Dear Lucius:

“I was always taught never to  put my burdens on  others who are close to  me, even when they’re just ranting and raving about their own”-

unfair teaching, isn’t it? The teaching was that it is okay for your teachers to  do  what is not right to  do, not for you and not for anyone. So.. how do you tell your teachers, if they are your parents, let’s say, that they shouldn’t  do what is wrong to do?

It has to cause the student of this teaching anger and confusion

As to your “immoral relationship”-

Let’s look at what is right/ moral and what is wrong/immoral: it is moral for parents to behave according  to what they teach you is  moral. But they didn’t (assuming your teachers are your parents/ caretakers in your childhood). It is moral for a husband and wife to respect each other, but this  was/ is not the case with this woman and her  husband: if they can’t act respectfully toward each other, they shouldn’t be living  together. In this  context you got involved with her.

Were you wrong? yes. Should you extricate yourself from her and her marriage  (no matter how unwell her marriage is)? yes, says I.

And look at the  bigger picture, the context. We don’t live in a moral world. We should do all we can  in our personal choices and interactions to  do what is right for  us and for others, to do-no-harm.

But have empathy for  yourself, for making  mistakes, because it is not that you are a seed of evil in a good, just world. You, like everyone else, is both a victim and a perpetrator.

Do your best to be neither a victim nor a perpetrator.

anita