Oh, bloody hell yes you can. And we all do. Whenever you meet someone attractive, there is always a point at which you ask yourself, "Should I let this go any further? *Will* I let this go any further?" And you either say Yes and keep going, or No and shut the door.

"You can't help who you fall in love with" is one of the mantras of the WS (after being busted, of course). You absolutely CAN and DO choose you who fall in love with. It's no accident and nobody is just a helpless victim who fell in love against their will, or without being aware of it.

Sheesh.

Oh dear...cut the guy a break.

He was in luvvvvvv

How can luvvv be bad???

Mr. W

my $.02.

I always told my daughters that is is just as easy to fall in love with a smart, rich man as it is to fall in love with a stupid, poor man.

My oldest daughter is on her third marriage:

First man, older, smart, poor. He was mean, and crazy, and the marriage lasted one month. We tried to tell her, but she would not listen.

Second man was her age, poor, smart. He was great, but he was a cheater. He began with a moral compass, and then somewhere just began losing that compass and thinking about himself. It all began when he started college and thinking about...money...and what he could make.


Now, she meets a guy who is VERY SMART. He has no job. He is in college with her, so she isn't worried about that too much. I tell her, "Honey, there has to be at least the THOUGHT of being supported. Baby, could you at LEAST find a guy with a JOB? What does he DO to pay rent?" She laughed and said she wasn't sure, but he had a house, a car, and paid the bills. Besides, she wasn't going to MARRY the guy, just DATE him.

And then she called me about whether or not


she "should" allow herself to fall in love.

Because she thought she could love him.

And she thought he was the best man she had ever met. Only there was this "money" issue, and that she had not found out about his "invisible means of support" thing.

We discussed the problem, and I said that you cannot marry a man for money, or the lack of money, but it was a consideration that the two of you had to discuss. You had to support yourselves.

But DECIDING to be in love, was her decision - YES.


She decided that she would go ahead and love him. That this leap of faith in the MAN was right.

She decided it was the thing to do.





And it WAS the best decision for her.


Turns out, he was looking for a woman who might just NOT be looking for the money he had.


He found her.

She never asked about his money, or how he paid the rent, or about how they "might" support themselves, BEFORE she gave him her heart. She told him that as they moved toward their future they would work together to get the things they needed, and that her pay would contribute to the rent and the car and the food, and that together things would come along.

This was music to his ears. He had had his fill of the other kind of women. The women who looked first at his wallet.

Because.....

Later on, about five months before they were married, she found out...


He was sitting on a stack of coin.




They now live happily ever after. Because she CHOSE TO LOVE FIRST.


And Mulan, you are right on this.

You do choose.


Every step of the way.


SB

Plus you gotta love the old twist-a-roo logic of ...

"Well if I knew then what I know now, I wouldn't have done the things I'm still DOING"

Which means...

Bygones..

and how dare you judge me on something I started doing 2, 4 or even 10 years ago. Can't you see I'm a decent person NOW because I AGREE that I made a mistake back then.

Mr. W

What if I meet my soul-mate, Mulan???

MelodyLane-Then you would hear the director say, "CUT," and you would get a HUGE paycheque.

Then peel him off the bottom of your shoe!

Oh - you said "soul-mate", not "sole-mate".

Well - if you keep the boundaries up, you will not meet anyone who professes to be your sole/soul-mate because you won't get close enough to them to find out.

If you are single and available, and you keep your boundaries properly up until you have made a choice, you might find someone you choose to love.

Dat's all I got on "sole-mates/soul-mates."

Another thing...

If you happen to meet your "soul-mate"...

Too bad..so sad.

You've already made your choice.

Mr. W

But God wants you to be happy...and if you happen to meet your soulmate while you are married, well follow Gods will and destroy your family so you can be happy...you deserve to be happy..your family doesnt. God wants you to be happy, he doesnt care if your family is happy though.


NOT!!!!!!


