"Partner Poaching"

[BlueIris]

http://women.msn.com/804963.armx?GT1=6686

I think it's interesting that the MSN link for this refers to the article as "Mate Poaching." Okay. Also, does anyone know anything about the article's claim that 20% of long-term relationships begin while one partner or the other was married or committed to someone else?

This one is just...I don't even know what's going on with MSN lately. For awhile, it has been ages since I'd seen any links even vaguely sexist on my Hotmail screen or through the MSN pages I sometimes frequent. Now--the last few days have been a barrage of WTF material.

[Nikia]

1. The one yesterday was about emotional affairs

http://msnwomen.lhj.com/lhj/story.jhtml?storyid=/templatedata/lhj/story/data/EmotionalAffairs_08012003.xml
By their definition of it, it is cheating to have a close friend of the opposite sex if you are married. If you are bisexual, you must not be allowed to have any close friends once you are married.
These articles like that appear are just one of the sections on MSN. They are sort of like articles that appear in women's magazines.

[BlueIris]

2. I think it's especially hinky that MSN renames them in links

with offensive language the actual authors chose not to use.

I saw the link for "emotional 'affairs'" (insert eyeroll here) yesterday, but didn't read the piece. Mostly because, well, I can't stand anything about that topic as it is now discussed in the popular media. When people describe an "emotional" affair the way you've posted that the MSN author did, that is just so--it's stupid. Married people and those in close relationships are allowed to have close friendships, sure. That's normal and healthy. What I hate is--the way I'm seeing it discussed now? Doesn't jive with the way I heard that term defined by a CSW I was friends with way back when in the mid-90s. When a partner starts caring about a "friend" or coworker or acquaintance literally more than he cares about his own partner? I think that's a problem. A huge, "time to reevaluate the relationship" problem. Especially if the partner is more emotionally invested in the friend's problems than she was in her partner when the partner had to deal with the exact same issues. My ex? Boatloads of sympathy for his (casual) friend he hadn't seen in a year at the time when she discovered she would not be able to biologically have children. When I found out I had a similar health problem--it took him five days to even be bothered to return my e-mail about it. Yes, that was the penultimate straw to the end of the relationship. An "emotional 'affair'" is a valid way to describe a real form of betrayal or other seriously fucked up, hurtful behavior--but not the way the fuckwits on MSN characterized it.