To disagree with the statement "the other woman owes you nothing"

[Sarahcoggles]

I see this time and again on MN.
Woman posts that husband is having an affair. She hates the OW and is very angry with her, as well as being angry with husband of course.
Then a load of posters pile in saying she should direct all her anger at husband, as he was the only one who owed her anything. The OW owed her nothing, so she shouldn't be angry with her.

I think that's wrong. We all owe our fellow human beings respect and courtesy. If I bump someone's car in a car park I should leave them a note. I don't owe them anything, I never promised I wouldn't bump into their car, they didn't put their trust in me not to bump into their car , I never promised to pay for any damage that I might do to their car. They don't even know me. But it's still my fault, my carelessness, and common courtesy dictates that I should leave a note and be held accountable.

Why is it perfectly fine to have a relationship with someone else's husband, knowing that you're going to hurt that person, just because they're a stranger and you never promised you wouldn't shag their husband?

Personally I think both parties are equally to blame, just in different ways.

If you read my posts you'd know the answer to these questions

Numbertheory.#

"My point isn't that marriage isn't usually understood in the UK by the participants to be sexually exclusive, rather that the institution does not require fidelity. Sleeping with someone who is married is simply sleeping with someone who has lied to their spouse. It's no worse than sleeping with someone who is in a supposedly sexually exclusive relationship where they aren't married. It isn't an attack on the institution of marriage."

I agree.
Unless the marriage has any kind of semblance of spiritual commitment (whatever that might look like) it is just a party and having sex with someone who is married (particularly in the UK) means nothing at all as the vows made at the point of marriage mean more or less nothing.

OH had an emotional affair and has left me for her. OW told him of her feelings, which was the catalyst (he figured it was all in his head before she spoke up). I don't blame her for speaking up, if he was committed to me he would have said no. He'd been lying to me for over a year and he knew what he was doing.

Bollocks, in the nicest possible way.

The LAW dictates you should not leave the scene of a car accident (which is when you bumped into the car)

The other woman owes you nothing and had probably done you a favour, as "remember how you got him, because that's exactly how you'll loose him"

If she walked in to your relationship it's because there was an open door

People aren't possessions, just like if your best friend dumped you to be best
Friends with someone else, it was their decision and your friendship must have has holes in the first place.

Also if we we're all doing the sisterhood thing we should all take a vow not to tolerate cheating / poor behaviour from men which would eradicate it all together as to allow this behaviour is to reinforce it.

Don't get me wrong, I have ended friendships because they were cheating on their spouse, having affairs with married men etc because it changed the way I see them, and it fundamentally changed them. It is not behaviour I find endearing at all but to blame the woman shifts the focus away from the man.

@Sarahcoggles , you’re changing your parameters all the time. You conflate “not exactly as much to blame” as “total free pass for life choices.”

Your OP says “equally to blame,” and obviously a stranger who’s never met you and only knows about you through what the lying cheating bloke tells her is in no way as culpable as your husband.

Only one of them promised to love and honour you all his life. Only one of them decided with you to have children, with all the duties and commitments to family that brings. Only one of them is the person who should love you most in the world but betrayed your trust (not to mention risk of STDs)

It’s rank misogyny and patriarchal bullshit not to recognise that.

The OW owes nothing directly to the wife, but she owes herself and society better decisions.

Disagree with you. The partner who is cheating is always the person who should take most of the blame.

Yes, it is wrong for the other party to sleep with a married man (or woman) but they indeed don't owe you anything.

Your partner is the one who made a commitment to you and who is breaking it by having an affair and lying to you.

Married men are not powerless beings who are preyed on by women who want to sleep with them...

They make a choice to cheat even through they know this could destroy their family.

I can completely understand the anger towards the other woman/man but in the end you are a stranger to them and it is your partner who has betrayed you.

I was responding to your OP.

Also I want to add that the reason you put the focus so much on the other woman is because it's easier to take your anger out on her than on someone close to you.

But the one who hurt you is your partner.

I agree with you OP. We all need to take responsibility for our own moral compass. I think women who sleep with other women's husbands have a spectacularly low moral compass. Just like the husbands.

As always OW is vile, morally reprehensible, a whore, slut, insert other dirty words; while sexually incontinent men are just weak and pathetic beings that women can haul around by their dicks 🙄.

Just because you can doesn't mean you should. I could kick puppies, trip up elderly people and steal sweets from kids but...should I? Of course not. Same applies to being the OW.

The difference is that all of the above are crimes, being an OW is not. We may feel that ‘other women’ owe certain moral behaviours, but that means less than fuck all to anyone who doesn’t agree with that premise.

