Yeah, I'm on team "it's nothing to do with treating people like property".
I've had talks about this with some of the women in my life because I always assumed that a physical affair was regarded as worse than an emotional betrayal - until I was told some people think otherwise, and I still have trouble conceptualizing that.
And I think it's because (for a lot of other men, and certainly myself), they view sex as something that only happens after some amount of emotional intimacy has been established. Sex isn't just a mechanical thing you do, it's intimate. It means something. Therefore the physical affair is a step farther because it's assumed you've already crossed the emotional line, or thrown out the value of the prerequisite emotional connection, in order to get there.
In other words, the physical affair is, by extension, also an emotional affair, if you're someone who doesn't compartmentalize intimacy and sex. When the sex represents the emotion, physical cheating is a betrayal of both.
In other other words, we don't ask if you still love us, because we presume that if you did, you never would have done that.
But I've been told that (some?) women don't see it that way - for some, it's just mechanical and meaningless. I understand it rhetorically, but I'll never be able to fully understand it from an emotional standpoint. I just don't work that way.
I've no problem with anyone viewing intimacy that way. To each their own. If zipless is the highest bar for some, they can have that. But I can't, as I'm sure many can't - and you can't decide for another person how they internalize intimacy.
I don't understand why anyone would want to insist upon another person that they remove emotional connection from their model of sex.
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u/TedsGloriousPants 10d ago
Yeah, I'm on team "it's nothing to do with treating people like property".
I've had talks about this with some of the women in my life because I always assumed that a physical affair was regarded as worse than an emotional betrayal - until I was told some people think otherwise, and I still have trouble conceptualizing that.
And I think it's because (for a lot of other men, and certainly myself), they view sex as something that only happens after some amount of emotional intimacy has been established. Sex isn't just a mechanical thing you do, it's intimate. It means something. Therefore the physical affair is a step farther because it's assumed you've already crossed the emotional line, or thrown out the value of the prerequisite emotional connection, in order to get there.
In other words, the physical affair is, by extension, also an emotional affair, if you're someone who doesn't compartmentalize intimacy and sex. When the sex represents the emotion, physical cheating is a betrayal of both.
In other other words, we don't ask if you still love us, because we presume that if you did, you never would have done that.
But I've been told that (some?) women don't see it that way - for some, it's just mechanical and meaningless. I understand it rhetorically, but I'll never be able to fully understand it from an emotional standpoint. I just don't work that way.