US tech CEO resigns after Coldplay concert embrace goes viral
A US tech company says its chief executive has quit after he was apparently caught on a big screen at a Coldplay concert embracing a female co-worker, in a clip that went viral.
The clip showed a man and a woman hugging on a jumbo screen at the arena in Foxborough, Massachusetts, before they abruptly ducked and hid from the camera.
The pair were identified in US media as Mr Byron, a married chief executive of Astronomer, and Kristin Cabot, the firm's chief people officer.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx20z3ykd9roOpen linkView original on sopuli.xyz618
Comments188
Before this
CEO: Who are they going to complain to? HR?!
Before this: Epstein files connections to Mossad
After this: OMG DID YOU SEE THAT RELATIONSHIP GOSS ON THE COLDPLAY CONCERT OMGOMGOMG
That’s not a good look 😬
She's switching to Public Affairs.
Standard HR. Not a profession that’s renowned for moral and ethical integrity.
Well she is working with people. Two of them but one didn't know about the other.
*didn’t
She took her job "people officer" too literally.
It was a great look at the "couple"
You know what IS a good look? Distracting you from the Epstein files!
Damn that shit suits you!
I get being embarrassed but resignation seems like an overreaction. Coldplay isn't that bad.
Hey other tech CEOs, when you take your mistress to a concert where there's a crowd camera, have a chat ahead of time about how to play it cool. Bet nobody would have noticed if they'd just smiled and been boring for a second until the operator moved on. That'll be $50,000 please.
Inb4 his ex wife files for alimony+child support, and he tries to claim no income.
my understanding is the wife already changed her last name on facebook, so divorce filing is pretty much a given. He is definitely claiming no salary income, but she's gonna grab him by the assets
Don’t these C-level guys usually get a golden parachute? He "tendered his resignation", but probably still got some severance. Board could force him out but probably triggers some other vesting/equity clause. So having him "resign" but give him golden parachute.
Golden parachutes usually don't involve inter-company affairs. He's going to be lucky if the board doesn't sue him for defamation of the company name essentially.
Per Axios report [1], Andy Byron appears to have negotiated some sort of exit package.
These fuckers always get their 🧀 no matter what happens. Better to pay them off rather than stall it in court and risk attracting more attention.
[1] https://www.axios.com/2025/07/18/coldplay-kiss-cam-astronomer
Yeah, that's fair. That sucks, I guess they took the easy path.
Well, fuck this.
Intra
This also isn't some huge company. Closer to a startup still. Might not have that kind of benefits yet
Don't forget about how he blames the Democrats for getting 'canceled' and gets a speaking role at the next Republican Convention.
That's not how it generally works. If you quit, the court will impute an income and you will owe based on that.
That’s exactly why I said “tries”.
Seems like if they hadn't reacted to their images on the screen, this whole thing would have gone unnoticed.
I've seen this response a ton and I think that's exactly correct, but I can't imagine the anxiety in the hours, day and weeks after. Just waiting and wondering if anyone recognised you, if anyone had a recording/proof. Then after a few months under the radar I might not be a complete train wreck.
But then what if Coldplay puts out a Netflix special or something, then I'd have to wait and wait until it came out and then watch it and see if that moment makes it into the recording... And if it does? Now I'm just waiting for some random friend of a friend to watch it and go "hang on..."
I think I'd rather this timeline, if I was that idot.
Probably why I'd never cheat on my partner, especially at a huge public gathering, when the person I'm cheating with is an employee and I'm the fucking CEO and could lose my job over it.
Thankfully this man will certainly continue to fail up, and as soon as this news quiets down he'll get hired by some other goon just like him to some other lucrative job where you just have to be an asshole a few times a week and otherwise the money will roll right in.
This would have been over in fifteen minutes if it hadn't been hard pushed to distract from Epstein.
Just look at the fucking Internet! Actual news media!
