The Civilized Man

We've had some rather heated debates on the discussion boards quite recently - and what better job can a forum do than to stimulate thought-provoking debate? - with one debate in particular centering on a report from one of the readers on a sexual encounter he had with a married woman.

In the report, the reader - The Byronic Man, a younger guy who's fairly new to seduction and still more or less getting his footing down - details an encounter that took place over several days with a late-30s married woman who wanted to sleep with him, but had some reservations. He persisted, slept with her, and she seemed to have gotten what she wanted... though also seemed to have dealt with a bit of inner turmoil.

And here's where things get interesting. Another of our readers, Landlord, in his early 40s and experienced, weighed in to let Byronic know he was out of line, and had crossed a line, sleeping with a married woman - whether she wanted it or not, that was beside the point. This is simply not something you do.

Various commenters weighed in on one side of the debate or the other; some in favor of, a larger number against.

This post, however, is not about the morality or ethics of sleeping with married women. I'll leave that for the boards to decide.

What's more interesting to me than the moral debates themselves (which you can debate forever... if two parties' value systems fail to match up, or their empathy levels are dramatically different, they will argue past each other for 100 years and never sway the other) is a set of questions posed by Landlord, asking for more opinions on "what game means" and "what does it mean to be a man"?

I'd like to veer a little deeper off that topic and talk about what makes the difference between a civilized man... and an uncivilized one.