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.

imo though most people are too insecure for an open relationship. I know I certainly couldn't do it - would wonder if he was with someone better than me/was forming an emotional attachment to her etc. But each to their own I suppose.

When I met my exH it transpired, after a while, he told me in fact, that he had cheated on his former DP (they had no kids but I am sure it didn't hurt her any the less), but I still decided to marry him nonetheless (something I regret but not necessarily for that reason).

I do remember at the time feeling surprised that she should be so surprised that this had happened. I am sure he was taking the cowardly way out but also what many people forget is that it is no so easy to extricate yourself from a live in relationship or marriage often for practical reasons.

Maybe even then I was already too cynical or insecure perhaps, I don't know, but I have always thought that this was a risk with any relationship. Probably borne out by the fact that many people on here who felt so confident that their partners wouldn't cheat find out that they have. Do you ever really know someone?

I have simply never been that complacent in any relationship I have been in. I have never cheated on anyone btw and would strive for fidelty as the ideal.In fact I think it would be a dealbreaker for me.

But I also know that in the last few years of my marriage which was very bad with no physical contact I may well have entertained an affair if the opportunity arisen. I had tried my best with my DH but ultimately it was all going very bad and nothing I did could save it.

I abhor the use of word slapper too. IMO there is too much reactionery stuff on her. I have experience immense pain at the breakdown of my marriage but I am a realist too.

Agreed citylover.

It's all very well some people saying that relationships should not overlap, but unless you live in a bubble- it can happen! You can meet people at work through friends, wherever- it can start over a meal in the canteen, a coffee, a shoulder to cry on, whatever. Men and women interact. One of them in unhappy- maybe both. Chemistry is there! You can't deny this.

I'm not bored yet ... which one of us would be the woman to have the children and stay at home, relying on him for money, knowing that his other woman/women might not choose to have children and she would be the one he was out having all the fun with, spending all the pennies on, whilst you do all the work?

What happens to society then? No more children. It will all become a bit Alduous Huxley's 'Brave New World', babies grown in tubes, because I can't think of many women who would choose to do that in openly polyamorous/polygamous relationships. Surely EVERYONE is going to want to be Fun Girlfriend, not Blowsy Old Mummy Girlfriend.

What was the OP? No, they aren't slappers. There is no such thing as a slapper. Have their actions resulted in somebody else's pain. Yes. SOMETIMES, sometimes not. Hurt person (if there is one)is therefore entitled to call them a made up insult.

There have been some threads on here about the lack of sexual activity in relationships. While there are various ways in which a couple with mismatched libidos can work things out, if you 've got a situation where one partner not only refuses/witholds sex but refuses to try to fix the problem, blames the other partner for being a disgusting sex mad beast or refuses even to acknowledge there is a problem, then the partner who doesn't want to be celibate for ever has some excuse for looking elsewhere for sex - and this might even help to keep the original relationship going if discretion can be maintained.

Nobody is calling anyone on here a slapper, but I reserve the right to call my exp's OW a slapper. Why should I respect her good name when she put me through hell and has tainted my dc's relationship with their father and tried her hardest to stop him seeing them.
Sadly it seems she is not the only one. There are a lot of them out there.

For me, it's not that ex met someone else (or several someone elses), but that he chose to screw around whilst also sleeping with me.... dunno mebbe it's just me, but the utter humiliation of walking into an STI clinic, when I've only ever been with one man in my entire life (thus far), shall remain with me till I die....

I'm fine with the 'he's found someone else', however I would expect the smallest modicum of respect on his part for me his wife and mother of his children, in that he would begin parting ways with me before dropping his pants....

There have, madamez, true. But people witholding sex can be a signal that their partner is not satisfying their other needs. They both need to communicate and work on the whole relationship, not just the sex if they want to survive. It's not always high v low libido.

Oh, I'm off to a bloody monastry

yes, I know I'm a woman and women should go to convents

MP, what a cynical view of life and love. I would not have been able to disagree more with the idea that most relationships will end with an overlap with another relationship if you hadn't gone on to suggest somehow that this is absolutely fine and we should just accept it. Sorry, but no.

When you marry, you make solemn vows including that you will be faithful to your partner. Breaking that vow is not something to be shrugged off.

If you need support upon the end of a relationship, why not get it from friends and family.

You work at a relationship because it should be worth the effort. How crap would it be if a relationship were allowed to fall apart simply because the partners didn't put in the effort to keep it healthy? If the most important relationship in your life isn't worth a little effort, what is?

Interesting stuff. MP's OP recognises that people are imperfect and there should perhaps be more of this.

On the question of whether you "overlap" or not, well... I've known four divorced couples now and let's just say the circumstances were all very different. Just proves how simplistic the old Mary Kenny (Daily Mail) moralising is - nothing to do with people "not trying hard enough".

With couple #1 it was the absolute heartbreak of being childless-not-by-choice and the way this became an issue.