OH YEAH GIVE US THE GOSS ON THESE FUCKING RANDOS LITERALLY NOBODY KNEW THE NAMES OF TWO DAYS AGO!
The reactions I’ve seen to this event make me cringe more than the event.
Yeah same for real though, are people this bored??
I think it's less boredom and more more "hey a story that's not about the world being on fire."
CEOs world is clearly on fire 🚒
Definitely cringe af
You're SO close.
You know the biggest lie capitalism tells?
That the market dictates what goods they are being offered.
Its so weird tha dude had to resign and get suspended just because he had an affair.
Dont get me wrong, dude is a scumbag (like most CEOs) for cheating on his wife and so is the lady who also cheated on their partner. Without question they did wrong and should face their personal consequences.
But why in the USA hell is this an issue on the work side - it shouldn't be Let whoever fuck with whoever non of the companies business.
He was technically her boss. And he gave her that job. Was it because she was sleeping with him? That will certainly cause people at the company to assume so. So whenevr the next person doesn't get a promo, they will sue because the company fostered an environment where you only get ahead by having sex with your superiors. Also, most companies have a written policy about fraternizing with subordinates. It usually states termination as a consequence of breaking the policy.
This is completely fucking moronic. Employees are not a company property. Good there is the article 8 (right to private life) of Humans Rights Act in the UK, stopping madness like this.
I am from the UK and this wouldn’t fly here either.
You can’t be sleeping with your employees dude that’s a clear power imbalance dynamic and you would be fired here too for having a relationship with a subordinate.
It’s not like companies give a shit who you sleeping with but they have rules in place to prevent abuses of power and also to protect their own image.
Seems pretty naive that you can only see this from a very limited angle.
Educate yourself.
https://www.employmentlawreview.co.uk/personal-relationships-at-work-what-does-uk-law-say/
You can be forced to disclose relationships and sacked if you fail to do so. You cannot be sacked for having a relationship.
I don’t believe I said it was the law. I’m saying most companies have policies against it.
Read again. You cannot be sacked for having a relationship and companies are not allowed to forbid that. Admit you were wrong and move on.
Hey if you can show me some legal precedence then perhaps I’ll admit to being wrong but you only provided a non official article discussing this not some legal precedence of these rules in employment contracts being contested and overturned in a court of law.
Your article clearly says they can have policies about it. The penalty for not following policies is often termination. So the article doesn't say what you are claiming it does.
Note in your first paragraph of the quote, it only says likely. So even they admit that there is wiggle room. Nothing in the article specifically protected the right to have a relationship with a subordinate, and in fact says if disclosed they can move people so they are no long subordinate as a result of thier relationship. Which is clearly not saying that company policy can't involve consequences for having a relationship with a subordinate.
The CEO wasn't transparent about it to the board, so he can be fired for that.
He was married, so he would be breaking a law by having sex with anyone else in many jurisdictions, and the bad image/press that gives the company would be enough to fire him even if it wasn't illegal where he is.
The liability alone that she "could" claim she felt pressured into the relationship because he was the boss would likely give them cause to fire him based on his contract.
I am not aware of any instances where it is against the law to cheat on your wife.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adultery_laws "There are fifteen[6] countries in which stoning is authorized as lawful punishment" (for adultery)
Plenty more it is just illegal.
16 us states.
Punishment and enforcement vary. But it is certainly against the law in a lot of places. In others it will put you "at fault" in divorce proceedings. So maybe not illegal, but has legal consequences.
Are you seriously suggesting is perfectly normal in the UK for the CEO to have an affair with the head of HR that he hired, and no one would complain because of human rights act?
The Europeans had, and still have in some cases, dynastic royalty and state religions and stuff. They’re surprisingly backward in a lot of ways. The personal freedom to use your power imbalance at work for sexual gratification seems like the sort of thing they’d never move forward away from.
