yunger80gmail

I get the same feeling. Particularly from the ambiguity he works in, does the friend have a “crush” (junior high) or is he “in love” (adult)? Both.

I know we’re supposed to assume good faith, but my gut’s saying that we’re being gamed.

Apparently I am not being clear enough. I have never said that this situation is occuring right now. What I have said said is that it is an issue I have been thinking about for a while, because it has happened in the past and it can happen in the future.

But anyway, I have come to my conclusion now so I'm happy. I wrote my conclusion in my previous post above. So thanks for your help everybody.

My first consideration, Yunger, was to go with the higher and long-term value in this dilemma - as is the Objectivist requisite.

If you have serious intentions to develop a long-term relationship with the girl, then the friend takes a back seat;

If this could be no more than a one-off with her, then a good friendship wins out.

However, my feeling is growing that you don't care for or value either of them much. I believe that in friendship at least, there can be no sacrifice or contradiction, as I see it as another example of the benevolent trader principle - your gain, is my gain.

So get rid of them both.

(Just testing...)

Tony

Yes, Tony, you are probably right. If a person was really my friend, maybe I would not WANT to sleep with the girl, simply because I would become unhappy just from the fact that my friend is unhappy.

But, as I wrote in my previous post, this is not the issue I am trying to understand. I am simply trying to understand if it is in any way morally "wrong" to cause my friend pain in this situation. And my answer is, no, it isn't. (But, as I said, if it is truly a friend, and someone I value, I simply may not WANT to cause him pain, because that would make me unhappy as well. And in that case, I would not sleep with the girl.)

Yunger,

It sounds like you want a way to make emotions involving relationships rational in a manner that they can be negotiated without pain.

The human being is not built like that. You have to make allowances for pain, not blot it out with negotiation.

First, thanks for your answer Michael. Regarding the above, I fully agree with you. However, there is a difference in feeling pain, and allowing it to affect your judgement. If I let my pain affect my judgement all the time, I would become unfriendly with any person who stirred up any kind of negative emotion in me. Jealousy is one of those emotions. I am not saying that I will block the pain - I am just discussing whether or not I will let that pain affect my moral judgement in that situation.

If you are truly interested in how to control this stuff, I believe the best path is to study human nature in general, doing what I call the cognitive to normative sequence. In other words, you first identify what people are. Then you ask why and measure.

You actually started doing this by noticing that jealousy plays a strong role in relationships, but not in job hunting. Then wondering why. (As an aside, depending on your friend and the situation, you will see jealousy's cousin, envy, very often in competitive job situations, with accusations of betrayal and the whole 9 yards.) That's just the start, though. The waters of the human psyche run deep.

Ok, I misformulated myself. I will rephrase my question: Why is that feeling of jealousy you feel when someone sleeps with a girl you wanted, more important than the feeling of envy that you get when someone gets a job you wanted? Why is that feeling of jealousy justified, and taken into consideration when making the choice, while the feeling of envy isn't? Honestly, I do not see any difference. They are both hardwired. If I should take into consideration that my friend gets "jealous" and "hurt" when I sleep with a certain girl, then I should also, for the same reasons, take into consideration that he feels "envious" and "angry" when I get a certain job.

This is what makes this question so difficult. But I think that I am coming to the conclusion now. I think that it is right to sleep with the girl, but at the same time also to tell my friend that although I understand that this is painful for him, he has to accept that this is the way it is, and that he has no right to make me feel guilty for sleeping with the girl for my own pleasure. Because it is a choice made by the girl, and me, together, and not his choice to make.

Rational volition is an extremely important part of human nature. Rand's glory is the way she valued this and provided a moral sanction for it. But we do have emotions and those emotions have a specific nature. We can control and program some of them, but we also come prewired with a lot of baggage waaaaay before our rational volition develops from our infancy.

We are rational animals, but we are animals before we are rational, not after.

Ayn Rand tried to ignore the prewired stuff and command her own relationship emotions in a ham-handed manner using only rational thought. Then she tried to do the same with others. She even had a beautiful vision she tried to impose on her own emotional reality and that of others. But reality will not be ignored with impunity. She got hurt terribly and she hurt others.

I believe Rand is a great inspiration for many things in life, but not in how to manage your love life.

I agree with this. I don't agree with a lot of the things Ayn said. The main things being the psychological interpretations she made. A lot of our psychology is separated from our morality - we come pre-wired, as you say.

But it still does not affect whether or not I should sleep with the girl. Because even though I may feel like someone is stepping on my toes for sleeping with the girl I am in love with, the fact is still that I don't have any kind of right to judge that person for doing so. He, even if he is my friend, does not have any obligation to sacrify his own happiness for mine. If it makes him happy to sleep with that girl - so be it. I won't try to stop him. And he shouldn't try to stop me or judge me, either. As long as the choices we make are consensual, and not violating anyone's rights, then that's the way it is. No matter what we may feel in the moment.

(But, as I said, with a big dose of diplomacy, to prevent the bad feelings from taking over completely.)

I must also add this little paragraph: There is one situation where I would not sleep with the girl. And that is, if I value my friend's happiness as highly as my own happiness. So if I would, for example, feel happy because my friend feels relieved, or not in pain, then I would not sleep with the girl. But that is not what I am discussing here. I am discussing whether or not I am making any moral "wrong" by sleeping with the girl. And my conclusion is no.

I'm more interested in why you take sleeping around so lightly. Promiscuity is a sign of emotional immaturity.

