One Man's Musings

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First let me say that I’m not here to judge the decisions that you have made. It’s neither my intention nor my desire. We all will face God and account for ourselves.

Secondly, I am saddened that your own experience has caused you to react so vocificerously and paint men with such a tarred brush. I will not deny that there are animals dressed as men, but I will also argue that there are saints (perhaps with both small and capital s) living and working among you as well. To essentially write off, with a tiny caveat later, an entire sex is harsh thing.

You made an excellent point about the thread about the engagement. While it is right that the person involved should use this as a means to discern, my general issue is with the posters her at CAF who jump to such mean and judgemental conclusions. The woman involved should use every single moment of her time with him to discern. The posters who have tried and convicted this man and sentenced him to child-abuser hell ought to be ashamed.
But coming here complaining about the symptom of a deep societal problem does nothing to take care of the problem.
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This is, I believe, a misinterpretation of my intentions. I posted these musings as thoughts that have occured about attitudes her at CAF, not in society at large.

I am talking about posts that declare you must yank the internet out of your home and punish your husband while posts declaring that no oen better dare tell a woman over 40 what to wear go on and on. The double-standards that are prevelant here are a downright shame.
 
GhostMan, I 100% agree, and have nothing to add…

Liberanosamalo,

I will pray for you,

your angry and hurt are so strong in your writing…

I pray that your pain softens…

Peace
 
Thank you, Eagle. I need the prayers and my children most of all. The damage one man can do is incalculable.

No, I don’t hate men. Some of my favorite people in the world are men. Really! :o

And I mistakenly gave my xh the credit for being like them based on what I saw.

Which is why, when someone is desperate to come to a board full of strangers for advice on whether to keep trying, if I detect any similarity to what I endured, I personally tell her (or sometimes him) that they don’t have to endure what I did in a wrongfully understood quest to “bear the responsibility of their marital choice” or remain faithful to a vow. Especially if abuse is involved. But with men, even if it’s “just emotional abuse” I will say they should stay so they don’t leave kids open to mom finding a new husband who might be a danger to them. In that respect, their choice should be about protecting their children by their presence even if their marriage isn’t happy or fulfilling.

And I still think many of you are wrong on the porn thing. If you had listened to one of my children describe what she saw on her father’s computer and his conversations online with someone near her age, you’d hate porn too and wouldn’t make excuses for the men who view it and give them a pass. My daughter is joining a new generation with a diminished view of men. And you wonder why people ridicule men? My own daughter’s quote… “All men look at porn.”

Great expectations! 👍

Thanks, Dad, for clarifying that for your own daughter. 👍

Lower the bar. Maybe she’ll end up with someone just like you! 👍

Yes, pray for my kids. They’ve been hurt too. Some of them just don’t know how badly.

… and yes, society at large’s attitude was discussed here in terms of commercials and women’s attitudes and men being the butt of jokes. That’s why I commented. Because we here at CAF live in that society and it affects us and our children.

Oddly enough, there’s lots of men on Madison Avenue. GSDM has male employees. Why are they choosing such a marketing ploy? Are they creating society’s attitude or reflecting it?
 
I was going to post to this last night but I decided to surf porn instead… 😛 That IS a joke by the way! Actually I watched Discovery Health with my wife and we talked about our 4th child as we had an OB appt this morning.

I have to agree with Ghostman (and Whatevergirl) in most of what has been said.

From a counseling perspective, it’s never ALL one persons fault in regards to marriage breakups. Remember Christian Marriage is suppose to be 100% from each partner. Sadly that rarely happens in the real world. Partially because we don’t explain that well enough, and secondly because many times people just aren’t committed to each other and to Christ.

One person in the thread though talked about how porn had done terrible thing to their marriage etc… I don’t believe that porn was the real problem here, the problem with the Husband’s lack of commitment to the vows he made before his wife, his Church and his God. All too often on this board we make an accusation that because a man views porn at all he is some how an addict. That’s is just simply not true. If you have a drink of wine or a beer once a week or get drunk once every 8 months, are you an alcoholic? No and no one on this board would suggest otherwise. Yet someone looks at an innappropriate image, which IS a mortal sin - I agree on that (just like getting drunk), and people suggest that the marriage is doomed.

