can i start a thread for us mistress's??

[meandmrsjones]

how many on mumsnet are there?
ive noticed with good reason that they are very badly thought of on here - just from the threads i have read
im not what you call i full mistress as of yet we are yet to sleep togther - neither of us are single and we both have kids and responsibilities so not not wish to upset our partners but we feel so drawn to each other,he is all i can think about
would just like to her others experiences and if it ever worked out for the best ?

go ahead and flame

Some of that survey surprises me and some of it doesn't amber. Whenever I see a survey being quoted though, I wonder whether like me, you want to know more about the 42 women in the sample?

Since I don't think that Mumsnet is an alternative society where people think and feel differently to those who aren't registered to use it, I think the relationships board here is a fairly good barometer, with a larger sample of people.

There are a few posters I've seen who were in such bad marriages that the infidelity was almost inconsequential, more for whom it was the death knell (either levied by them or their partner) and about the same number again who were devastated, would never tolerate it again, but it didn't mean the end of their marriage.

That suggests that infidelity is acutely painful for the vast majority of posters here and unlike your paraphrase, it's not gender specific. There are male posters here who have suffered enormous pain through infidelity.

And Flight I do have a major problem with people who don't tell their spouses about the person in the wings. I think that this sort of lying by omission causes a huge amount of bewilderment, as you will have seen yourself on this board.

WWIFN, I don't think I said the new person was kept a secret - I said the man spoke to his wife.
I was thinking he spoke to his wife telling her about the new person.

Celtic fairy of course it isn't good, but no break up is good unless it is mutually desired. Very few are I think.

Having someone else you want to be with is not always totally preventable and may indeed be the cause of wanting to break up in the first place.

I have been through a break up where I wasn't told about the new person at all, and it was horrible, and made me feel very stupid when I did find out. So telling the wife about the new person would have to be part of the deal.

I have been cheated on. Its shitty and I wouldnt wish it on anyone. On the other hand there was obviously something wrong in my relationship or it wouldnt have happened (we hadnt been intimate for months at a time at one stage). Really we should have split long before we did and no I was not blameless in the thing. Tbh I felt sorry for the OW in the end, he wasnt fair to either of us.

He was too cowardly to end it with either of us so he carried on. she was about 7 years younger than him, very pretty and bright, he nearly destroyed her from what I hear.

To all the OW out there, im not judging you and I certainly dont agree with alot of what is being said here and the nasty comments, but for yourself be sure that this man loves you like he says he does, ask yourself once a month is this what you want, one month the answer you give yourself might not be the one you expect.

xox

deb

Do you really want to be with a man who would cheat on his wife? Coz if he can do it to her he'd do it to you. It dosn't make you special. Or does it give you an ego boost? Get some self-respect woman.

Deb, you clearly have a great deal of grace to post that.

Posh - sometimes it's not an ego boost, thew other woman can be extremely intelligent and empthic and feel dreadfully bad about it - can have nothing against the wife, just that she is being given promises and love which she doesn't know what to do with.

People having affairs can be as utterly confused and conflicted as those they are having them with. And it's usually the married person who holds all the power in the relationship.

I hate the idea that all mistresses are evil, horrible, cruel people with no feelings for anyone else. I'm sure some are probably pretty vile but others will be caught up in something they feel unable to walk away from. It doesn't make it right but it does make it less clear cut.

OP - why don't you pop to this site gloryb.com/ - it's perhaps more appropriate for your needs.

Heart-breaking in a pathetic way to read of those who've "waited" 10 years plus.

Sometimes people fall out of love in a relationship, but stay.

Then they meet someone new and they realise they could be happier.

Both those, in themselves, are okay. It's what you do to act on then that matters.

Sometimes it's not the person you meet who is making you happy but the attention, and if you split for them you go from frying can to fire, with the added recriminations of 2 broken families. And the relationship fails because it was built on sand.

So taking this completely at face value becsuse someone else might read - don't split up with someone for someone else. Ever. Split up with someone because you can't be with that personany more.

Using another person asan excuse is cowardly. If you truly are meant to be together you'll get together in time. After they've left their partner for their own reasons.

wise advice Frakkin.

Mind you sometimes a person has issues which mean he won't, or can't, commit to someone at all...this is sometimes not understood or overlooked in regard to infidelity, but people tend to understand the fact that someone who is unfaithful will be quite likely to do it again.

This can be due to the person having an intense fear of commitment, which is described here...basically, if he is married to you he will fight it somehow, or sabotage it by being unfaithful - he'll rebel, if you like. And he can only truly have a sharing and close relationship with the other woman, because he knows he will never have to be committed to her.

This can sometimes explain the scenario where the mistress 'hangs on' for a really long time, because she genuinely feels he shares everything with her which makes her feel valued - and she is valued - but he knows that if he leaves his wife for her he will not be able to keep seeing her, because it would make him too vulnerable to being fully committed and that's something that terrifies him.

Almost the worst thing in this is that a mistress can feel very unhappy with the limited time they have together, and feel really demoralised about their lover's feelings towards them because he hasn't made an honest woman of them, as it were.
And the worst thing of course is that it can go on for years, and if the wife is unaware of it, it's a dreadful, dreadful thing to find out when at last the bubble bursts.

Nobody wins once it's finished because the infidelity is often so long term thus impossible to work around for the couple...and the mistress isn't in her place any more, so he will run from her too.

Then he'll quite likely remarry very quickly and it starts all over again.

Celtic, in answer to your question: "Would you expect your boyfriend/husband to be faithful to you?" Not necessarily, especially if he met someone he was intensely attracted to. I think that is unlikely but not impossible.

