You mean other than all the crosses?
It's pretty obvious Lang was trying to make a point here.
Posted on 11/07/2017 1:15:39 PM PST by drewh
When I was a freshman in college, I thought I met the love of my life. He was cool and fun and sexy, an older frat guy who was good at beer pong and knew exactly how to make me laugh. Within weeks of our first meeting, he became my official boyfriend. Within six months, we moved in together. Another six months later and we were engaged.
It was a whirlwind romance by any definition — except for the fact that I cheated on my boyfriend three times. Despite the heartache it caused, my experience with infidelity taught me a lot about love, relationships, and growing up.
Before college, I had been a serial monogamist. Since my first schoolgirl relationship at 14, I had several long-term boyfriends, and was never single for longer than two months at a time. I lost my virginity the summer before high school, and after that, had been sexually active with my subsequent partners. Despite my "experience," as my friends and future boyfriends would call it, I had no idea what it was like to be in a serious adult relationship — that is, until I went off to college.
That's when I met the man I would date, get engaged to, and inevitably cheat on. That's when I learned what a real romantic relationship was.
The beginning of my relationship with my college boyfriend was like a fairy tale. We were inseparable: He walked me to class, studied with me in the library, ate meals with me, and slept over nearly every night. We partied together on weekends, got to know each other's friends, and started talking about The Future. I was 18, and although I had been in what I had considered a "serious" relationship before, this was the first time I had the freedom to explore what I thought an adult relationship was supposed to be like — love, sex, drama and all.
The first time I cheated on my boyfriend, I wrote it off as a foolish mistake. I was drunk at a concert with a group of friends who found some cute boys for us to hang out with. After a half-dozen 20-ounce beers, a couple of joints, and a few sexy country songs, could I really be help accountable for my drunken actions? I loved my boyfriend, after all, and I knew we were going to be together forever, so what was one stupid mistake?
Even though I tried to write it off as insignificant, a week after I cheated I fessed up to my boyfriend out of sheer guilt. His face crumpled as I admitted, as he had suspected, that something did happen the night of the concert I didn't want to tell him about. His eyes burned with anger when I tried to tell him the same excuse I had been telling myself: I was drunk, and it didn't mean anything.
Eventually, he did forgive me, but after cheating, there was a distance between us that no amount of time seemed to be able to close. Something had changed in our relationship, and it wasn't just broken trust on behalf of my boyfriend. It was an uneasy feeling in my gut and a tiny voice in my head that said, But what if you did mean it?
Something had changed in our relationship, and it wasn't just broken trust on behalf of my boyfriend. It was an uneasy feeling in my gut and a tiny voice in my head that said, But what if you did mean it?
The second time I cheated on my boyfriend was no drunken mistake, and both of us knew it. After partying with friends, I ended up at a former crush's house and quite predictably, one thing lead to another and we slept together. The next day, that uneasy feeling in my gut had some company: pure guilt, and an overwhelming sense of being a truly terrible person. The voice got louder too, and started to say more: You did mean it, and this won't be the last time this happens, either.
When I cheated on my boyfriend for the third and last time, he wasn't actually my boyfriend — he was my fiancé. Despite the bumps in our relationship, a combination of our feelings for one another, a heavy dose of hormones, and the idea of finding happily ever after kept hurtled us towards a disastrous engagement that would only last seven uncomfortable months.
A month before it all fell apart, I cheated on my then-fiancé with another former crush, and even before our lips touched, I knew I was doing something wrong, but that I wouldn't regret it. I needed this infidelity to get me out of my relationship, something I knew deep down needed to happen, but something I was too weak and too immature to do on my own. So I cheated — again — and it served as one last sign that not only were my fiancé and I not meant to be, but I was not mature enough to really be with anyone.
That's the biggest lesson cheating taught me: that fidelity is an exercise in trust and maturity, one that not everyone can perform. I certainly couldn't at age 20, and it showed me that not only was I not ready for a serious monogamous relationship with my ex, but that I was not ready for a serious monogamous relationship at all. I may have felt like an adult, but I didn't have the relationship experience, communication skills, patience, or empathy to embark on a forever kind of love I so desperately wanted to have. I was selfish, uncaring, immature, and too caught up in the idea of what relationships are supposed to be, rather than what my relationship was actually like.
Cheating ripped away the false narrative about my relationship that I had created — we were in love, and with love came pain and drama — and instead illuminated my love, or lack thereof, for what it was: hurtful and ugly and so necessary for me to become the faithful person I am today.
Cheating ripped away the false narrative about my relationship that I had created — we were in love, and with love came pain and drama — and instead illuminated my love, or lack thereof, for what it was: hurtful and ugly and so necessary for me to become the faithful person I am today.
