- Reviews & Essays
- Forgiveness
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As both a writer and a reader of erotic stories I have watched the arguments rage back and forth at the stories, at the public comments, on the bulletin boards and in emails. When a spouse strays, when should forgiveness be offered and when should it be withheld? Its pretty easy to make one general observation. No matter what how any given story handles the situation, its certain to offend someone.
First, let's define "Infidelity". It's not as easy as it might appear at first glance. Does the term require the partner have sex with someone else? Does it encompass flirting, or necking, or making out in the back seat of a 64 Dodge Dart? Where is the line in the sand that the crossing of moves the action from innocence to betrayal?
Originally, I was going to automatically rule out any action that took place in an open relationship. I'm not sure that I can do that. Even in those relationships, there is often an agreed upon set of limits. When those limits are crossed, when the agreements are broken, isn't it the same as cheating? I recall a very interesting story where a couple joined a swing club. As it turned out, one of the partners was doing it to reopen an affair with a lover from before the marriage. To me that's cheating. Why? Because its deceitful. One person is doing something behind the other's back.
Is it cheating if it doesn't include sex? Please, no discussion of what goes on in the White House. Oral sex is sex. Anal sex is sex. Sex between two women or two men is still sex. Is there such a thing as emotional infidelity? Cyber sex, phone sex, girls confessing, guys bragging, or heck, girls bragging and guys confessing. Am I cheating if I confess to a close friend my fantasy of sex with Sean Connery? Or with a VERY close friend my fantasy of Faith Hill?
No, of course not. The line can be very fine though. For the purposes of this discussion let's confine the definition of cheating to physical contact of the closest kind. Real, one on one (or more than one) sex involving lots of sweating, intimate contact and probably orgasms. If that isn't a clear enough definition for you, I'm sorry. Why are you on an erotic website?
Once a spouse, partner, or boyfriend/girlfriend has indeed cheated, or perhaps been fortuitously interrupted as they were getting undressed in bed together, AND the partner is aware of what has transpired (no flag, no foul), what happens next?
From my review of a lot of stories and a lot of comments at Lit, I find two extreme schools of thought on forgiveness. The first school holds that any crossing of the fidelity line is unacceptable. For example, I once received a condemnation of a character in one of my stories because when she was kissed by a long ago lover, she kissed the lover back before regaining control of herself. This school of thought considers adultery unforgivable, plain and simple. The usual response seems to be "Kick the offender out and with luck they'll catch AIDS and die a horrible death. That'll teach 'em!"
The difficulty I have with this view is that there is no margin for error. A college girl gets drunk at the same party her boyfriend passes out at and ends up screwing with the star quarterback. Is she in the same classification as the mild-mannered father of three who bangs the 18 year old babysitter every Saturday night on the pretense of taking her home or the soccer mom who takes on the entire starting defensive squad of the Pittsburgh Steelers?
I don't think so. Among anything else this makes me think of the old "hung for a sheep as a lamb" chestnut. This seems to mean that when the girlfriend sobers up she might as well do the rest of the fraternity and perhaps the girl's field hockey team while she's at it. What's done can never be undone.
The second school holds the complete opposite opinion. With love and understanding, nothing is impossible. Indeed the farthest edge of this group holds that no offense has even been committed. All boundaries and agreements are artificial and only stifle the happiness that comes from complete freedom to act solely as one chooses. Indeed, the partner should be happy that they have the fortune to be with someone who is so open and free.
Here my problem is that liberty becomes license. Then the person really is doing the basketball coaching staff and the entire secretarial pool at the office. It doesn't matter that they are abandoning their children, their job and creating heartache for the one that they supposedly love. As far as I'm concerned, it has to work both ways. Generally I see most of those type stories as having one person who loves too much and the other who doesn't care for anything past the moment.
Generally there is a lot of shouting that goes on between these opinions. One accuses the other of being "wimps". The second tells the first that they're "Nazis".
Then in the middle, we have the dreaded moderates, of which I confess myself to be one. When we are asked if an affair can be forgiven we answer firmly and with great conviction, "It depends". I believe that some errors are forgivable, and some are not. I've written stories with both types of endings. To my mind, its not just the length of an affair, nor the deep the involvement is that is the key, although certainly I want to discuss those issues. What matters to me when I'm trying to decide on one of my stories or on one that I'm reading is a myriad of factors.
It is said that men look at affairs from the physical side, women from the emotional side. I doubt that its that easy but perhaps it does shed some light on the subject. When confronted with an erring spouse a woman is more likely to wonder "Do you love her?" A man, whether he vocalizes it or not, wants to know "Was he better than me in bed?" In both cases the actual words are likely "How could you DO this to me?"
