I agree...It is interesting to read everyone's "take" on things.

There's an old Blues song written by Willie Dixon and performed by Muddy Waters, Etta James, The Rolling Stones, Foghat and many others that I think expresses my feeling pretty well.



I don't want you to be no slave
I don't want you to work all day
I don't want you to be true
I just want to make love to you

I don't want you to wash my clothes
I don't want you to keep my home
I don't want your money too
I just want to make love to you

Well I can see by the way that you switch and walk
And I can tell by the way that you baby talk
And I know by the way that you treat your man
I wanna love you baby, it's a cryin' shame

I don't want you to bake my bread
I don't want you to make my bed
I don't want you cause I'm sad and blue
I just want to make love to you

I can relate...My husband didn't have "movie star" looks but he was "handsome enough."... It was his personality that drew people to him. He was cute and friendly (to all) and "full of life!"...He could really "light-up a room" yet he was modest and humble.. It was his joy and excitement and zest for life that made him so attractive and endearing...And he showed interest in everyone and knew how to make sincere and heartwarming and meaningful "connections" with people. (Both men and women.)...He never flirted. He always treated women with dignity and respect...Anyway I felt proud of my husband and proud to be married to him.

gotcha... so she don't need no brain or skill to be with you, cuz all you gonna do is Fruk her... they've even got human sized blow up dolls that will suffice for that, don't they? yeah, my mind went there... I stepped in it... you led me there and I did drink...

Depends on what you mean by "rivals". There are plenty of men that are quite happy with the woman that they have at home but they still go out and chat up other women.

In response to what you are saying in this thread about people that interfere, I think that I know what you mean but what tends to happen is that people go to their friends and family and they will talk about their partners to them. This is going to tend to turn them against the partner if what they are doing is complaining about their partner to them. Then you get your "interfering inlaws" when they might not have had anything against you to start off with. The "disloyalty" consists in talking about problems in your relationship with other people. I'm sure that we've all done it and I don't think that it particularly matters whether these other people are male or female. This topic isn't really about cheating at all. Maybe you see it that way because your husband had female friends and maybe women are worse when it comes to interfering in other people's relationships but I don't think that you are really going the right way about it when you say that you think that they should stop being friends with those people. That is just going to give your partner more to complain about and cause more conflict. If you don't get on with them then don't be friends with them and tell them to stay out of your relationship. If your relationship is strong enough it doesn't particularly matter what other people think. Tell your partner that you don't care what so and so thinks about you and to stop slagging you off to them every time there's an argument or a problem in your relationship because that is just going to cause more problems and turn people against you and your relationship.

Yes, I know there are lots of men who are happy with their women at home, and still chat up other women. But, a man that doesn’t find me to be enough woman to meet all his needs, will find himself chatting up women from another woman’s house, becuz he won’t be doing it from mine, unless of course, he doesn’t mind me chatting up other men besides him. But if that is the case, what’s the point to our being together in the first place, if we don’t meet each other’s needs sufficiently?

No, tawt, my original post didn’t mention cheating because that’s not what is in question in this particular scenario, it’s about disloyalty and disrespect… and to me, when both of these values are violated in combination it spells out the demise of a relationship, because it shows that there is no real connection between the partners when the one feels free to gossip about the other, while it destroys the trust completely… if I can’t trust someone with minor issues like keeping a simple confidence, or, not talking about me behind my back, there’s no way I can trust them with major issues... it's really just that simple

Well, you probably wouldn't even know if the man you are with was down the pub trying to chat up the barmaid while you're cooking his dinner. Unless you are living in each other's pockets you just aren't going to know what he's doing when you aren't together and all you can really do is try to work out what sort of man you're getting involved with and whether or not he's the type that would just be happy with you and not be likely to do that sort of thing. A lot of women do fall for charmers that are good at chatting up women though.

I don't know if it's entirely reasonable to expect someone to not talk about you and your relationship with other people. I talk to my family about my girlfriends. At the end of the day though, nothing that family or friends say about someone that I'm with really matters and they aren't going to influence my decisions. A family member asks me how I'm getting on with a girlfriend and if it's going well I say so and if it isn't I say so as well. I just tell them how I'm feeling and what's going on in my life because I come from a close family but I still make my own choices and if they don't like the woman that I'm with that's tough because I am an adult and I do make my own decisions. Of course, if I was with someone and she said to me that she was saying something to me in confidence and she didn't want me talking to other people about it that would be a different matter but you can't expect someone that you are with to not talk about you to other people that are close to them. Also, if the relationship is going well and you aren't doing anything wrong where is the problem?

They don't have the time to please them all, they are lousy lovers and lousy friends

Here goes my answer, I once had a guy who was in an open relationship contacting me. I just thought at first, that maybe he wanted someone to talk to. I didn't think he wanted to be anything more than friends with me. Yet, he suddenly kept leaving subtle clue's that would hint that he WAS wanting more from me. I guess he didn't realize I'd seen that he was in an open relationship on his profile. I peeped his profile because we got talking. Even if he had every intention of playing me, he has already lost, because I don't do open relationships. To me love is one plus one, not one plus two, unless maybe I was bi. If we can't be enough for each other, then I think I do myself a favour by quickly cutting all ties with the man.

That's always where women go when I talk about this. But, this IS NOT what I'm saying.

