What is with the English, affairs, and divorce?

[BoundaryGirl3939]

Everyday when I visit this website I see a post about a husband having an affair, or a suspicion that he is cheating, or an irritation that he is getting to close to a female friend. I see mumsnet as an accurate description of what is going on in English society, and the levels of infidelity shock me.

I'm Irish, and believe me that the men here are not perfect. We have high levels of addiction (alcoholism) and dysfunction (anger management) but the infidelity is definitely not as commonplace (although it does take place but not as frequently). Yes, Irish marriages/relationships break up, and adults may get a second life partner after a relationship has died, but the actual 'cheating' is not as common and is scandalous if it does take place.

I find it shocking that an average man can contently sleep with another woman, and then go home to his wife and kids. My mind boggles that a woman can feel like she has a right to encroach on another womans husband and take a father from his family.

LMAO at OPs assumption that everyone on here is English, while being both on here and Not English herself.

This

You are being daft to think we're all English for starters.

Secondly there will be as many Irish men cheating on their wives as English ones (or Scots or Welsh) you'd be incredibly naive to think otherwise.

No

Ooh, I smell a Venn diagram approaching!

Irish here, rural middle class and unfortunately know a number of couples broken up due to infidelity. Just because people don’t talk about it in real life doesn’t mean they’re not going through it

😂

There is a fine line between naivety and stupidity and I think it's been crossed.

Your argument appears to be that because in your own tiny (at a population level) circle of people in Ireland, you believe (but don't know for sure) that less people are having affairs; and on an international website (whose headquarters happen to be in England) where people go to discuss problems with marriages, this subject comes up reasonably often, that that means English people have more affairs than Irish?

I'm sorry op, but that's just dim.

A more interesting discussion is why are there - globally obviously - so many affairs and my answer to that would be because I think it's an unrealistic fantasy for most to be happily with the same person for 60 years.

i think you are all giving OP a hard time. @EffortlesslyInelegant I think your post is way off the mark

Take another really common thread - being overweight. There are LOADS of posts on MN about this, and about getting Wegovy on the NHS or whatever. This is a cultural and country-specific thing, and it tells you something - loads of people are concerned about being overweight AND there are loads of overweight people with access to the NHS (so, British).

I doubt you’d find the same problem with obesity in similar forums in continental Europe, because they don’t have such a big population with this problem as we have here in the Uk.

OP, if it helps, there is a thread running somewhere at the moment with a title something like ‘15+ years in, how’s your relationship?’ in which posters are talking about their long-term (and mostly contented) relationships. Very little mention of infidelity there, so it’s obviously possible to find marriages where no one is shagging around.

But then…I have no idea of the nationality of all the posters on that thread so that thread can’t be taken as a reflection on English marriages after all.

Does this help at all?

You are looking at a skewed population. You won't find many posts on the topic of "I need some advice, my partner is loving and understanding. This week he's done half of the school drop off/pickups this week. Cooked dinner 3 times, loads the dishwasher properly and always puts pairs of socks in the wash".
The number of people with arseholes for other halves are over represented here because they are the women that need an outsider perspective.

I see mumsnet as an accurate description of what is going on in English society
Please don't. It really really isn't. Another culture to all the ones I have accounted here in real life.

But everyone would know the person is a sleazebag and only an absolute eejit would go with them.

Everyone in the entire country would know?

Has Ireland suddenly shrunk to the size of a postage stamp since I was last there?

@Seashellssanctuary , That's the population of the UK, not England.

How pedantic,

I was not confused. I did consider in my original to post the English Population of a meagre 56m and only 11X that of Ireland.

However I dida ssume that the OP was not making a particular distinction (as there is no way of knowing) between the countries making up the UK.

Thanks for your input

My Excel is getting excited just thinking about it.

does that mean everyone in ireland knows each other

sorry but youre being ridiulous

OP, I can't comment on every Irish married couple at all, but my Irish X committed adultery, and in a planned, calculated , pre-meditated way too! I call him my X rather than STBXH because I came to believe he always had it in him due to what I found out, and have asked the Church for an anullment as I believe the marriage was never valid in the first place!
I wouldn't wish being cheated on on anyone, it's a horrible thing to experience and I'm sorry to say, Irish men, and women, aren't above it nor immune to it! Maybe up to a few decades ago when Irish people were very devout it was rare! It's very sad and destructive, but I suspect it's now becoming far more common here!

Many of the Irish men I know have all had affairs! They’re catholic and until their mums die say they can’t get divorced .

Hmmm. Naive? Or just childishly goady?

If you think Ireland doesn't cheat because they are Catholic you are deluded, they are as committed to marriage as anyone else.

People of any religion cheat, just because you aren't aware of it doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

You seem to think that Mumsnet represents all of the UK.
Do you understand anything about statistics?
And do you realise how small a proportion of the UK population post on Mumsnet?

It’s not an “English” problem. It’s a man problem.

Men come from all nationalities and ethnicities.

Thankfully, in England, we don’t have a culture where divorce brings shame on a family.

My DH is from an Irish family. His grandfather deomonstrated the "commitment to partnership/ children" by having two (large by today's standard) families that he moved between. His wife knew about the second family and tolerated it.

YABU.
This is an online forum not real life. Take it all with a pinch of salt.

I don’t know…. If I literally believed I would burn in hell for eternity for defiling the sanctity of marriage for some hot sex in the here-and-now, I would definitively take a moment to pause and reconsider.

God knows everything after all, even if your spouse doesn’t. And it takes a lot of Hail Mary’s to claw your way back from breaking a Commandment and a sacred vow of marriage.

So at least a percentage of the religious population probably were/are influenced by their faith and their abject terror of hell.

Not everyone, of course. But some.