Posted on 07/16/2009 8:38:36 AM PDT by Niuhuru
I would agree and just add that those things could also apply to women, not just men.
Off topic- were you gone from FR for a while or did we just not cross paths? I’ve always enjoyed your posts.
I thank that folks dabble, both men and women, because they are missing a moral compass.
I like your graphic better! LOL
I’m sure some do, I’d say more often than not though, its that they get taken for granted in their primary relationships.
Most guys believe it or not are decent, yes there are pigs out there, nothing you can do will change a pig, but most are decent. Of the men I know that have cheated and I would classify as decent, I’d say the biggest factor was they got taken for granted by their partners.
Even a decent guy will only be able to handle that for so long before he strays.
Life happens, kids come, it gets crazy, but if a woman doesn’t make the effort to take care of herself and at least make the effort to make her husband feel special, even if it isn’t what she’d like to be doing at the time, he will find that elsewhere.
(And this goes both ways, women stray too and usually for the same sorts of reasons)
That makes no sense. Why would God create sinners, and then turn right around and provide forgiveness for something that He created in them, knowing ahead of time, who is and who isn’t going to ask for foregiveness anyway?
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Love.
It is easy for many of us to simply chalk infidelity up to lust. In many cases that pretty well covers the issue but there are some that don’t fit that pattern.
Humans are mammals and most mammals are polygamous. Insofar as I have been able to find, there is only one mammal that mates for life, a small rodent that is endangered. All the rest of them - humans included - seem to have an instinct for polygamy.
We humans find such a thing anathema (sp?) to most of our legal systems so we’ve discouraged the practice for societal reasons. However much we may want it to be otherwise, instincts trump law and men (and women too) sometimes find themselves in love with more than one person. For those who have lived through such a thing, they know just how painful it can be. Those who self-righteously watch from the sidelines cluck their tongues and accuse the principals of infidelity pointing to the vows taken in the name of God, broken for simple lust. They also accuse the perpetrator of denying his/her original mate the full and unbounded love he/she deserves, as if he (I’ll use the male version from now on, for simplicity) was only issued a certain amount of love to be carefully rationed out only to legal recipients.
There was a movie a few years ago, most of you saw it, called “Second Hand Lions.” Robert Duvall played the part of a crusty old man who was subsequently softened by a small boy. In the movie, he told the boy a bit about being a man. He started his talk with the words “True love never dies.”
I tend to agree with that but there are other things about true love that he didn’t mention. For instance, ‘True love can never be divided, only multiplied.’ Think about it, those of you who have children; when your second child was born did you suddenly love the first less? Of course not, you love tham both the same, with all your heart and soul.
Well, it happens with prospective mates too. I was once married (as much as the legal system would allow) to two different women. We all lived together in the same house, raising our kids and paying our bills. Eventually though, one of them listened to those who find fault with that which they cannot understand. She began spending more and more time in other homes than ours. She finally left, taking one of the children with her. She now lives in another state and we only talk occasionally. I miss her. I guess I still love her.
The other one stayed with me and we have a daughter and a grand-daughter now. We’re as happy as we can be in the world today but we both miss our other limb.
I think that is one of the hardest thing to get your head around.
There are many terrible, painful and sad things in life, and reasonable people ask, if there is a God...why?
Why does a 18 year man old die in a war before he has a chance to be intimate with a wife? Why does a 6 year old girl have a terrible, painful, wasting cancer? Why does a man who loves his wife with all his heart, have her taken away by Alzheimer’s years before she dies physically?
They are good and valid questions.
God didn’t create sinners, he gave humans free will.
Not to get too theologian on this, but its a fudamental thing.
God, can do anything, he could have made us all obey without question, worship without thought.. exist in every moment and thought to further his glory, without ever being selfish or mean. However, what is that worth? Is a gift that is forced or demanded truly a gift? No, its not. A gift that’s demanded is no gift at all.
If the worship of God is to mean something it must be given freely, if the following of God’s teaching is to mean anything it must be given freely. In order for something to be given freely, the options must be there for it to be denied as well.