What's more loving and giving than giving someone their freedom? Than leaving them alone when they want to be left alone? I ask for nothing in a relationship except that when we're together, we enjoy it. Why would I screw that up by making rules and demands?

If she loves me and wants to be with me, she won't care about others. If she cannot stop thinking about others, then I'm happy to share in the small part she's willing to give me. Does that mean I love her any less? I don't think so.

Well, what you say only reflects your own values.

NO U?

I think that most people these days have those values and a commited monogamous relationship is just that, whether there's a legal document or not.

If you tell someone that you aren't commited to them and that you are going to have sex with other people that's one thing but anything else is cheating really and it spreads diseases and wrecks relationships.

Okay… let me clarify something about me… for political reasons I live my life out loud… openly… there’s nothing about my life, no matter how good, bad, praise worthy, or embarrassing it may be that I won’t reveal myself if and when absolutely necessary… I’m human and I’m flawed, I make mistakes and I mend my ways when I goof up… our entire lives are on record, some have deeper paper trails then others… because I’ve been writing my own story to leave behind after I die, I’ve spent thousands of dollars over the last 20 years obtaining every bit of documentation that has ever been created about me so that I can more accurately detail my life and its history. And there’s not too many of my more serious flubs that people don’t already know about. So, I don’t have anything to hide that I don’t share with my family, friends, enemies, etc… and I don’t have a problem with people talking about me with each other, even if they are bad mouthing me, because face it, not everybody likes us and always has only good things to say about us.

With that said… I’ll now present you with another hypothetical scenario, so you can try to understand my position more clearly, without my revealing names or confidences…

Me and a man join a dating site around the same time… the man then approached me via email and we strike up a conversation that soon leads us to begin a friendship. I live in the South and he lives in the North, so we can’t meet in person, but we talk on the phone, email, IM, and we spend hours, days, weeks, and months sharing our lives, our stories, our feelings, and our friendship grows pretty close. So I think…

But we are still strangers from completely different backgrounds… so our values, standards, beliefs, education levels, social standings, everything about us is new to each others worlds, and even though we accept our differences and enjoy each others company long distance, they still exist and can at times cause us to butt heads over issues… well, while we’re growing this friendship behind the scenes, we’re also posting on the forums, and he lets everybody know via a post that we are working together on one of my stories… this is a small world, so when new couples get together those who pay attention to the details about what everybody else is doing make note of it… then one day, as everything was going swimmingly we hit a snag over a very important issue that brought our friendship to a halt… and of course, I had to vent my feelings through my art, and posted a poem about our first disagreement…

at this time… another female member contacted my now ex-friend to find out what was going on between us… well, we had become so close that we didn’t want to stay apart, and soon reunited, putting that little tiff behind us… but he and the female member decided to post their own version of our events, and when I read what she said, I realized they must have spoken about us and it was then he said that he didn’t know her until she’d emailed him to find out if he was okay after our breakup… which I thought was strange, becuz if they weren't already friends, why would she be contacting a male to inquire about his personal business... instead of contacting the female side of the relationship…

well, I set this idle curiosity to the side and we resumed our friendship… only now we decide to keep the extent of it private and off the boards… then he decides to quit posting altogether, but doesn’t want me to stop, so he encourages me to continue writing and posting… while he refuses to acknowledge our friendship anymore… going so far as ignoring my posts while he posted to others around me… and this other female member who had previous to their allegedly first email contact responded to my work, then suddenly stopped posting her replies on my work too… like she was boycotting me on his behalf… she even became more aggressive toward me over time, which led me to ask him what was going on between the two of them… he denied everything and said it was all in my mind… only the trail of bread crumbs can reveal the hypothetical path of this scenario… and because of the type of friendship they have formed, in which he complains to her, then she strikes out at me as her way of defending him, is extremely inappropriate… and odd… because he still maintained to me that they aren’t friends…

but, whatever is going on between the two of them, even if it is just a behind the scenes friendship, like he had going with me, there’s no room in one man’s life for two women… especially when one of them is highly aggressive and enjoys causing trouble… and he defends her to me every time she acts up… so much so that it’s obvious he has feelings for her… and I don’t play second fiddle to any woman… so the last time they ganged up on me I broke off our friendship again… because I needed to create enough space for them to show their true hands… and it was only at this time that he finally revealed his true condescending feelings about me… as he attacked me, she cheered him on… so… once they no longer felt they had to hide their tightly knit connection to each other, their joint actions against me confirmed what I’d suspected about them all along…

So… now… if he and I were to reunite… under the circumstances that I describe in this hypothetical scenario… should I let them remain friends, or make him choose between me and her?

Please keep in mind Tawt, that this is a fictional scenario that I’m presenting so you can get a different point of view about whether I should let him keep his friendship to this particular woman, if we were still together…

I agree.. cutting all ties works for me too...

Well, nothing when your heart is in the right place... and that's the kind of relationship the woman wants too... but I've had a couple girlfriends that had guy friends with this same approach, and they always complained about not feeling really loved by the guys because they don't care enough to set boundaries... and the women want a deeper connection besides just sex and freedom... and they always ended up leaving these guys for other guys that would take their relationships to the next level... just saying...

What? You posted this thread to have a rant about something that never actually happened?

If that's the way you see it...

My understanding all along this was fictional which is why I never had a legit answer for it.