Fidelity...when is it important?

[NoseyNameChanger]

What are the rules of the game?

If a guy has a girlfriend, is it OK to go after him if you like him? If not, how do people meet Mr/Ms Right? We'd all most likely stay with the first person we started going out with.

If a guy is in a long term relationship but not living with his girlfriend?

If he's living with his girlfriend?

If a guy is engaged, is it still OK to go after him? What if he's making a mistake and can't see that you're the one for him?

If they've got kids together (and are together) but not living together?

If they have got kids together and are living together?

If they are married?

All different grades of commitment. I just see marriage as the ultimate contract. I know people don't see it as that anymore, but I just think if marriage isn't a contract to commitment and is 'just a piece of paper', then why does anybody get upset when they are cheated on, be it a husband/wife/girlfriend/babyfather whatever.

Why do we insist on fidelity especially when we don't believe in marriage?

Now I love Mumsnet. I think it's a brilliant resource, very pro women, populated by and large by intelligent, thoughtful posters, and that the advice is generally spot on.

But the one topic on which I differ hugely from the general consensus is infidelity.

I cannot bear the vitriol and retrograde moralising that occurs when someone admits to having feelings for someone outside their primary relationship. A woman posts to say that she believes her husband has developed feelings for another woman and everyone cries, 'Bastard! How could he? He's married to you, therefore he is not allowed to ever have romantic or sexual feelings for anyone else ever again!'

Why? Just... why? It is not a crime to fall in love with someone else. It happens. Human relationships are messy. Nobody owns another person.

Now the lies and gaslighting that often accompany affairs are another matter and can often constitute emotional abuse I think. But the simple act of coming to desire or love someone else more than ones primary partner is amoral I think. It is not bad, it is not good, it just is.

I know affairs cause pain. The breakdown of a relationship is always going to hurt. But if your partner no longer loves you and prefers someone else, this does not make them a "bad person". People can get married for all the right reasons and find somewhere along the way that their feelings and priorities change. It's hurtful, but it's not wrong.

So... to answer your question op, if a man you like, and who likes you, has a girlfriend, well it's up to him. If he wants to have a relationship with you he needs to be honest with her. But do I think the two of you are wrong to want to be together? No I don't.

If you decide to have a relationship with someone who's a cheat then they are more likely to cheat on you at a later date. If they are not a cheat they would end the relationship they're in and move on.

If someone has promised exclusivity, then they should live up to it or tell the partner they have changed their mind

Now, some people want open relationships, some don't, but everyone involved should have a say in it.

It's deception and betrayal that are the problems, not the agreements reached on monogamy or polyandry, or whatever.

It's the deception and betrayal that's the issue, one partner thinks their life is one thing and acts and makes decisions accordingly. It's very painful to find out your partner wasn't acting in your best interests when you were putting them first.

I have never dated anyone with a girlfriend, there are lots of single guys out there. Not everyone stays with their first partner, what a weird thing to say! I went out with several men in my late teens/twenties and if the relationship wasn't going anywhere or I decided they weren't for me, I finished it and was therefore single and available to find someone else more suitable. Presumably lots of men do the same, as I didn't find it necessary to date men in long-term relationships ever. Now I have met someone who had just started dating someone else, and in that situation, he wrote her a letter stating he wanted to be with me, and so everyone knew where they stood.

My experience is that overlappers, who tend to sit in one relationship and start another one concurrently, tend to always overlap. I've lost count of the amount of times that my friends who found some hot new guy, got rid of the girlfriend, then found themselves being cheated on a few months or years later. Same in marriages, the cheaters are mostly always cheaters. There may be a few exceptions, but it's obvious why- people who overlap/cheat don't think it's wrong or actively like the excitement or are always a bit passive, which is why they end up doing it again and again.

The best guide to someone's future behaviour is still their past behaviour.

So- in your rules of the game, none of these are in my rules! None. If I met a guy I liked and he had a long-term girlfriend, then him chasing after me would diminish him in my eyes. I would see him as a bit sad and desperate and feel sorry for his girlfriend (this has happened). Not attractive, but then I notice in your post that it seems to assume you will be luring them not the other way around and that's a different dynamic and one I would never stoop to.

