| | Jordan, by not sleeping with Jane, Fred would be encouraging her act of dishonesty. In that case, being dishonest about still being in a happy, loving relationship. The dishonesty is entirely Jane's, and nothing Fred does affects that.
Now if the choice is between having Jane go back to a crappy relationship where she doesn't love the guy, or have sex before she officially ends it, I can't see that either would be a clear winner. If Jane won't break up from the relationship for whatever reason, she's the one deciding to live with immoral options. That's not Fred's decision. He only gets to decide whether he wants to sleep with her anyway. Maybe he thinks that'll convince her to leave Dick. Or maybe he's desperately in love with her and knows that she won't leave Dick, but he can hold her just one time. Or maybe he just wants to have sex with some hot chick who's single in everything but name.
If he chooses not to have sex with her, not only might it be a sacrifice on his part, but it would for the sake of trying to make Jane's lie a reality, or at least fake it. She says to Dick that she's in a happy relationship, when she's not. Fred doesn't help Dick or Jane by going along with it. Not sleeping with her doesn't make her monogamous or devoted.
Philip, I agree with your post, especially that duty is a terrible foundation for a relationship.
Rooster, you say "the mere fact that a relationship exists is what I would respect". My argument is that the relationship that's worth respecting is a sham and a lie. If you use relationship in the widest sense, as in the way two people interact, then sure there is one still....based on deceit, unhappiness, and duty. But a relationship how most people discuss it is dead and gone.
Let me go into more detail on how I see it. If I'm in a relationship, there's two reasons why I want it to be monogamous. One is for health reasons. So if Jane doesn't tell me she's sleeping around, I think that's a huge problem. That's not really Fred's concern if he himself is healthy. I don't think this is the scenario being discussed.
The other reason is because if she wanted to sleep with other guys, I would have serious doubts about whether she liked me all that much. I'm not really interested in being in a serious relationship where I don't think the girl likes me very much, or likes other people more. There's a level of intimacy I wouldn't be able to have like that. The monogamous part is just a tiny part of this issue.
The problem in the scenario given is that this last value I described is already gone. The fact that Jane hasn't slept around doesn't change that fact, and if she did sleep around, it would remain the same. That part of the relationship is gone, and if I don't know about it and she's pretending it is still true, that's the real dishonesty. So if I'm Dick, the problem started way before Jane sleeps with Fred. And of course I'd like to know about it. But that's Jane's responsibility. If Fred was a friend of mine or something, and I expected him to think about my rational self-interest, I would want him to tell me about it before sleeping with Jane. But that's out of the trust I have for him. If he didn't, I wouldn't trust him in the future. But that's only because as a friend I expect that courtesy from him.
This is the reason why I say the relationship is a sham, and the dishonesty is already there. Dick may not know it yet, and Jane may not even admit it, but it's already broken. The final act of sex only underscores the fact.
Rand talked about people who try to "reverse cause and effect". They realize that cause A makes effect B happen. They decide they want cause A, so they get effect B through some other means. In one case, the cause is love and the effect is sex. Sex doesn't cause the love, the love is what leads to sex. Some people go for the effect, hoping to pretend that the cause is there. So they have sex, pretending that they must be in love.
I think that view leads to the idea that the sex is the cause of the infidelity and the end of the relationship. Instead of wanting the effect as the example above, instead it's a desire to avoid the effect. If only they don't have sex, the relationship is still meaningful! When the effect occurs, in this case sex between Jane and Fred, it's being seen as the official end of the relationship and trust. But sex is the effect, not the cause. The relationship stopped being meaningful, and that's what created the conditions for the affair. Blaming the sex is backwards. Sex is just the consequence. It highlights and brings into focus the problems with Jane's relationship, but isn't itself the problem.
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