AIBU to think that most relationships will end with an OVERLAP with a new relationship.

[morningpaper]

I don't get this thing on MN whereby married people are expected to end marriages before embarking on other relationships.

This idea of people (except you always mean 'woman' ) being "slappers" if they enter relationships with married people makes me think lots of you have very little understanding of how relationships work.

• To be blunt, I would be FAR more upset if DH left me for a lonely life as a single person in a bedsit than for a new relationship. I think the former is FAR more insulting. I have a close friend whose husband did this and it was MORTIFYING every time people said "Oh darlng, was there someone else?" and she had to say "No" (unspoken message: 'I am just too horrific to live with').

• People need support when they end relationships - and that support often comes from a new relationship.

• If people ended every marriage at the first sniff of new romance, or at the first feelings of dissatisfaction, then none of our relationships would last more than a year or two! It is often a new relationship that gives people the impetus to re-evaluate their lives.

• Most relationships become very "stale" after a certain amount of time - society tells us we must WORK at our relationships after the desire has gone, but WHY? Why not just accept that our partners or ourselves might be MORE happy in a new relationships - we have changed and grown, after all.

I have several friends in relationships with married people - and I expect a lot of you do, too, but they probably don't tell you because you are so HORRIFIED at the idea. Such relationships generally end in a lot of DESPAIR but they are part of life.

When you talk about "ending relationships before starting new ones" it sounds to me just like people who talk about not having sex before marriage - a great ideal (perhaps), but not realistic for 99% of people.

Great post, MP, but truly terrifying for those of us who hope to stay in our marriages
and for our DH to stay too!!

There is a whole lot of insecurity on here MP, lots and lots of women can't accept that this is indeed a fact of life and that there are lots and lots of grey areas in the field of relationships.

But why live in fear of your partner leaving you? He will if he wants to, or if he is the type of scum who wants to fuck around on you he will too. you can't make a man stay with you as much as you can't make a man leave his wife for you. but if this is the type of man you are dealing with, whether you are his wife or his mistress, you are on to a loser.

Very true Carmenere. Why IS there so much insecurity? Is it true of all women everywhere or are mothers worse???

I read the posts about relationships sometimes and just want to take everyone out for a drink, they all sound so edgy.

well my dp dumped me to start a family with 4 children with an unknown woman and i agree

i thought the fucker would rather take a chance on meeting saomeone

and having 4e kids with them

than stay and try and have kids with the woman he says he loves

yes i think that hurt

and i met him before i left my exh

just to put my hatr in thew ring lol

tho of course i didnt plan it and i was in a psychiatiric hoispital at the time...he wasnt tho lol

I don't understand the terror either. DH might leave me, I might leave him. Who knows. But mainly we just bumble through quite cheerily.

i find that thread on the slappers horrible. what you have said mp makes more sense than some people wish to hear

actually mp i agree. i love dh and hope that neither of us does feel the need to look elsewhere, but i know this is a possibility. its far too easy to blame the ow/om or the faithless partner when in fact its more often a series of events and problems.

disagree entirely (quel surprise eh? )

if people want out of a relationship they get out they don't look for someone to lean on to help them get out of it.

The reason to end a relationship is because it isn't working, if there are children then you work as hard as you can to make it work and then leave.

But to leave for / because / with the help of someone else is a sad sad indictment of the kind of person you are .. weak and dishonourable IMHO

I would be upset if dh left me for any reason, I can't see that other woman/no other woman would make it any less painful tbh. I wouldn't think "well, at least it was SOMEONE ELSE, so it's not that I'M horrific".

I do think it's reasonable for people to either leave if they're unhappy or to try to work it out - I think it's horribly dishonest to shag someone else to see if they might be worth moving on to.

I don't want my relationship to be a throwaway thing that I accept should be replaced with a newer shinier model every now and again. I think if it stops workign then we need to talk and try to fix it and if we can't, we should split. I think another person clouds the issue, completely.

I don't actually have friends in relationships with married people (except the married ones) and I wouldn't be terribly impressed by it tbh.

It's dishonest and lazy and being careless with peoples feelings.

you get out of a relationship because the relationship is not working, not because there's a better one you've been playing on the side

But Twig that is just too simple, most of the people in my life that I know who have had affairs are actually really decent people who found themselves in unhappy places and didn't behave in the best way at the time. but it doesn't make them weak and dishonourable for ever or in their fibre, just in that moment of time.

And I also feel it has little bearing on their ability as a parent.

But relationships don't either "work" or "not work".

And a normal relationship will have good years and bad years: if you have a couple of bad years and an alternative comes along (a new relationship) then you might end your current relationship because of the new relationship.

Otherwise, you might just keep going. People LIKE being in relationships, even dull ones. That doesn't mean that the relationship is "not working" and needs to end. Being in relationship is just the human condition.

Oh I disagree, I think they do mostly work or not work. Not working imo is when terrible or bad times vastly outweigh the good times over a period of time (different for everyone).

I wouldn't end my relationship because someone came along who looked better briefly or might be better.

Well, in my twenties, sure but now? No.

Anmd a working relationship is one that mostly makes you both happy. There you go, www's simple definition!

i didnt believe in divorce

unfortunatelyt it turned out that after trying every way possible i decided suicide was the way

i think there are all sorts of situations which dont fit

i wouldnt condemn anyone

i opnly glanced at that thread

but sometimes people mught inasdvertently find they do actually need help asnd that pwerson does turn oput to be the one

both mine are the same one tho

we did last for 8 years more than last i still undersytand why he left maybe he couldnt take the res[ponsibility

surely leaving a relationship and getting with another person means that the old relationship wasnt working?
whether they tried or didnt etc doesnt matter does it? that person didnt feel like it worked and no longer wanted to live each day as they were.

I think new people can be the catalyst for a relationship to break up but I think in those cases it was mostly broken anyway, the couple just didn't have the courage/energy/strength to do it.

And a working relationship is one that mostly makes you both happy.

lol well from reading MN I think everybody had better bail out now then!

I feel like that though. Don't plenty of people on here? (not here that much atm)

Come on, whenever there's a "my dh is great he is" thread, it gets lots of posts.

And of course people don't come on mn and post

"gosh I'm so happy, the flowers in the garden are blossoming, I have lots of money, great sex with my handsome and attentive husband, wonderful children who I never have any issues with, AIBU? " do they? People come here and post mostly because they have problems. Or trivial concerns, or questions, or rants or musings etc

Not as much as the "SLAPPERS!!!!" type threads though - they are the ones that get REALLY excitable

zippitoes- im sorry for the situatuon you found yourself in. my dh's father commited suicide when his mum told him she was not happy and that she wanted a divorce. my dh was 12 at the time. when he (my dh) found himself unhappy and not in love with his then wife he decided he did not want to live that way so left and we have a incredibly happy life with two dd's and my dss.

Mind you, while I'm arguing about whether mn is representative of general relationship unhappimess I suppose I should just forget that and refer to the UK divorce stats shouldn't I? They're pretty conclusive: most people ARE unhappy! Voila!

Yes that's a cheery though eh WWW?

I just DO NOT UNDERSTAND the MN lack of self-esteem on this issue, which comes out as such a nasty sort of misogyny

It's really sad