How about God wants you to be happy, that is why you have a family at home that loves you and would love for you to be happy with them. A family that is willing to forgive your mistake and work to make a loving and happy family. But I guess that just isnt good enough.

How about "I prayed for a good man and God brought him to me" (OW talking about my husband).

Yeah, God loves to break up marriages...

Okay, I have a few issues here...First, I just ate a perfectly good homemade cookie, and this thread title made me throw it up. Beyond that, I guess I just have one thing to say

People are idiots, especially waywards

People justify their immorality by the rationalization, "God wants me to be happy." But the happiness they seem to want is only found in indulgence. I do believe God wants people to be happy, but not to the point that it overcomes the right thing to do

Its just justification; a part that in their minds, makes it all okay. �God wants me to be happy. This makes me happy. Therefore, God must approve of it.� What they are doing is reducing the God of glory to more manageable proportions; they trivialize God, and make Him into their own image. They re-fashion God, to make Him fit their expectations and serve their desires. They invent their own projects to suit the purpose, and then sign God on as a junior partner.

yanoo...my pastor always said, God wants us to be HOLY. And THAT will make us happy.

I will be collecting an offering shortly

Classic.

And I second the fact that people are idiots, with particular attention to waywards.

Love is not something that just happens. It requires time, energy, and a great deal of effort to fall in love. Love must be cultivated. It isn't something you catch, like a cold.

Therefore, you most definitely can choose who you fall in love with. You choose who you spend time with and who you allow to meet your needs. You choose who you allow yourself to get close to. You choose who you open your heart to.

Now that that's perfectly clear, Luri, would you like me to send you a new cookie?

I believe that God wants us to be happy also...He gives us what we need and if we use these things and our good people we will have happiness (contentment). But if we are constantly looking for something better, You will never be happy with what you have.

I think these waynerds also are convinced that happiness is this constant euphoric feeling and I think that is wrong....what is wrong with happiness being contentment and gratitude with what we have...

One of my favorite quotes is "You cant always get what you want, but if you try sometimes well you might find you get what you need." It is just so fitting for these waynerds not working with their spouses to have a happy marriage, but bailing when they feel they have found something "better".

They dont seem to believe in sacrifice for happiness...they seem to want the easy way straight to happiness...but it is only temporary...

The OW called my WH her soul mate. I always figured it meant she didn't think highly of herself that her soul mate would be someone else's husband, who encouraged her to cheat on her own husband and destroy her own family as well as his.

But then, thinking lowly of herself was pretty accurate.

Dr Harley addresses that rationalisation in The Lover's Perspective on Infidelity

OW writes,

"I have built a relationship with a man over a period of 10 years and the last 3 have been sexual. I want to spend the rest of my life with him, because being in love is such a beautiful experience, something I may never experience with anyone else.

I believe he is a gift from God. In all of its wrongness, there was so much right. I don't believe something so beautiful, could not have been a gift from above. But he does love two women, and we can't live in this triangle forever. He has chosen to try and make it right at home, and I cannot prevent him from trying. But we work together and neither of us can leave town. There's no chance of us escaping that way. And I can't stop loving him."

Dr Harley replies,

"People try to justify their behavior by creating a belief system that supports it. In your case, you try to believe that God had something to do with your affair. I've heard it expressed many times, but it can't possibly be true. God would never give you someone else's husband, because to do so would create so much pain for his wife and children.

Married men are out of bounds for you. You must find love and happiness among those who are not married because to do otherwise is the most cruel and self-centered thing you can do to a woman and her children. It may have been bliss for you, but it was a nightmare for your lover's wife.

You are right when you suggest that, even if he divorced his wife and married you, the relationship would not work. Most affairs don't end in marriage, and most of those that do, end in divorce. Affairs are definitely not the way to find a life partner."

I don't know how a person could believe that God would choose to destroy a family in order to bring happiness to the OP, but it seems they really do.