My husband is the one that stood up and made promises to me, he’s the only one that owes me fidelity, and he’s the only one that could betray me. Another woman did not, does not, and could not.

Here are some things that are not crimes.

Calling a fat person fat.
Telling someone you think they are ugly or stupid.
Laughing and jeering at a homeless person and waving banknotes in their face.
Telling a child they will never amount to anything.

According to you,

The difference is that all of the above [previous poster's examples] are crimes, being an OW is not

But none of my examples are crimes. None of them are illegal. Nor have any of us ever promised not to do them.

So by your logic, all of those things are fine.

It’s not really stealing sweets from kids though, is it? It’s more taking a sweet a man offered you and then begged you to have because his wife doesn’t actually want the sweet and they have separate sweetie jars now anyway and he’s never felt like she understood his lemon sherbets. They were his sweets to share and he shared them with someone else.

And sleeping with a man who is married is nothing like a person verbally abusing children and vulnerable people. Why would it be? It’s not the same at all. Totally different situations.

I mean, animal cruelty, theft, and assault. Not necessarily in that order.

And yes, your new examples are things people can choose to do. Recognising that an OW doesn’t owe the wife anything isn’t the same as saying that it’s a pleasant thing to do. It’s not, but it’s not a betrayal.

FYI, I’m not an OW, haven’t been an OW, and I don’t think it’s a good thing to do so I won’t be one either. The point is that my choice not to have been/be one is not based on me ‘owing’ anything to a wife though, any more than an other woman owes it to me to not fuck my husband.

They are both to blame for any subterfuge.

I don't think the OW "owes" the wife anything.

I do hope tho, that somehow, somewhere the OW has some time of realisation of the devastation her very own actions have had on not just the wife but invariably many many others. It is the blase nochalant way so many OW go there without a second thought which is so distasteful. They almost view the wife and the children of the marriage as somehow not human, any hurt they might "in theory" be causing as not being a thing, and a (sometimes astounding) sense of entitlement. As a previous poster said, i do think there are two different types of people in life - those who have the capacity to grasp the concept of lifelong commitment and the idea of "vows" - and those who really do not have any such capacity and just see life as a series of "experiences" or "opportunities" for them to grab/go for should they so chose.
You can only hope that the OW herself is used as an "experience" or "opportunity" by others along the way (although admittedly she is likely the type of person who will not give a sh*t if someone uses her).

Its a bit like how people would react if they by chance walked passed a shop which had ben ram raided etc there are people in life who under no circumstances would go in and take stuff for themselves - they would phone the police or whatever, where there are people who would be in that shop like a shot without a second thought taking whatever they wanted because they can with zero thought for the people who might be affected by their actions, only out for what they can get.

OW are like that.

You don't 'owe' it to the homeless person not to taunt them by waving money in front of their face.

You don't 'owe' it to the morbidly obese person not to call them a "disgusting fat pig".

The point I am making is just because you haven't made some kind of formal, legally binding oath not to do something, doesn't mean it's not a repugnant and appalling thing to do.

And just because you haven't made a formal, legally binding oath to another specific individual doesn't mean that you're not treating them like shit, or that it's in any way OK.

I kind of think we do have some sort of moral responsibility not to do things to other people that cause them appalling pain and suffering, even if we're not legally obliged to refrain from it.

I don't agree it's equal, regardless of sex the one in a marriage conducting an affair takes the majority of the blame, but the affair partner, is a lowlife and no doubt is viewed by some of their family and friends as one, and they deserve any shit that comes their way.
Always the person in the marriage shoulders the majority of the blame.

The examples of abuse of other people are not appropriate. All of the examples on the list are of deliberate cruelty that bring no benefit to the perpetrator other than the sick pleasure of hurting someone.
OW do not typically lie in wait to prey upon weak men for the sheer pleasure of hurting their wives. Their purpose is the relationship with a man they often believe they love, who they usually think is unhappy in his marriage, and that they are a better match for if they'd just met him first.
Other than feelings of jealousy and possibly guilt, the spouse probably figures not at all in their thoughts.
OW are often guilty of gullibility, nearly always of selfishness, but they are not comparable to abusers.

The examples are entirely appropriate.

There are posters claiming that there is no obligation not to knowingly cause harm and pain to another human being unless you're legally obliged not to do it, or you have officially promised not to.

I'm suggesting that actually, as a semi-decent human being, you do have a moral imperative not to behave in a way that causes terrible pain and suffering to another person, purely for your own benefit, and that legal obligation really isn't the point.

It's the partner who is, of course, most to blame and bears the responsibility of infidelity.

That doesn't mean that knowingly shagging a married man/woman isn't a complete dick move though.