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.

I think I am sometimes having a little linguistic issue on the love front. I should have been in the UK long enough to realize this. However, I struggle with the concept falling in love. It is most usually translated to something that describes something more fleeting.

But the point I am trying to make is that if you are married, and you notice you start feeling drawn, it is not too late to turn back. You dont HAVE to act on it. You should not put yourself in a position to fall in love in the first place.

was just out getting beery with DH at pub

discussed this thread (bit of a challenge actually not to start every sentence with "And the children said..." or "There was a thread on mumsnet that said..."

Anyway I said "What wuold you do if I came home and said I was in love with someone else?" and he said "Oh god I'd be devastated but I wouldn't want you to stay with me out of duty or pity, if you were going to be happier with someone else."

And I said "Do you think you will fall in love with other people?" and he said "Yes" and I said "Do you think that means we won't be together in the long-term" and he said "Surely that means we are MORE LIKELY to be together in the long term? There is nothing worse than feeling you are someone's One True Love."

see he is like me, but in boy form

I will report back in 20 years and let you know how it went

p.s. have had beer, so obviously this might not be wholly coherent

Lulumama, is Romeo and Juliet really a good pairing to quote at people when you want to convince them that monogamous marriage is soooo lovely everyone should do it? Given that R&J end up dead (and IIRC before they've even managed to get married).

You see MP, if that is the way ex had presented it to me, I'd have been fine about it...he didn't, he chose to screw around, have a woman to fuck outside the home, and a wife and lovely home with all the trimmings as well.
I never knew till after he'd gone, and apart from the very real possibility of catching something disgusting or life threatening from him, I really, truly, utterly, don't care who he's doing.

I do however know that at least one of his lays knew about me and dd1, and feel she was behaving like a little whore to be screwing a man who was married with a newborn child.

I do not think that the other women are solely to blame, but they were complicit in this behaviour, no they may not have owed me anything except perhaps on a humane level, if they felt so desperately sorry for poor hard done by ex, they could have provided him a home to stay in whilst he left me, that never happened. I wouldn't have minded in the slightest if he had walked out on me for another woman, but before he fucked her and me too....

It's fine that he doesn't want monogomy/me/ whatever, it is not fine that he takes away my choice to decide whether I want to have my life put in danger because he cant keep his trousers on and there are women who dont mind who they fuck. Because I bloody do!

While I appreciate that no one way of conducting one's relationships is going to suit everyone, I really do fail to see why it's such an awful idea for people to agree that they will live as a family, prioritise caring for the DC and yet one or both will occasionally have (safe) sex with someone else (while having no wish to leave the family set-up or indeed to stop having sex ever again with the longstanding partner). I really don't understand why so many people get into such a state about it.

Please note: I am refering to a situation where it has been previously discussed: dumping any kind of change of an existing agreement onto the other person as a fait acompli with no warning is not very ethical behaviour. Yet so many people would react with (quite literally) physical violence to the merest suggestion of discussing making an existing relationship non-exclusive.

Madamez, I think that is fine if it is agreed beforehand. Not if it is done in secret.

madamez-i,personally,cannot imagine wanting to have sex with anyone else whilst i am in love with my dh.for me,it would mean i was no longer in love to have those feelings for somebody else(this is based on my personal experience).

as QS said,fine if something like that is agreed beforehand.however,if its not,then lying to and devieving somebody like that shows a total lack of respect.i think its the dishonesty that would be the main problem,it doesnt fall in with my understanding of love.

I've posted on this thread already but have changed my name as it could hurt someone if they were able to work out who I was in real life.

I did have an affair many years ago. It sounds a cliche, but it wasn't something either of us had planned. In fact, many of our colleagues had thought we were having one long before we did as there was such a frisson between us - which ironically lessened once we had "given in" to it and it was actually easier to hide.

It is not something I am either proud or ashamed of. It was arguably the love of my life. However we stopped it after a short time, with much pain for us both, because we knew it was wrong and because he and his dw had finally been allocated a child for adoption. I am not sure whether his wife ever knew or has since found out about the affair - but she may have had a subconscious inkling as she did the most effective thing possible: she became my friend. I even went on holiday with her a few times

In fact, many years later, I have remained good friends with both her and him - but probably closer to her as he keeps a slight distance (understandably).

I have now been married myself for many years. I agree with the point that Stillwaters was making: my love for dh is different to what I felt for this other guy - and also to what I felt for dh in the first throes of our relationship, but is deeper because of the problems we have gone through and becasue we choose to be committed to each other even though we might also think "phwaor" about others (in fact, I point out ski bunnies for him to ogle when we are on holiday) - but we choose not to act on those impulses.