One person actually suggested on a thread earlier this week that a poster take their kids and LEAVE because the persons husband looked at porn for the first time in 8 months… take a dose of reality and think about the kids. Any separation at all is going disrupt their lives immensely. These are adults we are giving our advice too, treat them that way. Remember that they have a responsibility to each other and to God to work things out.

One of the things we need to do, especially for some of these people who, from the way they post, never sin, is to define porn. What is it? According to the Church it’s anything that we view or read which is designed to get us aroused.

That being the case, those cheesy romance novels fall into that category. That being the case, quit watching Disparate Housewives. That being the case… skip 50% of the commercials on broadcast television and please disconnect your cable.

That is my point and what I think Ghostman is trying to get across as well. Men fail, women fail, we look at images or people and sometimes think “what if.” However for many people there is no desire to take it any farther than that. They would never cheat, they find their spouse attractive (even after 3 kids and/or the extra 30lbs beer belly), love them, love God and truly want to do the right thing.

Then there are people out there who don’t. For those it does not matter if it’s porn, novels, movies, or unfaithfulness… they are going to take it too far.

Thus I would close once again with talk to your spouse. Find time to spend quality time with them (especially if you have kids), try to schedule a “date night” every so often, and pray together. These suggestions are for both men and women. If both of you do these, if you put Christ first and your partner second above all else - your marriage will prosper, even when one of you fails at something.

Joe
 
This is really a fascinating thread…I rarely read an entire thread word for word, but this one has a lot of great thoughts, advice, and just tidbits of wisdom locked into it.

Thanks GM for posting this…and Liberano…you are a great writer. I used to freelance write, myself, and think you could easily do that yourself. You should look into it, especially to help others who have gone through things that you describe from your marriage. I dated an abusive man before I married my husband…and so much of what you say is him. Sometimes, I wonder if all abusers drink the same kool aid, or read the same ‘how to manipulate women’ books. They are masters at hiding their identities from others…and unless you date one, or marry one–then, the true colors emerge. They purposely don’t want people to know their true selves, but in agreement with Ghostman, I will say that he has a point in looking DEEPLY into a man’s immediate family to do a litmus test of how he might have been raised. Don’t let love blind you. It can be blinding, but like a job interviewer poses some tough questions of applicants…you almost have to do that before you marry these days or get into a serious relationship. Thankfully, for me, I realized before going any further with that guy, that he was bad news. I also met his mom, who was a nice lady, but the relationship between the guy and her spoke volumes to me. No thanks! lol

I just wanted to chime in with that–good thread. And, please Liberano…think about my suggestion to write. 😉
 
Thanks, Whatevergirl. Actually, I do write for a living. Nothing exciting, but it pays the bills! Thank you for the compliment.

Those charmers like I married are a dime a dozen. And I’m sure Church Tribunals probably have nicknames for those cases. “Another one of these…”

Your point about their families is very true. But then you get into the Christian charity question… do you dump someone you love who seems to show such promise because his mother was married multiple times and he grew up without his father? Where is the charity in that? Where do you draw the line?

Sadly, I spent a lot of time in my petition detailing his very odd family background. I guess we should start a thread about telling people they are unworthy for marriage to us because of family events which they suffered from and have no control over. Do my kids now go on that list for future people seeking to avoid problems to shun too?

As a parent, do you say “No, you cannot marry him. His parents were… divorced!” The shame! Do I tell my daughters no good Catholic man would want them because they now come from a seriously flawed family? The sins of the fathers really are visited on their children down through multiple generations. Thanks to the choices of my xh, my children are at least the third generation from that family to grow up in fractured families raised by single mothers.

And this, GhostMan, is the whole crux of the lack of respect we’re talking about. Men, by their nature, are supposed to head their families and give them guidance and direction. Succeeding generations have neglected this role and walked away from it to shocking degrees. Society has become more and more infantile and less and less self-controlled. Until men claim their true role, they cannot claim the respect that goes with the self sacrifice that is involved in fulfilling that role. Instead we have a society marked by a period of prolonged adolescence, immaturity, sexual license, men who don’t want to become fathers, men who refuse to marry their girlfriends or the mothers of their children, men who leave wives to return to their adolescent bachelorhood, and a society that refuses to condemn or sanction such behavior.