With #2 it was a sexual incompatibility and the use of that as a trigger for other things.

#3 just realised they should never have got married in the first place and were more like friends - no passion or love any more.

And with #4 the husband was discovering his bisexuality and wanted them to embark on a "swinging" lifestyle which the wife wasn't keen on.

I know for a fact that all these couples went through agonies and lots of counselling before splitting up, and in no case was it as simple as either "another woman/man" or one person "being too unbearable to live with".

BTW - with madamez I'm always torn between thinking she is totally refreshing and wondering if she ought to change the record a bit! (Sorry madamez.) I know it's her chosen role on here to speak up for the non-monogamous-by-choice and I respect that to an extent - it puts a point of view which is not usually heard - although I think her language is often a little strong. Monogamy does not necessarily equate to "ownership" of another person and the strongest monogamous relationships are those which realise this, surely?...

It's very difficult, I imagine, if one person wants to have an open relationship and the other doesn't. The one who doesn't probably sees all this "I can't be monogamous, me" shtick as code for "I want to behave like a bit of a twat, have it reinforced and get away with it."

Of course life is complex and people sometimes behave less well than they ought to (and often less well than they themselves would have like to have done). However, that doesn't preclude discussing what is an ideal way to leave a relationship that isn't working.

Ideal, in terms of being as painless as possible for the parting couple and also for any children involved.

A lot of this is ultimately about respect - respect for one's self and respect for those people that we chose to have children with- and of course respect for the children themselves.

Having the next model waiting in the wings is extremely hurtful - such a terrible betrayal of someone's love and affection. It is the ultimate in selfishness - to want to leave a relationship in a way which maximises someone else;s pain, whilst minimising yours.

MP - I do rather think that you spend a lot of time on these threads trying to minimise the hurt you have been party to over the years in being involved in other people's relationships- almost as if you want people to say 'oh, don't worry it isn;t such a bad thing to have done'.

Whilst not quite letting you off the hook, it has always been my contention that the contract of marriage is between the parties to the marriage - no one else owes me a duty of care as a result of it! That being so, the person who I hold entirely responsible for an affair is (and has been) my exh. That he found someone willing to aid and abet him in doing so, rankles a little, but she owed me nothing - he owed me a graceful and dignified end to our relationship and he failed to deliver that!

It's difficult, though, because surely my examples above (and I'm sure people have others) show that there is, really, no "painless" or "ideal" way to leave a relationship that isn't working.

And if someone has already started thinking in terms of moving on emotionally, and they meet someone else they really like, it takes a very strong-willed person to say "Sorry, I can't get involved, I'm in the process of ending another relationship" or "Can you wait eight months while I get my divorce sorted out?"

I don't think in the second scenario anyone is talking about waiting until the divorce comes through - but waiting until you've stopped shagging your wife and pretending to be in a relationship is not too much to ask, I don't believe!

I think Anna888's DP did exactly that. I think she said she actually left the country for 18months while it was all sorted out. I think they found it excruciatingly painful and that must have been terribly difficult - but I do have a great deal of respect for her that they did so! (I think I am talking about the right person)?

I think a lot of this is about the fact that, while people get together by mutual/multi-lateral agreement, they very, very rarely split up in such a way. It's not always entirely unilateral, but it does seem more often than not to be more at the behest of one person than the other.

It takes two very strong adults to sit down, work out that "it's not working" and decide together that it's best to split up form this mutually-agreed point on. I'm sure this happens, but I bet it's rare.

Ah but rarity does not mean that we should not still strive for it

Diamonds are rare, but I would never say no...

I've only read the OP.

But I think if you're the type of person who can't finish a relationship without having another iron in the fire, you've got some serious issues.

As far as support, erm, how about friends? Family? How about yourself?

And most people don't end marriages at the first sniff of other romance because they have something called respect. For themselves and commitment they made, for their spouse, for their families, for the people who love them, especially their kids.

They also have something called maturity and self-control. By which they have somehow grown to understand that not all that glitters is gold, that the grass is always greener on the other side, and that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

Personally, I'd rather walk alone than badly accompanied.

Because after all, you're known by the company you keep.

Good post Expat!

Soapy, you speak sense.

I had an affair with a married man when I was 19 and he was 43.

There was nothing to be proud about in that, tbh.

I felt really stupid. Because I was.

I mean, damn, don't you think you deserve someone who's not attached?

Who needs all that melodrama?

It just sounds really juvenile.

My ex FIL was a serial adulterer, dittany.

Even now, I don't think he's truly aware of the intense hurt he caused his sons, who knew from a very young age.

My mother once got him told, though.

After his wife died, he wrote her this ranting letter, about me and ex h's split. He said, 'I've started dating again'. And she said, 'Really? I wasn't aware you'd ever stopped.'

Being imperfect is one thing.

Using imperfection to excuse continued immature, disrespectful behaviour is another.