THere are pleanty of other theologians and scholars and writings that you can find on these topics and believe me when you explore them you will find, they make perfect sense. I hope you explore your questions.
But He still knows what we will choose before we are even born, doesn’t He?
‘Yes, it is His will that we all choose good, life, and communion with Him; however, it is also His will that we be free to make those choices.’ Are His wills then, in conflict with each other when He creates those that He knows will not choose good?
Since He is beyond our understanding, why do so many people profess to know what God does, and why?
No, unfortunately you didn’t, otherwise I wouldn’t be paying alimoney!
??? Why not spare us the pain and suffering, if love is the answer?
I’m not really trying to figure out God, I’m trying to figure out why people believe as they do. Thanks
Years ago I used to work as a counselor. I have some other credentials I could tell you about privately if you want to Freepmail me. This is what I heard from people who came in for counseling and from the records of others I read. No, I'm not making it up.
Most of the time I didn't hear the guilty party (male OR female) say that things were terrible in their marriage. If they did have complaints, they were such stupid, trivial complaints--my rotten husband works all the time and then actually has the nerve to want me to go to bed with him, my wife never lost 15 pounds after the baby was born and now only wants to have sex three times a week instead of seven, that kind of thing. Small things people could work out if they weren't selfish. It was usually just that the marriage kinda boring, not quite what they'd hoped, and this new person was so hot and they had opportunity, so they didn't really try to resist the temptation. And then they were caught and were sorry when they saw the seriousness of the matter.
I was areally struck sometimes by the fact that people could be discontented by spouses that anyone else would give an arm and a leg to have--beautiful, sweet, intelligent, accomplished, supportive people. But the other party could not have been pleased by anybody for long and would always find things to whine about.
Please remember this isn't an attack on men or their morality. Some women are unfaithful too, and I heard the same things from them. I know there are occasions when a marriage was ghastly and a husband stayed with his wife to prevent the kids from being abused or taken away from him, and then had an affair, but this wasn't what we routinely heard.
The other guy on this thread said He does.
If He made us that way, where we all obey, etc., why would we even think it was a gift, and not just the way it is? Who decided all this was a gift? Who decided that we have to worship God and that it has to mean something?
If we are incapable of understanding God, as many suggest, how is it possible that a theologian or scholar, could know anymore about God, than a non-theologian or non-scholar? How can someone study that which they are incapable of understanding? How would they know whether they were studying the right thing?
I will give you an honest answer. I know some CEOs and other guys like Sanford that do cheat. You will not like the answer.
The answer is that American women are garbage.
Now American women are not the WORST women in the world. That would be reserved for the English or Australian women. But American is essentially right up there.
Women used to be groomed for marriage. Now, they all walk around with a chip on their shoulder, both liberal and conservative women. As Ann Coulter said, “Men have jobs, but women have careers.” American women have ceased to even be feminine. A guy has to be gay to like what most American women have become. Many guys do not wish to become gay. That is why they cheat because to “love” their woman would be, essentially, becoming quasi-gay. Women, even conservative women, think it is a virtue to be unfeminine. They chop off their long hair, basically lose all sense of class, and become little more than a money grubber. They literally believe they are some sort of royalty and men are *under* them. They believe man’s destiny is to be manipulated and controlled... not unlike a beast of burden.
Remember, I’m not talking about the extreme examples such as a woman covered with tatoos. I am talking about your ordinary and regular American woman.
To marry an American woman today is suicide for men. Men do not realize this because they have been programmed, drilled into their mind, about the ‘glories of marriage’, through TV programming, through proms, etc. etc. A man becomes a beast of burden, a wage slave, a manipulated instrument which is Aristotle’s definition of a slave.
Compare a married man and a bachelor. The married man rapidly loses his hair, gets a big gut, and perhaps starts drinking. The bachelor tends to have a full head of hear, is slim and trim (not always of course), but generally has a skip in his walk. At work, the married man is stressed. At work, the bachelor tends to have a bounce in his step as well as a couple of women always prying at him.
