Gloominary wrote:The point of criminalizing adultery is not to force someone you love to be with you, but to keep someone you love, who no longer loves you (as much) or never loved you in the first place from disrespecting you, taking advantage of you, using you, claiming they love you and only you, and than doing something completely different behind your back.
So, it would be OK if they did it openly, in this justification. IOW if they took the risks of natural causes. But generlly it is the spouse who reports the crime, so I generally would have to know. And frankly I don't feel any benefit from say, one of her friends reporting her to the police. Tell me, and let natural emotional social consquences follow.
We're talking about criminalizing adultery here, not divorce, if they're no longer devoted to you, they should get a divorce, or if they were never devoted to you, they shouldn't've married you in the first place.
I think that's too simple. Though certainly these may be better options. and I think it is up to me, not the state to decide how she should have handled it. I don't need them coming in, when I am capable of dealing with it, the way I want to. I wouldn't want the state coming in regarding friendships. My friend is back talking me and other shit, so the state gets involved. I realize there is a legal aspect to the marriage, it is an official contract, which actually I think is wrong. I had to get married because of international aspects of our situation. Or, let's say, it made sense for practical reasons and the idea certainly fit our feelings for each other. But otherwise I would not have done it. I don't see it as the state's business and I also see them as not competent to deal with my relationships or to be my whip.
They need to be held accountable for the vows they voluntarily took.
To me, accountalbe to me, and to children if they are involved and to the other guy also. In the sense that she or I - if I cheated - might be fucking over someone else, the other woman, let's say, also.
To have the state punish her: It's like I am a child and the state has to look out for my welfare and take care of things I can take care of. Or it is like we cannot trust the social world to work this out. NOthing is going to fix it all, but I don't need the people who, for example, might have been school principals - iow some bureaucrat - fixing my wife's unfaithfulness. Or lawyers getting in there. I mean, that is like getting a dentist to fix my bike.
And the punishments would also be as much category errors.'
As the victim, if it was that simple that I was the victim, I get nothing from the punishment. I don't think society does either. It is a mess out there now, but we need to find our way through it. Controlling the mess, pushing it further underground, making it 'work' with even less freedom, that's just hiding from our fears that we will not be loved as if we an guarantee it. Or fear of not being respected. Or fear of being cuckholded. Or fear of not being good enough at sex. Or not being lovable enough.
I get laws that protect strangers from strangers and even loved ones from the violence of each other. But this...no.
We need to work this out between people, just as we do friendships. Which entails, not always having it work out. But then government involvement is at best no guarantee of this either.