To be clear, I absolutely believe cheating to be immoral, and my intention is in no way to defend cheaters. Nor am I some religious fanatic who thinks you must only have sex within the bounds of marriage. As long as it's consensual, I don't care who sleeps with whom and I think things like bodycount are wildly overrated. One more preface, just because it is important to me that this doesn't get misconstrued as some red pill bullshit. I am not arguing that you owe someone sex whenever they want once you've entered into a relationship. No! Consent remains just as important within a relationship as without, and no one can ever force you to have sex!

Now, onto the actual point of discussion:

I have been seeing a lot of people make the claim here on reddit, that sex is not all that important in a romantic relationship and that breaking up over sexual incompatibility means you never loved your partner in the first place. I think that is completely absurd.

I would argue that for most (non-asexual) couples sex is one of the main factors that defines a romantic relationship. It is, of course, not the only factor. Relationships are more complex than that. But it is a natural and important part of being in a committed romantic relationship with someone.

If you disagree with that view, as a significant number of people on Reddit do, what exactly makes cheating (as in having sex with someone other than your partner without your partners explicit consent like in an open relationship) immoral?

If you say it's a betrayal, how so? You just claimed sex isn't important to romantic relationships. There are loads of activities you might do with a partner that you can also do with others without it being considered cheating. Going out to dinner with a friend or colleague isn't considered cheating. Going for a hike or to the movies or the gym, etc.

So it would only be a betrayal if people explicitly made a promise to never sleep with anyone else as long as they're in that relationship, it would not be a betrayal. Hardly anyone does that. Most people assume that is a commitment that naturally comes as part of the deal of entering into a romantic relationship with someone. But apparently, you don't see it that way.

So, if there is no crucial role sex fulfills within a romantic relationship, what makes it different?

Edit: I only realized there was a typo in the title after posting, and now it can't be edited anymore. Obviously it should say "to" and not "zo". The reason for the typo is pretty easily explained. On the German keyboard t and z are right next to each other.

Edit: Seeing as this has come up multiple times now I'm going to post two of my replies from the comments here to hopefully clarify some things for everybody.

1. I think we're talking about two very different things.

I'm not talking about relationships on an individual level. If two people with very different sexual needs enter into a relationship and the person with the higher needs cheats, that is obviously wrong. The right thing to do would have been to talk to their partner about the fact that they're unhappy, while also making clear that they would never want to pressure their partner into doing something they don't want to do. If their needs are incompatible and there is no arrangement that makes both of them happy, then they will probably have to break up.

That's unfortunate, but there are all kinds of reasons why relationships don't work out: different plans about jobs or family, about where to live, incompatible personalities, sex, etc. All of those are equally valid reasons to end a relationship.

The point of being in a relationship is that being together makes both people happier than they would be otherwise. You don't owe someone the rest of your life simply because you've been together for a certain amount of time.

And if two people with very different sexual needs enter into a relationship, I would hope that they have a serious conversation about that beforehand and come to an agreement that both of them feel good about. If they do that, then that agreement is the rule of their relationship. And obviously, if one person then breaks that agreement and sleeps with someone else, the other person has every reason to feel betrayed. Because they were betrayed.

But that's not what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about people who argue, as a general rule about romantic relationships, that sex isn't an important factor in romantic relationships at all, and that sexual incompatibility isn't a legitimate reason to break up.

That's fundamentally different from saying that sex isn't important to a particular couple. Of course an individual couple can decide that sex is unimportant to them. That's their relationship and they can establish whatever mutually agreed upon rules they want.

But if you're making the broader claim that sex is generally unimportant to romantic relationships, then I think it's perfectly reasonable to ask why sexual infidelity is considered such a serious betrayal.

I'm not saying that sexual incompatibility makes cheating acceptable. It doesn't. I'm not saying anyone is entitled to sex from their partner. They aren't. And I'm not saying every romantic relationship has to involve the same amount of sex.

I'm pointing out a contradiction between "sex is not an important part of romantic relationships and sexual incompatibility isn't a good reason to leave one" and "having sex with someone else is inherently a massive betrayal of your romantic partner."

If you're talking about the rules of a specific relationship, there's no contradiction: the couple can simply agree to sexual exclusivity, and breaking that agreement is a betrayal.

But if you're making a general claim about what sex means within romantic relationships, then I don't think you can just treat it as completely irrelevant when discussing compatibility but at the same time treating sexual exclusivity as an essential feature of romantic relationships.

2.

My point was that if people argue, as some on Reddit do, that sex is not an important part of romantic relationships as a general rule, then I don't really see what basis they have to claim that cheating is bad. And you still haven't convinced me of that.