Marriage has many, many benefits to women. But marriage is pure hell to men. Pure hell. There are NO benefits to marriage to men. Absolutely none. All there are is responsibilities. Even if the couple divorces, the woman still gets to take his paycheck. Does the divorced man still have any right to his former wife’s bed? Of course not.
The fact that this very question is being asked on Free Republic shows how dumb the women are. Do you NOT see how women are driving legal and cultural forces against men? Do you not see the double standard that if a woman sleeps with a student, she gets a slap on the wrist whereas a man not only goes to prison for a long time, he gets punished for the rest of his life by going on some sexual perversion list. In this severe recession, it is the men that are losing jobs. Why? Women have secured the ‘pink collar’ job in various institutions. Almost all consumer spending is controlled by women as advertisers all keenly realize.
Why did Rush Limbaugh get divorced three times? It was because he could afford it. Rush Limbaugh, too, bought the ‘marriage myth’. Now, he has publicly said he is never, ever going to marry again. He has wisened up.
Once you meet women from other parts of the world, a man will not go back to American women. In fact, he will actually lose attraction to American women. Their personalities, their artificial ways, the lack of class, the lack of femininity, all stand out to him. There is a reason why it is extremely rare for American women to be able to find a mate in non-English speaking parts of the world. Whereas, a non-English speaking woman can easily find an American husband. Naturally, men respond to women. American women are faux women. They are not really women.
Many of the ‘bachelor vacations’ go to the same areas... such as Argentina. Many men understand Sanford but will not say so publicly around their wives. They don’t blame him for what he did. They just thought he was stupid in how he did it.
Life is short. It eventually dawns on a man that they should be able to experience a real woman for once. It is the slave, for a brief instant, desiring to be a man. And these slaves, i.e. these married men, know how controlled and manipulated they are.
And this is why Sarah Palin must be destroyed... by both liberals and conservatives. She represents how a normal woman is which is found throughout the world except in English speaking countries. She embraces her femininity and embracing class. She likes being a woman. This is why she has enraged women from across the political divide. She is not feared because she could lead a ‘conservative movement’. She is feared because she could lead a ‘man’s movement’. She makes men start asking, “Why can’t my wife look somewhat like that as in NOT GETTING FAT?”
The nuclear family isn’t even natural. The common American family prior to the twentieth century had five plus children. It wasn’t because of lack of birth control so much as it was wives still looked good and acted like women in which the men responded.
Westernized nations are facing a demographic cataclysm of low birth rates and collapsing marriage rates. Why? It is because of the women. Who controls abortion as well as all reproductive rights? It is the women.
Women do not understand men. They do not understand that they are literally causing men to die first. And they don’t care. After all, everything is supposed to revolve around women anyway, right? This is why when a little white girl gets kidnapped, Greta is on Fox giving nonstop coverage. If it was a boy, who cares? Males are a subhuman group anyway, right? Men are expendable. Their destiny is to fight womans’ wars, to work all day to give money to women, and protect women from not realizing they are no longer women: “No, dear, you don’t look like a fat pig.” Outside America, people look on the American male with pity. This is why men are abandoning westernized countries, i.e. “Man Drain”. This is also why you won’t find any real ‘men’ today in America. It is better to act like a ‘ghost’ than be noticed by this man-hating culture.
You ask why do men cheat? I ask why they don’t.
You see, I really don’t buy the “moral compass” argument, I truly don’t.
When a person finds themselves in a relationship, love doesn’t conquer all folks. That’s a fairy tale. I’ve watched many couples who loved each other very much, crash and burn.
A woman or man who denies sex to their partner, is going to wind up with a spouse who strays, not if, just when. A spouse that lets themselves go physically, not due to illness or disease, but just by refusing to take care of themselves to the point where their partner no longer finds them sexually attractive, will likely wind up having their partner stray.
If anyone in a relationship fails to make the effort and time to make their partner feel special to them, their partner will cheat, its not an if.. its a when.