First of all, how did the affair happen? Was it planned or did it suddenly and unexpectedly take place? A husband gets sloshed at an out-of-town business meeting and ended up in bed with some stranger. Compare this with a girlfriend who plans for weeks how she is going to spend the weekend with her old flame at a reunion that she has made sure her current boyfriend is not going to be at. The more effort and planning that goes into an affair the deeper the transgression and therefore the harder it will be to forgive.
Second, what overt harm did it do to the partner? I'm not just talking about being brazen about the whole affair, although the more and the harder one rubs their partner's nose into what is happening the slimmer the chances of forgiveness are. Other factors include; is the cheater denying the partner anything, be it sex, affection or time spent together? Although we are on an erotic site and therefore tend to think of the denial, lessening or quality of sex being the biggest injury, often its not. Intimacy means a lot more than just sex, and not just for women either. The withdrawal of the cheater from the partner whether caused by guilt, indifference or simply lack of time to balance everything going on is as damaging as the physical actions themselves.
Is anyone else caught up in this? Are children involved and are they suffering because of the actions of the cheater or the reactions of the other person? The more devoted a parent is, the harder they will probably find to forgive when the kids have been affected. At the same time, the consequences of a divorce, especially a bitter one, have to be taken into consideration. I'm not saying "stay together for the sake of the kids", but it is a strong consideration.
Third, where other factors at work here? Was there alcohol, drugs or blackmail involved? Particularly in the case of being drunk, that's an excuse, not a reason. An adult who doesn't know when to stop drinking shouldn't be drinking at all. That college girlfriend up above has a better excuse than a 40 year old married woman for getting drunk. Drugged unwittingly is rape, not cheating. And blackmail, especially as used most often here, comes from making a voluntary misstep, the compromising pictures of the wife with the boss for example. If the first time didn't happen then the blackmail wouldn't exist. It does however, tend to make further offenses more understandable.
Fourth, and perhaps the most important factor of all, how does the cheater react when caught? Some things are almost certain to happen. As long as possible the cheater is going to deny what has happened. When confronted with proof, the next instinct is to attempt to minimize the damage as much as possible. These actions; coupled with the standard "I can explain", "This is the only time its happened", and the most famous "I just love you, it was only about sex" are panic reactions. They spill out in a desperate attempt to soften the situation, make it appear not as bad as it is, make the cheater appear less wrong.
Now there are those stories we find here where the cheater simply shrugs and basically says "Its all your fault and I'm not going to stop." Assuming this isn't revenge sex or something like that, then the partner is going to have to take a really hard look to see if they can get live with the situation as its presented to them. I'm not talking about the "willing cuckold" type stories. No forgiveness is needed when the partner willingly acquiesces to the affair. This is about people who are hurt and want the affair to stop. Can they live with the cheater's ultimatum? Some will. Some people will be so in love that they'll suffer the hurts in silence to keep that partner. Most won't. It certainly isn't a good starting place.
Most people though, unless they were planning on heading out the door already when they were caught, will try to salvage the relationship they were in. They may have been cheating but there had to be something of core value with the partner they were slipping around on. Otherwise they would have simply packed up and gone long before. Eliminate money and status reasons, cheaters like that are simply quieter cases of "I'm not stopping". We're talking about the people who didn't think of the consequences, didn't consciously admit they were really jeopardizing their marriage. These are the people who want to be forgiven, hope to be forgiven.
Can they be? I can only decide for myself. Maybe yes, maybe no. You will have to choose for the stories you read or write and the characters you encounter or create.
- COMMENTS
inka22224 months agoThings to add:
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- You forgot to add "or when a woman cheats on her cuckold bf/husband" to Rule 11 about "no pregnancies"
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- Someone "famous" already mentioned it in an essay on writing, but in LE universe, especially LW, 30% of male population are Navy Seals
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- Again may be LW specific, but ALL husbands (or at least an overwhelming majority) are mentally defective Ghandi followers. They LOOOOOOVE their wives with an emotion so fictionally powerful that it survives not simply being cheated on, but even being literally stabbed in the back, or literally cuckolded. They can't possibly see the love of their life cry or even be sad, even if the sadness is from the evil bitch self inflicted karmic damage, for which they feel somehow responsible.
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- Yes, as per rule #1, everyone has large penis (except C.H.). BUT, if you're black the penis is at least 12 inches and thicker than an elephant's leg, or at least trunk. In real universe, in USA, whites have penis statistics of only 1/10th inch shorter on average than blacks.
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- Again LW specific, but while there's obviously nothing lucky or good about being cheated on, those cheated on husbands/fiancés/BFs, have leprechaun level 80 level of luck as far as discovering the cheating, for most part. The most improbable sets of circumstances happen to achieve that. Although, if one talks to people in law/justice system, it seems that most real world criminals are caught because they either were dumb or blabbed so perhaps this isn't so unrealistic.