Look, I come from the middle east where my entire life way ruled over by monarchs installed by England and currently controlled by America... They are literally untouchable, more so than ornamental monarchs like Europe. And if a big shot company owner is caught having an affair, they could literally both be killed by their respective families... I don't think European CEOs can get away with it because they have royalty.
Royalty (even ornamental) in the 21st century is just an example of having backwards and ridiculously outmoded cultural constructs. I admit that I could have phrased that better.
European résumés include photographs and marital status, which would be an outrageous reach into one’s personal life in the states. It’s not surprising that they’re ok with the idea that bosses should be able to have relationships with their employees and still keep their jobs. I guess that makes the resumes make more sense.
It is perfectly normal to not have your personal life controlled by a company, yes.
Blows USians mind, eh?
You're not understanding the full context of this situation. And then acting like everyone else here are the dumb ones.
You should just stop embarrassing yourself.
Either doesn’t understand or doesn’t want to understand. I’m not sure
Are you a teenager? 🙄
I'm not a USian, I just have critical thinking skills.
It's called conflict of interest, and disclosure is often required to avoid accusations of favoritism.
Disclosure - yes. That can be requested and an employee may be sacked if he fails to disclose such information. Unlike USA however, companies are unable to tell an employee to NOT have a relationship with someone at work. It can make a decision to move employees in relationship to other teams if for example there is a risk involved.
That's what happened here... He didn't disclose the relationship because it was an affair.
It isn't real just because you imagine it... That's not how it works in the US.
Once again, America shows how "free" they actually are.
And to show that the protection is not theoretical in Europe: Walmart implemented that policy when they tried getting into the German market twenty years ago. They were so insistent that it took a judge to tell them to stop it since it was against the law(It's sraight up against the first and second article of the German constitution, which protects personal freedom).
They were free to disclose it. It is this way because people have used interoffice relationships to better their positions and create favor, which leads to an imbalanced an unfair workplace. Having a secret romance in the office has the potential for failure at best.
Got a source? Sounds like an interesting story. I can't read german though...
If you do a "germany walmart before:2023" search, you'll find a bunch of English articles about the whole ordeal. It was in Forbes, NYT, etc. almsot twenty years ago because of how badly they failed on multiple levels.
Seems like they were trying to ban all relationships between any employes. That wouldn't fly in the US either.
Thank you, try to explain it to morons who downvoted my comment.
So what happens when a CEO uses his position of power to force somebody into a relationship how does she prove that it was not consensual? These rules are in place to make sure the underlings are protected.
If she gets promoted because she had sex with the boss, you’re telling me that won’t create a hostile work environment for the rest of the people that work there? If they are passed over for a promotion?
If she gets promotion, even if it was a earned promotion, you’re telling me the rest of the office won’t question it if she gets that promotion because of a belief that she got it because she slept with the boss?
There’s a lot that the US gets wrong. This is one item we got right. Yes, they are free to sleep with whoever they want, but they have to disclose it to the company. And there cannot be a boss underling type relationship if they are sleeping with each other.
But this has been explained to you by other people and you just are basically ignoring what others are saying.
It's not the cheating. It's the "porking your HR lady" part that's a problem for companies who dont want to get sued.
I haven't read to many articles on the matter but for all we know hr lady does not like him at all but wanted to keep/get that job and now she is stuck in an abusive relationship. Can't share with her partner cause yeah... And can't get HR to step in cause... Yeah.
No evidence that is the case but that's why we should fire CEOs who date their underlings. You are right we should absolutely not be firing people for not abiding a religious/social contract that has nothing to do with their job.
At no company is HR ever going to step in over something the CEO is doing because they don't have the authority. -It is difficult to get an objective business take from a subordinate you're porking, though.
Mostly true. Depends on the structure of the company I'd imagine. Pretending shit works like it's written in the rule book and not exactly what you just said (won't get involved cause he is boss) HR would absolutely bring this to the board of directors as it jeopardizes the company's bottom line. And we all know Money is the real boss.
