Understanding
" How could someone just jump into another relationship so fast?" She said to her furiously when she found out her ex is in another relationship.
" ... " She felt awkward as she was about to tell her a personal story on that subject herself.
I really thank her for having that experience because she made me learn to see it as an okay behaviour, just like how I am more lenient and tolerant on cheating now. There are those whom in my life I just can't hate. In order to continue loving them, I have to learn to be more understanding and accept it isn't that unforgivable after all. There is no right or wrong in relationships, I have learned. People just pursue their own happiness. I thank those whom I have come to love challenged my believes. Because of them, I am less hurt when unfortunate things happen to me and I am more understanding than I have ever in my life.
" ... " She felt awkward as she was about to tell her a personal story on that subject herself.
I really thank her for having that experience because she made me learn to see it as an okay behaviour, just like how I am more lenient and tolerant on cheating now. There are those whom in my life I just can't hate. In order to continue loving them, I have to learn to be more understanding and accept it isn't that unforgivable after all. There is no right or wrong in relationships, I have learned. People just pursue their own happiness. I thank those whom I have come to love challenged my believes. Because of them, I am less hurt when unfortunate things happen to me and I am more understanding than I have ever in my life.
5 comments:
"I am more lenient and tolerant on cheating now"
"There is no right or wrong in relationships, I have learned. People just pursue their own happiness. "
Firstly,
People do pursue their own happiness, the point is, in a loving relationship that happiness includes the happiness of the OTHER person. In
fact in the relationships I've seen really working, both people see the other as MORE important (Love is fundamentally self-sacrificing).
Cheating is "wrong" partially because it shows with perfect clarity that what one side thought was a loving relationship fundamentally is not!
Secondly,
I'd like to suggest that "Right" and "Wrong" are ways of protecting our happiness. We
try to pursue our happiness ourselves but cannot always see the negative consequences of what we do, and often do not even honestly
try to assess them. This is why we have 'rules', just as there are 'rules' for climbing mountains, making an omelette, and
more obviously performing algebra. Question the source of your rules and refine them intelligently by all means (i.e. which rules?),
but don't throw the rulebook away completely, or you'll end up at the bottom of the mountain with egg on your face :-).
I understand where you are coming from. But just ponder a question for me: Would you see me any less if I was the one cheating?
Yes I would. But if I didn't think you were worthwhile as a person I wouldn't be trying to discuss this with you.
Equally if you had said "I have learnt in relationships it is best to cut
off your own arms" it's your decision, your arms, but how could I sit back and let you follow through on that without
saying anything?
As to the wider question: are people who do wrong things best abandoned, well if I only
talked to completely perfect people I wouldn't talk to anybody, including myself!
There are level of relationships, I could associate with people who do things I think are wrong for a while. They are still
fellow human beings. I could even be friends with some of them, at least to some degree, depending on what it was.
Really though how can you be good friends with someone whose behaviour you abhor and cannot support?
To be friends, one of you would have to fundamentally change their mind and behavour. I suspect this is the conclusion
you have come to as well..."is it really that bad?". Changing your
own behaviour to start murdering people so you can be friends with murderers is not a very good answer.
You might still like them though in some or even many ways. Accept that so far as it goes.
But can you really love what you don't trust?
My next question is What if you found out it happened to your sister?
What I tried to say was yes I don't think cheating/murdering is right, but I tend not to believe it's completely wrong. I have never done it and I am not attending to do so. However, because I have never been in that situation to make that choice, I don't think I have the right to judge the ppl who do so. I wasn't them, and I don't understand what that must feel like. Therefore, it's unfair for me to criticise them.
If someone have learned cutting an arm is the best solution, then maybe that's the best solution for the person. I won't accept it would be the best solution for myself because I didn't go through the same experience, but maybe it's for the person. I would try to understand why the person think it's the best solution and make sure I help him/her clarify the issue, but when it comes to the decision, it's his/hers, not mine and I would respect the decision.
Apart from the above reason, I can still be friends with someone whose behaviour I cannot support, because there are other parts of the person I love very much so. Thus, yes I can still love the persons who cheat on their partners.
Like you say, no one is perfect and we all have our own perspectives on things because of what we go through. I used to be very black and white, but I came across to learn what I have learned. You don't have to change the way you think because it's not your time yet or it's not the path you meant to take. And, I respect that.
There is a difference between judging the person and judging the behaviour. I think we are in agreement that just because someone does something wrong doesn't mean they are completely wrong as a person. I am attempting above to judge the behaviour not the person. An interesting question when we see someone do something wrong is 'if I had been them would I have done the same thing?' We don't know, not having been them. We don't know what they felt, how their past impacted them, etc. Also they are still human beings.
However, I know in practice, and this may be to do with my own imperfections, that I wouldn't like to go to the pub with say a bunch of child molesterers. Would you?. In summary, I agree they are still worthy of 'love' as human beings however monsterous, for me I think there are degrees of love and it depends what they did and who they were to me as to how that would effect our relationship.
This does not change the fact that some behaviours are wrong. You seem to assume that right and wrong are defined in terms of the person. I think this is true for some things, not for others. Simple example would be teaching maths. I wish to suggest a distinction between the resulting behaviour and ways of getting there. For example, in maths there is definately a right and wrong answer. 2+3 never equals 6 (and if you start arguing about definitions of those symbols you miss the point). However the way we learn the techniques of algebraic manipulation vary from person to person. The latter takes account of how things are perceived, so right or wrong in that sense is relative. The former is more about what actually IS, and is independent of any argument you care to make about 2+3=6, cos it just doesn't.
2+3 <> 6 is black and white, but not because it is simpler that was but because intrinsically it is black and white. I can accept some people may try to claim otherwise, not going to agree with them though, or say it's "right for them", but to try to get them to reconsider. And if they still put 6 I'm not going to cut off their heads for crimes against maths, but whatever relies on that calculation will be a bit wonky all the same.
We must be careful not to confuse the path with the destination.
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