OP – I have viewed, contributed to, and even started, topics on relationship stuff on STW and this one is particularly interesting.
I have learnt, through my long and varied life, that people are strange creatures and have various interpretations of honesty and truth. Perhaps admitting you have feelings for this ‘other’ woman, even to yourself, is the most honest of all. Would feeling this and stifling it be any more honest or just more devious as you are hiding it even deeper?
Morals are also something that seems to mean different things to different people, and I’m not talking about this in a multi-cultural way, but right here in contemporary Britain. Interesting examples I have come across are a woman who has three children by different fathers and has had two abortions, but she finds the though of her boyfriend in a close relationship (even non physical) highly immoral! Now I’m not judging her life here, just finding her ‘moral’ standards a little confusing!
Another is is a woman I know who has set up home with a man who walked out on his 5 children to be with her (her own child was put into permanent care years ago) and has not seen them for several years, but who thinks ‘cheating’ is a terrible ‘sin’. I think you will agree it’s confusing.
I think the thing is our modern lack of moral direction, in the past we relied on the church to tell us what was right and wrong, now we have odd snippets of that ‘thou shall not’ past mixed in with teenage playground understandings and none of it makes any real sense. I think most people get their relationship education from their peers in school where it’s ‘fill your boots’ for the boys and ‘don’t let him unless he really loves you’ for the girls. This is then continued through adulthood by girly chats and womens magazines, and for the men locker room banter and men’s magazines
What we need, as a nation, is a new moral code – a handbook if you like – that is issued to everyone, it would avoid all this confusion, and I’m sure STW members could help write it.
While we are waiting for this new handbook all you can do OP is follow your heart! You can never know the outcome of your choices before hand no matter how hard you try so, think it trough and trust your own judgment as you are the one who has to live with it.
