On fidelity

"But what if you just marry the wrong person? Don’t you think that can happen to someone?" (Katrina is a friend of mine from work. The same age as me, she is a constant lifeline when things get on top of me. She’s also just as ruthlessly ambitious as I am, which I think helps.)
"Don’t give me that crap!" (You know, sometimes I worry that in my commitment to being ‘straighttalking’, I am in fact just a bit rude.)
Katrina shrugged, "People change."
"Yes, but you don’t just ‘marry the wrong person’. You allow yourself to have an affair, it doesn’t just ‘happen to you’."
"But supposing you fall in love?"
"But I think that’s rubbish. You don’t just walk down the street one day and see someone and immediately fall in love. You don’t on the spur of the moment abandon your wife and children and throw everything away to be with someone else. You allow yourself to love them. You put yourself in a situation where you can love them."
"Oh."
"Marriage doesn’t mean you never see anyone again that you find attractive. Marriage isn’t about that. It’s about a commitment to someone else that means, if you do see someone else that you fancy, you stop it right there. That’s the end. And if the extent to which you fancy them worries you, then you take positive steps to make sure that you don’t see that person regularly, and you certainly don’t see them by yourself," I may have raised a wagging finger at this point, I can’t quite remember. If I didn’t actually raise the finger, it was certainly there in spirit, "or in a social situation, or anywhere late at night, or where Alcohol Is Involved."
A pause, "You know what, RTT? You’re right."

And that’s what I think about infidelity. (No need for concern, by the way! I just wanted to write an entry, and this was what bobbed up to the surface.)

Perhaps I like the sound of my own voice. Perhaps I am guilty of writing up conversations that verge rather more on the side of articulate coherence rather than verisimilitude. But one of the reasons that this conversation made me smile because it is so rare that you are talking to someone and they just wholeheartedly agree with you. Katrina didn’t shout, "Yes, that’s all very well, but…!" and she didn’t pick holes in my arguments just ‘because’. She thought about it, and she agreed with me. And, sucker that I am for winning arguments, it was great.

Tomorrow, (once I have shaken off this horrible cold), I am going to try to listen to other people, and find someone to agree with, unconditionally and completely. I might even let them get the last word. (maybe).
A small mission, but nonetheless a good one, I think.
with love, as ever,
therumtumtugger
xxx