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- Single fathers with daughters outside incest sub-universe, have the daughters ALWAYS unnaturally bright, with Einstein level IQ and off the charts EQ, and their main mission in life since age 8, to find the next wife for the father. Curiously, it's only daughters - the sons are typical real universe emotionally immature males, in case of a single father, they at best hurtfully take the mickey out of their dad for being single and in case of a mother, they throw a major tantrum if she brings home a guy she likes to meet the child (ok that one might be realistic i suppose).
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- Amazing men (good looking, rich, great personality but with dark attractive edge) always fall for the shitty women with awful past, after the women's obligatory (and usually not very taxing and entirely insincere) "redemption"; instead of finding a decent woman who wasn't a dumpster fire of a toxic superdump all her life except last 2 years.
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- And in those exceptional cases when they don't, those amazing men (good looking, rich, great personality but with dark attractive edge) fall for a woman who never did anything to better her life, got involved with a total shit guy (of her own choice and volition) and is now saddled with the shithead guy's child or children. Women who make good life choices and have good personality and don't do bad stuff are shit out of luck.
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- Everyone who discovers they are being cheated on, immediately gets brain freeze for an extended period of time, can't think of anything, can't make decisions etc. Unless you are one of the 30% of men who are Navy Seals, then you know EXACLY how to solve the cheating problem within 10 seconds, with a plan rivaling the bombing of Hiroshima in its complexity, ruthlessness and efficacy of results.
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- 5% of population (mostly men) are uber-hackers, able to break into accounts, financial institutions, etc... They know how to clone phones and install spying apps from internet (even though it's on unrooted Android and un-jailbroken iPhone, which most random spying apps can't do). However, in a rare case the woman is a hacker, she is always literally world class champion. She doesn't break into someone's gmail, she breaks into CIA and NSA and FBI (simultaneously), steals money from offshore banks (always donating to charity) and can find any person by just their first name and last digit of car tag.
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There are several problems with "forgiveness" side, that you should take into consideration. To clarify, when I talk about forgiveness, I mean "forgive and continue loving and being married". I am NOT talking about "divorce, and stop feeling negative feelings about the spouse for the sake of your own mental wellbeing" - the latter is actually a good thing, especially *in your own head*. The proponent of justice in me thinks that you should NOT inform the perpetrator of cheating, that you forgave them, even if you internally do for your own sake. As to "forgiving so you can stay married", here are the problems:
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- Forgiveness as a concept increases the unjustness in the universe. On a philosophical level it means people can do bad things to other people with impunity. That's a shitty universe to live in. On a practical level, in a system, it's a strategy which creates moral hazard, LITERALLY inviting people to harm others. Including the one you "forgave" further harming you - see below.
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- Recidivism among cheaters is VERY high (just Google "cheating recidivism"). "once a cheater always a cheater" is NOT a LW fictional trope; it's a reflection of actual reality in life. When you forgive a cheater and take them back, you basically just ensured you are staying married to a ticking bomb of cheating.
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- Forgiveness (except in specific very narrow circumstances) is a slippery slope. If you can forgive a "blowjob" why wouldn't and shouldn't you forgive sex? if you can forgive sex 2 times one weekend, why not 100 times over 2 years? If you can forgive her risking getting pregnant with his child, why not actually getting pregnant? In practical individual terms, this means if she got away with the former, she will now be incentivized to do the latter (see last bullet). In higher scale terms, it means that there's very little solid philosophical ground to be a "moderate" - if you can argue for forgiving some things, your own arguments are likely to be usable to argue for forgiving almost anything. (yes, there are very small defined limits where there is no slippery slope, e.g. distinguishing zero-intent vs. prior intent cheating; zero-lies vs. full transparency followup; and couple more, but this is out of scope for now).
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- Forgiveness creates a VERY strong imbalance in a marriage, making it pathological. In essence, cheating+forgiveness means that BOTH spouses realize with clarity that the victim loves the perpetrator significantly more. Yes that imbalance already existed, but at the very least, it was invisible, which constrained both spouses from either reacting to it or abusing it too much. At this point, the cheater will feel they have no need to even try to treat their spouse well in any way shape or form, and won't have ANY respect for the spouse even if they had some before. Whereas, most NORMAL spouses would start and keep feeling resentment over imbalance.
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- If children are involved, forgiving the perpetrator creates an unhealthy lesson for the kids, that it's OK to severely harm someone you claim to "love", with no consequences, and to generally be an immoral shithead. After all whatever you do, you'll be forgiven.
