Is the case you quoted even cheating? So the wife is comatose, basically is no longer there, no longer recognizes the husband, but yet this is a marriage? I realize what the all uptight moralists would say, but there is a difference between cheating on a spouse who is with you, aware and a spouse, and someone vegetating because of modern technology.
There was a heartbreaking story about this in the NY Times today, about the wife of an ex football player, who developed severe dementia, problem from his playing days, and also had alzheimers as well. By the end the guy was in a facility, didn't really recognize her, wasn't there any more. Yeah, I know, the wedding vows say till death do you part and all that, but did the people who write that even envision what dementia was? Remember, when they wrote those words, people were lucky to live into their 30's, so things like alzheimers and such weren't present, and if someone got that sick, they would soon die. In the story, the wife ends up having companionship with another man, she goes each day to visit the husband at the facility, but she found companionship in another man who had lost his wife. I told my wife a long time ago that if I got into that kind of state, to make sure they had a DNR on me, and also I told her I wanted her to find someone else, she deserved that, if i was basically out of it. To me, only a very cruel person, or people like those in the Vatican who are all about theory, could judge someone like that. The cellist Jacqueline Du Pre had a virulent case of MS, and by the end of her life she was literally a basket case, in a care facility...her husband, Daniel Berenboim, did what he could to take care of her, but he also had met another woman and were starting a family....I cannot judge someone in that kind of position, it is a bit different when a spouse is cheating for the sheer hell of it. Yes, there are gray areas, like the spouse who for whatever reasons doesn't want to have sex, but when you have someone where the spouse is literally not there any more, is the spouse supposed to suffer a life without companionship? That is the problem with rigid ideology, without seeing shades of gray, you lump it all together...wedding vows are meant to be between two people, who are functioning spouses, what happens when one in many ways is in effect not all that much different then passed away? I don't have answers, but I can see shades of gray, each person has to make their own decisions.
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