I cheated on my girlfriend with another girl for about a year. She doesn't know about it, and is very happy with me. Besides that I am a very good boyfriend, and when we are together we are happy. Now, my close friends have told me that I should tell her what I've done, because it was wrong, and she has the right to know. I agree that it was wrong, and that she indeed has the right to know; however, I also feel that at this point, it is over with. She has never known, and is all the happier. Meanwhile, I am eaten up inside every day with guilt. I knew I shouldn't be doing what I was doing, but I did it anyway; I have no excuse, and what I did was wrong. If I told her what had happened, I would no longer feel guilty, but it would crush her. I would rather live my entire life feeling like the worst person in the world, if maybe she would never have to find out and go through that. I would never do what I did again, because I learned that under no circumstances is it worth it to cheat. Am I right...

At school we had a discussion about our motives to do certain things. The concrete example was Antigone. Antigone buries the corpse of her brother, which is against the law, and risks her own life by doing so. Finally she gets caught and is sentenced to death, but before that can happen, she kills herself. At first I thought this was the greatest love one can prove to another. But a classmate said everything we do has an egoistic motive. Antigone didn't bury her brother to give his soul rest, but to give herself a good feeling. My question is: What we experience as love, is it really caring about someone or just trying to feel better?

If, within a marriage, one partner denies the other sex, can they morally still demand that the other refrain? Note: assuming the standard Western marriage, with the assumption of exclusive monogamy. In other terms: Can we demand of our partners, in a marriage, "You can only have sex with me, and none other, and I'm not going to have sex with you".

Is love selfish? I cannot be in a relationship because I think I have discovered that love is selfish. Consider my argument. Premises: I choose not to be selfish. I choose to reason logically. What does it mean to love? Does it mean satisfying your wants more than those of your lover, or the other way round? IF it means satisfying the wants of your lover more than your own, then you would react in the following way: If your lover deserts you willingly and decides to be with somebody else, you would be happy for your lover and not be jealous (since by being happy for your lover, you are satisfying his/her wants and not opposing them). On the other hand, IF to love means satisfying your own wants more than those of your lover, then you would react in the following way: If your lover deserts you willingly and decides to be with somebody else, you would be upset and jealous. Which way would you react? Assuming you are upset and jealous, then you are selfish. However, such selfishness is needed for a...

Is is possible to truly love someone, yet still do things that would knowingly hurt them (i.e., acts of infidelity)?

When, for example, a man has his heart broken by a woman he loves, why does it sometimes feel like a mini death? Is there perhaps some sort of a parallel between breaking up and dying, between the end of a relationship and the end of life?

I married from back home because of certain cultural pressures. He seemed like an all around nice guy but when he got here he changed. He admitted that he had put on a show in order to convince me to bring him here and now he is trying to control me. He also always fights with me over money matters. At the moment we are separated but not divorced and I am contemplating whether or not I should divorce him. He does not leave me alone but constantly hurts me and thinks I am cheating on him. I also caught him trying to start affairs with women both abroad and local and I feel I cannot trust him. When he came here I liked him but now I feel little to nothing towards him and I think he wants to use me for some end (hence why he wants to get back). Also he frequently hints that it's good to use women for money and etc., and then dump them for other women... Although this may not be the right place to ask such a question but what do you philosophers think of the situation? I think it would be interesting...

I am in love (or as convinced of it as I've ever been), but the woman I love is my best friend. This situation leaves me in emotional ruin after every time we see each other. I am sure that she is not romantically interested in me. What I need to know is: to what extent am I obligated to make my feelings clear to her, even if doing so runs the risk of damaging our friendship?

There are billons of people on this earth, and yet so many people proclaim that they have found their one-and-only soul mate. Is it reasonable of them to say that if they haven't met everyone on the earth? Is there really such a thing as a "soul mate"? If not, then is it safe to assume that people simply settle for what is within their reach and then redefine what love means to them?

I had a friend ask me this question some time ago and we tried to talk through it but ended up still stumped. The story went: if there is a husband and wife in a happy marriage but the husband goes away on a business trip, maybe has a little too much to drink or just has a lapse in judgement, and has a one-night stand with another woman and knows it was a morally wrong act does he have the obligation to tell her even though it will devastate her and potentially end her marriage? Or should the husband keep quiet and live quietly with the shame he has brought on his marriage? If an immoral act has already been committed does it do any good to be truthful about it and bring further harm to others, as would happen if the wife were told? It just seems that if it is immoral to do harm to others than telling the wife might just be as immoral as the act of adultery.