Anonymousover 1 year agoWhat is left out of this essay is what is the definition of forgiveness? Does it mean that I love you unreservedly, trust you fully, and the relationship continues as though the betrayal never happened? For those of us on the BTB side of the scale, we find this to be unrealistic. Only God forgives at that level.
For many of us, forgiveness means that I’m not going to be the one to punish the wrongdoers. Now, keep in mind that divorce is NOT a punishment, rather an inevitable consequence. When someone commits adultery, divorce is just formally letting the government know that the contract has been broken. Forgiveness is, to a BTBer, the following:
I’ll tell the children and the parents the truth of what you did, along with anyone who asks, because I don’t lie, but I won’t put up posters, or share videos online.
I won’t arrange for you to lose your job, or end up homeless down by the river. However if your boss wants to let you go, I’m not going to save you. You removed yourself from my protection.
I’m not going to physically harm you, torture you, or kill you. Depending on who you chose to have the affair with, they might hurt you. After all “By the wicked shall the wicked be punished”.
TLDR: Many of us genuinely believe, as bewildering as it is to some, that the punishment for adultery should be death. Therefore, forgiveness is merely the withholding of the punishment. If they are truly remorseful, and have “learned their lesson”, then they will be better in their next relationship, but they don’t get to keep the relationship that they betrayed.
Hopefully this helps to understand why we make the comments that are weird to some of you.
ZK
Sarahwithlovealmost 2 years agoInteresting. It is easy to see the rage these stories bring, and I agree that there are two divided, often adversarial sides but for different reasons. The "forgiveness" readers have a unique perspective that is impossible to attain in real life but common in the written word and that is the ability to know the characters true thoughts because they are conveyed in black in white by the author. That never happens anywhere in the world unless ESP exists, which it doesn't. So when regret and repentance is conveyed by a character, those are the true beliefs of the character. The reader knows then, the truth and what the future holds.
The other side takes the actions of the character and places themselves in the characters shoes and uses their real life experiences, often painful and damaging, to decide the future of the characters. It is perhaps, then a means to build their own selves up and to heal. Or perhaps to take vengeance on a cheating character that was missing in their own real life experience. They also take vengeance on the other readers and the author this way, labeling them a cuck or a wimp, because doing so, hides their shame in being one themselves, in the distant past. It is probably an effective mechanism for their well-being, as long as it isn't offensive. Too often it is however. The problem with this side is that they ignore the author's words in describing the true thoughts of the actors and instead create their own future outlook for characters in a story as would be in real life. This is silly, of course, but too often we read a comment that says, "She is a cheater and a liar and will end up fucking around on the cuck the first chance she gets" when the author knows the evidence is right here in print that she won't ever consider those actions again.
Anonymousover 5 years agoI shared a lot of your process. There are many factors to juggle here. But I lean towards BTB. RAACs are hard, because cheating is a hard thing to deal with for everyone involved.
You first got to the core of the issue, deceit. You try to build a life with someone, and a great big chunk of it was a lie. Life is already hard, and unbelievably tragic. Really listen to even well-to-do friends, and you might hear some horror story about their youth. A mother decapitated by a tree in front of them (that's a true story) just awful experiences. And then you think you have at least one single person to build a life with...organize some happiness out of the chaos. And then you discover you don't know them at all. That throws you into flux. You'll ask yourself, "what the hell do you really know....you didn't even know this person you shared a roof with for x amount of years"
that's what cheating does, at it's core. And if the cheated partner was faithful, that's where the pain is all too real. let's not forget the cheater, if they do feel empathy, how crappy do you think this makes them feel? either they'll fight their own reality and be in a constant state of civil war within, or they get to just take a real hard long look at themself and say, "i'm the bad guy here....i'v taken something pure and ruined it" there's no easy way out for them.
i understand the btb crowd more. anger and sadness are common emotions. the 'forgive at all costs' crowd is a lot harder to relate to. i understand denial and bargaining, but if that's all they have...it's a really painful place to be. at least an angry wife or husband can go through all five stages, accept the broken relationship and move towards a future. staying stuck in unearned forgiveness feels hollow. the pain will get buried, but remain. my ultimate takeaway is that love is common, but a relationship is work. if one partner expresses or hides their lack of commitment, is there really any point in making it work? i think more relationships would work out if people as a whole understood that they're not special. you can be replaced. what you bring to a relationship is very much those qualities of honest, effort, communication, and FUN. And believe it or not, fun is work. Maybe you just wanna play your game while your spouse watches their show.....but this'll be the 20th time in a row. Maybe now is the time to wash your stanky ass, dress nice, and invite them to go on a hike with you.
notredame43over 6 years agoim very much a you fucked up you're burned bitch or bastard . sometimes forgiveness is earned, but it's rare . as for willing or gutless males and unapologetic cheating wives nope id sterilize both , bullets lead to bars😆👍