Because it's a conflict of interest to not disclose a relationship with a subordinate. This is a normal course of action, it's just been denormalized as of late.
I think the main issue is that he was cheating with the head of HR
The main issue is hiding it. Hes not fucking batman or something. Divorce your wife and get with the hr lady who gives a fuck, dont act like its some schoolyard secret.
The main issue for the company is that he's having an affair with a person directly under him in the company - it's a conflict of interest at the very least, with the possibility of the person higher up in the hierarchy having leveraged their position to get sexual gratification from their underling and/or of the underling having used their sexuality to influence that higher up in the professional domain (for example, to get salary raises).
Absolutely, they might both be impeccably professional and not let their romantic relationship influence their professional relationship, but the company doesn't know that and it's hard to disprove that it wasn't so.
On the Moral and Ethical plan, the main issue is indeed that they're betraying their respective partners in secret rather than having assumed their relationship.
Its entirely possible that if they disclosed the relationship to the board or whoever, they would have an arrangement where he doesnt have to quit.
True.
It boils down to how much they could keep their relationship professional at work even whilst romantically involved outside, and them keeping it hidden, whilst understandable, doesn't exactly indicate to the board that they were professional about it (people who are impeccably professional about it immediatelly realised the potential conflict of interest and would have tried to address that risk and the impression around it, even if trying to keep it discrete).
Having come clean about it at least to some board members might have helped once the news came out because said people would have mentioned to the rest when the news blew up that they had been kept appraised of the situation, which might have helped. On the other hand it might've just guaranteed termination when they did come clean.
I had in my own professional career a situation which had the potential to explode (legal trouble, small but none the less some) and informed and kept my direct superior appraised of it, and when it did blow up and ended up in the newspapers (purelly by chance there was a freelance reporter there and the whole thing was "juicy" and a bit sleazy and made everyone involved look bad - great for gossip kind of news - so I guess that freelance reporter managed to sell the article to a couple of newspapers - good for her as she looked like she needed the money) I still got kicked out of my contract (I was a freelancer) because it made the company look bad. I was literally told that had the thing not ended up in the newspapers it would've been fine.
Thats a fair point to make although I would hold leadership to a different standard than freelancers.
I'm not really trying to pass judgment on the right or wrong of the situations.
I'm just pointing out that in my experience (not just personally but also for what I've seen with others) most companies will just ditch employees/"colaborators" if they can do so legally when some scandal involving those people hits the Press, quite independently of those people having done the professionally correct thing before it all became a scandal.
Being more of a well connected insider might protect one from this, but my impression is that the initial reaction is to remove the person connected to a scandal in the Press, and then maybe they'll come up with some arrangement if that person has enough influence with the right people within the company, and I guess this guy - even being the CEO - did not.
(Obviously in my own situation, is was a freelancer hence easy to legally let go even in Europe, and with enough distance down the chain from the ultimate decision makers that even with my direct manager trying hard to keep me, they didn't care enough about me or even him, so the outcome was pretty much guaranteed)
Two coworkers on equal footing is one thing (though still discouraged), but when there's a power imbalance (ceo-hr, manager-associate) it becomes a pretty significant conflict of interest.
Some examples;
A Manager gives favor to their lover and promotes them over other employees that fit the position better or did more to earn it.
CEO signs off on a big bonus for their subordinate lover, who then shares it with them on a fancy cruise.
All this tells me is that he is rich enough to not care about a job and just take a sabbatical until the commotion has died down.
Its all just not wanting to deal with other humans.
A big part of being a CEO is being the face of the company. Many companies hire a CEO simply based on their recognition in the industry. If you have a bad image, companies won't want to associate with you.
He should run for President instead
Because if you've been proven to be immoral and a liar no one wants to work with you or buy your product. Of course they're going to force the CEO out.
Just like mr trump right? Right?
Ehhh, cults are a little different
It's different when you're majority stakeholder. No one with enough influence to force you to do anything.