They say once a cheater, always a cheater, but after my experience, I can say that phrase is patently false. Cheating on my boyfriend multiple times taught me invaluable, albeit painful, lessons in love and relationships, on adulthood and maturity, on growing up. My actions showed me that relationships take a lot of work, not just together, but within oneself. It can't be forced, it can't be rushed, and it can't be half-hearted. When it is, people — yourself, your partner, your loved ones — get hurt.
Cheating taught me that kind of hurt never quite goes away.
You're kidding, right? That's all you do.
You are not very self-aware, are you? I'll grant you that you are very intelligent. But your arrogance and superior, know-it-all attitude kills it and makes you ugly.
Nothing personal, dear, but you just have a bad personality all around. It's very unattractive and off-putting. You have no sense of humor. *Snickering* to yourself is not a sense of humor. Taking things in the light hearted sense they are offered and the ability to laugh at yourself and make others laugh, is.
I suggest you grow one.
There. That is my attempt at helping the human race, one old crone at a time.
No.
Of course you have. You're like 97 or something, right? You've known that word since before electricity.
That's not the point. You saw me use it in a post and ten minutes later you used it. You are a dirty copycatter and I will not stand for it.
Someone like you that has to dumb herself down to converse with us mere mortals can use her own damn words, I expect.
The apple represents KNOWLEDGE, GOD didn't want then to have.
Even though there are many people, a bit later in Genesis, Adam and Eve were alone in the Garden of Eden, so just WHO did Eve have sexual congress with, besides Adam, and what was her payment? And don't say the apple!
Your egregious inferred defamation is now beyond the pale.
How many girls and women have you had sexual congress with, devoid of a sanctified, legal marriage ?
Not that there are many hard up females in the world who would consent to doing the act with you, I trow.
You're a nasty little child, inside of an adult's body, and a pervert to boot.
Misused word ( “feminism” ) for a SUFFRAGIST Movement.
You need a class in reading comprehension. Go reread what I wrote.
"When they go low, we go high," is not a Hillary phrase. It's a Mooch phrase.
Do you even follow politics?
Just curious.
The apple represented knowledge, yes. It also represented acknowledgment of their nakedness and shame of that nakedness. Someone less naïve than you can conclude that it represented sexual knowledge and to take it a step further, virtue. The eating of the apple represented a loss of innocence AND virtue.
Come on, lady. Use that big brain you won't stop bragging about.
There are many lessons to be learned from the stories in the Bible. And many ways of interpreting them.
You mean other than all the crosses?
It's pretty obvious Lang was trying to make a point here.
>>No, it hasn’t and neither has “human nature” changed any since the dawn of time!
And that’s what Lang’s artwork - festooned with Masonic and religious symbolism, is illustrating.
Human nature is a cycle.
Sure the state-of-the-art technology changes, but the collective tendency to worship those created things... it can be seen persistently repeating throughout history.
>>Do you always throw Bible verses at people, no matter what the topic of conversation is?
Do I?
XX + XX = FAIL
XY + XY = FAIL
XX + XY = Human
The thing about women being the "civilizing influence" is actually rather a newish invention, but yes, it DID work most of the time.
OTOH...religions, of all kinds, and sometimes "the state" were the means of imposing rules and civility upon mankind, before that; though many times that didn't work either.
In ancient Sumeria, there were such laws governing behavior.
August tried,too, by laws, which only sort of worked, but didn't last past his death.
The Ancient Jews had religion and religious laws.
The Catholic church had a massive amount of laws, which many have now been changed or just ignored.
The Protestants, too had rules/religious laws. Most of which have now, also been subsumed into ridiculous acceptance of garbage like same sex "marriage". *spit*
And last, but most assuredly not least, your constant, unremitting attack on me, as a stand in for the lunatic Feminazi harridans, is disgusting beyond words.
Misuse of a word which proved nothing at all.
I don't have an ilk. I am singular.
I'm Batman.
Get someone else to "FIX" the sentence as well as yourself.
>>Many thanks for those links!
The “links” were generic searches for the relevant terms:
Metropolis Occult Symbolism
>>I did post about the Thune Society and others in Germany
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Thune+Society+Crowley+Theospophy
It’s all related.
Well actually, harridan. I initially attacked your defense of feminism. You began the personal attacks. Go back and check if you don't believe me. I realize that you aren't a so called "feminazi" but you do defend it.
I'm all about first wave feminism. It's the second and most especially the third wave I have a major problem with. Those ideologies are destroying us. You don't seem to see that and see an attack on feminism as an attack on women. You are wrong in that.
And your lashing out at men who hold my position is bizarre for a conservative woman.
That's my take.
You are not a kind and generous woman.
You are not a helper.
The whole ‘knowledge’ reference in that story has also made me wonder about that too. Since in the bible the words of ‘knowing/knowledge’ in a relationship often referred to sexual intimacy.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.