Real Manhood is not a role of chief bully and tyrant. It’s a role of leading by quiet and persistent example. The women I know married to such men value them, don’t let them get away at all and never make disparaging comments about them. There is nothing more attractive than a man who subjects himself to God first and is a servant to his family the way Christ told his Apostles to lead by serving. And there is no bigger buffoon than a man who serves himself at the expense of the women and children in his life.

Society has a lopsided supply of one versus the other, and as many of our young men grow up without the good example, the supply is growing.

How about a thread from the guys about the way THEY police each other and keep each other in line, instead of griping about how they don’t get no respect. Hmmm?? :rolleyes:
 
I sound hard, and maybe I am, but I do believe that most, not all, most people who end up in bad marriages missed the warning signs along the way or failed to seek out character references. I don’t think most abusers start with their wives, frankly. Most abusers start out being abused themselves. It is incumbant upon people contemplating marriage to get to know the entire family, as well as friends and ex-boyfriends of girlfriends.

Character references? Heck, most people who know my ex have no idea what he was up to. Nobody, not his family, not our friends, had any idea that he had a secret life. I didn’t know for years. He had his own computer, he worked at home and was on it all the time throughout our courtship and marriage. When cell phones came out, that was yet another tool to expand the secret behavior. He had a business post office box to handle the bills, so I never saw them. Only his accountant did. In retrospect, yes, there were some signs. But when you’re not looking for them, you miss them. Because you trust the guy you married.

Was I supposed to ask his parents if they beat him or abused him (they didn’t so far as I know)? Would they have told me if they had? I don’t think abusers would be so honest and forthright as that. As for ex-girlfriends, do you think they would have had anything to say? Would he have given me their phone numbers?

We met through a mutual friend, and were friends for five years before dating. I had no idea he harbored such thoughts, but then the easy access of porn and dating connections via the Internet brings the sleeziness of our modern day world so conveniently in the home. It is entirely too easy to look at porn and hook up with other people today. Easier than ever. To brush off porn as something minor is the way to increase it’s insidious influence in our families today.

So now my kids are the product of a broken home. Does that mean they are doomed to a life of failure because of their father’s actions? I pray for them most of all. It’s very easy to pass judgement on a situation if you’ve never been in it. I already feel a great sense of failure: what the heck was wrong with me if I couldn’t keep my husband from wandering, huh? It had to be my fault in some way. Never mind that he is an adult full capable of making his own choices.
 
Ailina, what could an ex-girlfriend say? I was told he broke up with one ex-fiancee because she was a pathological liar and had emotional problems. That she had 95 percent of her personality was bad, but the good 5% you initially saw was on the surface and deceived people. I had been married a short while before it dawned on me he was really talking about himself.

I believed she was unstable until he left me and was going around town telling people I was unstable. Then it dawned on me that was probably another one of his lies.

I have watched him get engaged twice. His mother won’t warn them. She didn’t warn me either. She told me “They’ll figure it out.”

Well, it takes them years. I can’t say a word, because I know I’ve been described to them as his crazy ex-wife. I would just look like a bitter witch trying to destroy his happiness because if I couldn’t have him, no one could.

They wouldn’t listen to me anyway. Not until he starts his cruelty with them.

So much for warnings from ex-girlfriends. Even if I had a last name, why would I have called. I was 22 and in love.

Let’s just say now when I hear a man describing his ex-wife as crazy, I move away real quick.

Ailina, I’m sorry for your pain and the dilemna you face… how to teach your children that their father’s actions are horrible and he is sick without actually saying anything bad about him or seeming to excuse his behavior so they don’t follow his example.

There was nothing wrong with you. He just wasn’t smart enough to put the same value on you that God does. That is his fault, not yours.

Unless you’ve been there…
🤷
 
Liberanosamalo said:
Ailina, I’m sorry for your pain and the dilemna you face… how to teach your children that their father’s actions are horrible and he is sick without actually saying anything bad about him or seeming to excuse his behavior so they don’t follow his example.

There was nothing wrong with you. He just wasn’t smart enough to put the same value on you that God does. That is his fault, not yours.

