AFFAIRS and social Peace.

I would like to shed light on the premise that when a husband and wife put themselves in a situation

where they commit adultery and this breach of marriage takes place within a common circle of friends, such brings about ostracism and shame.

What is the real intention behind such a reaction is the wish that the adulterers should show themselves responsible. The fact is that cheating is something that is not regarded, but is understood as a sin in the Christian sense or as a non-permissible act in the secular sense. Once the affair is exposed, it draws a wide circle and affects all the relationships intertwined in it.

To simply call the reactions "gossip" or "nosiness in other peoples affairs" does a bad job,

if what is behind it is not gossip but a sincere aim towards pacifying the situation. In order to find that out, one has to see if there is this kind of distinction and desire.

So, it is not the fact of shaming and judging the adulterer in this affair that is on trial, but the act of infidelity.

What for some time had seemed to me rather unconscious and vaguely important has become very clear to me in moments of reflection on it. But those who want to lose sight of the deed, because they give their attention either to excuses, justifications and the rejection of shame, miss the most important thing about it.

Those who deliberately cut the adulterous couple,

let it be known that they are interested in the act, that it is judged by them, that it has endangered their social peace, signal in the least that it has happened. They wish the adulterers to show themselves responsible for their infidelity.

To signal this would be to courageously address the circle of friends directly concerned and to openly admit one's own deed - the adultery committed - and to repent of it.

The fact that this is an act that requires a lot of courage

means that precisely because it requires courage, the expression of repentance (I admit my deed) gives the opportunity to make the acceptance of repentance possible.

So if the women in the circle have begun to shun the one woman who committed the betrayal, this is one of the chosen ways of making it clear that they do not wish to simply carry on as before. Behind this is the message "If you want to belong again, we need your discernment, we need you to recognise that you are responsible."

The ball is in the adulterous court. She can choose to let each of the other women see her repentance in the dialogue. Which is probably the least difficult situation for her. This then offers the opportunity to let the other women know about it. However, it may well be that she has to go to each one individually so that eventually the whole group is pacified.

But the worst thing that can happen is this:

Everyone sweeps the matter under the carpet as "unimportant".

Everyone involved decides that the exclusion of the adulterous male friend and the exclusion of the female friend in the circle will simply remain and neither will be given an opportunity to repent.

Not only is this unheard of in the Christian tradition, for any sinner should be given an opportunity to repent, it is also out of order in a secular sense. In the sense of resolving a conflict.

So if the (often unspoken) punishment for a sin committed is to exclude the offender from common social encounters and meaning for a certain period of time, the punishment would be completed as soon as the sinner has suffered long enough and indicates his repentance by asking to be let back in.

One after the other the women would decide individually

whether they invite her female friend to her house, include her bit by bit into her life again until she finds it appropriate to also organize a gathering in the whole group, because she had observed the other individuals were doing similar things. This would indicate that each and every one of them had met in private, had spoken about the issue and in one way or the other, accepted what was reflected and apologized about (through regret, for example).

We know that this happens between females.

What about the men?

I will address that later or when I have gathered more information since I know too little about the males reactions towards each other.

But it is of great importance that the social peace has been disturbed. It is not appropriate to dismiss the whole thing as a "trivial matter" or "typical village gossip".
That would be what I would call weak-breasted and upside-down tolerance. Which is not tolerance at all, but complacency, if not fatalism.

I spoke of the worst thing that can happen, namely the statement: "None of this interests me in the slightest. Meddling in other people's affairs is just tittle-tattle."

Really? How much do you check that statement for truth?

Do you always think you know others so well as to imply mere superficial sensationalism?

And what if it is not? Since exactly this statement came from my brother, who lives in the hood where we grew up, it made me uneasy, to say the least. Also, it angered me but I will refer to that anger later.

So in this real-life case - a very old acquaintance of mine is no longer invited by her close friends - it came to my attention yesterday who she had her affair with. And now I heard further details, according to which the friends involved (who are all married themselves) are divided into camps.