I take sleeping around lightly, yes, at least in some cases. And in some cases not. It all depends on the situation. Feel free to explain your point if you want, but in another thread please.

Thanks for the answers guys. You all have very important points, in my opinion, but this is a difficult issue and I'm still not satisfied with the explanations. Let me explain why.

But before I do, let me just say that there is also a flipside to this, and I'm trying to solve that at the same time. The flipside is that I could be the one in love and getting hurt (and it has happened in the past). If my friend slept with a girl that I was in love with, could I justify my anger or would I do better in repressing my feelings, thinking that it is his right to do whatever he wants, without considering my irrational whims? To be honest, right now I am inclined to go with the latter.

Because isn't that feeling of "ownership" you have with a girl that you are in love with, really an irrational whim? If you can't have the girl (cause if she chooses to sleep with your friend, then obviously you are fooling yourself if you think you can have her), then what kind of right do you have to demand that other people don't have her (no matter what they "have her" for, be it just sex or true love)?

I think it is important to define these things before they actually happen, before you are actually caught up in the situation, because if you don't, then you will be at loss and act irrationally when the situation actually does occur. And judging from the fact that it has happened several times before in my life (at which times I was actually at loss and acted on the feelings I had in the moment without knowing if I was doing the right thing), I am sure it will happen again.

Let's put this another way. Why is that feeling of "crush" more important than, say, the feeling of jealousy that a person has when you are competing for the same job and he looses? I am sure you would not argue that you should consider your friends emotions if you are competing for the same job as him. So why should you consider his feelings when you are competing for the same girl? Or rather, why is it ok to compete for a job, but not ok to compete for a girl? Me, I don't really see any difference - both feelings of jealousy are irrational, and in neither of the cases does he have any right to ask you to hold yourself back.

Selene and Brant:

Thanks for the answers guys, but I am still not satisfied.

Could you kindly tell me why you would you as you do? If you do not tell me the reasons you think as you do, then it will not really add any more understanding for me, since this is not a voting-competition, but what I am looking for is either new angles that I haven't thought of, or if you see flaws in my logic that will make this issue more clear for me.

Because obviously, the two factors pro and against that I described in my original post, are contradictory to each other. So I must be missing something. This is why I am so confused... I would be kind of paralyzed and powerless if that situation occured again, so I would really appreciate some new perspective on this. What do you think is morally right in this situation, and why?

Ninth Doctor:

Thanks you too for the answer, but I'm sorry to say, it still doesn't answer my question.. You see, I am not looking for the action that will bring me most benefit in this specific issue. If it was that easy, it wouldn't have been an issue at all.

What I am looking for is a moral justification for my actions. Is it RIGHT for me to fuck the girl, even though I am hurting my friend?

Whether or not I am loosing his friendship is not something I would consider. That is a consequence of my friend's moral values, and it is not something I am willing to bend over for or even consider. I want to find MY moral values, and that is what I am looking for here.

(LOL to the pic by the way)

yunger:

No one can make that decision except you and the girl.

My question to you is, does the girl allow your friend to be in love with her?

In other words, is she encouraging him?

Adam

Post script: Welcome to OL. Are you a student, worker or businessperson?

Secondly, how did you come to reading Ayn and to this particular forum?

First, to answer your post script questions:

- I am a businessperson. I sell a software solution that helps large organizations reduce IT costs and reduce printing waste.

- I started reading Ayn Rand because of personal curiosity, looking around, and finally finding Ayn's books. This forum, I found by searching for an objectivism-related forum on Google.

Now, to the issue at hand:

- Yes, I agree that it is my decision to make. I am aware that I am not obliged in any way to avoid sleeping with this girl, my friend has no claims to make in the matter. But I have not been able to decide what I think is the right action for me to do in this matter. I want to sleep with the girl - it would give me pleasure and happiness. But, at the same time, my friend will resent me if I sleep with the girl - not because he has wrong values or anything like that, but simply because after all, he is a human, and it is not easy to keep a clear head when you are in love.

So that's why I am confused..

(P.S. This is not related to any specific case, it is a general question, so I can't answer your question about how the girl is acting. Plus, I don't really see how that would change the answer - this is about how I will act, not about how she acts.)

I have been thinking about this issue for a long time now, but still haven't been able to come to a conclusion. Please help me shed some light on it!

The question is: Is it morally right or wrong to have sex with a girl that your friend is in love with, even though it would hurt him a lot? We will assume that this girl doesn't mean anything for you. She is just some girl you can have sex with for pleasure, but nothing else.

I am having difficulties coming to a conclusion on this because:

- On one hand, my friend does not have any "right" to stop me from sleeping with this girl. She has her own will, and I have my own will, and we are allowed to do anything we want as long as it doesn't obstruct my friend's rights in any way, which this doesn't. I have no obligation whatsoever to stop myself from achieving happiness, just because he happens to be in love with this particular girl. Simply put, that is not his decision to make and he has nothing to say in the matter.

- On the other hand, my friend can't really "choose" to not get hurt - it is an automatic process, hardwired in his brain. If I sleep with her, he will be in pain, as simple as that. So I am actually directly causing him pain by sleeping with her, and he can't do anything about it. It has nothing to do with values, it is just directly hardwired in the brain, and I completely understand the pain he will go through.

I really need to solve this issue and come to a conclusion, because this is something that has come up in the past, and will most likely come up again, and it just paralyzes me - I don't know what I should do!