Letters to the Editor
Xrandadu Hutman
Published Letters: 2714 Editor's Choice: 52
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The Letter Writer lacks empathy for her husband
[Read the article: I'm cheating on my husband and loving it. Is that a problem?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Dear Letter Writer --
The problem is that everything is about you. You are happy with your husband. You enjoy occasionally cheating with other men. You are not worried because you know that you can get away with it. That's because you are discreet and what your husband doesn't know, won't hurt you.
Notice that in all of your thinking, your husband's side is never represented. You never think about what he would want. That's what's wrong with your marriage, and it's rendering it a sham. In a good marriage the partner's look out for each other's best interests, even the ones that the other might not be aware of. There is something called "empathy" which in an old-fashioned cliche consists of "putting yourself in the other person's shoes." How would you feel if your husband cheated on you? Be honest, how would you really feel, if he were in the passionate embrace of another woman, savoring another woman's body, tastes, curves, smells, and other intimacies? Would you be completely OK with this?
I think you need to think this through. I think you're simply a emotionally immature person. You think that nothing will hurt you, and you are ready to continue thinking this way. You think nothing will hurt your husband. You will keep thinking this way until it's too late. Then you'll think, "I didn't realize." Come on, do you really want to follow that pattern? Many have before you....and it isn't fun. Why not learn from the mistakes of others instead of repeating them?
When you have affairs with other men, do they always wear condoms? Are you aware that venereal diseases spread anyway? You could give your husband any of a variety of diseases that you might not immediately be aware of because they can lay dormant for years. You could also develop cysts on your ovaries that, again, you won't know about until much later, when you'll think, "Oh, gosh, I just can't imagine how this might have occurred! Dear me!"
Yeah I'm trying to scare you. Well, to wake you up. You are affecting your husband's life whether you know it or not. You are also subtly feeding into his emotional life. You might think your husband doesn't know anything, and he probably doesn't on the surface. But people have instincts and suspicions. People pick up on small changes in another's temperament and emotions even when they don't realize it. Your husband could have little nagging suspicions that he won't verbalize for fear of being a fool.
One weird thing about cheating is it creates this unseen fracture in the connection between the main two people in the relationship. They are no longer on the same level, power-wise. The cheater has an ugly form of power over the cheated-on, where the cheater hoards all of the important information about his secret emotional and sexual life. The cheated-on may suspect this is occurring, but the cheated-on has no recourse. Anything the cheated-on might say or do will result in the cheater putting up even more walls. This is a subtle form of emotional abuse. It's like poison slowly creeping into the groundwater -- you won't know it's hurting you until it's built up and you're deathly ill.
My advice to you is to get a divorce. Then take an ethics class. Then get yourself a full battery of STD tests. (You might suggest this to your husband too...)
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Uggghhhh
[Read the article: Israel's rising right wing]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]These people make me sick. Does anybody really think they have the best interests of other humans in mind?
They're just power-hoarders looking to advance the cause of one small group (wealthy corporate nationalists) at the expense of everybody else.
They have no long-term vision for humankind.
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Imagine also the end-point of your life if you stay married
[Read the article: I'm cheating on my husband and loving it. Is that a problem?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I was thinking about this a little more, and I wondered, "What would happen if the LW stayed married and continued cheating, without being caught, for the rest of her life?"
Let's say you and your husband are both 80+ years old. When you die, you will die having had both the enduring love of your husband, and a whole slew of memories of intimate experiences with other men -- all secrets, of course, that you will either take to your grave or leave behind in diaries for your children or grandchildren to find ala that Clint Eastwood/Meryl Streep movie.
But what about your husband? Your husband will die having had what he believes to be the enduring and faithful love of his wife. He'll die thinking something that is not true. That means for his entire life, he will have been made into a fool.
Do you really want this for your husband? Do you really want his idea of his life's story to be completely at odds with reality?
I think it is cruel to separate somebody from the reality of their own life's narrative.
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Dear Anonymous
[Read the article: Israel's rising right wing]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Hey dude, I read Haaretz, Jerusalem Post and Israeli Insider. Also Debkafiles. Also Al-Jazeera and several Arab papers. Also Le Monde Diplomatique, Google World and Guardian UK.
So WTF are you talking about, and what's your point.
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Regarding the previous "Anonymous"
[Read the article: I'm cheating on my husband and loving it. Is that a problem?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...you forgot the part about her getting several cats.
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When will somebody make a movie about the Durutti Column?
[Read the article: "Control"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]That's the Factory band (er, person -- Vini Reilly) that really deserves some attention. The guy's still making music! Yet has anybody even heard of him? His music's great!
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Come on, Salon editors (and Joan Walsh) -- at least acknowledge Camille's letters are fake
[Read the article: The paranoid withdrawal fantasy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I've been reading these for years. Camille did the same thing on here in the late 1990s. It is creepily obvious that she's writing her own letters. The least you could do it admit it. It's pretty unfair to readers.