The social peace seems to be very badly disturbed if the affair has led to the fact that some no longer invite the others to the given occasions as usual.
There is an uproar about who told whom about the adultery, even though they were "not allowed" to do so.

As I was annoyed with my brother, who pretends that none of this concerns him, since he himself is neither married nor even the one whose house is open to said friends, since he does not invite and has mostly given up being a host for many years, but is still invited himself and accepts these invitations in due course, I realise that it is not only his fatalism but my own that bothers me.

We are more alike in our existence than I would like.

I, too, no longer have a large circle of social friendships and have withdrawn more and more from such activities in the last decade. My space has long ceased to be a meeting place.
I excused this through making the comparison that city life somehow supports leading a life with only lose ends and the lives of my childhood friends and family (who stayed in the countryside) required to stick together since their circles never changed significantly.

Not only is our parents' house used less and less for family gatherings because my mother and father are no longer alive, but the internal ties between us siblings have also suffered and broken down in parts. Easter and Christmas, anniversaries, marriages and other events no longer seem to have much meaning.

Many of my former friendships are broken and dead.

Now that I have passed fifty, I realise that this part of existence has been under-appreciated by me and what I will one day bequeath will be little.

On another level, I realise that this is the life of "modern" people. Since nothing is particularly sacred to us any more, we do not swear an honest oath when we marry each other, we have frivolous rather than grounded relationships, the isolation is complete when we no longer meet or interact with each other as families and as friends.

Conflicts remain unsolved, they are not even recognized as such, or are suppressed. Since it was ridiculously easy in the year 2020 and the following to forbid gatherings and why it was obeyed as easy, lies in the fact that peoples have isolated themselves long before.

I myself have thought that I would rather not participate in such "undignified gossip"

whenever I heard about affairs within the circle of friends and found myself too noble to say a thing. For example, I never said that having an affair within the close circle of males and females might not only be a bad idea but would be downright wrong. Why did I not say that? Because I did it myself.

When this happened the very last time (around ten years ago) I - for the very first time - had it severely coming at me. I was accused, I was given bad names, I was confronted with the fact that I had "stolen the man from another woman".
Even though I did not belong to the close circle of friends of the betrayed woman, nor had a close relationship with herself (the two of us didn't meet in private and on our own), it still was not totally unattached, since my ex husband was a friend of hers. To cut a long story short, there were some ties and that justified to let me be the persona non grata for the time appropriate.

Walking on egg shells.

I then was invited to common gatherings again. If I remember correctly this happened after three years have gone by. I was anxious to go, to let the eyes lay upon me. But I went. This was important to all others to see that she had forgiven me (and him) and so that the social peace was repaired.

Now, given what kind of lead I was taking on my own life, I cannot put pride towards me.

I failed in organizing family and friend get togethers since I was not able to convince my ex husband to meet with my current husband. I (for the most part) broke up with my sister and totally with my niece. I have no contact to one of my brothers. I have no contact to former friends of mine (also not to those whom I was in female-male relationship with). Before 2020 my circle was small, after it it almost vanished.

I realize that those bonds cannot be revived so easily, if at all. I face that the signs which are given to our children (who are now almost adults) are set and that you cannot go back and change your past life. It is set in the sense that it showed itself as a role model towards the younger ones. You cannot and will not be able to change that.

What had been done, had been done.

There will be some few future occasions to make gatherings possible. I will not miss out on them.

Yet I make peace with what the future generations will have learned through their parents and other role models. They may feel on a deeper level that all this complacency and superficial tolerance towards "life styles" is different from "livelihood" and from sincere boundaries.

I hear young men saying that they "seek for a woman to spend their lives with".

And I support that. If what Christianity has lost shall be found again through what is called "traditional" I no longer will say any superficial word against it.

I hope that more males will support this view and that they finally take back their lead in raising kids and in particular boys.