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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (26458)	12/9/1998 9:46:00 PM
From: Grainne	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Blue, I am a bit perplexed on how to answer your more specific question of the Irishman who was your best friend and business partner. My sense from reading your post is that the situation may have had to do with an Irish concept of marital fidelity. There is an old saying that the Irish make do with their wives! Prostitution, for example, is much less common in Ireland than in other European countries. Probably mostly because of the influence of the Catholic church on morality, it seems quite common there to just give up on sex when that part of a marriage is dysfunctional, rather than to go outside of the marriage for looking for some. I am pretty much generalizing here, and am not sure I have your situation figured out well, but it sounds to me like your friend was definitely heterosexual, but would have felt extremely guilty having extramarital sex. I must say I have an entirely different opinion of porn than you do, on the Internet or off. My experience is that most people have at least an occasional passing interest in pornography. Out here in San Francisco we have a sex store which even has a vibrator museum, and lots of couples browse there. Of course San Francisco is a wee bit less closed about sexual matters than some other places, but I have read the statistic that conservative Republicans are the most prolific consumers of sex toys. I realize that some extremely ill people are fascinated with pornography, but that does not mean that healthy people are not. If it is violent porn, kiddie porn, or if the interest results in addiction and many hours daily spent looking at it, then I would say there is definitely a problem. But perfectly nice people, including people in my family and people right here at the Feelings thread, look at porn on the Internet and are definitely not pathetic losers. It sounds like this guy's interest in pornography made you feel rejected. But I don't think he was rejecting you, just making sure he didn't violate his own moral standards by having a physical relationship outside of his marriage, even though the marriage was not satisfying. Imagine how complicated your relationship with him would have been if it had been overtly sexual as well! It does sound like you overreacted because you were hurt, and everything ended up very messy. I don't have a clue as to how you could fix it at this point, but maybe you could at least try to talk to him about it. I think it is safe to say there was a huge misunderstanding of some sort!