In my experience, when your morals fade, the quality of man you get fades too.

You can justify sleeping with him in any way you like. You can tell yourself he'd have done it anyway, if it wasn't you it'd be someone else, that they are only girlfriend and boyfriend and should have got married if they wanted exclusivity.

But deep down you know that you'll just be the next in a long line of people he's cheated with, and if you end up with him as a partner, he'll do the exact same to you.

If you lie down with dogs, you get fleas. In a few years, you'll look back on this and either be glad you had the moral compass to reject anyone who wasn't single, or horrified that you were complicit in splitting up a relationship but you are sexually frustrated.

Getting married solidifies an existing relationship. It offers legal protection, and has important religious implications, but you don't suddenly become out of bounds when you walk down the aisle. Anyone who already has a partner is out of bounds. You might be attracted to them, but you shouldn't get involved with them. Their moral codes leave a lot to be desired.

A woman posts to say that she believes her husband has developed feelings for another woman and everyone cries, 'Bastard! How could he? He's married to you, therefore he is not allowed to ever have romantic or sexual feelings for anyone else ever again!'

Bollocks. That doesn't ever happen.

The majority of posters offer the sensible view that people are married not dead and that it's normal to fancy other people or find them attractive. People only get inflamed when they read about those feelings being acted upon, not when they are merely felt.

Even then, not 'everyone' agrees. There will always be posters who've had affairs themselves or have been the OW - or who are in those situations right now - and feel compelled to write frothing posts about how everyone else is being so suburban or bourgeois and that it's really no big deal if people choose to go elsewhere without telling a partner first.

Well I disagree Badinage. I still think that if anyone admits having feelings for anybody outside their marriage on here - whether acted upon or not - they are risking a flaming.

The idea seems to be that even thinking about someone else means that precious energy that should be being directed towards the spouse, isn't being.

I've seen many women posting about having a non acted upon crush being told to "Grow the fuck up. What about your poor husband? You should be lavishing him with all this energy and excitement". As if the poor op can help being attracted to someone else and is willfully witholding all the good stuff from her primary partner.

Also I hate this implication that anyone who disagrees with the general consensus about infidelity must be an OW. What a rude and dismissive way to treat posters who happen to think differently.

We all have different moral compasses I guess. In my book it is far worse to be judgemental, intolerant, and dogmatic than it is to develop feelings for somebody you "shouldn't".

You might have seen some posts like that when an OP is struggling with a crush, but what I'm challenging is your assertion that everyone responds the same way.

They do not.

In fact on the 'crush' threads I've been on, the vast majority of posters respond with level-headed pragmatism and often a lot of humorous advice about imagining the 'crushee' in unalluring positions.

Posters are not stupid. They respond to what an OP is saying. If as a thread develops the OP admits that the crush is taking over her life and it's affecting her behaviour at home, then people will respond differently.

Not that I've ever seen the sort of frothing post you describe in response to a poster reporting a fairly harmless and everyday crush, but I simply cannot imagine that 100% of posters thereafter would post to agree with it. It's much more likely that there will be more posts of the 'meh, it's only a crush in your head' variety.

let's turn this around

OP, personally I don't have any issue with a person ending a relationship to be with someone else

it's the lies, the deceit, the lack of respect, the taking the original partner as a fool that does all the damage, IMO

so, this guy you fancy...say to him "yep, I fancy you too...but end your other relationship cleanly first"

do you have a problem with doing it this way ?

I think the OP (and some other posters) are confusing monogamy with fidelity. Fidelity is about honesty and trust, not about the number of people you have sex with: a person in an agreed open, non-exclusive relationship can have a dozen different sexual partners and not be unfaithful because no one is being decieved.

Also, monogamy is not remotely natural, it is a social construct for the benefit of men, and it's, at its base level, about controlling women as a supply of breeding animals.

As to whether it's OK to flirt with or lust after someone who may be having regular sex with another, well, it depends on the situation. The relationship the person you fancy is engaged in may not be exclusive.
Also, it may be coming to an end anyway/toxic/abusive, and a new flirtation/relationship may be what the person needs to escape an existing relationship gone bad. No one is entitled to 'keep' a partner when the partner wants to leave, after all.

