in their mind, I could also understand forming a relationship with someone else, though I also think you should still take care of your spouse- whether that's through managing their care or ensuring other caregivers are looking after them. i.e. Your spouse suffers a stroke and has severe brain damage... that's almost like a death. You've lost your partner, even if they survived. I don't think you should be relegated to a lifetime of loneliness... that person is never coming back. However, I do think you owe it to that person to look after them.
There are circumstances in every relationship that one of you may feel "justified" in cheating. In my humble opinion, I think that when someone is in an unhappy relationship, they will feel justified cheating. Sometimes you can be seduced and in the heat of the moment, you feel it's justified. After the fact, you may wish it had never happened....
As a rule? No. But because there is always an exception, being unfaithful might be just the ticket for an abused wife who is not even at the point of realizing she is abused by her husband.
Sometimes abuse can simply be verbal. He may have been putting the wife down (or vice-versa) or girlfriend or whatever, for years. Enough to make living just existing. The wife* becomes someone just going through the motions of life, not happy, but too scared to seek out any alternative.
Then Joe Sunshine comes into her life out of the blue. She is invigorated. Her sparkle comes back. She feels alive.
Then it is justified.
This is NOT gender-specific at ALL. Men are just as suseptable to a conniving, scheming woman who wants to keep him weak and vulnerable so she can control him. Women are good at that guilt technique.
"Unfaithful" as in sex? If "justified" means to make right then I don't think so. Not that I have not tried at times to justify. But neither do I understand that fidelity necessarily means confining yourself to one person sexually. Though many people just buy into that so expect it and to get on with them you have to sneak around as discreetly as possible. I would be very upfront that I liked men and often responded to their interest in me and that would be all fine as long as they were less serious about me but then if they like me more they would go back on that and just assume the other. I longed for a safe and secure marriage but was not willing to be "owned" by anyone. Until that is my husband came along but I was 53 then. I don't really think it helps anyone to try and "justify". Or to expect it. I'm not always happy about my husband's choices but then if I expect to have more freedom I must allow him the same. Not that he necessarily always wants it. Sometimes I have even found women for him just to make myself feel less selfish and guilty.
So you are asking if adultery (voluntary sexual intercourse between a married person and a person who is not his or her spouse) can ever be justified---and unfaithfulness is a synonym.
Apparently not easily, but it happens sufficiently frequently to suggest that some people have no problem justifying it or perhaps don't even both trying to do so.
Adultery is usually intellectually incomprehensible, but psychologically quite understandable.
And it doesn't have to be a deal breaker for a relationship.
But it's a step in the wrong direction---you are seeking from another something that you should arrange to receive from your spouse.
I would judge no one so involved, but absent an "open" relationship, I would suggest that one re-evaluate what he / she is doing.
This post was edited by WM BARR . =ABSOLUTE TRASH at February 12, 2018 9:02 AM MST
Nice Jugs 