There are of course a lot of posters on MN who find out that their male partners are having affairs. There are even threads which come up that state that all men cheat.
Similarly however after seeing an acquaintence’s photo on FB last week, I realised that out of the group of school run mums I knew when my DC started school, at least three of them had affairs and two of those left their marriages to be with OM while the other simply left her marriage. I also know and know of plenty of other women who have had affairs.
I wonder therefore whether it’s time to re-think our approach to these things, and whether it’s actually time to assume that humans aren’t designed to live monogamously for ever. Obviously if people want to, meet someone and feel they never want to be with anyone else that shouldn’t be commented on, but if it was understood that most people will at some point develop feelings for someone else, and it was openly understood that you as a couple be able to openly discuss these feelings and how to move forward from there, that less people would have affairs and enter into the lying and deception that they bring?
As things currently are, affairs bring nothing but heartache and sadness. However, if someone in a couple develops feelings for someone else, that is also considered a taboo even if those feelings are not acted on but are perfectly natural.
It does of course follow that in some cases a marriage would end if one partner developed feelings for someone else. But at least it would happen openly without the deception of the affair and everything that goes along with it
There would of course still be those who had affairs regardless simply because they could, and they would deserve the contempt they got. But would people be open about their thoughts and feelings I wonder if they had the opportunity to be, with the understanding from the outset that they could be?