[Avodah] Having a boyfriend equivalent to being married?

[Micha Berger]

RZS just replied to RJE:
:> This seems to be asking about what their intentions
:> were. But their intentions are irrelevant in the face
:> of a chazakah..

: Huh?  The chazakah doesn't make them married, it's just a tool to
: let us presume their intentions.  But a presumption can't override
: the metzius.

To rephrase, chazaqah is a din birur, which means it is only relevant
when there is a safeiq that requires birur.

I just wrote the following to someone who commented off list. (The
rest of the discussion was off-topic for Avodah, so I didn't ask him
to post here.) I related the question of whether we can question the
chazaqah in light of rov to RYBS saying that tav lemeisiv holds even
if contemporary sociology seems to make it true only in a mi'ut of
cases.


Ve'el isheikh teshuqaseikh sure seems like a maqor for tav lemeisiv.
If you do not believe tav lemeisiv is a universal, you need to explain
why this part of Chavah's onesh ended, or how it doesn't mean what it
seems to. The connection seems inescapable. (With 20:20 hindsight once
someone pointed it out.)

The question is whether chazaqah disvara is a variant of ruba deleisa
leqaman or a different principle altogether. (Or maybe sometimes one
sometimes the other, just as chazaqah is sometimes sevara and
sometimes mei'iqara, and rov is sometimes leqaman and sometimes leisa
leqaman.) Perhaps it means that we are supposed to assume that laws of
nature apply until proven otherwise, even if in most real life cases
today, other laws of nature come into play to modify the result more
often than not. In which case, a chazaqah would apply even when the
law of human nature only is the determining factor in a mi'ut of
cases.

Back to RZS's email:
:> IF the chazakah is operational, then as long as they are
:> witnesses to the actual biah, (or, I suppose, to a  yichud
:> that is equivalent to witnessing biah?)
:
: When would there ever be witnesses to that?

Witnesses to yichud? If they're "a couple", it's quite likely.

SheTir'u baTov!
-micha

-- 
Micha Berger             One who kills his inclination is as though he
micha at aishdas.org        brought an offering. But to bring an offering,
http://www.aishdas.org   you must know where to slaughter and what
Fax: (270) 514-1507      parts to offer.        - R' Simcha Zissel Ziv