I have a few things where if I start down the path putting the brakes on is nigh impossible, gambling high on the list, but I just don’t start. And even there I’m OK being near “temptation”, one of the best concert venues “in” (way outside) Tucson is attached to a casino, I go to shows there all the time, eat dinner in the restaurants before the show most of the time, never touch any of the tables or machines. They’re not why I’m there, I already know the results, no reason to start.
It just seems sad and kind of silly to me. “I can’t be friends with half the population because I might have sex with them” it just doesn’t add up for me. Maybe it’s the large quantities of females in my life growing up, I can separate the “fun” part of women from the “people” part of women, declare the “fun” part off limits and be friends with the person. For me the physical attractiveness of my friends is kind of like stuff on a food TV show, yup looks nice, probably be a lot of fun, not gonna happen, moving on. I don’t know, maybe I just compartmentalize exceedingly well, it’s all a no brainer to me.
It's awesome that you are able to control the urge to gamble - you have my sincerest admiration for that as I have seen people who have succumbed to it and it is a destroyer of lives. Continued success to you!
Mel
I'm not sure anyone is saying that exactly. An incontrovertible fact is that affairs happen and while they don't happen by accident, a lot of people report that they never set out to have an affair, it "just happened". Now, you can tell me how strong your will is, how strong the will is of your significant other is, how moral you both are, how neither of you would ever contemplate such a thing etc. You may even be perfectly correct. The divorce statistics and the high incidence of infidelity among virtually all races, creeds and religions in America suggests that you are not the norm. Healthy attractive heterosexual contemporaries of the opposite sex that spend a lot of private time together either resist natural feelings of desire or don't. Granted we are not animals and we do not have to give into base desire, but culturally we seem to have a big problem with that.