Unless you’ve been there…
🤷
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Thanks for the kind words, Liberanosamalo. My kids don’t know about their father because there is no way to explain his sickness in a way they would understand. I don’t even understand it, and it has broken my heart. Thank God I come from a large family with plenty of positive male role models for my kids to witness, particularly my sons. They can witness that it is not normal to lie and deceive others.

If I had known what my ex was really like, I never would have married him. I still have trouble believing it sometimes, because he seems like the same old happy-go-lucky guy that I married, and talks so smoothly and easily that he can charm the birds out of the trees. I have to keep reminding myself that the man I thought I knew is dead, for lack of a better word.
 
Liberanosamalo said:
Real Manhood is not a role of chief bully and tyrant. It’s a role of leading by quiet and persistent example. The women I know married to such men value them, don’t let them get away at all and never make disparaging comments about them. There is nothing more attractive than a man who subjects himself to God first and is a servant to his family the way Christ told his Apostles to lead by serving. And there is no bigger buffoon than a man who serves himself at the expense of the women and children in his life.
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This is the crux of the whole problem, porn or no porn, wandering eye or not it truly all boils down to this.

While I do believe you are on the right track here the question becomes why do so many women seem to seek out males with distructive paths ahead of them? Sometimes the warning signs are huge, yet they are ignored… some women see them but many to not. I have spent a lot of time over the years talking with women about this issue and I have some ideas on why but I would be very interesting in hearing any thought you guys might have first.

Joe
 
jwashu said:
This is the crux of the whole problem, porn or no porn, wandering eye or not it truly all boils down to this.

While I do believe you are on the right track here the question becomes why do so many women seem to seek out males with distructive paths ahead of them? Sometimes the warning signs are huge, yet they are ignored… some women see them but many to not. I have spent a lot of time over the years talking with women about this issue and I have some ideas on why but I would be very interesting in hearing any thought you guys might have first.

Joe
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If I had known how destructive he would become, I wouldn’t have dated my ex, duh. He wasn’t one of those “bad boys”. Nobody who knows him can believe it. If you met him, you would think he’s a nice guy. As far as I know, he didn’t read porn, certainly never brought those kinds of mags home. Oh, once in a long while, he would go see strippers with his buddies. Or maybe that is all he did on the nights he was out playing raquetball. Who knows? My whole marriage seems false now.
 
I have to keep reminding myself that the man I thought I knew is dead, for lack of a better word.
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Ahh, yes. It’s a special kind of widowhood we endure. The man we thought we married is truly dead to us. And we mourned it in a way conventional widows never will understand. The grief IS worse. Because we can’t keep his picture out and remember him with happiness. We lost our past, present and future. The “good times” are now all suspect because we wonder about everything and “what was really going on when we were there, doing that?” “Was that while he was seeing so and so?” “I thought he loved me then and he was really planning to leave me.” Our history is stripped from us. Even if we wanted to reminisce about the happy times (what few we had) our families eventually hate them so much too that they don’t want to hear it. We can’t talk in glowing terms about the person to our children. Anniversaries, the memories surrounding children’s births… all of it is something we remember alone. And it’s very lonely.

Most people, when their spouses die, get an insurance payout and get to keep their things. We have to spend tens of thousands in legal fees to keep less than what we had. I watched my furniture and wedding gifts go out the door. Most of what I had was really HIS before the wedding. So he took it with him. We have to spend money even to keep seeing our children because men who never had two minutes for children before the divorce all of a sudden become superdads when it comes time to hurt us in the courts.

No one bakes us casseroles like real widows get. We become socially tainted. “The Divorcee.” Women who used to be our friends when our husbands were abusing us (though they didn’t know it) all of a sudden don’t want us around their husbands because they’re afraid of what? That we’d want another cheating man? Been there, done that, sweetie. If your husband is one of them, I’m the last person to want him!

People think maybe we’re at fault for this breakup. We are now a scandal… the Catholic who is divorced. “I thought she didn’t believe in divorce. Her whole life she was against it!” We feel like we’ve become another example of what is wrong in society. We kneel in church and repeatedly hear the readings from our wedding day and it’s a knife in the heart. We see couples in church holding hands as we try to keep our children quiet and behaving. And it hurts. We’re shredded just as if we had buried the man we loved, but his “corpse” walks around continuing to harrass us, demean us, call us names. And corpseman never comes to church, by the way.

