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.

The more sexual partners you have the more likely you are to get ovarian cancer, did I dream that or is that right...it's in my brain as fact!! I thought it was different penatrative methods and so wasn't the same in a monogamous relationship.

PP, oh don't, I've had plenty of sexual partners, I'm not arguing against promiscuity when single in fact, I have and I HAVE had an STI, does that negate Madamez's anecdotal evidence that lots of partners = no STI?

I skimmed the boring posts MP but yes, I kept up on the whole!

Hey I'm not saying I haven't, I just had it in my head that this was something I've been told as fact....... this may not be so.

You will quite often hear that women who have a lot of different sex partners or women who started having sex young are more likely to get cervical cancer. But really, this is only true because the more men you have sex with and the earlier you start having sex, the more likely you are to pick up an infection with a high risk (cancer causing) human papilloma virus (HPV). And so then you are more at risk of developing cervical cancer.
People who have had more than five oral-sex partners in their lifetime are 250% more likely to have throat cancer than those who do not have oral sex, a new study suggests.

The researchers believe this is because oral sex may transmit human papillomavirus (HPV), the virus implicated in the majority of cervical cancers.
So not true really.a bit of an urban myth!!

Hls: I got asked a few times in a professional capacity, finally decided to sit down and try to work it out (with occaisonal head-scratching moments of 'does it count if it was only oral' and 'does group sex count as one or as four'?)
PP I can't remember off the top of my head, it may be cervical cancer that is more likely if you have lots of partners - but there is one type of cancer (possibly uterine) that is more likely the fewer sexual partners you have...
WWW I don;t know that I was asserting that more partners equals a lower risk of STIs - whether or not you catch one is about luck as much as behaviour (there was a thread a while ago about some poor woman who got a dose of something nasty from her XH who had been shagging around without a) telling her and b) taking any precautions: now that is horrible, unethical, disgusting behaviour). I think that if you have a lot of drunk careless self-hating sex and believe blokes who say 'Oh, I'll pull out, I hate condoms' then you probably have a higher risk of both STI and unplanned PG than if you romp around at swingers nights with your little bag of condoms and turn down anyone who has an unappealing attitude.

Madamez, I was joking about my anecdotal lots of partners + STIs trumping your anecdotal lots of partners + No STIs

pp- you don't have to catch an infection to get the human pap virus that can cause cervical cancer. it exists in its own right. It is more common in people who have lots of partners because a) they are exposed more to the virus- and b)the theory is that in younger girls, the cells of the cervix are still developing and susceptible to damage from the virus.

You could have sex with just one person carrying that type of human pap virus and get it. Smoking increases your risk of gettingit- like all viruses, your immune system can fight it, even if you are exposed to it.

Also, eating cruciferous veg like broccoli 3x a week has been shown to reduce the incidence dramatically.

Madamez- in a professional capacity? Mind boggles- counsellor? therapist?? I still think it's bizarre you can remember!

If sex is always safe sex, then you are reducing the risk altogether, but as everyone should know, there is no such thing as safe sex, only SAFER sex!! Condoms can burst and are only as reliable as the person using them.

If condoms were safe I would not be here!!

My post was ignored further down so I'll ask down - following on from what mp's dh said, does it make you feel good or bad to be told to be one person's one true love?

Really find it fascinating that mp's dh said he couldn't think of anything worse.

it would make me feel good

but then i suffer from needing honesty in my life and being loved and not lonely or ignored

It depends on the person saying it, IMO. If I was told it by someone with reasonably good mental health it would be a nice thing. If I was told it by somebody who was clearly vampirical in their affections, it 'would' be as scary as Hell.

Darn it, I always mess up those emphasised word thingies.

I wouldn't like it and would tell the person to get a life whoever it was. But for almost anyone, surely it depends on who is saying it. Sometimes someone saying 'I love you' is more of a threat than anything else...

More sexual partners - increases the risk of cdrvical cancer. No sex - increases breast cancer.

Cervical cancer - higher in lower classes
Breast cancer - higher in middle/upper classes.

Make what you will of that wrt to sexual partners .