They only get forced out when they get caught.
Immoral liars are mandatory for C-suite positions otherwise.
*Donald Trump enters the chat
This story is being promoted in the media to distract from trump being a child rapist
YEAH GEE I WONDER WHY THIS BECAME THE NUMBER ONE STORY GLOBALLY RIGHT NOW IT'S SUCH A FUCKING MYSTERY OH MY LET'S CALL SCOOBY DOO AND THE GHOSTBUSTERS
Fucking jesus almighty christ have you people learned NOTHING!?
I HAVE FORGOTTEN ABOUT EPSTEIN ALTOGETHER! WHO EVEN IS HE!
I've never seen more synthetic engagement with a topic in years. It's insanity how this bullshit got so pressed on the public, did you see Reddit? They flooded this random drama on every single sub, if you didn't catch how obviously it was coordinated then you need to take a double espresso and bash your head against the wall a few times to wake up.
People can remember two things, and lots of people like drama. This is a short laugh at a CEO getting a very small amount of comeuppance. It's not going to make us forget how terrible Trump is or that the government is actively covering up for pedophiles.
We need small breaks of laughter to keep sane sometimes.
Why did this story distract you so easily
Just couldn't handle the shame of being caught attending a Coldplay gig
I don't really listen to their music, but they put on a good show.
…meanwhile. Elon Musk out here handing out vials of cum at parties. What a cool guy.
Maybe we need to reign in the upper class a bit.
Hey, yeah, Epstein! I know about that guy! I read about EPSTEIN in the papers and shit!
That's who we were talking about right?
Nah, but he needs to resign for similar reasons as OP's subject POS.
I think the best joke I've seen about this so far has been
"Coldplay hasn't put out a single in years, but in one night they made 2"
4 actually
I was interviewing with this company 💀. Withdrew my application/interview last week because of this.
Didn’t leave a reason. Just emailed recruiter, "I am no longer interested".
Also, they have like 6-7 interviews with various people in company.
These multiple rounds of interviews to get a job are fucking ridiculous. They chose the pope in two fucking days, you do not need a week’s worth of interviews to know if I’m worth giving a paycheck.
To be fair, it has occasionally taken a very long time to choose the next Pope, which is how they ended up with the tradition of locking the cardinals up together and not letting them out until they'd made a decision in the first place.
Seems like a good idea to implement all the time.
A lot of children would be living a better life.
I guess it depends on if they are interrogation style interviews or more of a getting to know you kinda thing. For my current job I had like 4 casual interviews and it was a blessing in disguise. I applied for a role that I was pretty tired of but had the most experience in. Without letting me know the first interviewers recognized that I had some skills that would fit well with a different position that wasn’t advertised on their homepage yet. In the end I was offered a job for the latter!
I know this is anecdotal and probably not how it usually goes. I also agree that 6-7 interviews is probably overkill. But multiple interviews aren’t always a bad thing.
Pity. I hear they have an opening for CEO, with perks.
Really? How would this have impacted you as an employee? And how do you know the other companies are different?
CEO having an affair with head of HR... The flag for rampant violation of company policy from above, nepotism, mix of private and professional life... really cant get more red unless the head of HR is also his daughter.
A ceo that's fucking his employees is probally fucking his employees.
It also makes working for the company a punch line on your resume.
"Ohh, you worked for Astronomy? Wasn't that the company where the CEO got cuaght fucking around at a Coldplay concert?"
The above may be a good or bad ice breaker at future interviews, but its still something you may have to deal with.
There's an expression "fish rots from the head down", meaning when the leadership of an organization is bad, the whole thing starts to stink. In this case, the CEO was having an affair with the head of HR, and was so unsubtle about it that he was caught like this at a public event. So, either the rest of the execs are completely unaware of what's happening around them, which isn't good. Or, they're aware and did nothing about it, which is also bad.
Sure, this may be happening at plenty of other companies, but those CEOs have at least managed to avoid getting caught. Why work for the one company you know is troubled like this?
