For the most part, I don’t really keep up with celebrity gossip, and can’t remember the last time I paid any notice to any of those garbage magazines in the super markets. When I was down in Punta Cana, I caught something one day about Tiger Woods but didn’t really understand what had happened. Jump ahead a few days later, and the TV was full of information about his alleged affairs.
Nobody is perfect, and everyone slips up from time to time. That said, when two people step up to that alter and proclaim their love for each other, it really is something that I believe shouldn’t be taken lightly. That the average divorce rate is North America is over 50% is indicative of both how meaningless some of those vows really are, and also how quick people are to move on when things go sour in a marriage. A friend of mine once said that too many people these days want the wedding, and yet very few people want the actual marriage.
I don’t think I’m the type of person that could forgive someone for cheating on me, either in a committed relationship or a marriage. Some people can, and I respect them for it. I can also imagine loving someone enough that maybe that’s the type of an event that a marriage could recover from. And with that in mind, I could maybe understand someone having way too many beers at the bar, having a bunch of problems at home, and then going home with someone and making a rather monumental mistake. It obviously doesn’t make it right in that scenario, but at least I could understand how it possibly happened. What I don’t really understand, and can’t really imagine anyone forgiving, is when a partner vows “until death do us part” and then spends the next several years cheating on their spouse with multiple people. I read a quote the other day from Chris Rock where he said people are only as loyal as their options. Given the failure of the modern marriage, maybe there’s some truth in that.
I really have no idea if the allegations against Tiger are true. Truthfully, he should be afforded the privacy he needs to deal with everything and try to resolve his family issues, if they exist. If they end up being true though, I really have a hard time knowing that companies like Nike will continue to let him be a spokesperson for their products, knowing a good deal of their target demographic is young kids, many of which probably look up to him as a role-model. But that’s the sad state of consumerism these days unfortunately.
In any relationship, the measure of committment is in what you give to it, not receive from it. Hence forgiveness. There is no greater act of freedom you can bestow on someone than to forgive them. If you measure relationships by the degree to which you are giving you’ll always know what’s required.
The great failure of today’s relationships is that people view them as win/lose, or more succinctly, gain/loss. That view is derived from the measure of receiving, and thus always fails.
You can’t get out of it what you don’t put into it. A basic foundry law of the universal way of things.
I agree, but I also don’t think any relationship can be a black hole, where one person consistently gives, and the other person consistently takes. Relationships involve two people, and both people need to give, compromise and sacrifice to make a relationship work.
In terms of forgiveness, I think it’s obviously important in any relationship. But some words can’t be taken back, and some acts simply can’t be forgiven. I don’t think there’s an absolute measure, and it depends on the people involved. Some people can forgive infidelity, and I respect that. But others can’t, and I don’t fault them for it.
Clearly a relationship can’t be a black hole. My statements shouldn’t be framed in absolutes not extremes.
in responding to acts like infidelity you have to ask yourself what you’re trying to accomplish. If it’s to punish, retribute or hurt the other, then it’s a slippery slope. If you want to ebd the relationship because it’s due to moralily or ethics or personal belief, one could still forgive the other and yet still go a separate way. They’re exclusive things.
Forgiveness is more about letting hurt, anger and pain go within one’s self than it is pardoning the other.
If forgiveness is framed in a judiciary sense, then it’s about arbitrary and subjective determinations of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. If framed purely in regard to one’s personal emotional and mental well being, it’s then more about the ability to accept the immutable experiences which shape a life.
Rather verbose and grandiose I know, but reflection should be 😉
Definitely interesting. Although, if forgiveness is “more about letting hurt, anger and pain go within one’s self than it is pardoning the other”, which I actually kind of agree with, then isn’t it more about helping one’s self than giving to the other person?
I still think you can not forgive someone and it doesn’t mean you’re trying to punish them or anything. Some wounds take a very long time to heal. In the context of infidelity and a marriage, the other person broke the vows you made on your wedding day. At that point, in many ways, the relationship (the original one) is severed. You can try to forge forward and make a new relationship, one where the event happened and both parties moved on the best they could, but I think the original one (that had those elements of trust in place) is no longer.
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Absolutely it’s more about helping one’s self. In the same way that the focus on giving is about one’s self. Focusing always on the other is the problem.
Sure it changes things. Laptops and cars get dented, mended, but they’re never the same, pristine things out of the box.
I don’t want the ideal relationship, I want my relationship. And if vows get broken they can be mended. Mended is better than gone. When you truly do find someone that you love in so many ways and on so many counts, you realize just how many fish aren’t in the sea worth catching.