You see, the core issue for me is that people change - and way too many people get married because it's presented to them as the proper way to live, or the only way to live. So people agree to a monogamous relationship, get married to someone who is attractive and pleasant and available.... And then, some years down the line, one partner either takes a fancy to someone else or finds out about the existence of open relationships (not by doing anything sexual or even flirtatious behind the existing partner's back, but because of a book, a news story, a pub discussion or whatever) and begins to feel that this is what he or she wants. Depending on the what kind of a person the other partner is, initiating a discussion can lead to a better-functioning relationship with both partners having a better understanding of each other - or it can result in physical violence and unfounded accusations that the partner who wants to discuss the possiblity of change has already had sex outside the marriage etc etc. Plus any amount of variations in between.
Dittany how would you feel about, for instance, a couple who married with the agreement that they would never have children and yet, some years down the line, one or other partner begins to feel desperately broody? Should the agreement hold because that's what was signed up for, even though the broody partner is becoming desperately unhappy?

madamez: "if the focus of your life is labelling someone My Partner and preventing that person ever having a sexual thought about anyone else, that's a pretty pathetic, pointless and miserable way to live."

As I said above you are bearing the torch for a view which is not often heard in these places and as such it should be welcomed and respected. But I occasionally think some of your comments come over as not so much live-and-let-live but actually proactively anti-monogamous - as if you think monogamy is a bit daft and silly and it is your mission to tell us so. (And I know that isn't really the message you want to give - rather that it isn't right for everyone.)

I don't feel myself compelled to prevent DW ever having a sexual thought about anyone else. (Why, only the other day she was having dirty thoughts about Keisha Buchanan and I was so happy to go there. Half a joke.) I think many of us who are in monogamous relationships, and generally happy despite their ups and downs, don't see them in this jealously possessive way at all. We just want, ideally, to live in a way we have both agreed to live.

madamez: "if the focus of your life is labelling someone My Partner and preventing that person ever having a sexual thought about anyone else, that's a pretty pathetic, pointless and miserable way to live."

As I said above you are bearing the torch for a view which is not often heard in these places and as such it should be welcomed and respected. But I occasionally think some of your comments come over as not so much live-and-let-live but actually proactively anti-monogamous - as if you think monogamy is a bit daft and silly and it is your mission to tell us so. (And I know that isn't really the message you want to give - rather that it isn't right for everyone.)

I don't feel myself compelled to prevent DW ever having a sexual thought about anyone else. (Why, only the other day she was having dirty thoughts about Keisha Buchanan and I was so happy to go there. Half a joke.) I think many of us who are in monogamous relationships, and generally happy despite their ups and downs, don't see them in this jealously possessive way at all. We just want, ideally, to live in a way we have both agreed to live.

(apologies for the double. dunno what happened there - I got a screenful of crap when I first tried to post...)

UQD:there are plenty of people who have monogamous relationships and do so happily and consensually and good luck to them. There are also plenty of people who engage in monogamy in a way which is compulsive, unkind and unhealthy. I do try when engaging in discussions like this to separate the monogamous (people who have agreed to a monogamous relationship but can cope with their partner leaving the house, speaking to other people etc and who generally live happy lives that just happen to include their sexual fetish) and the monogamist ie the obsessive, everyone-must-be-monogamous and everyone-is-a-threat-to-my-monogamous-relationship nutter.

Distinction noted. But is monogamy really a sexual fetish? if it is, then it's one shared by the vast majority of the population.

I still want to know how I am supposed to manage an affair. Yesterday when I got home from work I did school run, lunch boxes, hung out washing, drove to my parents for dinner, got home at 7.30, dragged 2 recluctant DCs in to the bath, read with DS#1... spent 10 mins talking to my DH before he went out again, did bedtime, did some ironing and fell into bed. And feel asleep whilst reading That is not unusual. Where, in my day of wild excitment, do I fit a lover? Oh and some days I take an hour out for a run. I really do live with the wrong sort of life. The opportunity might well arise in terms of the potential lover, but never in terms of the time and place. Perhaps when I take the recycling to the dump?

Do immoral wives all have wrap around nannies (which is another worry I suppose) and housekeepers?

madamez my point re romeo & juliet was not that they are the ideal we should aim for, but that the idea of true love/ the one/ the one you would cross heaven and earth for was around waaaaaaay before it was presented as an ideal by disney, which is what MP was saying.

I've always moved on to the next before ending the old. But then that has been as a young persons relationship. I'm not sure I could do the same now. If I did it would be because the relationship was very poor, which on balance it really isn't.

in my relatively limited experience people who start the next relationship before ending the old are more often scared of being on their own than making any statement about monogamy/polygamy. I know men and women who intend to have monogamous relationships but always have an overlap because they can't imagine how to live wihtout a partner (or presumably who they are without a partner)

It's treating relationships the way people treat jobs, if you think about it.

It seems to me that the VAST majority of people excusing/supporting infidelity sorry overlap - are those who have had affairs/been the OW etc - perosnally (as others have) I have managed (somehow ) to walk away from attached man though my heart was breaking - for a number of reasons - my own self respect, shame, concern for the GF/DW etc etc...I am not some wonderful superwoman - I just have normal human empathy!