yep, is old age baloney too <img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="images/icons/smile.gif" /> kinda reminded me of karma, which I associate with newagesism. There is no doubt one reaps what they sow as a matter of consequence...cause and effect. But there is absolutely no mechanism anyone can prove which supports the notion of karmic debt. If you commit adultery (for example) the notion that someday you will be a victim of adulter (for example) is ridiculous. If you are a victim of adultery it simply means you made a bad choice of partner. If on the other hand you learn everything you can from your experience with adultery, you will in fact be a better person, and should experience greater good accordingly. Life is one continuous learning experience, and the future is always unwritten (otherwise freewill is a meaningless concept, but freewill is the bedrock of Christianity). You can write the future poorly, and experience undesireable consequences, or vice versa. In addition life has an element of chaos, no matter what you do, how good you are, crap happens....likewise no matter how bad you are, sometimes you come out smelling like a rose....such is the nature of life.
When contemplating reaping what you sow, it is fair to observe (and consistent with how human societies function) that if you hang with bad people, choose bad behaviours, you will have an unhappy life... that has nothing to do with karma, and everything to do with natural consequences. You can get out of this vicious cycle at any point by changing your behaviour (although your consequences may follow you). And it is fair to observe that long term bad behaviour is difficult to change, but again that is not karma....everyones life is whatever they want to make it.....and yours will be fine hopeful. Hold your head high, do the work you need to do for yourself, and live life with a "hopeful" healthy attitude....life may not go where you think it will, or where you want it to, but it will be ok.
btw you didn't hurt your H, you hurt yourself. Relationships carry the risk of failure, and everyone has been hurt one time or another, and/or has hurt someone one time or another. IMO it is pointless to asign blame and/or guilt. What is important is what lessons are learned, what truths revealed, and what future actions taken. It is easy (and self-serving) to elevate affair related hurt to some special status, but it is no different than any other disappointment, anyone (ws or bs) who cannot seperate that from their self-worth has issues beyond the relationship failure. In addition, affairs are not a singular event, they are the manifestation of a lot of complex behaviour, (personal and marital) which needs to be unraveled before one can even know what the whole thing means in the first place.
I will say though, the first lesson one should learn is that affairs are rarely the best way to resolve marital dysfunctions....repair or divorce/seperation makes a lot more sense...unfortuneately this is not something commonly learned as part of growing up, but then again relationship dynamics may not be something that can be taught anyways (but I do think we could do a lot better than we do).
<small>[ March 23, 2003, 08:41 PM: Message edited by: LurkingAbout ]</small>
