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.

UQD: I wonder if this is a bit of a gender-perception thing? In that women still get labelled far more as freaks or failures if they don't Have a Man and far more of the media aimed at women is about not only Catching a Man but Preventing Infidelity?

And if it wasn't for the propaganda why would so many people 'choose' monogamy and yet find it so difficult and unpleasant to maintain?

Sorry wasnt name calling at you but you were taking umbrage at the use of whore..surely that would be the definition? Someone who choses monogomy based on financial decisions and has sex that they dont want to maintain the status quo?

I dont see why you have to chose monogomy if it doesnt suit you...

stillwaters: some interesting thoughts there. The friend of mine who cheated on her husband recently was the last person any of us expected to do so. She had been vociferous in her condemnation of people who shagged at conferences.

madamez: I wonder. I still don't think people are coerced into monogamy through propaganda. The fact that people sometimes find it difficult to maintain doesn't mean they'd find any of the alternatives easy.

My god MP are you so blinkered to other peoples feelings
I had NO fear that my H would cheat, no insecurity - I trusted him and felt secure (EVEN when we had rough times)..bit like your self righteous post earlier....
Seems I was wrong!!! Thats were my viewpoint comes from...and I have been alone for 18 months - I don't need a man and I certainly am not feeling insecure (cos don't have a man)....
Its a bit like blaming the W (or H) when the OH cheats ....
I think this will go round and round - those of us who have been cheated on (and a few who actually have some morals) will believe that an affair (whatever the outcome/means justifies end and all that)is wrong end of ......those who have been the OW will defend it to the hilt (and dress it up as true love/meant to be/overlaps)....
WW would like you as my friend {suck}

I think the reason that so many people still choose monogamy is that they don't realise what it is. For ever and ever, not much romance after the first decade or so, resisting temptation, and putting up with all the negatives of being with the same person day in day out. In exchange for security and companionship and affection and a great deal of shared history. Whether or not you think it's a bargain worth making is a personal thing. It's hard to see it that way when you start out and many people are disappointed when the reality hits.

I have called promiscous men slags before too. I dont understand the umbrage being taken about how can one woman call another a XXX XXX, but it IS acceptable to have sex with another woman's husband - well thats not exactly sisterly either is it?

Yes he made a choice, a choice that he would always have said that he would never have made, beacuse it was immoral and his family and wife were the most imporatnt things to him. He said this, he belived it, but then he found himself choosing to do it anyway. choosing to do something he had always despised and critised.

This is an example to illustrate that there are many poeple who can declare 'they would never...' and yet things happen in their lives and they find themselves choosing the thing they always said they nevr would.

My BIl is not unique.

I use this to illiustrate that people who have affiars are not a subset of bad morally corrupt poeple, many proably thought they would never do this, and yet they doing it. Why?

have done office poll on whether you have had overlapping relationship:

• female1: yes all of them
• female2: yes all of them
• female3: yes several
• female4: currently living with husband in house split in two for tax reasons but in relationship with someone else
• male1: yes
• male2: no but nearly (then had to make urgent phone call)

does that count as a gallop poll

Straw poll I think!
Surprised they were all so honest!

sorry i haven't read all the posts.
However, I do always believe there is a choice. I don't believe in the 'we couldn't help it, we just fell in love' thing.
Personally if i have started fancying other people, i have gone home and addressed what what wrong in my relationship, or gone our separate ways. I don't believe an affair is EVER excuseable or justifiable. Why go ahead with the affair before spltting up? Are you hedging your bets? I just don't get it. I have never snogged anyone whilst being in a relationship- as far as i am concerned the relationship i am in would be doomed, so why not finish it first?
I have always thought 'never a backward glance' and given my relationship every chance to succeed first before jumping into something else. I also think that i owe it to the new guy to carry the minimum of baggage. I know i am ready for a new relationship when i am happy on my own, not unhappy in another relationship

It's the leaving I find terrible. Leaving the wife or husband and family.. I can see how feelings get out of hand, and I can see how affairs happen. I can even see how upright, judgemental people are even more vulnerable than others -- because they must think: if I feel this way, it must be real love and not something silly and smutty like all those other bad people who have affairs. But leaving your wife and family just because you think you've fallen in love with someone else, that's low.

becasue it is easier and a bit more fun to go shagging someone else, have clandestine lunches and feel like the king/ queen of the world, than to work at and rebuild a moribund or boring marriage. IMO

did i say i agree with lapin?

I think many of you are naive about human nature, and want to divide poeple into 'people who are good' and 'people who are bad' and 'poeple who would' and 'people who wouldn't'.

Life and poeple are not like that. People and realtionships are very complex and the way in which some of you want to cling to a simplistic belief against all the evidence is quite puzzling to me.

I am married, I hope to God and will try my utmost to ensure that I never beray my family and Dh and that he never does the same to me, but to think it couldn't happen to use is exreme naivety.

I see the devastation affairs cause, it ruins lives, it is not justifiable. But it happens alot, to poepl who thought it wouldn't happen to them or they'd never do it, or who believed they were good people.

Again, why?

Some people have an affair once, feel awful and vow never to hurt someone in that way again - I had a conversation with a friend who had been unfaithful and he said "I wouldnt do that again" Some people take what they want greedily regardless of how it hurts other people.

I love the way us monogomous wives are painted as such dull, sexless, insecure nags - no I dont spend my life worrying about fidelity (I just have a quiet afternoon today and this conversation is stimulating)

I bet every "romantic" husband who paints his wife as a boring sexless nag to his OW is guilty of being just as much of an unnappreciative nag at home - if they took the romance home they wouldnt need an affair

Good post Stuffitall.

that's kinds what I think too.

I haven't said affairs are okay, I haven't said they are not wrong, I haven't justified them as being morally acceptable: I have just said that they are part of life and that people who enter into them are NORMAL PEOPLE.

The thing that I feel exasperated about, though, is the number of people who stay in a relationship because they don't want to be alone, or have never lived alone, so stay in a very unsatisfactory relationship and use someone as thier unwitting 'prop' while they wait for another person to come along and rescue them.

Those people would do better to learn to live alone and independently before throwing themselves on someone new. IMO.

Lapin I don't find it funny AT ALL. Why are you saying I find it funny?

"But leaving your wife and family just because you think you've fallen in love with someone else, that's low."

Wait a minute, so when SHOULD we leave? I thought we were supposed to leave BEFORE we fell in love with someone else, according to this school of thought. Would that be preferable? When we thought that might be on the horizon?

The truth is that (and I agree with you here) - it is the LEAVING that is horrible i.e. It is the END of the relationship that is horrific and devastating.

yes, people who have affairs are normal people, but does that mean that as a society , we should accept without judgement or question the actions of those who are unfaithful within a committed relationship?

I'm very sorry I've upset you Lapin, I really don't mean to. I know we disagree about this.

Of course not Lulumama, I'm not suggesting that - but that is the total opposite to what does happen, which is that we consign "such people" to a category of "slapper/bastard/whore" in order to feel safe. And that is madness.