[Lostie!]

Originally Posted by Jack_

Of course it's not a morally decent thing to do, that still doesn't make it anywhere near on the same level as someone who is in a relationship, and willingly jeopardises that relationship by cheating. The single person has absolutely nothing to lose or risk themselves, and therefore the action they are taking is a lot more justifiable.

Pursuing a relationship with a married person will never ever be "justifiable" to me. In any way. People can tell themselves they're doing nothing wrong because they're not the one in the relationship but that's just a load of twaddle to make themselves feel better about the horrible thing they're doing, in my eyes.

Originally Posted by Jack_

There is also a lot of sexism rooted in patriarchy with this issue. As I said, the term 'homewrecker' stems from that and is used by females to abuse the woman who got with their partner, when really they should be directing their anger straight at their partner. It's this underlying notion of 'well, boys will be boys!' and 'a padlock can only be opened by one key but a master key will open many padlocks' and it just has to stop. Obviously there are taken women who cheat too, but a lot of these attitudes stem from sexist beliefs like this. And that makes it even worse, and even more important that it is stopped.

Yeah but none of this applies to my stance on the subject. I'm happy to call a male "bit on the side" a homewrecker too.

Originally Posted by Jack_

Think that the single person deserves some blame all you want, on that I still disagree, but I absolutely refute the idea they deserve the same amount. One is single, one has put their own relationship at risk. The two are completely different situations.

Okay, so in the cases when an affair completely destroys a family, the "other person" isn't deserving of a single ounce of blame for that? None at all? Well I don't understand that notion whatsoever, since the affair was perpetuated by two people.

Quite frankly imo, the one thing that makes someone who pursues a relationship with a married person worse is one who refuses to accept their share of the blame. We'll have to agree to disagree since we're clearly on entirely opposite sides of the spectrum on this debate.