You can love 2 people at once

[Teletubby22]

Following on from the op yesterday who hD a 5 year affair I believe you can love more than one partner at the same time. You love them for different things. I wouldn't recommend it though.
I've been with my dh since I was 15. Up until my early 40's he was my only one. Once I hit my early 40's a switch was flipped & I went slightly crazy. It was like it was some kind of teenage excitement I felt I had missed our on and had to get it out of my system. I fell in love more than once but never had any intention of leaving my dh. They were all secrets and knew nothing of my home life on terms of my families names or our address. I'm 100% confident they would not be able to find me on rl or on social media. It's been a few years now so I doubt they would even want to.
It's been a few years since the last one and now I could not be bothered to even think of having an affair. I just thank god I never broke up my lovely family or that I was ever caught. I'd rather live with my secrets than hurt my dh & adult dc than clear my conscience.

No judgement here. Life doesn't always go the way it should.
Sounds more like delayed onset of lust though.

@ThisIsNotThePostYourLookingFor

I believe you can. A friend of mine got divorced and gets on very well with her exh and her new DH. She admits she still loves exh and always will but they just weren’t right for each other.
^^^^^
THIS
really great answer.
For me l had / have 2, maybe 3 great loves, apart from dh, they weren't good for me.

I agree you can love more than one person.

However, love includes respect. And having multiple affairs behind someone’s back is a huge lack of respect.

Just because you love someone it doesn’t mean you have to sleep with them. It doesn’t mean you even have to be with them. If you loved and respected your spouse, you wouldn’t be lying and sleep around behind their back.

I think when most people claim to love 2 people, to justify affairs they are lying to themselves. I think most just love the comfort and stability they have with their spouse and don’t want that to go away. It’s not the spouse that they love. It’s their lifestyle.

People are mixing up demonstrating love in the way we've been taught to towards our partner (ie, not cheating) and feeling love for a person based on that person's qualities.
If my DP was cheating on me without my knowledge, I'd still be displaying all the behaviours and qualities that make me lovable, so why should he stop loving me when he's the one doing something wrong?
I get that sometimes the AP arouses such strong feelings that the cheat has no room for any for their primary partner, so their love for them gets pushed to the side, but that's often temporary, and a lot of people in affairs love both partners and are genuinely torn. Otherwise more would simply leave.

Agree you can love multiple people at once, don't have a problem with that. Doing it without the consent of everyone involved - including your original partner - is nasty.

If people were only met to love one person, then no one would be able to psychologically divide their feelings between lovers, and family ?

What is the difference?
Why would they have to?

I cheated during a mental breakdown. It haunts me every day because I am so in love with my husband. I was in love with him even when I cheated, it was just a very tumultuous time in our relationship and with my mental health that I sought attention elsewhere. I feel vile. I'm disgusted with myself and I work every day to atone myself from what I did.

Don't be proud. What you did is vile. I hope you can see that.

Thank you all for your comments. You've been a lot kinder than posts I've seen on other threads. I'm not proud and I'm grateful no one else got hurt on these occasions except me. Life is more content now and hopefully I will take these secrets with me to the grave.

And there are people who have affairs to help their marriages

I am not particularly anti-affairs, but this is absolute shit. This is the shit people who have affairs tell themselves to avoid facing up to what they are doing to their spouse.

Cheated spouses do not think the affair 'helped' their marriage. They feel devastated by it.

Affairs are nearly always selfish acts by people who don't want to face up the problems in the relationship and deal with them or leave.

I think when most people claim to love 2 people, to justify affairs they are lying to themselves. I think most just love the comfort and stability they have with their spouse and don’t want that to go away. It’s not the spouse that they love. It’s their lifestyle

This. The man who know who cheated for ten years was clear. He had a better quality of life with his spouse financially, her friends had become his friends and he was very embedded in that social life and 'set' of people , where he was seen as the good guy who had stuck by his partner through everything. He did not want to give that up. I have no doubt he liked his partner, but he made her life a lie to suit himself.

Of course. You can. But loving people isn't just a feeling, it's also an action. Going behind their back is an act of self love only. It robs the other person of their right to free choice.