They were there with a group of coworkers, apparently this was some sort of open secret amongst some of the staff.
So what? Let whoever fuck whoever you dont have to participate and just say no.
Dont ruin your own family bu cheatimg on them however
Duh, people can fuck whoever they want. As usual, there may be consequences.
What I dont want is to work for a liar that's breaking contracts and fucking people over. Once you find out that's happening, you need to realize that it's probally not isolated behaviour.
If they are willing to do this to their wife, someone who can actually impact their life, they will probably not think twice about fucking you over, someone who cant impact them at all.
Let me put it more succinctly: if the king is willing to behead his wife, hes not going to be concerned about your head staying attached either.
If you think that any big company CEO would think twice about you i got bad news for you.
This wasn't a big company ceo. The company, Astronomer, has between 200-500 employees. That's still in "we are a family" territory, but its a bit out of scope.
Your point seems to be that "all CEOs are thieves and liars, so dont trust anything, ever." I think that's more cynical internet puffery than an actual stance. No CEO, even at small companies, are looking out for your personal welfare, but there is a difference between someone who honestly accesses your business value and a lying liar that lies while they lie.
Learning your CEO is explicitly the latter is useful and actionable info.
to be honest I buried the lede. I withdrew largely due to the long interview process. I had ghosted or left them on read for a week but the viral news reminded me.
Thinking how it would impact me directly? Probably not much. But this is a small company. If leadership is this sloppy at covering up extra marital affairs. How bad is it on the inside?
Shitty leadership in my experience often correlates with awful company culture.
Stock goes down, they lay people off to make it go up. And they will be without a CEO for a while. The fill in person probably will be at a disadvantage in deal negotiations because the topic of conversation will be the affair, not whatever product they are offering. That will also hurt the companies future prospects and stock price.
Why?
This. Is. Not. How. It. Works.
Substantial costs savings.
This is one of the wildest assumptions I have seen for a while.
How?
Stocks often go up in the short term after layoff because of the substantial cost savings. Companies usually tie them to a change in direction to some new market that shows promise. In reality, they are getting rid of higher paid people that they will replace with lower paid people. So that will increase profits which tends to lift the stock price. If they are laying off due to poor business prospects for the future, that would lower the stock price. So it all in how they spin it, and in how the market for thier product is doing.
As for the rest, you don't seem to know what a CEO of a small company does. This is a sub 500 person company. The CEO does a ton of networking to help get customers. And bigger companies will expect to be talking to the CEO, not a subordinate. So respect and clout are critical. Big company CEOs operate differently.
Take it and milk it.
Source: OE.
This story is being promoted in the media to distract from trump being a child rapist
Exactly. He can rape little girls AND women.
Also he can do all that raping AND also beat his ex wife because she was the one who suggested the doctor that did his hair transplant which then became painful (according to the court case that got paid off).
Furthermore he can do all that raping and beating and paying off of victims AND also bankrupt many casinos!
That dude is a multi tasker if I ever did see one.
Yea it’s just obv promoted. Like what even is that completely irrelevant nonsense company
Never underestimate how much of the media and society love to see schadenfreude. It's basically escapism from the daily onslaught of terrible news all the time.
No, this absolute teen goss bullshit was pushed HARD on the public specifically to distract from the Epstein shit. They saw anything and it went fucking VIRAL.
Get your head out of your fucking asshole, this was pushed, nothing about this ridiculous nonsense would have made a single wave two months ago.
For fuck's sakes.
If they had just made out like everyone else does, nobody would have cared who they were. It wouldn't have gone viral. Wife still might have found out about it, but I don't think that would have changed much.
Yeah, it's textbook Trump (formerly Streisand) Effect.
Who is this referencing?
That's James Hetfield of Metallica embracing Dave Mustaine formerly of Metallica and frontman for Megadeth
Dave Mustaine - Metallica
Is that them mocking it or is it an old pic?