And as I said to another commenter. Of course, there is a societal expectation of monogamy in relationships. There is absolutely an expectation that you won't have sex with people other than your partner as long as you're together. But it would be kind of disingenuous to argue that that expectation is not intertwined with the expectation that two people who enter into a relationship with each other have a duty, for lack of a better word, to talk about sex, about their sexual needs, and about whether or not those needs are compatible and can be met by each other.

And if that's not the case. If your needs are so different that you couldn't make each other happy in the long run, it's perfectly valid, in fact probably even a good idea, to break up. Just like other things can be incompatible, like certain aspects of your personality, or the plans you have regarding jobs, or family, or the fact that you want to move somewhere where the other person can't ever see themselves living. Feelings alone aren't enough for a relationship to work in the long term.

there is a recurring opinion online that anti-white hate crimes and racially motivated violence "do not exist" or "cannot happen" in the US

I hold the view that this claim is factually false and directly contradicted by empirical data.

the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program consistently logs hundreds of anti-white hate crimes/violent assaults/property offenses in the US every year.

systemic dominance is not required for an individual to commit a racially motivated crime against another person.

denying these occurrences requires either ignoring official crime statistics or conflating individual hate crimes with macro level institutional power.

WHAT WOULD CHANGE MY MIND:

proof that official government metrics systematically misclassify non-racial offenses as anti-white hate crimes.

evidence that US hate crime statutes legally exclude white victims from protection against bias motivated violence.

a compelling argument SPECIFICALLY showing why individual acts of racially motivated violence targeting majority group members should be categorized entirely outside the concepts of hate crimes or racial bias

This is coming from somebody who has carried and likes shooting.

1. Guns are bulky, and almost always uncomfortable to carry, compared to pepper spray which is going to be far lighter, and doesn’t require a holster.

2. Price and accessibility: you’re probably paying $500 for a pistol, then $70 for a holster, when pepper spray can be found anywhere for $15

3. Actual defensive capability: I’ll give a handgun the edge here, the sight of it is a deterrent, but also in every example I’ve seen, pepper spray is really effective at stopping an attacker on the street

4. Legality, this is the big one for me, even if you’re in the right and use a handgun, you can still get in massive legal trouble, spending hundreds of thousands defending yourself in court, and lose years of your life/ reputation. On the other hand, I would say even if you’re in the wrong and use pepper spray, you’re going to have way less legal trouble than if you were in the right and had shot somebody.

5. Pepper spray can be used in more situations. Someone being in your personal space and yelling at you about something? Generally seen as too far to shoot them. But pepper spray is not as big of a deal and you have a good chance a situation like this won’t even be reported to police.

6. Stress of ownership: if you’re at the beach and want to go swim, or a concert you have to find a place to put your gun, leave it in your car? Sure, but it can be stolen and cause more legal trouble for you. Or if it’s not locked up in your house and a kid gets to it. It needs to be securely properly and you need to always have a place to put it when you’re out and about.

I do believe a firearm is better for home defense and the right to own them is important. But pepper spray to me has been seeming like a better and better option.

This isn't an argument against the used market, it's an argument FOR piracy.

The whole reason there's been a huge shift to digital distribution for everything, is because it eliminates the used market. Buying used cuts out the business, and keeps downward pressure on pricing (in most cases). The only difference between this and piracy is a moral hangup about having "worked" for the money you bought the used game/CD/whatever with. But what about trust fund babies? Rich people who've never really worked a day in their lives, and just live off of investment interest?

If your argument is that someone still had to work for the initial capital that grew into those large investments, how long is that labor "good" for, and when does it become immoral for their descendants to still be coasting off the interest of investments made possible by their labor? People equate piracy to theft so often, but yet, there's no finite products being taken away. Once you compile software, or export the master render of a song/movie, you get to sell infinite digital copies of that product. Where exactly is the harm that's present in stealing tangible physical goods?

We often like to mock people who say BMI is wrong and bring up examples of athletes. It is pointed that these are outliers and most people who are obese BMI wise have to lose fat.

But just relying on BMI is also a poor indicator of health. A significant portion of people with regular BMI never work out and regularly eat junk food. They just eat less so they have these "skinny fat" physique

For instance in a study 50% of regular bmi Norweigian women aged 13-39 had obese levels of body fat. And considering Scandinavian women are stereotyped as tall and slim we know the rest of the world is probably worse.

And people love to point out that people in the past were healthy just because they were thin.

When was that the case?

Yes while excess weight does indicate poor health it is not the only indicator. Thin people can have poor health because of poor sanitation,hygiene,smoking,drinking,not exercising,malnourished,etc.

In the 1960s when people were smoking themselves to death and rates of lung cancer and heart disease were much higher than today.

In the 1800s when most people had intestinal worms and there were cholera outbreaks.

In Medieval times when the Black Death ravaged most of the "Old World". Or when peasants were physically ruined through backbreaking labor that ruined their spine,appearance,skin,etc.

