The post My Father Made Me Want to Cheat on My Husband received a great many comment that talked about how responsibility one individual is in the midst of a multitude of influences for their behavior choices. Here is one view. See more here.
This from MJH88:
There is a lot of talk on here about ethics and responsibility. The way I read this article is that the author IS taking responsibility for her actions. Responsibility is not something cut and dry. You can sit behind your computer and dish out all the moral idealism you want. Frankly, down in the real world nothing is ever that easy. The author was thrown into a situation that she, over the course of her life, had to work out and deal with.
This author in my view is a clearly ethical person. I mean that in the sense that she always had an ever present sense of guilt, which just shows how morally upstanding she actually is. Think of this article being written by someone who said “I married my husband, cheated on him, and felt no remorse and I would do it again.” That is the truly unethical person.
This author dug deep inside herself to try to find out how it was she could be a more ethically responsible being. I think she did that not because she thought marriage as an institution should be respected, but rather because she truly loved her husband and her children and feels a responsibility to them to be a better parent then her parents were for her. She understands what true morality is about, which is that we can always be more responsible. She is working at that. I think it takes a great amount of insight and courage to admit and then write down and share the things that she did.
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photo: kmk7702 / flickr
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I’ll agree with you that life is full of difficulties and its difficult to figure out where responsibilities lie. In this case however, it is pretty cut and dried. She’s married, she willingly entered a relationship where fidelity was expected. She did not chose to look for someone to cheat with, but when she found a man she was compatible with she did chose to ignore the fidelity her husband could reasonably expect.
She uses her father as an example for why she chose to cheat. What she is overlooking is this: at some point her mother found out about the other woman and for whatever reason, agreed to overlook the relationship. Her mother was given the choice to stay or dissolve the marriage. Was this same option presented to the posters husband? No, she made a unilateral decision, one that would also affect her husband as well as the wife of her lover.
So the wife feels guilt over what she’s doing. This would indicate that she’s a decent human being and not a sociopath. It does not mean that in terms of fidelity to her marriage she made an ethical decision. There were options other than staying lonely in her marriage or cheating. She did not chose to examine those options or to remove herself from the temptation. She could have approached her husband and tried to tell him how she felt, she could have realized that it was a wakeup call telling her she had some internal work to do. She could have been forthright with her partner and said she needed a separation. All of these things hurt and are extremely difficult to do. She kept her affair secret because that was the easiest thing to do. Ethical people make the hard choices and accept the consequences.
The heart goes where it will, few of us can help that. As adults, we learn to accept that there will be difficult choices and unpleasant consequences but it is our responsibility to do what is right. I’d say that she is at the very beginning of a process that has the potential to help her become more ethical. Guilt is very difficult to live with and most humans try to avoid it by apportioning some of that guilt to other people. Sitting with her feelings and honestly examining herself will help her to see what is needed to avoid another such situation.
Ethics is the practice of making your actions match your values to do as little harm as possible.