I now really dont believe that the majority of men are faithful

[isthismylifenow]

I know I am generalizing now, but once again I have had an "offer" from a married man.

I have posted frequently here, so maybe you remember me, but if not, separated for 6 months from a 20 year marriage.

I have been propositioned on a few occasions now, but this last one just takes the cake.

How offended on a scale of 1-10 would you be by this message..?

"If I were there right now, I would wine and dine you to your hearts content, then with your permission, would take you home and perform wild and wonderful sex bringing out the worst in you"

I reply in a joking manner (in your dreams...) as this is a friend I have know for some time, there has been banter in the past between us, but nothing more than a joke here and there.

His reply to that:

"I need something casual and safe, what do you say, are you keen to take it further"

WTAF! So I didn't even reply and now I am getting the "oh so ignoring me now messages"

I am upset. I don't think I am wrong in feeling upset. This has happened quite a few times now, in every case the man is 'happily' married.....well that is how it would appear when I was married and we were all mates. Now I am single, it seems like men think they have the right to treat me like a piece of meat, or 'ah its been 6 months, she must be gagging for it, so I will give her one'... its degrading and its making me start to dislike men. I am no man hater btw, but what gives them the fucking right to think that this is okay on any level.

I don't know if it matters any (it shouldn't, but maybe I have portrayed the wrong message) that since my separation I started going to gym (this was for me, somewhere to work out frustrations and clear my head, which is does and I enjoy going), and I think I probably look better than I have in quite some time.... I am eating better so my skin looks clearer, all things that have just given me a tiny bit of confidence, of which I had NONE at all before.

Now today I ate a big bag of crisps and don't even want to go to gym tonight, as I feel today I just want to put back on the weight.. but fuck them, why should I.. I am not boasting about losing weight, so please don't read it that way.....for once I tried to do something for me, and now I am being taken advantage of AGAIN, but in a different way now...

I don't go out of my way to flirt, as I said I had a bit of a banter with some friends for years, but nothing heavy. I didn't message him first, he messaged me about work stuff (I do work in a very male orientated industry) and then bam!

I am not over-thinking this am I???

But your last comment implies that i am bitter and twisted as it is written in a passive aggresive style. I genuinely don't mean any vitriol and am certainly not angry that sexual infidelity is under reported as, in our current times it is so heavily weighted and that has very serious repercussions for individuals and society.

No-one really knows whether someone else is unfaithful we only know about our selves. Woman in particular favour emotional investment as it provides them with safety and resource which infifelity directly threatens.

Ahhhhh

But you miss my point. It is not possible, not even likely, that every single married man out there is a cheat or has cheated. It is not that sexual infidelity is 'under reported' in my case, and in many others, as there absolutely are faithful men out there!

But for some reason you can't acknowledge that anybody could possibly be in a happy, trustworthy marriage. Why is that?

I only posted an hour ago for the first time, so I'm not sure where you get that impression. Some people may be faithful and some may not. I just think that there are many, many more people being unfaithful than people, who believe that all their friends are faithful, presume. And that is going by confidences told to me and the fact that nearing 50 exposes one to more life experience. My 20 year old self was horrified by infidelity, now, meh, not so much.

And my neighbour of 8 years, who is absolutely convinced that she and her husband are an true example of a happy marriage, would be horrified to know what her husband get ups to. She has also told me very confidently that he would never be unfaithful to her as he knows she would take him to the cleaners. He obviously sees it all rather differently.

Oh and I'm not miserable, in fact i am rather cheery other than my typos above.

But everybody has an anecdote they can then use to 'back up' their argument. It proves nothing.

I have a neighbour with a horrible, snappy poodle. Doesn't mean every poodle would have my hand off.

The sad thing about your story is that everybody else seems to know what this woman's husband is up to but nobody is telling her. In those kind of situations there almost seems an amount of enjoyment in knowing that she's wrong about him, which is even sadder.

There are always going to be shitty, untrustworthy people in the world. Thank god everybody isn't like that.

The other thing of course is that you are never going to get a balanced view of relationships on a forum like MN, or any other.

People tend to start a thread on Relationships because their relationship is in trouble. You don't get many posts about 'I'm so happy, my marriage is fab' - because (a) what's the point and (b) you'd only get told to stop being smug and bugger off

So you don't exactly see a fair representation of life on here.

