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Relationships
: AIBU to think that most relationships will end with an OVERLAP with a new relationship.
(628 messages)
I don't get this thing on MN whereby married people are expected to end marriages before embarking on other relationships.
This idea of people (except you always mean 'woman' ) being "slappers" if they enter relationships with married people makes me think lots of you have very little understanding of how relationships work.
- To be blunt, I would be FAR more upset if DH left me for a lonely life as a single person in a bedsit than for a new relationship. I think the former is FAR more insulting. I have a close friend whose husband did this and it was MORTIFYING every time people said "Oh darlng, was there someone else?" and she had to say "No" (unspoken message: 'I am just too horrific to live with').
- People need support when they end relationships - and that support often comes from a new relationship.
- If people ended every marriage at the first sniff of new romance, or at the first feelings of dissatisfaction, then none of our relationships would last more than a year or two! It is often a new relationship that gives people the impetus to re-evaluate their lives.
- Most relationships become very "stale" after a certain amount of time - society tells us we must WORK at our relationships after the desire has gone, but WHY? Why not just accept that our partners or ourselves might be MORE happy in a new relationships - we have changed and grown, after all.
I have several friends in relationships with married people - and I expect a lot of you do, too, but they probably don't tell you because you are so HORRIFIED at the idea. Such relationships generally end in a lot of DESPAIR but they are part of life.
When you talk about "ending relationships before starting new ones" it sounds to me just like people who talk about not having sex before marriage - a great ideal (perhaps), but not realistic for 99% of people.
There is a whole lot of insecurity on here MP, lots and lots of women can't accept that this is indeed a fact of life and that there are lots and lots of grey areas in the field of relationships.
But why live in fear of your partner leaving you? He will if he wants to, or if he is the type of scum who wants to fuck around on you he will too. you can't make a man stay with you as much as you can't make a man leave his wife for you. but if this is the type of man you are dealing with, whether you are his wife or his mistress, you are on to a loser.
actually mp i agree. i love dh and hope that neither of us does feel the need to look elsewhere, but i know this is a possibility. its far too easy to blame the ow/om or the faithless partner when in fact its more often a series of events and problems.
I would be upset if dh left me for any reason, I can't see that other woman/no other woman would make it any less painful tbh. I wouldn't think "well, at least it was SOMEONE ELSE, so it's not that I'M horrific".
I do think it's reasonable for people to either leave if they're unhappy or to try to work it out - I think it's horribly dishonest to shag someone else to see if they might be worth moving on to.
I don't want my relationship to be a throwaway thing that I accept should be replaced with a newer shinier model every now and again. I think if it stops workign then we need to talk and try to fix it and if we can't, we should split. I think another person clouds the issue, completely.
I don't actually have friends in relationships with married people (except the married ones) and I wouldn't be terribly impressed by it tbh.
It's dishonest and lazy and being careless with peoples feelings.
But Twig that is just too simple, most of the people in my life that I know who have had affairs are actually really decent people who found themselves in unhappy places and didn't behave in the best way at the time. but it doesn't make them weak and dishonourable for ever or in their fibre, just in that moment of time.
And I also feel it has little bearing on their ability as a parent.
But relationships don't either "work" or "not work".
And a normal relationship will have good years and bad years: if you have a couple of bad years and an alternative comes along (a new relationship) then you might end your current relationship because of the new relationship.
Otherwise, you might just keep going. People LIKE being in relationships, even dull ones. That doesn't mean that the relationship is "not working" and needs to end. Being in relationship is just the human condition.
Oh I disagree, I think they do mostly work or not work. Not working imo is when terrible or bad times vastly outweigh the good times over a period of time (different for everyone).
I wouldn't end my relationship because someone came along who looked better briefly or might be better.
surely leaving a relationship and getting with another person means that the old relationship wasnt working? whether they tried or didnt etc doesnt matter does it? that person didnt feel like it worked and no longer wanted to live each day as they were.
I think new people can be the catalyst for a relationship to break up but I think in those cases it was mostly broken anyway, the couple just didn't have the courage/energy/strength to do it.
"gosh I'm so happy, the flowers in the garden are blossoming, I have lots of money, great sex with my handsome and attentive husband, wonderful children who I never have any issues with, AIBU? " do they? People come here and post mostly because they have problems. Or trivial concerns, or questions, or rants or musings etc
zippitoes- im sorry for the situatuon you found yourself in. my dh's father commited suicide when his mum told him she was not happy and that she wanted a divorce. my dh was 12 at the time. when he (my dh) found himself unhappy and not in love with his then wife he decided he did not want to live that way so left and we have a incredibly happy life with two dd's and my dss.