Given their history, I am going to say the image is not real.
Lmao. I'd seen the photo floating around, but didn't know the story behind it
Me too. Just realizing everything now.
Big mistake. You always play it cool. If the police catch you getting your dick sucked, just play it cool. They won’t suspect a thing.
Just say it wasn't you
But I saw you in the bathroom.
Wasn’t me
🎶I even caught you on camera!🎶
You can’t use past tense when they’re looking right at you.
Does Coldplay cover any Queen songs? "We will, we will, doxx you!"
I think they just endlessly and relentlessly cover the one Coldplay song.
Your link is weird. This one works:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx20z3ykd9ro
Sounds like both of them might be shitty people. Which is standard fair in this lovely world of ours. However one of them is a CEO - and that opens the door for some proper shadenfreude.
Really important news guys
it's nice to have fun once in awhile
They really Coldplayed their families
That hand placement...
Am I dirty in my head, or is he actually holding her from the boobs?
I find the most erotic part of a woman is the boobies
He's now at the "find out" phase of things lol
It's shitty of them, especially him. But, at least he has the decency and shame left to step down after this.
Why “especially him?” And why is he the only one of them who needs to resign from their job? Why is it only the men who get heat for having affairs like this? You think she didn’t know he was married? Why this societal bias?
Maybe because of the power imbalance? Wasn't he her superior?
What strange world do you live in? Usually women are treated much worse after such incidents.
And in such case, why is HIS marriage her responsibility?
There may have been an imbalance, but seems the nature of the relationship was pretty mutual, not coerced.
I think in this specific scenario, the guy has been flamed pretty hard
FYI, they were both married people with their respective marriages.
Holy sexist knee jerk reaction, Batman.
Yeah, pointing out the sexism of others is so sexist. Mainstay defense of sexists.
Let's not say he has decency. His other option was probably to be fired.
It's like nuance here is fucking dead and people only understand absolutes, jesus christ.
Let me put it this way: had he not resigned, he would be an even bigger piece of shit.
It's such a shame. They should not kill themselves, like Epstein.
I think we as a society need to get over compulsory monogamy. It clearly doesn't work for everybody. Why must two consenting adults refrain from expressing mutual love for one another?
Don't get me wrong, cheating is unethical and monogamy is still valid for those who want it. But the idea that monogamy is the most pure form of love is a social construct that has no basis in reality.
If you don't want to be monogamous don't get married. It's an easy solution.
Why would marriage be an issue? It's convenient for purposes of healthcare coverage, hospital visitation rights, guarantees that without a will stating otherwise your spouse makes all decisions regarding the disposal of your corpse, and they automatically inherit any wealth you have, and if you have military benefits in many cases marriage is required to transfer those, or have them automatically transfer on death.
I'm not monogamous, neither is my spouse, but we are married because of all the above reasons. Marriage isn't about love and monogamy it's about financial and death planning
You're right to call out that marriage != monogamy. The comment should have been:
Except all those advantage of officially marriage cannot be enjoyed by people who actually want the polygamous marriage as the system does not recognize that.
Oh for sure, it's incredibly frustrating, even more so since realistically no one is really fighting for poly marriage recognition outside a couple east coast towns. That's great and all, but isn't perfect by a long shot. I've toyed with reporting myself for polygamy (well technically it would be bigamy stauetorally) and trying to get it overturned that way, though looking through case law and the like I don't really see a way that would work. And there aren't enough of us to really easily get it on the ballot I don't think.
Or have ab open marriage, or habr a marriage where you swing
Good point.
The idea is that no one is stopping you from being poly. If that's the type of relationship you want, then have fun with that. The problem in this case is when he wants to see other people and his wife believes they're in a monogamous relationship.
While that's technically true, it's a lot more nuanced than that.