OP, is your contention that if a couple aren't married then they aren't that serious? Regardless of what they've agreed between themselves?

By the way, apart from Tim Burton and Helena BC, do you know many couples with kids who are together but don't live together (by which I assume you mean separate houses rather than one partner working away)?

That's a nice distinction between fidelity and monogamy SGB.

Fidelity is of ultimate importance to me. I am the same as bandinage, her rules are my rules.

Finish one relationship, before you start another. Simples.
Hatlldo, if you develop feelings, before you act on them, you finish the old relationship. Then you are not considered such a bad person.

I find that interesting. I really feel the boyfriend/girlfriend stage is insignificant. Somebody being dumped because their boyfriend/girlfriend has met someone they like more seems normal to me.

It made me feel physically sick to read that, I don't know why, but the idea that someone could see my BF as fair game just because we are not married (despite the fact that we are totally in love, that we share everything of ourselves and that our children see each other as family etc) just beggars belief.

Commitment doesn't need a piece of paper and I have no doubt that if you "went after" my BF he'd tell you where to go, but you can be assured that I would want nothing to do with you, knowing what little regard you had for my feelings or those of our children.

Now ending one relationship because you have met someone else, fair enough, totally different thing.

And these married men throwing themselves at you, perhaps they are all talk, enjoying the thrill, knowing that they won't do anything about it, or perhaps they also have no moral scruples and don't value the relationship they have with their wife, but sleeping with them is no great conquest for you. You will end up sneaking around with someone who isn't available or you end up with someone who thinks nothing of shagging someone else behind your back. What a catch.

FWIW in my youth I have had flings with men who were engaged, but that was before I knew what a real relationship felt like. Perhaps that is the difference.

Quite Oblomov.

I think OP is already seeing married man or man with girlfriend and is trying to backward rationalise and justify it to herself. IMHO

None of this makes it ok.

Op is divorced. So she was married. And rhus presumably she was someones girlfriend. At one point. But all of those stages, her dh, fiance , boyfriend was fair game , eh op?
No
what you write also makes me feel ill. At no stage is someones roses partner, boyfriend, whatever, fair game.
AT NO STAGE.
You wouldn't have minded if your boyfriend had slept with others? You still would have married him?
I feel the polar opposite to you, on case that wasn't clear!

I think it's possible that the OP is talking, at least partly, about people in the very early stages of dating. It's not at all unreasonable for someone to walk away after a few dates, after all: dating is about getting to know someone and decide whether or not you want to continue seeing him/her. Also, if someone has only been on a few dates and there has been no discussion of the relationship becoming monogamous and no promises made, then it's not a big deal to date/have sex with other people. If you are a very, very monogamous individual and do not want to have sex unless there is an agreement in place that this means commitment and monogamy, then that's fine, that's your choice but you need to discuss this with people you date rather than making assumptions. Some people consider sex to be a massive big deal, others consider it a bit of fun - neither viewpoint is inherently wrong but what is wrong is assuming that other people not only share your feelings but ought to share them.

Isn't dating the pre-boyfriend and girlfriend stage though? Or is that a matter of interpretation?

I'm not sure the OP is talking about interpretations of monogamy as she seems to be talking about going after the boyfriend/girlfriend - presumably to "win" them into a monogamous relationship rather than to check their interest in an open relationship.

Pretend I put "going after" in quotes too, would you?

I think lots of people believe in marriage.

But then find those beliefs hard to hold onto if things aren't going well.

This might happen to women but ive only seen it in men - people get complacent sometimes, theyve got a partner, they forget they did well to get with them, life gets a little boring, their ego is high, they think they can have their cake and eat it.

I think you have to set your own morals and values and find someone who has the same.

The betrayal comes when you believe the other person held the same values but they acted in a way which didn't demonstrate that.

SGB I agree with you about the early dating bit completely, you have to go out with someone a few times to know if they are the kind of person you would like to date/discuss monogamy/any other form of relationship, but the OP does start her rules with the minimum attachment level of 'what if he has a girlfriend?'. Usually a girlfriend is more than a few dates and usually there is an assumption of exclusivity (unless agreed otherwise).

I think she's after a guy with a long-term girlfriend, which isn't at all the same as checking out someone who is also dating around at the time.