SelfHelpCollective.com

Other People's Relationships...

by Selina
(Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.)

What do you think to my friend's relationship dilemma. She's happily married, but there's no intimacy, so she's found it elsewhere, secretly, with a man who will not marry her. Is it ethical?...

QUESTION: Is Illicit Relation Ethical?...

MORE FROM Selina...

I would like to share one of my friend's dilemma who is happily married with two school going kids. (We shall call her CC.)

If CC is happily married, what can be her problem? Well, she's...

• Happily married financially.


• Happily married with two cute kids.


• Happily married with great in-laws.


• Not so happily married with her husband (we shall call him Mac).

Why?

Their married life was great till Mac was away in Gulf working. The problem started on his return from Gulf. They courted each other for 6 years before taking wedding vows. CC is very attractive and no doubt Mac is also very good looking. They make a great couple but only in the public's eye.

Since CC is very attractive, she is bound to get male attention and it was not taken lightly by Mac who loves her very much. He got suspicious and CC's self respect was hurt. She reasoned that she has been faithful to him through out. (Well yes. She was faithful to him because I'm her close friend. And I know she was faithful to him through out.)

So they stopped being intimate.

They just put on act of being a perfect couple in the friend circle and family get-togethers.

One day she came across a person online, half her age, who was smitten by her (we shall call him CJ). Slowly but steadily they became close. So close that they cannot think about anything else. Both know it is an impossible relationship but both of them don't want to come out from it.

CC tried to get out of it and stopped all connection from CJ.

But not for long. Both couldn't do and think about any thing else but to plunge back into this dangerous sea called illicit relation.

CC will never leave her family because she loves her kids very much and respects Mac a lot. But she doesn't love Mac any more. She is a very good daughter-in-law too.

CJ is happy with this set up since he is coming from a different place, so to speak. There is no physical attachment here. But yet they are deeply in love. He has already made it very clear to his parents that he will never marry. His parents are orthodox and will never ever accept this relationship knowing CC is double the age of their son and with a settled family.

CJ says he will not survive without CC and vice versa. They are very happy with each other.

I find their future dark as night. Is this relation ethical?



STEVE'S ANSWER

Selina, I thank you for your somewhat complicated relationship problem. I've compiled a series of quotes that sum up for me the 'answers' to the various dilemmas on play here:

"Let everyone sweep in front of his own door and the whole world will be clean."
-- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

"Love is all we have, the only way that each can help the other."
-- Euripides

And, finally...

"It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question."
-- Decouvertes

Hope that helps, Selina! :-)

And thanks again for getting involved in our relationship advice forum!

Steve