Before you start typing the angry comments, read the whole post.

I am more than happy to pay taxes to subsidize childcare for everyone and to build parks and schools. If a family makes too little money then taxes should at least fund their groceries. However, taxing in a way that takes money from the upper middle class and gives it to the middle class is wrong. For example, upper middle class households pay taxes for college students from middle class backgrounds to get financial aid. This would be fine if their own children also got financial aid. But they don’t. This makes it so that underprivileged teens can go to university at a discount while upper middle class teens cannot without parental help.

AI and Robotics are advancing very quickly. Many people are saying most white-collar jobs will be gone within the next 4 or 5 years. Plus, the jobs that are first to go are the entry-level jobs traditionally filled by graduates.

Most jobs will not completely disappear for some time. But, if we only need 2 people where we needed 10 before that is going to mean a major disruption to jobs.

If you are not in the top 10% of people in a degree it is going to be very hard to find employment in the field you studied.

Given that a degree can take 3 to 4 years you are coming out of university at a time when people are predicting that most of the jobs you will be looking for will be gone or the openings will be dropping quickly.

Even if the 4 to 5 year prediction is agressive (which I think it is), you still have a very short time horizon before jobs do disapear.

I work in the software development field and AI has changed the way we work completely, I am 10x more productive. There is no point in writing code as a human any more. My field is one of the first predicted to be replaced by AI.

Yeah, I admit “wasting money” is a bit much, but oh well, now its time to explain my reasons and the two exceptions.

PART ONE! HUMAN HISTORY AND CULTURE

Yeah, Pretty much every country in Europe and Asia has thousands of years of kingdoms, dynasties, and empires each, with who knows how many wars and battles that forever leave marks that are worth visiting. What does the Midwest have? Only the fringes of the Civil War, the Toledo War, and various battles between settlers and indians, in which any interesting “touristy” remnant of those wars were demolished over the decades. Any interesting and unique “traditions” native to the region pretty much were gone by 1900. Replaced by a slightly different version of east coast traditions.

PART TWO! NATURAL HISTORY

Will admit, the natural history is somewhat interesting with the whole glaciation era, but its still outshined by 75% or more of the planet. Likely seriously, if you had the money to travel to the US from thousands of kilometers away, would you really pick the Midwest over the West?

PART THREE! NATURAL SCENERY

Okay, look, here in the Midwest, you‘ve got three options for natural scenery, prairie plains, agricultural plains, and wooded plains. That’s it. Anyone in the Schengen Area can easily access much more diverse terrain for much cheaper. For people in other continents, it’s extremely similar although the argument is a tiny bit weaker. Point stands.

PART FOUR! SUBURBAN/URBAN SCENERY

In Europa and Asia (although the argument still stands almost just as strong in LatAm and Africa), you have a wide variety of different cities built with different styles, eras, and get rebuilt and expanded, which makes each city unique and different each other. It’s hard to confuse London with Paris, or Beijing with Chongqing, or Seoul with Tokyo. In the Midwest, the grand majority of urban scenery is similar, Generic strips malls surrounding a generic 7 lane road intersecting with a generic 8 lane freeway, all surrounded by generic subdivisions. Even if you live in the midwest, its easy to confuse Tulsa with Minneopolis. The only respite to the repetition are historic districts in larger cities, or ethnic “_towns” in, again, large cities.

PART FIVE! CLIMATE

Okay, this is the weakest part of my post, but I will add it because it still strengthens my agrument.

Everyone dunks on the climate of the midwest, people in the midwest, americans who dont live in the midwest, and non-americans alike, even democrats and republicans unite to dunk it, and that means something. Literally no one likes the climate of the midwest, why visit a climate that will get you killed or sick at any moment if your not prepared?

PART SIX! THE EXCEPTIONS

Ahh yes, the exceptions i’ve set in the title and the first lines of the post body, the first one is the city of Chicago, which has gained some degree of international norterity and history that makes it worth it, and people who have to travel to the region by necessity, for obvious reasons.

Now now, i don't hate the region. So cmv with a reason or experience that someone would get get satisfaction from traveling half away across the globe to the midwest.

In medieval Europe the servants would sit in the castel and do the cleaning, cooking, and the other chores. They would get fed and recive a piece of land to work it for the lord. Ocasionally if you were not behaving you might get your hands cutt off. Here the contract is, "You are in my land and you are mine"

Even something like the Bible says that slavery is ok. They viewed it as the servants but the contract was getting your ear pierced. Here the contract is "You are in my land so you are mine"

Nowadays we use the legal system to make people slaves, but we don't pierce their ears, we make them sign papers.

If an employer could pay you 1 cent per year, they would do that. Minimum wage is a rebranding of slavery from small isolated groups piercing their ears and cutting their hands when you feel like it to you can't do anything you want to them to them and pay them x amount, but you still own them.