What Happens On A Hall Pass Stays In Vegas

...or something.

You know what a hall pass is, right?  You remember from school - the old school, literal hall pass - the laminated oaktag rectangle or the taped up hockey stick or the purple stapler with your teacher's name on it - giving you express and explicit permission to be where you are anywhere in the building, presumably doing whatever it is you're doing.     Fast forward an alarming number of years - - the literal hall pass is long gone, and as functional adults (as far as you know), it is incumbent on us to be where we should be and doing what we ought to be.  Permission doesn't enter into it.

Unless it does.

The New Hall Pass is a metaphorical thing, wherein your husband, wife, s.o., or what-have-you, gives you permission to have at it with someone else, no harm, no foul.  It's a dalliance, an indiscretion, an encounter, an affair, free from spousal / partner consequence.  

For the record, I have not been issued a Hall Pass.  If I had, I'd be out of my relationship in a shot.  Further, I have not issued, nor do I intend to issue, a Hall Pass.  If anyone tells you differently, it's a lie. A LIE, I TELL YOU!

So when did this become the new Vegas?  I was talking to my good friend over at nefariousvixens about this, and we find it very baffling that anyone would offer their beloved a freebie with somebody else as a little present.

That might be the weirdest bit.  Bachelor party?  Here, honey, have a hall pass.  Business trip?  Hall pass.  Class Reunion weekend?  Hall pass!

I can't fathom how or why this is a good thing. Because while it's just good clean fun to be dirty, and it's nice to be naughty, it's not ok if it's not with your person.  If the argument is that by giving them permission to mess around with someone else, you furnish them with a little variety now and again in an attempt to reduce the odds of them cheating with someone else without your permission...well...I don't get that either.

Because at some level, I can't help thinking that issuing the hall pass is the first step to issuing their walking papers.  It devalues the bond you're supposed to have and diminishes the importance of the intimacy between a husband and wife, or any two people in what is supposed to be a loving, committed relationship.

At first glance, I can understand the appeal; I'm not that naive.  But in the end, I think one needs to weigh the desire of the moment with the desire for a future.

And in my view, the hall pass belittles the issuer and the one who receives it.