"Divorce is a civil right. It's there to get people out of marriages that have gone horribly wrong such as domestic violence, abuse of the children and incompatibility."

Celtic, are you suggesting that everyone who gets divorced these days is doing it for those reasons? I would strongly disagree, as I have pointed out with my examples of several couples I know. I think divorce has almost become a lifestyle decision. Again, I am not necessarily saying this is right or wrong, but it has become so commonplace that it is now more socially acceptable than infidelity, which in some ways is slightly odd, especially when you consider the fall out from divorce.

The fact is that the spark does tend to go a bit once a relationship has matured, and I imagine that at this stage it is not uncommon for someone to start fancying someone else and either start an affair or leave the existing relationship and then start a new one. I know quite a few people (men especially) who have two or three long term relatonships or marriages where this has been the case. There was nothing especially wrong with the previous partners, but they got bored and wanted the excitement of a new sexual relationship.

WhenwillI: "The reason why infidelity attracts so much bitterness and approbation is because of the deceit and lying involved, unlike when a marriage has hit the buffers because of boredom." Yes, I don't deny that. But there is also a huge amount of pain involved when when partner decides to exit the relationship in the manner above, eg: because they want the excitment of a new sexual relationship and are bored with the old one.

In the past, there would have been more of a social obligation to stick in the marriage, with, not uncommonly, another relationship on the side. This would have catered for the the (man's especially) desire for a stable family home life AND sexual excitment on the side. No doubt I will be flamed for this, but just stating what used to happen, and presumably still does to an extent.

tadpoles that's a really good post.

I agree we are dealing with the human condition here..there is little point trying to get people all to behave in a faithful, lifelong commitment pattern, because frankly they won't.

Divorce is almost as common as marriage these days. What does that say about marriage?

Also the citation of 'incompatibility' as a fair enough reason for divorce just shows how facile it has become.

But Flight incompatibility is used as a way of dissolving religious marriages.

It's not facile. What is facile is divorcing because of boredom, and wanting a lust filled relationship, which smacks of immaturity if you ask me. It offloads the family left behind to the nuture of the state/taxpayer, usually by way of benefits, legal aid. This won't be tolerated for long under the current government who are keen to elevate the status of marriage.

Divorce is as common as marriage these days. What does that say about relationships and responsibilities? What does it say about people?

You could call it immature when people marry without first establishing whether or not they are compatible.

What I am saying is that divorce can happen for very simple reasons, much the same as a regular relationship can break down because of imcompatibility etc.

I think you were trying to argue that divorce is critical in order to prevent emergency situations from arising such as when abuse is taking place, or someone is being violent. it is not an emergency if you are just 'incompatible'.

I wasn't arguing anything, just merely pointing out why divorce came into being in the first place. It wasn't meant to be a way of escape when boredom set in or when the going got a bit tough. It's not my personal viewpoint btw.

Incompatibility is important as a reason to divorce in religious marriages because sex before marriage isn't allowed to take place.

The one cheating scenario I have seen at closish quarters was one where the "marriage" was clearly dysfunctional, where I had to bite my tongue not to ask "why don't you get out" long before I knew there was another woman on the scene, "marriage" that in many ways did not deserve to survive because it was damaging.

And yet, it was striking to see how badly it affected the children that it came the way it did, with lies and cheating and another woman. They were nearly grown up, they could have coped with a clean divorce. But I doubt they will ever be able to feel the same about their dad again- and he feels this and regrets it bitterly. It wasn't the desertion of their mum or the break-up of the relationship: it was seeing their beloved dad as a liar. That could have been avoided.

You could argue, I suppose, that by making divorce pretty much socially acceptable, society has facilitated a situation where people do not have to "put up with" lifelong monogamy and have the option of divorcing one person before embarking on a sexual relationship with another.

While this means that the person has not committed infidelity during the current marriage, they most definitely have broken another of the marriage vows which is "til death us do part".

When divorce was considered more socially unacceptable, people got around the problem (of monogamy) by having affairs. Now divorce is more acceptable, people get around the problem by dumping one before moving on to the other.

Which is worse, breaking the "til death us do part" vow or the "be faithful to one another" vow? Honestly not trying to be argumentative, just curious as to which path is really the better one, especially where children and limited finances are involved.

One way or another, people will find a way to opt out of lifeling monogamy if they want to!

I think relationship programmes should begin in school early, in Primary through the Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning SEAL programmes and in Secondary as part of Sex Education.

People should realise that to embark on a relationship that involves children demands a long term commitmant and shouldn't be taken lightly. Those who wish not to do this should be told there is another choice, a free agent lifestyle so to speak.

Schools do see the emotional impacts upon children whose family have broken up. It's quite obvious in the classroom and is manifested by behaviourial changes (the child could go suddenly very quiet or display bad behaviour) and a drop in educational attainment. This is usually short term but nevertheless it's similar to children who are bereaved.

Tadpoles, most people do not end a relationship before embarking on another one. Most people have someone in the wings before doing this. Statistics show the latter relationship has a high chance of failing (70% as opposed to a one in 3 chance), much more than the marriage institution they left.

So one could argue that marriage is a safer option for security and long termism. Relationships that evolve from affairs are even more precarious than marriages.

My opinion is that it's the 'be faithful to one another vow" simply because unfaithfulness usually is the deathknell of a relationship anyway.

I dont think being a mistress is something to be proud of. Why dont you use your time better.

I also think if you are a mistress dont you Care at all about the man you married or partner or your children?.

If you want to be with someone else then be Respectful and kind and tell your other half that it is over, same for men.