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.