Mind you, while I'm arguing about whether mn is representative of general relationship unhappimess I suppose I should just forget that and refer to the UK divorce stats shouldn't I? They're pretty conclusive: most people ARE unhappy! Voila!
Yes, they very often do overlap. I can't say it's wrong or right, it is just that way, I suppose.
You are lucky you never understood the terror, though. I do now feel that if my new dp left me I would think 'Oh, well, plenty more fish in the sea'. But I do not have the emotional investment in this relationship that I had with my xh.
My terror was being left to raise 6 children on my own, not getting any emotional or financial support, nor practical help to run a four bedroomed house. It is as hard as I was afraid of and has lead to a deterioration in my mental, physical and emotional health. I was right to be terrified.
Plus side is I no longer feel that terror because the worst thing I could imagine happening - that my best friend and helpmeet (x-gender emoticon) would leave me - has already happened. So what's left to fear?
MP- I hope you have read my other posts on the Slapper thread- I got very little support- but thanks for the couple who did see my point!
Why didn't you support my posts, lol!!!
I think there is a lot of bitterness on this site at times- and so many people can't be objective- they discuss everything as to how it has affected them personally, rather than being able to take a more detached view.
I was thinking afterwards- most of the literature- plays/poetry/novels/films...would not exists if love always worked out smoothly- it's been going on since Sophocles day..so it's not going to change now!
and despite MNs wish for love to be "slapper-free" it just ain't how people operate!
and that is true HLS about grat art - it's all about people's tangled lives - I hvae started reading novels lately and thinking 'GOD this would get people with PITCHFORKS on MN!'
agree with WWW on what is a good relationship .. mostly happy across a period of time that is self-determined.
And Carmenere .. Yes I'm afraid that I do think that it is dishonourable to start a relationship when in one. I do think for that point in time one is acting without honour .. I think that shrouds one for a good long while as being weak and dishonourable until one enters a new phase in life
Actually, I don't know that he was my best friend and x-gender helpmeet. Sometimes, sometimes not. It was cyclic, like all relationships. And if you meet someone else when a bad patch is rolling round, you're going to be susceptible. I know this. And the bad patch is both partners' fault, not just the straying one's fault.
It's still legitimate to be terrified of someone leaving you with all that work though, and justifiable if you moan when they've done it.
thanks- but glad you started this thread as I was feeling pretty much a lone voice! Guess people like to vent their spleen rather than be objective and realistic.
that is true littlewoman, but surely a decent chap would not leave you with all the work? That is more a fear of him turning out to be a bit of a pig who gallivants off and ignores his respsonibilities?
i will add as this is mn that i was the married with kids so i have left someone for a single no kids not that that is relevant he has since left me to fibnd someone to have kids with
tho he ande ds would love each other if they werent so po faced
The idea that you should leave one relationship before embarking on another one is just a little too simplistic for me.
so you meet someone, fall in love with them, but decide that you need out of your marriage first before you can be together. So what do you tell the wife/husband? "I've fallen in love with someone else and I'm leaving you. But nothing has happened between us, I just want to end it with you before starting something with her." Is that going to make the betrayal, the hurt any less than if the wife/husband found out you'd been sleeping around on the side for 6 months before deciding to leave? Or do you just use some other reason to leave and then not embark on the new relationship for a time, until there's been a cooling off period? In which case you're still lying, still deceiving.
I just don't think that it as cut and dry as anyone who starts an extramarital relationship is a terminally horrible person. Shit happens, people fuck up.
No Wannabe. I think the leave before you're unfaithful view would be that you would know that the relationship should end. And then you would leave. And then you can embark upon meeting someone else. But, it just doesn't work like that. Meeting someone else can be the tipping point to take the chance and leave. Often you can't see what a realtionship really was until it's behind you.
yeah read that the first time.... my dh didnt go looking for me nor did i go looking for him. we fell for each other both of us in a relationship admitedly i was not married bt was living with someone
WWW "I think new people can be the catalyst for a relationship to break up but I think in those cases it was mostly broken anyway"
Well, do you know what? I think that sometimes men just dont like the fact that when kids come along they dont get all the attention they had before and then they meet a cute 29 yr old with no kids and VOILA! they are centre of attention again!!
I dont believe the relationships are always broken - I think some people are just selfish shits who want to wallow in their own self-pity and believe they are being hard done by.