Emkana I think that the idea of being someone's "One True Love" can be a huge responsibility. It makes you responsible for their life-long happiness - and what if you change and don't want to be their 'other half'? I've heard several people say 'I can't leave X, I think s/he will kill herself' - what sort of responsibility is that?

(If you are an Alanis Morrissette fan, I think she says it well in the song I am not the Doctor )

MP, I cannot believe you are critising 'one true love', what if two people find eachother and both the 'one true love'. It is not responsibility it is happiness, it is contentment, commitment, a ready made happy ever after (with a little work). I have met many old people who have no regrets about their 50-60 year marriages, who become one unit, they expect nothing without hard work and note the times when they're relationship was tough but divorce was not so easy and so worked through it and are happy they did. (this was gleamed through many afternoon taking grandparents to bingo!!)
The suicide or stay is not a 'one true love' relationship that's an obsession.
Maybe it is all too easy to swing, fuck around, be sneering and smug about not loving your partner deeply but it's very sad. When life was not a mass of credit and HP people worked harder and took nothing for granted and love was included in that.

my neighbour killed herself..she died at christmas..she drank herself to death because she split with her husband it took her 18 months the last three in hospital

my exdp thought i would kill myself when he left..im still here tho

my exh also thought i would kill myself when dp left

they were both wrong

and if someone does then it is not the fault of the partner who wants to split anyway

mp-i always thought that song was about not being able to help somebody who was mentally ill.

you are not taking responsibility for someone elses happiness by saying they are your one true love.its pretty screwed up to believe that someone else can make you happy anyway.being in love doesnt mean being happy.trying to explain what its like to be with 'the one' to somebody who has never experienced that kind of love is like trying to describe an orgasm to someone whos never had one though.

Diva:

Are you saying that those of us who do not believe in the idea of people having a "one true love" are like this because they haven't met their "soul mate"?

In THAT case, your argument would imply that any such people are PERFECTLY JUSTIFIED in having an affair if they DO meet someone that they feel this way about! So therefore if you are just in a sort of bumbling along, contented relationship, you better WATCH OUT because your One True Love might come along and - BAM! - you will be helpless, ecstatically catapulted into a whole new awareness of a Better and Deeper paradigm of love!

is that right

(I've checked on Google but I can't find any references to "My One True Love" before the mid twentieth century - was this concept around before then?)

I think the 'one true love' thing is total bollocks. I think there are loads of people who we could form a loving, successful relationship with. I can see people believing it if they are still with the person they first fell in love with, but i'm not

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments; love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no, it is an ever-fixèd mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his heighth be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

This was just a little before the 20th century and I beleive Shakespeare was talking about love.

I think too that love devolops - and it is only in hindsight that you can say you have found true love.

Because so many things happen in life and we dont always know how we will deal with it i think it is impossible to say that you will 'always' love your partner.

But respect for others needs and feelings should be something we are all able to do as a matter of course.

My love for my partner has changed - and i am sure there are many who can agree. The birth of children is a great example. Our needs and expectations change over the years and but we can look back and say that 'love' got us through.

i said i believe in the concept of one true love,not that i believe in love at first sight.i am not with my 'first love' or anything like that,unfortunatley i have been round the block a few times,but i know the difference between love,lust and infatuation now.

even if somebody is bumbling along contented etc then meets someone else and thinks 'wow-this is it' doesnt give them the right to have 2 relatioships at once,which is what this thread was originally about.cheating.which is wrong.

The trouble with the One True Love bollocks is that it is only by random coincidence that two people decide each other is The One at the same time. Lots of people decide that someone is their One only for the other person to run off shrieking in fear - plenty of people justify all sorts of appalling behaviour towards an individual (stalking, pestering, slitting your wrists on their doorstep, writing extrememly bad poetry about them and publishing it, etc etc) on the grounds that that individual is The ONe and will give in eventually. Being someone's True Love when you don't even fancy them is terrifying. It's harassment, and worse.

THis isn;t to say that people can't be in love longterm and be happy in couples longterm, but in many cases its quite pragmatic: this is the person who will do for me, this person is nice, kind, sincere, reasonably sexy and thinks the same about me and that's fine thanks. Nothing wrong with that.

Also, MP is absolutely right about people who believe in the One True Love being the sort who dump partners for new partners all the time.