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.

MsHighwater, I would take issue with the idea that a couple-relationship is the 'most important' one in a person's life: it's actually the least important one: for one thing you can always find another sexual partner, but you can't ever replace a parent or a sibling - or a child - and the loss of a longterm friend (whether to death, emigration or some sort of hideous disagreement) can hurt far more than the loss of a sexual/romantic partner.
Actually I think the emphasis placed on couple-relationships as the most important in our lives is another contributing factor to the misery caused to so many people by issues around them.

Expat - I suspect many of us have done things as young people that we cringe a little bit at now that we have a more rounded understanding of the hurt that we might have caused.

We can't, any of us, go back and change those things.

However, the OP seems to want people to condone the less than ideal behaviour of her youth - to normalise it and say that because it is common for people to behave badly, then we shouldn;t expect anything better of people.

Oh I have no time for serial adulterers, people mess up but only edjits of the highest order don't learn by their mistakes and continue to hurt their loved ones by careless betrayal.

UQD, you raise an interesting point about people who 'can't be monogamous'. I am not monogamous, and when I used to date I always made this very clear to anyone who wanted anything more than the most casual of friend-with-benefit arrangements. Once or twice I encountered people who simply refused to accept that I was not monogamous, and insisted that I could or would change (Once I got old enough to have some sense, I ran like the wind when such people appeared). So if someone decides that they are In Love with a person who has actually said clearly and repeatedly that he/she is not monogamous and will not be monogamous, shouldn't the one who wants a monogamous relationship so much that he/she won't listen to another person's point of view, mostly responsible for his/her own pain.

And, on the contrary, I think it's a FAR more insecure person who can't leave a relationship without someone else waiting in the wings.

I mean, that says a lot about a person, IMO.

It's pretty weak, like you're not enough of a person to stand on your own.

As for people who can't be monogamous, hey, as long as they're honest about it, don't see what the problem is.

I'm with madamez on that.

But I think a lot of people just have no self-control.

The whole 'fall' in love thing. It assumes you, a sensient adult, have absolutely no control over your own emotions and actions. Pretty infantile.

Madamez - I think if you are open and honest about the relationship that you wish to form with someone then that is fine.

I would think in the vast majority of cases of adultery - the relationship was expected by both parties (at the outset at least) to be monogamous.

Although I do find it odd that someone who has been involved with a married man and subsequently becomes his partner, is often deluded into believing that the person is likely to be faithful to her. I think that definitely is a case of hope trumping experience!

Dittany - what do you mean by 'the same level'?

I can't see what's so high horse or sanctimonious about expecting a person who made a commitment to one person, who went the whole hog with it and married them, to show their spouse and maybe the family they created together a bit of respect, or at least some decency and courtesy.

I mean, is that so much to ask?

If it is, man, that's pretty sad.

Yes, exactly, Dittany, because I ended our marriage when xh had his 19th affair and I had my 19th nervous breakdown. 'Overlapping relationships' are not always about one partner wanting to move on but can't make the break. Sometimes they are about people wanting their cake and eating it too.

Affairs can just be a little bit of fun on the side to a person who needs kicks in their life (my husband loved gambling .. he actually told me that his affair had been a 'bit of a gamble'). Who lost? I lost my husband. He lost his wife and family. Six children lost their dad. Who was the only person to gain anything? You can all do the maths.

Yet nobody here has ever heard me call xh's new OW a rude name, not ever as far as I know, and I have compassion for one of his OW's because she was a 16 year old girl who clearly expected a lot from him and was very badly hurt by his behaviour. She was still texting him three years later.

One size overlapping relationship does not fit all.

And I don't know what all your experiences have been, but in mine, I've certainly encountered no shortage of people who complicate their lives to degrees far more exponentially complex than need be.

I think even if there isn't "another woman/man" when a relationship breaks down in a LOT of cases there will be an overlap as many separated (married) couples find new partners BEFORE the divorce is sorted out.....

yeah, but that's a bit different from leaving your partner for someone else, though, FAQ.

well, IMO.

i mean, you're moved out, you're filing papers, you're maybe in the waiting period.

but you've already made the break.

been there myself!

been there myself!

been there myself!

what 3 times

• I should try and sleep......

going to get my hair cut in the morning as I'm going out on the pull piss on Friday night with a friend LOL

Oh, definitely, FAQ, that happened with me -between xh1 moving out and divorce coming through I had started seeing (who would become) xh2. But, despite the overlap, I was legally separated and in the middle of a divorce. But the OP seemed to suggest that it was bound to happen as a way of the dissatisfied partner finding strength to leave the relationship. But it's never as black and white as that, as previously discussed, because there are all types of overlapping relationships, OWs, and reasons to break your marriage vows.

I think possibly a key issue here is that when a person decides that a relationship is over, it's pretty vital to communicate this to your partner. However, it's also important for a partner to hear this: sometimes people say they will not accept that a partner is leaving/ending the relationship. SOmetimes the partner being left is the bad person (controlling, even violent) and it isn't until the other partner has met with kind treatment from another person that an escape seems possible at all.

Oh, and one last thought before going to bed, those of you who are running along the 'all men are shit' path: I do hope you're not raising sons with that sort of attitude.

now i always try to be careful about that, because being a shit isn't exclusive to any one gender.