As you can tell, I am one of the bitter ones that has been there, done that even though I always thought it would never be me.
Stirlingmum, I am sorry for your evident pain but the fact is that there was something wrong with your relationship because one of you was looking elsewhere. If the arrival of dc's was the only reason, well then yes, he was a lowlife and you are better off without him.
I'm of the opinion that one day we might all have to face the fact that adultery is a normality or that being deserted is a given in any relationship. Which woman then is going to take the chance of having children with ANY man knowing she will have to be their sole provider at some point down the line? How does society survive when nobody trusts anybody else, and nobody considers anybody else?
And I'm also of the opinion that most great art is an examination of human frailty. Most of these works have a moralistic tone to them, or at the very least a literary shaking of the head 'what's to be done with the species we call human?' type attitude. It is certainly not a celebration of human frailty, and man's capacity to hurt and be hurt.So it cannot be said it is a good thing these things happen so that Flaubert or whoever could write about it.
i was 19 when dh and i got together and it was made a joke of in our best mans speach at our wedding a few years later!
but what does age have do with it? he/she left for some young woman/man. at the end of the day they left because they were hook line and sinker surely.
Actually, there would be a lot less misery if people didn't buy into the bullshit about True Love and The One to the extent that it becomes imperative to dump one partner for another (because the one you fancy right now is your perfect soulmate, the previous partner disposable and you will be so happy with your soulmate forever and ever... until someone else catches your eye). This is the heart of the monogamist obsession, this idea that all life is about finding one perfect person to fix everything that's wrong with you. Longterm monogamous relationships work out just fine for some people, of course. As do long term open relationships, or long term relationships where both participants feel able to forgive the occasional bunk up elsewhere or even a longstanding extra relationships because everyone involved is comfortable with the idea that many people need to get their social needs fulfilled by a range of others, rather than devoting themselves obsessively to ownership of one individual.
I don't buy into The One etc but I do think it's possible to be in a happy relationship without buying into all that and to have enough consideration for the feelings of your partner not to be unfaithful or dishonest.
I think the idea of an open relationship is much more honest tbh than pretending to be monogamous and not being. Mind you, probably plenty of people don't know how to even think about challenging the monogamous norm.
WWW: like I said, some people are happy in longterm monogamous relationships. It may be that some of these people have had the occasional stirrings of lust for someone else but made the logical choice to stick with what they've got rather than deal with the upheaval of changing partners; it may be that both partners in such a relationship prefer contentment to grand passions (an eminently sensible outlook IMO anyway), or it may be that no one has yet tempted either partner away from the existing partner.
Littlewoman, it seems to me that it would in general be a far better thing to pick the other biological parent of one's DC for parenting ability (or at least some willingness to become and to be a parent) rather than coupling ability ie no matter who else he/she has sex with, is he/she capable of sustaining a loving parental relationship with the DC and a civil co-parent relationship with an XP?
imo though most people are too insecure for an open relationship. I know I certainly couldn't do it - would wonder if he was with someone better than me/was forming an emotional attachment to her etc. But each to their own I suppose.
When I met my exH it transpired, after a while, he told me in fact, that he had cheated on his former DP (they had no kids but I am sure it didn't hurt her any the less), but I still decided to marry him nonetheless (something I regret but not necessarily for that reason).
I do remember at the time feeling surprised that she should be so surprised that this had happened. I am sure he was taking the cowardly way out but also what many people forget is that it is no so easy to extricate yourself from a live in relationship or marriage often for practical reasons.
Maybe even then I was already too cynical or insecure perhaps, I don't know, but I have always thought that this was a risk with any relationship. Probably borne out by the fact that many people on here who felt so confident that their partners wouldn't cheat find out that they have. Do you ever really know someone?
I have simply never been that complacent in any relationship I have been in. I have never cheated on anyone btw and would strive for fidelty as the ideal.In fact I think it would be a dealbreaker for me.
But I also know that in the last few years of my marriage which was very bad with no physical contact I may well have entertained an affair if the opportunity arisen. I had tried my best with my DH but ultimately it was all going very bad and nothing I did could save it.
I abhor the use of word slapper too. IMO there is too much reactionery stuff on her. I have experience immense pain at the breakdown of my marriage but I am a realist too.
It's all very well some people saying that relationships should not overlap, but unless you live in a bubble- it can happen! You can meet people at work through friends, wherever- it can start over a meal in the canteen, a coffee, a shoulder to cry on, whatever. Men and women interact. One of them in unhappy- maybe both. Chemistry is there! You can't deny this.
