What is adultery?

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^^^ In an earlier post you mentioned sharia, that's exactly what I think of when people use words like adultery. Biblical stuff. It has really never occured to me that people would look at me that way just because I'm a single man if I just spend time with a woman. I think it is a bit insulting, it implies that people can't control themselves and will boink each other at the first opportunity. Probably a cultural thing too, I suspect that these attitudes are more prevalent in religious and conservative regions. I found this quite funny:
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/01/14/french-more-accepting-of-infidelity-than-people-in-other-countries/

The French are most accepting of having extramarital affairs: only 47% say that it is unacceptable, compared to 90%+ in Muslim countries. If the presidents of France do it, then why shouldn't normal citizens?
I think the way most religions regard adultery, is that is any type of sex between non-married people, so that includes people who live together unmarried. So that makes quite a few people adulterers before they were married. There are probably countries where the majority of people are adulterers by that definition. We should be more angry that these people are applying their messed up medieval reasoning to the behavior of other people.

That's a distinct possibility.

Personally, I find the attitude sick and disgusting. Pathological and contrary to the optimal functioning of society. The only reason that we can get away with it is that we live in an established First World culture where, most of the time, people don't die because they're struggling along in isolated nuclear family units.

The nuclear family as the primary-- make that almost sole-- unit didn't fly in hunter-gatherer societies. They would have died. It didn't fly in primitive agrarian societies, either. If you read the Bible closely and holistically instead of cherry-picking the verses that suit the agenda of the moment (most modern religions cherry-pick, be them American churches or ISI-[insert geographical region here]), Judeo-Christianity doesn't endorse it either.

It DOES endorse a strict and circumscribed flow chart, if you will, of where your aid and comfort can go. Men are to help and comfort men, women are to help and comfort women, a son is responsible to his parents and a daughter to her parents-in-law once married (in a patrilineal culture; in a matrilineal one it would go the other way). The Church, in the person of its priesthood and members, is to see to the care of widows, orphans, the elderly and infirm, and the abandoned faithful. But within that circumscription, aid and comfort is to be freely given.

Our culture here in the States makes me sick in a two-fold way. First, we call ourselves a Christian nation while failing to practice the principles of responsibility, care, charity, et al as laid out in the Book we claim to venerate. Instead, we choose to invoke the Bible only when it serves us. I'm pretty sure that amounts to taking the Name of God in vain. Second, we tell young people contemplating marriage that it isn't this way...

...and then expect them to adhere to it anyway. When I got married, I did not expect to have to give up my friends. I did expect to no longer be able to stay out all night drinking coffee and debating social issues as I pleased, but I also expected it to not be a Sin Before God that I would have to pay for if I answered the phone for a crying friend at 2 AM and talked about their issues until dawn, or dropped "cuddling on the couch with a movie" to go defuse a manic episode, or gave up two hours out of my day five days a week (while I was home alone with the baby anyway) for six months to do housework for a friend who was struggling with liver failure.

I certainly did not expect to be called selfish and threatened with expulsion from the family when I said that my stepmother had suffered a massive stroke and was on death's door, my father was getting older and was almost totally isolated, and I thought it necessary to load up my kids, enroll third-grader in the local elementary school, and come back East to help out with the situation for an unspecifiable period of time not to exceed a few months.

But THAT'S WHAT HAPPENED. Everyone I've talked to since seems perplexed by the fact that I express shock and outrage over the fact that that's what happened. It has been well established that what happened is "normal" and my stance on and reaction to it is "atypical, subheading: characteristic of autism."

I even discussed these things with my prospective husband before marriage, repeatedly over a period of two and a half years, because I knew that it was unusual and wanted to make sure he understood what he was getting into. He made jokes about "freelance social workers" and took to humming the theme song from Chip'n'Dale's Rescue Rangers (yes, I am both over the hill and one of those people who watched cartoons well into their teens) every time the phone rang and I went hunting for my car keys, but he said it was OK.

He SAID.

What was said beforehand and what went down in practice after "To love, honor, and cherish, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, for better or for worse, forsaking all others, for as long as you both shall live" were distinctly different and mutually exclusive.

