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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

If you mess with married folk you...

120 replies

readywithwellies · 22/11/2010 10:11

deserve everything you get?

OK, so here is the scenario:

You chase (or are chased) after a married/attached person and they leaves their partner to be with you.

AIBU to wonder how the hell you can trust that person not to do the same thing to you?

Why can't people find a SINGLE person to pester????

OP posts:

booyhoo · 22/11/2010 11:42

why would you wish that on anyone? are you that bitter?

Memoo · 22/11/2010 11:44

TBh if my DH left me for another woman I would be quite bitter too, and I think anyone who wouldn't be must be some kind of saint!

SantasMooningArse · 22/11/2010 11:45

It's the wishing it on their kids that gets to me

How could you do that?

Dh and I are having a rough patch but the desire not to hurt the kids is enough for me to find a way to sort it. I would never wish such a horrible time on any child, my own or anyone else's.

booyhoo · 22/11/2010 11:47

i just don't understand wishing a betrayal on someone else. especially when you have experienced the pain of it. i know it must make you so unbelievably angry when you are cheated on but i don't think it does you any good to be thinking such nasty things and wishing it on someone else. it's not a good place to for your head to be.

Memoo · 22/11/2010 11:48

No its not a good place, but if your DH left you for someone else can you honestly say you wouldn't hope that he would leave her too?

PamelaFlitton · 22/11/2010 11:51

I would personally just find someone better. But I have this really useful thing that as soon as someone shows they don't love me, I automatically fall out of love with them too. Which makes break-ups curiously painless for me. I don't do unconditional love, it's a waste of energy.

booyhoo · 22/11/2010 11:52

no. i would leave him to his own devices. i don't have enough space in my head to be wasting it on hoping he comes a cropper. if ihad been cheated on i imagine i would need to focus all the more on myself rather than what happened to him. whatever happens to him will happen and a betrayal wouldn't make me feel any better about the fact he did it to me.

Memoo · 22/11/2010 11:55

And we'd all be like that in an ideal world booy, but its not always easy to control ones feelings.

SantasMooningArse · 22/11/2010 11:55

Memoo

I hope I can say that yes, esp. if there were kids involved.

I do beleive in no fault affairs where the cheated on partner has done nothing wrong but tbh personally I am so far from perfection that I woudln;t not understand why they went. And once the shock had worn off, I would rather they were with someone worth leaving me for- far more offensive to be left for a disposable relationship IMO. And I would eventually wish him well (know that from past). Triply so if kids involved: huge admiration for friends of mine who divorced, met and amrried new people but remmain on good terms, excellent co-parents and the new partners have been absorbed into the mix, not replaced anyone.

I;d probably fail badly being less than saintly but would hope to emulate that.

Memoo · 22/11/2010 11:56

TBH if DH cheated on me I'd make one of those voodoo dolls and stick pins up his arse

traceybath · 22/11/2010 11:58

I think in RL there is often a bit of overlap with relationships - where someone has been unhappy and it takes the catalyst of meeting someone else for the relationship to end.

However I do think its very sad when people have affairs for years for all concerned really. An Aunt of mine who was married had an affair for 15 years - her husband was awful, violent etc and that affair was really all that kept her going.

All relationships/affairs are different aren't they?

Are there really that many predatory females out there? I'm not convinced personally but I can see that for a marriage to survive after an affair its a lot easier the husband and wife to lay a lot of the blame on the OW.

RunawayChristmasTree · 22/11/2010 12:10

Lol memoo, my mum was moaning to her carer about my sisters boyfriend, and the carer (a lovely Nigerian woman) said to mum "do you know what we do in my Country?" We get out the voodoo doll, I can bring you one if you like

I have to admit mum was tempted

nancydrewrocked · 22/11/2010 12:14

Cheaters are as varied as the monogomous in terms of the types of relationships they seek and lead. To generalise is pointless.

Serial cheaters will always exist: they will leave on partner after another ad infinitum. At the other end of the spectrum there are people who cheat and are perfectly capable of going on to have a monogomous long term relationship. The idividuals are as varried as the circumstances.

Some people just cannot be trusted whether they actually cheat or not. Others cheat but are not essentially untrustworthy.

