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 just don't think that it as cut and dry as anyone who starts an extramarital relationship is a terminally horrible person. Shit happens, people fuck up.

tis called monkey syndrom apparently. A monkey will never let go of a branch until it is sure it has a firm grasp of the next branch.

well partner yes

and to hit a few more mn buttons my exh earns 400k and my exdp earns 150 quid

a week not an hour

monkey sydnrome?

No Wannabe. I think the leave before you're unfaithful view would be that you would know that the relationship should end. And then you would leave. And then you can embark upon meeting someone else. But, it just doesn't work like that. Meeting someone else can be the tipping point to take the chance and leave. Often you can't see what a realtionship really was until it's behind you.

tis called monkey syndrom apparently. A monkey will never let go of a branch until it is sure it has a firm grasp of the next branch.

yeah read that the first time.... my dh didnt go looking for me nor did i go looking for him. we fell for each other both of us in a relationship admitedly i was not married bt was living with someone

adultery can be looked at in a number of ways

WWW "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"

Well, do you know what? I think that sometimes men just dont like the fact that when kids come along they dont get all the attention they had before and then they meet a cute 29 yr old with no kids and VOILA! they are centre of attention again!!

I dont believe the relationships are always broken - I think some people are just selfish shits who want to wallow in their own self-pity and believe they are being hard done by.

As you can tell, I am one of the bitter ones that has been there, done that even though I always thought it would never be me.

i left because exh said i talked too much i left to be with someone who wanted to be with me

tho maybe my judgement is crap

exh says he loves me and always will

now exdp has left

not sure what he means

but

we have been split for 9 years

he could solve all my problems

Stirlingmum, I am sorry for your evident pain but the fact is that there was something wrong with your relationship because one of you was looking elsewhere. If the arrival of dc's was the only reason, well then yes, he was a lowlife and you are better off without him.

it's not always men that cheat though.

I know someone who left her husband for a single man.

I know at least two other women who have cheated on their husbands.

And yet of all the female friends I have, only one's husband has had an affair.

so I think that often men get a lot of the blame when actually women are just as capable of cheating.

zippy and do you love him? would you go back there?

I'm of the opinion that one day we might all have to face the fact that adultery is a normality or that being deserted is a given in any relationship. Which woman then is going to take the chance of having children with ANY man knowing she will have to be their sole provider at some point down the line? How does society survive when nobody trusts anybody else, and nobody considers anybody else?

And I'm also of the opinion that most great art is an examination of human frailty. Most of these works have a moralistic tone to them, or at the very least a literary shaking of the head 'what's to be done with the species we call human?' type attitude. It is certainly not a celebration of human frailty, and man's capacity to hurt and be hurt.So it cannot be said it is a good thing these things happen so that Flaubert or whoever could write about it.

lol at

"Is this ANOTHER thread started by morningpaper about how we should all chill out about the normality of adultery?

Is there something going on at home?"

Yes MP do tell, are you enjoying being MARRIED?

we met when i was 19

yes if i unpacked my thoughts i do love him but he made me scared and lost

it would be possible i think to get him back

i just think life is weird

and i dont condemn anyone for trhe choices they make

its only chance meeting thatr i am still here

i was 19 when dh and i got together and it was made a joke of in our best mans speach at our wedding a few years later!

but what does age have do with it? he/she left for some young woman/man. at the end of the day they left because they were hook line and sinker surely.

i guess i have to add that i am seeing someone else now

another young free and single no kids

like me lol

Actually, there would be a lot less misery if people didn't buy into the bullshit about True Love and The One to the extent that it becomes imperative to dump one partner for another (because the one you fancy right now is your perfect soulmate, the previous partner disposable and you will be so happy with your soulmate forever and ever... until someone else catches your eye). This is the heart of the monogamist obsession, this idea that all life is about finding one perfect person to fix everything that's wrong with you.
Longterm monogamous relationships work out just fine for some people, of course. As do long term open relationships, or long term relationships where both participants feel able to forgive the occasional bunk up elsewhere or even a longstanding extra relationships because everyone involved is comfortable with the idea that many people need to get their social needs fulfilled by a range of others, rather than devoting themselves obsessively to ownership of one individual.

I don't buy into The One etc but I do think it's possible to be in a happy relationship without buying into all that and to have enough consideration for the feelings of your partner not to be unfaithful or dishonest.

I think the idea of an open relationship is much more honest tbh than pretending to be monogamous and not being. Mind you, probably plenty of people don't know how to even think about challenging the monogamous norm.

I'm boring myself now so off to bed!

well i think it is crap seeing someone else but i think it does soemtimnes happen and you can fight against it but maybe

o i have no idea

im off to bed to bored of it ow lol night nght

WWW: like I said, some people are happy in longterm monogamous relationships. It may be that some of these people have had the occasional stirrings of lust for someone else but made the logical choice to stick with what they've got rather than deal with the upheaval of changing partners; it may be that both partners in such a relationship prefer contentment to grand passions (an eminently sensible outlook IMO anyway), or it may be that no one has yet tempted either partner away from the existing partner.

Littlewoman, it seems to me that it would in general be a far better thing to pick the other biological parent of one's DC for parenting ability (or at least some willingness to become and to be a parent) rather than coupling ability ie no matter who else he/she has sex with, is he/she capable of sustaining a loving parental relationship with the DC and a civil co-parent relationship with an XP?