I'm not bored yet ... which one of us would be the woman to have the children and stay at home, relying on him for money, knowing that his other woman/women might not choose to have children and she would be the one he was out having all the fun with, spending all the pennies on, whilst you do all the work?
What happens to society then? No more children. It will all become a bit Alduous Huxley's 'Brave New World', babies grown in tubes, because I can't think of many women who would choose to do that in openly polyamorous/polygamous relationships. Surely EVERYONE is going to want to be Fun Girlfriend, not Blowsy Old Mummy Girlfriend.
What was the OP? No, they aren't slappers. There is no such thing as a slapper. Have their actions resulted in somebody else's pain. Yes. SOMETIMES, sometimes not. Hurt person (if there is one)is therefore entitled to call them a made up insult.
There have been some threads on here about the lack of sexual activity in relationships. While there are various ways in which a couple with mismatched libidos can work things out, if you 've got a situation where one partner not only refuses/witholds sex but refuses to try to fix the problem, blames the other partner for being a disgusting sex mad beast or refuses even to acknowledge there is a problem, then the partner who doesn't want to be celibate for ever has some excuse for looking elsewhere for sex - and this might even help to keep the original relationship going if discretion can be maintained.
Nobody is calling anyone on here a slapper, but I reserve the right to call my exp's OW a slapper. Why should I respect her good name when she put me through hell and has tainted my dc's relationship with their father and tried her hardest to stop him seeing them. Sadly it seems she is not the only one. There are a lot of them out there.
For me, it's not that ex met someone else (or several someone elses), but that he chose to screw around whilst also sleeping with me.... dunno mebbe it's just me, but the utter humiliation of walking into an STI clinic, when I've only ever been with one man in my entire life (thus far), shall remain with me till I die....
I'm fine with the 'he's found someone else', however I would expect the smallest modicum of respect on his part for me his wife and mother of his children, in that he would begin parting ways with me before dropping his pants....
There have, madamez, true. But people witholding sex can be a signal that their partner is not satisfying their other needs. They both need to communicate and work on the whole relationship, not just the sex if they want to survive. It's not always high v low libido.
Oh, I'm off to a bloody monastry
yes, I know I'm a woman and women should go to convents
Well I wasn't calling anybody slappers (awful sexist word) on that thread but I do believe that if you realise you're going to be unfaithful you need to get out of the relationship or work on the relationship or at the very least be open with your partner that you're fucking around. After all if it's just a fact of life then it must be OK to be open about it to your existing partner/spouse.
The thing is all the people I've known who've done the cowardly moving from one relationship into another by being unfaithful have been fairly unpleasant selfish people.
MP, what a cynical view of life and love. I would not have been able to disagree more with the idea that most relationships will end with an overlap with another relationship if you hadn't gone on to suggest somehow that this is absolutely fine and we should just accept it. Sorry, but no.
When you marry, you make solemn vows including that you will be faithful to your partner. Breaking that vow is not something to be shrugged off.
If you need support upon the end of a relationship, why not get it from friends and family.
You work at a relationship because it should be worth the effort. How crap would it be if a relationship were allowed to fall apart simply because the partners didn't put in the effort to keep it healthy? If the most important relationship in your life isn't worth a little effort, what is?
Interesting stuff. MP's OP recognises that people are imperfect and there should perhaps be more of this.
On the question of whether you "overlap" or not, well... I've known four divorced couples now and let's just say the circumstances were all very different. Just proves how simplistic the old Mary Kenny (Daily Mail) moralising is - nothing to do with people "not trying hard enough".
With couple #1 it was the absolute heartbreak of being childless-not-by-choice and the way this became an issue.
With #2 it was a sexual incompatibility and the use of that as a trigger for other things.
#3 just realised they should never have got married in the first place and were more like friends - no passion or love any more.
And with #4 the husband was discovering his bisexuality and wanted them to embark on a "swinging" lifestyle which the wife wasn't keen on.
I know for a fact that all these couples went through agonies and lots of counselling before splitting up, and in no case was it as simple as either "another woman/man" or one person "being too unbearable to live with".
BTW - with madamez I'm always torn between thinking she is totally refreshing and wondering if she ought to change the record a bit! (Sorry madamez.) I know it's her chosen role on here to speak up for the non-monogamous-by-choice and I respect that to an extent - it puts a point of view which is not usually heard - although I think her language is often a little strong. Monogamy does not necessarily equate to "ownership" of another person and the strongest monogamous relationships are those which realise this, surely?...