Original poster

readywithwellies · 22/11/2010 12:31

It is karma. I don't wish it on any particular OW. All of them. Just like I wouldn't care if paedophiles are raped in prison.

OP posts:

booyhoo · 22/11/2010 12:32

i understand that you wouldn't care if it happened to them but wishing it on them is a different thing altogether.

Original poster

readywithwellies · 22/11/2010 12:36

I do wish it on them. Like I wish the bitchy girls in school get fat and ugly!

OP posts:

PamelaFlitton · 22/11/2010 12:37

There's no such thing as karma. It's just a convenient half-baked theory.

MisSalLaneous · 22/11/2010 12:49

I believe serial or long term cheaters would never change, but I do think it sometimes happens that someone got married too early in the relationship / too young / before knowing themselves, being rather unhappy for years, and when they then meet their soulmate (cliche, I know, but someone they are on a similar wavelength with), it's a tough call between staying unhappy forever or owning up to having made a mistake by getting married in the first place.

Life is not perfect though, so even this "perfect" new person would have annoying habits down the line. I think often when someone leaves a long term relationship (whether married or not) for a brief fling, it won't last once the shine has worn off and they see them clipping their toenails and snoring with a cold.

I think I have more respect for someone leaving their partner quickly when they realise how unhappy they are / before getting properly involved than for someone who goes on cheating for years "for the sake of the children". Bull.

It is, of course, easy for me to say this. If this happened in my marriage (very very highly unlikely, I'd almost guarantee not, but then, we all believe this), I'd probably hate them both for a very, very, very long time. And I'm not sure how easy it would be to accept that we were perhaps not good together for a start. (This is of course not always the case.)

nancydrewrocked · 22/11/2010 12:57

Karma is a concept that enables pathetic bitter individuals to feel justified in thinking badly of and wishing harm on others and then feeling smug when those people suffer. Tis bollox.

SkyBluePearl · 22/11/2010 12:57

the married person is at fault

LightlyKilledCrunchyFrog · 22/11/2010 13:03

My sister was an OW for 5 years. She thought she was the only one. She wasn't.

She, however, is the one ostracised in the community, who had horrible things shouted at her in the street, threatening text messages, even now several years on she was barred from a party because of "what she had done." Never mind the cunt sleeping with half the country because his pg wife wouldn't put out. He gave his wife chlamydia. Lovely chap. Of course, he's totally socially acceptable and is now engaged again so he can do it all over again to some other woman. Knob.

I'm not defending DSis - she behaved in an indefensible way, lied to her whole family for 5 years and pretended to be friendly to the utter bellend's wife. But she was 19, and a very young 19, when it started, and he was in his thirties. But she is the one with all the consequences.

It's not as clear cut as OW being a temptress, IMO. My rules are pretty simple - if you don't like your relationship, get out. THEN start the next one. One at a time, see. Saves a lot of heartache.

Original poster

readywithwellies · 22/11/2010 13:05

Nancy - yes that is me. Too true.

Karma exists, don't you watch My Name is Earl?

OP posts:

Original poster

readywithwellies · 22/11/2010 13:34

Lightly - your sister chose to do that though, no one made her. Not that I advocate any of the behaviour towards her. I wouldn't do that, I would just sit back and think 'serves you right' when the other party cheats again.

OP posts:

fedupofnamechanging · 22/11/2010 13:41

Well to me Karma simply means that if you treat people badly and are basically a shit all your life, this will come back to you, because you will be the sort of person that other people can't love/like.

Nasty, selfish people end up bitter and lonely.

Believing in Karma doesn't mean that you actively wish that on a person, more that it is how things are likely to end up for certain people, purely because of their own actions in life.

That said, some people do seem to get away with it.

SantasMooningArse · 22/11/2010 13:53

karmabeleiver that's what I think too

Like the woman I know who blackballed people from her social group and now is upset coz the new group she fancied blackballed her for being a trrouble maker.

What goes around...

(I could of course write an entire essay on karma having a degree in a related subject but reall you wouldn;t want it as A) it's different in every religion, and B) it just sums up as we all need to learn different lessons and life has a way of teaching us these lessons)

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