I don’t think they do it because they lack the knowledge that its wrong, or that it could hurt the other person, its a matter of as creatures we don’t pair up simply to share an address, but to share ourselves... you fail to do that adequately, and your partner will find someone else to fill those areals that are neglected.
Men may stray more based on the purely physical side of things than a woman, but a neglected wife (even if not physically neglected) will find what she needs in the arms of another as well.
Way too many women today I feel have a false idea of what marriage is. Feminism has warped their brains... men generally want sex, and yes, they will respect your desire to say no, but if all you say is no, you are not keeping up your end of the arrangement in any way that is going to keep you from crashing and burning. Yep, you are married now, that doesn’t mean you stop caring at all about your appearance and let yourself go to the point where yous spouse literally finds sex a chore because they are not physically attracted to you... etc etc etc. Yes a woman can do those things and when the marriage crashes and burns say with honesty she never cheated.... but that is no absolution. Marriage is a partnership and a comprimise, too many women think its there way or the highway, and act shocked when the men they are with finally say fine, I’m going to see whats on the highway... and then go insane that their husband found something on the highway, and not only that, that she was prettier and/or younger.
Are you related to Maureen Dowd?
??? Why not spare us the pain and suffering, if love is the answer?
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Remember that God did not even spare himself suffering; Christ suffered.
The cessation of suffering is not what God asks of you and it is only part of what he promises you. It’s bigger than just the negative “no suffering.”
I don’t mean to be cryptic but I think you’ve been down this road before. I recommend prayer and the Bible for greater understanding.
Yes. He knows what we will do, but does not make us do it. We do what we will.
'Yes, it is His will that we all choose good, life, and communion with Him; however, it is also His will that we be free to make those choices.’ Are His wills then, in conflict with each other when He creates those that He knows will not choose good?
His desire is that everyone choose to live in communion with Him, and in all other matters His desire is reality -- he is Almighty. However, He does not exercise His almighty power when it comes to human deeds. He allows us to exercise our own free will in that decision. He could, of course, force us to be good, but He does not.
Since He is beyond our understanding, why do so many people profess to know what God does, and why?
We can know certain things about God, by means of both reason and revelation. We cannot, however, know everything about God, because God in his fullness is eternal, infinite, and in all ways beyond our comprehension. We can know Him best physically in the Person of Jesus Christ, and internally in the Holy Spirit. However, only those who go to Heaven will ever know God as He is in all His glory. "For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known" - (I Cor 13:12).
Now you are getting into a different area. You see there are some folks who read adam and eve as literal, then you have the majority of theologians who for the better part of the last 2000+ years read it as alagory. The “literal” reading of the old testament as word for word how it was is actually something relatively recent (last few hundred years) that view does not match most theological thought.
But that’s a debate for another time.
As to your statements
“If we are incapable of understanding God, as many suggest”
Ah, many may suggest we may never understand God, but few knowlegable would suggest we will never understand what God wants for us... while there can be debate over interpretation, the bulk of theological concensus of what God wants for us is fairly well accepted. Don’t confuse the two.
Its impossible to understand God, trying to understand God is a wholey different thing than trying to understand what God wants for and of us. My dog will never understand what it is to be Human, but it can understand that I want him to fetch me my slippers.
“how is it possible that a theologian or scholar, could know anymore about God, than a non-theologian or non-scholar? How can someone study that which they are incapable of understanding? How would they know whether they were studying the right thing?”
See above, understanding God fully, is indeed an impossible task, understanding what God wishes for us, is not so complex. Fortunately he has given us direction in terms we can understand. Theologians do not try to describe the essence of God... they can speak of God’s love, but they cannot nor do they try to tell you what God is.. beyond the Alpha and the Omega, the begining and the end and the Trinity. We can make conclusions about God based on the instructions he has left us, but we cannot fully understand “God”.
As I stated before, no question you have has not been thought of by many many people before, read and you will discover what they found and discovered when they asked it and why they did as well. Good luck.
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