Our society instills monogamous values in its media and traditions. The sentiment around polyamory is that it's weird, naive, frivolous and immature at best. The very suggestion of polyamory outside of friendly circles is often met with negative vitriol, as evidenced by the amount of down votes I'm getting in this thread.
I recognize now that I have always leaned towards polyamory and that's been an awakening that's taken nearly a decade over the last third of my life. I never cheated but I went through deep emotional pain and have caused emotional pain to others trying to figure that out in a world that was telling me monogamy was what I needed to strive for if I wanted a meaningful relationship. Even now, I'm voluntarily in a monogamous relationship because I deeply value my partner, though I can't help but wish society hadn't scared me into rejecting that part of myself for the better part of my life.
I never argued against that. Cheating in any relationship is deceptive and immoral. My qualms are with the fact that our society is biased against non-monogamy and due to that many people don't realize it's an option and instead resort to ways of getting their needs met that cause emotional harm and turmoil.
My issue is that people jumped to harrassing these people before they knew that and then used that newfound knowledge to justify said harrassment.
I don't think western governments allow polygamous marriages. Or do you mean only dating and never having legal rights?
I was mostly just talking about OP's "compulsory monogamy", which is obviously nonsense. No one is forcing you to be monogamous. If you don't want monogamy, don't do it, assuming your partner is okay with it.
Having some kind of polygamous marriage arrangement as a legal agreement is a different issue that should be worked out.
You do know that -gamy means marriage right? We aren't talking about polyamory, we are talking about polygamy.
Compulsory heterosexuality has been the standard of our society for centuries up until very recently. It was common for closeted gay men to marry women in order to fit into society and then have secret affairs with other men on the side to satisfy their homosexuality. That's changed over the last few decades but even now it still happens. Would you have told a gay man from 50 years ago that compulsory heterosexuality is nonsense? That nobody is forcing them to fall in love with and marry a woman? Despite the fact that every social normality and structure was oriented towards heterosexuality and fiercely rejected homosexuality to the point where homosexual people closeted themselves out of fear for their own lives.
I'm not saying non-monogamous people have it as bad as homosexual people did in the previous era. But you can't deny that our society strongly encourages monogamy and strongly discourages non-monogamy through social norms and structures. Similar to homosexuality in the previous era, there are little to no widely available resources for non-monogamous people to help them understand that part of themselves and the vast majority of them don't consider it to be an option due to the stigmatization of non-monogamous relationships; in other words, compulsory.
You can be in a non-monogamous marriage. Quite common, actually.
That's frankly a poor take.
On one hand, you're arguing that the social and legal benefits of marriage should be exclusive to monogamous couples. Why should marriage require monogamy? It may imply monogamy by tradition but up until recently those same traditions excluded same-sex couples and we've moved on from that requirement by now.
Alternatively, there exist those who are married but practice some form of non-monogamy, e.g. swingers, porn stars, polyamorous couples, separated couples. Does practicing non-monogamy invalidate their marriage? You could argue that it traditionally would, but again, we've already moved on from traditional marriage. In reality, the only thing that invalidates a marriage is divorce or death. Monogamy is not a requirement.
On the other hand, you seem to be implying that committed romantic relationships outside of marriage aren't widely and by default of social expectation (i.e. compulsory) monogamous. I'm certain you would be hard pressed to find anybody who would tell you otherwise.
Regardless, it's still at the very least a grey area to get involved with a subordinate, and I think a majority would find that unethical regardless.
When I was beginning to work at the university, there was a professor who had started an affair with his student. Everybody knew about that, no one cared a s***. Later on, the student got employed at the department, and then they got married. The only thing I ever heard of it being talked about was that it wasn’t quite sure whether it was the student or her professor who actually did her “maturity exam” (a then-compulsory exam after finishing your MA thesis, the questions of which were based on the thesis).
Man, that camera man must feel pretty bad or luigui esque
Why would the camera man feel bad for someone else's shit behaviour? This is probably their most memorable work now.
America's reaction to this is more pathetic than the cheating.