It's very difficult, I imagine, if one person wants to have an open relationship and the other doesn't. The one who doesn't probably sees all this "I can't be monogamous, me" shtick as code for "I want to behave like a bit of a twat, have it reinforced and get away with it."
Of course life is complex and people sometimes behave less well than they ought to (and often less well than they themselves would have like to have done). However, that doesn't preclude discussing what is an ideal way to leave a relationship that isn't working.
Ideal, in terms of being as painless as possible for the parting couple and also for any children involved.
A lot of this is ultimately about respect - respect for one's self and respect for those people that we chose to have children with- and of course respect for the children themselves.
Having the next model waiting in the wings is extremely hurtful - such a terrible betrayal of someone's love and affection. It is the ultimate in selfishness - to want to leave a relationship in a way which maximises someone else;s pain, whilst minimising yours.
MP - I do rather think that you spend a lot of time on these threads trying to minimise the hurt you have been party to over the years in being involved in other people's relationships- almost as if you want people to say 'oh, don't worry it isn;t such a bad thing to have done'.
Whilst not quite letting you off the hook, it has always been my contention that the contract of marriage is between the parties to the marriage - no one else owes me a duty of care as a result of it! That being so, the person who I hold entirely responsible for an affair is (and has been) my exh. That he found someone willing to aid and abet him in doing so, rankles a little, but she owed me nothing - he owed me a graceful and dignified end to our relationship and he failed to deliver that!
It's difficult, though, because surely my examples above (and I'm sure people have others) show that there is, really, no "painless" or "ideal" way to leave a relationship that isn't working.
And if someone has already started thinking in terms of moving on emotionally, and they meet someone else they really like, it takes a very strong-willed person to say "Sorry, I can't get involved, I'm in the process of ending another relationship" or "Can you wait eight months while I get my divorce sorted out?"
I don't think in the second scenario anyone is talking about waiting until the divorce comes through - but waiting until you've stopped shagging your wife and pretending to be in a relationship is not too much to ask, I don't believe!
I think Anna888's DP did exactly that. I think she said she actually left the country for 18months while it was all sorted out. I think they found it excruciatingly painful and that must have been terribly difficult - but I do have a great deal of respect for her that they did so! (I think I am talking about the right person)?
I think a lot of this is about the fact that, while people get together by mutual/multi-lateral agreement, they very, very rarely split up in such a way. It's not always entirely unilateral, but it does seem more often than not to be more at the behest of one person than the other.
It takes two very strong adults to sit down, work out that "it's not working" and decide together that it's best to split up form this mutually-agreed point on. I'm sure this happens, but I bet it's rare.
But I think if you're the type of person who can't finish a relationship without having another iron in the fire, you've got some serious issues.
As far as support, erm, how about friends? Family? How about yourself?
And most people don't end marriages at the first sniff of other romance because they have something called respect. For themselves and commitment they made, for their spouse, for their families, for the people who love them, especially their kids.
They also have something called maturity and self-control. By which they have somehow grown to understand that not all that glitters is gold, that the grass is always greener on the other side, and that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
Personally, I'd rather walk alone than badly accompanied.
Because after all, you're known by the company you keep.
I think the idea that affairs are only about ending relationships is a little unrealistic too and somewhat of a red herring. There are plenty of married people (mainly men I've got to say) who are serial adulterers.
Even now, I don't think he's truly aware of the intense hurt he caused his sons, who knew from a very young age.
My mother once got him told, though.
After his wife died, he wrote her this ranting letter, about me and ex h's split. He said, 'I've started dating again'. And she said, 'Really? I wasn't aware you'd ever stopped.'
MsHighwater, I would take issue with the idea that a couple-relationship is the 'most important' one in a person's life: it's actually the least important one: for one thing you can always find another sexual partner, but you can't ever replace a parent or a sibling - or a child - and the loss of a longterm friend (whether to death, emigration or some sort of hideous disagreement) can hurt far more than the loss of a sexual/romantic partner. Actually I think the emphasis placed on couple-relationships as the most important in our lives is another contributing factor to the misery caused to so many people by issues around them.
Expat - I suspect many of us have done things as young people that we cringe a little bit at now that we have a more rounded understanding of the hurt that we might have caused.
We can't, any of us, go back and change those things.
However, the OP seems to want people to condone the less than ideal behaviour of her youth - to normalise it and say that because it is common for people to behave badly, then we shouldn;t expect anything better of people.
) being "slappers" if they enter relationships with married people makes me think lots of you have very little understanding of how relationships work.
) 
