Dear JemJem:

I reread your thread and thought to comment a bit more: in your original post you shared that a married male co-worker pursued you for sex for a long time, and you “finally gave in and we started sleeping together. Please don’t judge”-

– a judgment against you and against the man was formed in my mind the second I read “I finally gave in and we started sleeping together”. Your request to not be judged came too late.

Another judging member posted to you: “At least he got a shag… good lad”- I had to google “shag”. The urban dictionary: “shag: a British slang term for sexual intercourse. Used by people who think the term ‘making love’ is too innocent and f*** is too coarse”.

This means that this member, like me, formed a judgment against you and against the man, suggesting that the two of you are guilty of a “shag”, a physical activity that has nothing to do with love and everything to do with selfishness: satisfying one’s needs at the expense of others.

Your co-worker wants to have sex with multiple women while married, to entertain himself this way- regardless of how his activity harms the women, including his wife, and his children. You wanted to feel better (“Having been so  isolated.. got lonely”), so you were willing to participate in harming his wife and his children.

Here is my non-judgmental comment: your behavior with this married man does not define you if you stop this behavior with him and if you do not engage in sex with any married man now and in the future.

There must be a way for you to get a relief from your isolation and loneliness in some other ways, ways that are not harmful to other people. Talking about harming others: non-harming is a central principle in Buddhist ethics. It is the ethical principle that comes before all others. While understanding how much suffering there is in the world, ours and others’, we need to aim at not creating more suffering for  others, even if our harming behavior (temporarily)  feels good.

* As I type this post, I understand that non-harming (ahishma) is about not harming any living thing, not just people, and therefore, because I am not a vegetarian,  some vegetarians will judge me for harming animals, and may call me a hypocrite for having judged you.

In general, when we judge others we need to scan our own behaviors, evaluate or re-evaluate this or that behavior so to determine if we hold ourselves to the same standards we hold others for. What do you think?

anita