Personally, i am not going from this board. People are far more likely to lie about being unfaithful than not. I only know of a couple of people being caught by spouses in my wider circle, cue collective shock and horror.

A few years ago I lost a shed load of weight and changed my hair colour etc. I looked completely different to how I'd previously looked.
The amount of men that messaged me asking for a shag was ridiculous. Friends husbands, 4 of them. My sons football manager, a few 'friends' on Facebook. And all of these sleaze bags were married or had long term partners. Yuck.

LaConnerie - "The other thing of course is that you are never going to get a balanced view of relationships on a forum like MN, or any other.

People tend to start a thread on Relationships because their relationship is in trouble. You don't get many posts about 'I'm so happy, my marriage is fab' - because (a) what's the point and (b) you'd only get told to stop being smug and bugger off grin

So you don't exactly see a fair representation of life on here."

I totally agree with the above.

MN is like an A&E waiting room. Not many undamaged people, but that doesn't necessarily translate to the world outside.

Reindeer

Same, which is not really a compliment. Men are very visual

I wonder if this depends on the industry that people work in, or the circles they associate with?
Among the people I know, this is not the norm at all although of course there might be hidden stuff going on that I'm not privy to. And I've not had any married men try it on with me that I can recall.
The only thing I did notice, was when I split up with my last DP, a lot of my male friends (who in fairness were single), were suddenly very interested indeed. And I found that hurtful as I thought we were all just great pals, and I didn't trust them or look at them in quite the same way after that.

As for would my DH cheat on me, I very much doubt it. We are very close, best friends, have no DC so plenty of time for each other.
However, I would never trust another human being 100% simply because I'm not a mind-reader so no way of knowing what really goes on in someone else's head. I'm definitely not a "cool wife"!

Toast you sound very sensible, yes it hurts when those you thought as friends were eyeing you up as their next conquest.

I have moved in all circles in my life but upper middle class seem to be the worst, they have the strongest sense of male entitlement and the most to lose, money/social status.

I dont think you have to say you do or dont trust some one 100% but never is a very time and nome of us can know how we will feel about our partners in 5/10/20 years or what fate might befall us in that.

We can all hope we will behave like decent human beings but life is often more complicated than that.

A couple of ex-friends of mine, now middle-aged, have been serial OWs for decades. One I feel for - she does want lurve, but it never works out for her (poss related to tricky childhood ) - the other's a prat. She's been shagging an ex boyfriend of hers, banker type, for 30 years. She fucked him the day before his wedding, which she went to, and the day he got back from honeymoon. His wife's never had a clue.

Loads of my still-current friends have had affairs with married men, too. These were mostly men taking advantage while the friends were vulnerable, with promises of leaving the wife and so forth.

When I first joined Mumsnet, I used to take care to point out that a cheated wife has a range of options. I stopped because nobody could countenance the thought of living with the knowledge. I couldn't, either! In theory it was fine, but the fact is extra-marital sex is not usually unemotional - there's always a risk of involvement - and it does always involve deception, however great your theories are.

Plus, if someone can go around sharing body fluids with other people and not feel emotionally connected ... they are using those other people, and I don't want to be with anyone who does that on a regular basis.

I accept that some folks are disconnected from sex. Hell, I've had plenty of disconnected sex myself! But, for me, it rules out a relationship.

I don't think there is an 'answer'. Perhaps the best we can do is what we do often do - find out, divorce, begin another monogamous relationship, and repeat

I think something like 60-70% of men AND women that are married have affairs so, sadly, I think the majority of PEOPLE aren't faithful.

Having said that, I'm kind of saddened by some of the responses saying all men do cheat, or would if they had the chance. I also find it sad that when someone says "my husband would never cheat", others find the need to say things like "yep, that's what my neighbour thinks, but her husband has been cheating on her for 9 years lol". I won't bother listing any LTRs I know of where the man managed to survive without ever sleeping with another woman as I'm sure I'll just be told that I just don't know of the many affairs they've undoubtedly been having.

Is it really so hard to believe that there are some men and some women that genuinely would never cheat? How sad.

I'm not sure anybody has insisted it's 100%, RedYellow? It seems more that the odds are much higher than people like to think.