It’s a living hell. Ghostman, if this is the kind of deliverance and “second chance” and do-over you think people who divorce get, you need to reconsider, please. There is no liberation in this lifestyle. Except we’re not being bullied in the sanctity of our own home unless we answer the phone and take his calls.

The only thing that goes through your mind as you’re watching your life go from bad to worse is “I CHOSE this man!!! Of the tens of thousands of people out there, I chose HIM!”

(Or her. We’re equal opportunity sufferers here.)

Which brings us to jwashu’s comment. Why do women go after guys like that? Because they don’t seem like that when they convince us that we’re loved, and we’re special, and they’ve never met anyone quite like us. They’re good. They could teach Charm School at the graduate level.

Think of the days before Doppler Radar and Satellite weather imagery. Lovely day, birds out there twittering. Not a cloud in the sky. Life is good. How were people to know that there was a hurricane barrelling down in the Atlantic or Gulf ready to wipe everything out? Then a few clouds come along. Nothing out of the normal range. You go along with your day. Eventually, though, you’re in the middle of the storm full force. Sure, if you’d known it was coming, you wouldn’t have been out camping or sailing that day. But who knew?

I felt like I had no radar when I was with him. Only in retrospect do you sit and realize where you were misled, what you ignored or forgave in Christian charity that turned out to be the fateful fork in the road.

Honest upright forthright people who have never known such duplicity can’t imagine the existence of such people. It’s counter to everything they have ever known. It was counter to everything I had ever known.

But my kids… they grew up with it. One of them used to tell him “Dad, you told me this yesterday. Now you tell me this today. Pick a lie and stick with it.”

And she tries to warn his girlfriend that daddy’s history isn’t what he says it is, and she ignores her and defends daddy’s actions. So daughter says to me “Let her find out the hard way.”

Yeah, my kids have radar now.

But really, we don’t think “This man will destroy me and make me doubt the very love of God someday. I think I’m going to stay in this relationship till there is nothing left of me.”

But it’s maddening to watch them out in the world knowing what they are capable of, behaving as if nothing happened.

It’s like watching OJ walk free.

And everyone else we meet from now on, we look at in a very harsh light. One step over the line and do we push them away for good? How do you not get fooled again?

Ailina, I too am blessed with male relatives who are good role models, but unfortunately my xh saw to it they are all far away. But it does help to have that (name removed by moderator)ut. Make full use of it.
 
WOW…GhostMan

It official, your thread has been derailed…

NEXT
 
sigh It was inevitable - given the topics I chose, but still sad.

Next time I’ll post about a man watching porn while telling his wife, who is over 40, what to wear while he demands she submit to him and make him breakfast. That’ll go for weeks.

Sad thing is, what will come out of this in many people’s minds is I called out posters here at CAF on their annulments and personally trashed them while defending porn.
 
Actually, no. To refresh memories… because these subjects we’re discussing are all tangential to his original post…
There seems to be a strange and pervasive belief that annulment is a “get out of jail free” card; a do-over, so to speak. That saddens me. There can be nothing more sorrowful, on this side of the grave at least, than an annulment. It speaks of broken dreams and vows, hurt and pain that go far beyond the two people involved and a betrayal of the highest order. Yet, in spite of that, I often see someone post “leave him (or, much less frequently, her) and seek an annulment.” This must be the course of last attempt. Surely we are called to do everything in our power – even bearing a cross that seems too difficult for us – rather than demanding our own way and wanting to try again. An annulment should reflect badly on both parties badly enough to make it rare. Even the aggrieved party must bear some guilt for failing to properly discern the motivations of his or her spouse. Many of you will take me to task for that, but what then is the dating/courtship process about? What does God call us to do in that time? …
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…Another thing that bothers me is the incredible standards that some women demand of men. The poll about canceling an engagement over a man who freely confessed an impure thought almost drove me over the edge. The original poster was called out be several people for potential conflict of interest and yet the posts continued. Yes, the poll was in favor of continuing, but there were enough “yes” votes to make me queasy…
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Surely some of the women who said yes must be capable of walking on water on command. Something about “log and speck” comes to mind…
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OK, now please read this caveat: Porn is bad; it is a sin; it has no place in any man or woman’s life. It is destructive to the soul and body; it breaks down the bonds of a marriage. Now, having said that, it seems like the worst possible sin a man can commit is to watch porn. Also, any man who watches porn is (usually) abusive, possibly a child molester, controlling, destructive and not worth even being in the same room with. Re-read my initial section on Porn now before you accuse me of defending it…
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I think it’s time to put porn into perspective…
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The whole idea is ludicrous, right? No more so than several posts like that I’ve seen about men and porn. (Please re-read the caveat now). Porn is a serious sin, so is gossip, so are lies, so is reading lusty novels about swarthy men. These all detract in our own lives and our marriage, but to even suggest that someone leave another person over one of them is to bitterly color the vocation of marriage.
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Where in these posts is there a derail? Talking about what divorce REALLY does? How serious it really is, and how no one willingly goes through that hell lightly?

