In many of the progressive segments of contemporary culture, you’ll find affairs are becoming one of the ‘rites of passage’. Rather than being an act people are ashamed of, affairs are increasingly becoming celebrated.
Rather than “adultery” being considered sin, earning you a scarlet letter to be avoided, they are now tolerated and encouraged.
On becoming aware of this trend, I found it shocking. I wondered how could something as destructive as an affair be encouraged and tolerated. The further I explored the issue, the answer became clearer.
As progressive society turns their back on God, with any kind of moral accountability, it has also elevated ‘self’ as the new god to be worshiped and served. As part of the new ‘self-orientation’ they worship their health and self-indulgence.
As part of the rites of passage, whether in business, politics or entertainment, you have to show that you’re truly selfish by engaging in selfish behavior. One way of destroying the old structures and traditions is to violate them with an affair.
In these ‘progressive’ circles, marriage is only for public respectability. It’s not about commitment, or being trust worthy, or fidelity. In their minds, it is only the old-fashioned traditionalist minded people that view marriage that way.
In these circles, if you’re ‘with it’ or ‘get it’, having an affair or mistress is one of the ways of showing they’re part of the progressive crowd.
To further show that they have no hang-ups and are ‘totally into’ the lifestyle, they may engage in polyamory. It is no longer about just swinging, the new ‘in’ thing is polyamory.
With drug-induced states of sexual excitability, they find themselves aroused by everyone. To the progressive, they’ve achieved a state of self-actualization and self-empowerment. To a traditionalist, they see such acts as ‘total selfishness’, corruption and perversion.
Since the progressive thinkers and traditionalist thinkers have such different meanings to the words they use, it’s hard for them to have meaningful dialogues on such issues. On the surface they may talk about the importance of marriage, family and community.
But in practice, what they mean are often diametric opposites.
Affairs are destructive. They destroy your marriage, weaken your community, and devastate traditional families.
They wreak havoc on your physical and emotional health and make intimacy next to impossible, since they do not understand closeness, commitment or fidelity. In their thinking ‘intimacy’ is nothing more than a code word for sex.
I mention these observations in helping you understand how different groups with different values may use the same words you do, but mean something different.When you have business conversations or even dinner with a colleague, the two of you may walk away with vastly different ideas of what was talked about.
It could be that you communication problems with the cheater is not about the two of you not talking, it is because the values and world views of you and the cheater are worlds apart.
Best Regards.
Jeff
2 Responses
Jeff, In my own experience (& for many others I suspect) this IS the Very Nature what I believe sooo many marriages fall victim too. The definitions being far removed between victim, perpetrator, affair, infidelity, adultrey-the list goes on….Without an ABSOLUTE here-All the rest doesn’t matter/It has become a Spiritual Divide-The DEATH (murder) of The Covenant.
Dianah,
Thank you for your insightful comments. Without thinking, many couples are falling prey to the script being fed to them in movies, pop culture and music. They take in all the entertainment without discernment or mindful thinking, which sets them up to ‘go with the flow’ of the message’ being sold to them of affairs as a ‘rite of passage’ which destroys the spirit of oneness in the covenant marriage.