I've talked it over with A LOT of people. Young people, old people, related people, therapists, religious people, irreligious people, areligious people, people who love him, people who love me, people who love us both, people who don't give a flying purple rat's patootie for either of us. The conclusion I must draw from the gathered anecdotal information (as close to "data" as you can get when dealing with the emotional responses of H. thinks-they're-so-damn-sapiens) is that his reaction was "normal" and mine was "not."

At that point, right and wrong doesn't figure in the analysis of how one should conduct oneself any more. Morally and ethically speaking, it SHOULD. But it DOESN'T. What figures in the analysis of how one should conduct oneself is, "If I engage in behavior A (giving resources to other people, or asking someone else to) under condition B (marriage), I am probably going to get result C (flaming dramatic asinine maladaptive soap opera). Preventing result C involves not engaging in behavior A. I will not engage in behavior A."

Is it logical?? Not really. First thing they tell you in an introductory logic class is that people do not obey the rules of logic. They do, however, for the most part obey the (unwritten, undiscussed, mostly unconscious) rules of something that we might refer to as "human logic" or "emotional logic" or "reactionary logic." That's what you have to work with when you're working with H. sapiens.

Moral?? Ethical?? Pro-social?? I don't think so, but what constitutes "moral" and "ethical" is up for debate (we debate it all the time) and what constitutes "pro-social" varies depending on the society in which you find yourself. People aren't, by and large, terribly moral anyway. We tend more toward "legalistic and self-serving moralizing" than "moral and ethical behavior."

My sincere wish is that I'd realized this crap before I got married, and possibly before I brought children into such a screwed-up world. I love my kids, to the extent that I have a tendency to make a god of them. But I feel deep grief in the face of the world I'm leaving them (and I'm not talking about things like the poverty rate, peak water, peak oil, peak food, overpopulation, environmental degradation, nuclear cataclysm, anthropogenic climate change, or the other "big stuff," because we'll deal with that, while the unconscious embedded s**t will just go on and on and on).

I'm not trying to be mean, or to say that the cultural baggage with which we have to live is sane or right or good. Personally, I think it's pathological as all hell. I'm trying to say that, right or wrong, it IS. It is the condition of our environment, is a limiting factor on how we can choose to live our lives in a way similar to water being a limiting factor on how one lives in the desert.

I'm trying to spare someone else making the same naïve, idealistic, textbook Aspie mistakes I did.

^^^ Maybe that is why my first response was sort of the opposite of yours. I'm single and have no children, so it doesn't really matter what other people think of me. I have no children or marriage to lose, so if anyone would insult me with their medieval s**t I can just tell them to get lost.
How your husband and his family treated you is pretty horrible. You'd expect the most important value for marriage and family to be loyalty, loyalty to your own family and whatever the rest of the world thinks, f**k em.

My mom was annoyed when one of my uncles brought both his GF and his wife to a family outing decades ago. The uncle and his wife are still married. Apparently, it was OK with the "family"--my mom was an outsider..

BuyerBeware your husband's expectations are not normal. There are always fine lines which can be crossed if one is supporting natal family too much, but yes it's ok for you to go and support a dying parent. It's ok to support friends who need help. However, I do think a lot of people would however find 2am phone calls inappropriate except in extreme circumstances.

I am very disturbed by the idea that sex with the husband comes before a fevered, delirious baby in the cot. That's not prioritising the relationship that's ABUSE. It's neglect of an infant and sexual abuse of the spouse. I am a strong believer in prioritising sex with a spouse, but not above the health and potential brain damage of an infant. Any father (or mother) who wanted to have sex while baby was so ill and needed immediate parental attention has some sick, sick priorities. It's not about the sex, I'd say the same thing about preparing a hot meal, etc.

My husband is awful in many ways, but he wouldn't have dreamed of saying I couldn't go visit my grandfather in his final days and then support my family in the aftermath of his death. I wouldn't have dreamed of trying to stop him dropping everything and flying off when his family was having a major crisis.

Am I reading this right or am I just that stupid in English?

That reminds of me this couple in the news who left their baby dying from hunger because they were too preoccupied playing some online game.

Sex can wait for another day, a health crisis doesn't.

WTF IS ALL THIS, - THIS IS A COMMON SENSE DAMN TI, I SHOULDN'T EVEN HAVE TO EXPLAIN IT FURTHER.