While you excuse porn, some women who have suffered from that have tried to let the world know that it is the cutting edge of a huge problem. And you compare it to women reading novels about swarthy men. Well, I don’t hear too much about such women spending thousands of dollars a month of family money online talking to swarthy men. To suggest that a woman stay in an environment with her children that has been polluted by porn is to bitterly color the vocation of marriage. You’re making excuses for bad behavior, Ghostman. There is NO place in a Christian marriage for a man looking at some other woman and lusting at her.
Often the women writing in about their husbands have posted other issues about their marriage and difficulties and posters respond based on the sum total of the information they have read over months or years.

As for your queasiness about people suggesting someone leave a man who confessed to impure thoughts… while I didn’t respond to that post, let me share my 20/20 hindsight. My charmer would make an offhand comment here or there that I ignored or didn’t appreciate how it linked to his behavior. But in retrospect, it was his way of mocking me, degrading me, comparing me to other women and letting me know I fell short.

I can see now that if he had ‘confessed to an impure thought’ or even let me know who he was thinking of, it would have been one of his subtle ways of letting me know that he thought the woman was more desirable. To give me doubt that unless I really worked harder, he could find someone else quickly. Unless you’ve lived with someone like that who never says anything accidentally, you wouldn’t understand. Yet if the person interpreted it wrong and found out too late, you would say that “aggrieved party must bear some guilt for failing to properly discern the motivations of his or her spouse.”

This whole thread is about failing to see the signs, men who must bear the responsibility for their own failings. Yet you compare someone viewing movies and photos that I would be banned if I described online here and say it’s the same as gossip or reading a silly novel. (No, I don’t read those, by the way.)

I see no derailment. But while you’re minimizing the behavior of your male friends who view porn, you certainly come down hard on people who have been betrayed by it. Would you give it a pass so freely if you found out your wife was online secretly viewing it?
 
GhostMan said:
sigh It was inevitable - given the topics I chose, but still sad.

Next time I’ll post about a man watching porn while telling his wife, who is over 40, what to wear while he demands she submit to him and make him breakfast. That’ll go for weeks.

.
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You talk like this… and yet you call your self and other men victims here because of women bashing men on these fora.

I see there is very little tolerance when it comes to women and womens weaknesses and sins… much more impatience with women than I see the other way around…

But as I also suggested in another thread… you and I might both see clearly… we just see it with different perspectives… me being female and you male.

There is this hint of irony to many of your posts… the grugde somehow against women in generel… and belittling of their emotions and the betrayal they actually live through when their husbands commit adultery through porn.

I think all the women posters here have been extremely patient with the generelizations made on this thread about women …
 
Liberanosamalo said:
Actually, no. To refresh memories… because these subjects we’re discussing are all tangential to his original post…

Where in these posts is there a derail? Talking about what divorce REALLY does? How serious it really is, and how no one willingly goes through that hell lightly?

While you excuse porn, some women who have suffered from that have tried to let the world know that it is the cutting edge of a huge problem. And you compare it to women reading novels about swarthy men. Well, I don’t hear too much about such women spending thousands of dollars a month of family money online talking to swarthy men. To suggest that a woman stay in an environment with her children that has been polluted by porn is to bitterly color the vocation of marriage. You’re making excuses for bad behavior, Ghostman. There is NO place in a Christian marriage for a man looking at some other woman and lusting at her.
Often the women writing in about their husbands have posted other issues about their marriage and difficulties and posters respond based on the sum total of the information they have read over months or years.

As for your queasiness about people suggesting someone leave a man who confessed to impure thoughts… while I didn’t respond to that post, let me share my 20/20 hindsight. My charmer would make an offhand comment here or there that I ignored or didn’t appreciate how it linked to his behavior. But in retrospect, it was his way of mocking me, degrading me, comparing me to other women and letting me know I fell short.

I can see now that if he had ‘confessed to an impure thought’ or even let me know who he was thinking of, it would have been one of his subtle ways of letting me know that he thought the woman was more desirable. To give me doubt that unless I really worked harder, he could find someone else quickly. Unless you’ve lived with someone like that who never says anything accidentally, you wouldn’t understand. Yet if the person interpreted it wrong and found out too late, you would say that “aggrieved party must bear some guilt for failing to properly discern the motivations of his or her spouse.”

This whole thread is about failing to see the signs, men who must bear the responsibility for their own failings. Yet you compare someone viewing movies and photos that I would be banned if I described online here and say it’s the same as gossip or reading a silly novel. (No, I don’t read those, by the way.)

I see no derailment. But while you’re minimizing the behavior of your male friends who view porn, you certainly come down hard on people who have been betrayed by it. Would you give it a pass so freely if you found out your wife was online secretly viewing it?
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Judging all men by the one man in your past, is unfair…

Its been derailed, in my opinion, by your self confessions.

Forgiviness, isnt that in the Bible somewhere…
 
GhostMan said:
sigh It was inevitable - given the topics I chose, but still sad.

Next time I’ll post about a man watching porn while telling his wife, who is over 40, what to wear while he demands she submit to him and make him breakfast. That’ll go for weeks.

Sad thing is, what will come out of this in many people’s minds is I called out posters here at CAF on their annulments and personally trashed them while defending porn.
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I don’t see you as defending porn…lol I see the relevance of your musings, but I am not sure as to the replies you were looking for, GM? I think that the thread has been pretty interesting!:o
 
GraceDK said:
You talk like this… and yet you call your self and other men victims here because of women bashing men on these fora.

I see there is very little tolerance when it comes to women and womens weaknesses and sins… much more impatience with women than I see the other way around…

But as I also suggested in another thread… you and I might both see clearly… we just see it with different perspectives… me being female and you male.

There is this hint of irony to many of your posts… the grugde somehow against women in generel… and belittling of their emotions and the betrayal they actually live through when their husbands commit adultery through porn.

I think all the women posters here have been extremely patient with the generelizations made on this thread about women …
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Women patient on this forum? are you kidding? that was Ghostmans point…Man does wrong, leave him, women does wrong, take care of her, be a loving spouse…

Isn’t this a Cathilic forum and not a womens forum?
 
Yeah, I didn’t even comment on his statement “A man who no longer believes his wife is gorgeous because she has put on weight or bears the scares of pregnancy is a pig (rightly so), while a woman who decides that she is “done with sex” is probably just tired or depressed. Hmmm.”

The dismissal and bitterness behind that comment could have a topic all itself. But I won’t.

Often such men find their fantasy woman in the world of porn. Airbrushed and photographically digitized young women whose impossible bodies have never given life (but may have taken it several times) who exist not in the real world but in the mysogynistic fantasies of arrested adolescents.

Again… what is this society we have produced where our men don’t grow up?

But GhostMan is demanding we show some respect for men. So GhostMan, lecture your brothers out there about their immaturity.

Here’s a helpful hint: Women who are done with sex aren’t really done with sex. They’re done with being emotionally and psychologically demeaned and discounted. Once someone drives them away mentally, most of them want no part of the physical. Women just aren’t like men. Unless they have killed a part of themself, they can’t have intercourse with someone they feel no connection to. It’s not just physical. It’s a very important part of their psychology, that considering they’re the ones who give birth, protects society at its most fundamental level. And it demands a huge responsibility in return from the men they love to be persistent and constant and faithful in return. And porn undermines that to a shocking degree.
 
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