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 actually don't hold the view at all that men are useless. I think that some men can be just as some women are.

I hope I don't give the impression that I think that? I know lovely men too, you know!

dittany: why would MZ imagine things? Just because they don't happen in your world doesn't mean these things don't exist.

Everyone is entitled to an opinion and doesn't deserve to be shouted down just because he doesn't agree with the majority.

Being in the majority doesn't mean you're right.

As one who got left for another woman - all I would like to add is that if you don't want monogamy - don't get married and make the promises you do. I salute my parents who've been married 50 years and they're by no means perfect. I've not moved into another relationship but then I've two small boys to take into consideration. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I believed that marriage meant commitment and that we should have both been prepared to work at it. Give and take etc.

And no I'm not raising my boys with "all men are shit" attitude. I just hope they'll be balanced enough having in reality just me as an example.

Blimey I can't believe you all discussed this into the early hours! When I was LOOONG in bed watching the peep show on my iphone

No, I am not having an affair. Huge fun though they are, and lovely opportunities though I have been offered, they do involve large pits of despair. And frankly I would be a complete twat to leave my partner, children and home for a shitty single life in a bedsit. No thanks.

However DP and I both have several very close friends who are in extra-martial relationships and so this is a topic that we talk about a lot. And it is HUGELY complicated. There is no EASY way of dealing with it. And there is no morally RIGHT way of dealing with it. Whichever way you look, there is pain and there is intense emotion. It is complicated.

Yes I have been open before that I had affairs when I was married and that DP had affairs when he was married (of which I was one). But I don't think that means that every time I object (which I do) to the use of the word "slapper" that is because I have an innate need to justify myself! I don't feel the need to justify myself. But I DO know that all my friends who are involved in such relationships are not bad people and the use of the word "slapper" to describe pretty much anyone is always wrong IMO.

dont see where madamez has imagined what she has said?! what she said is actually a lot of peoples case.

i do beleive that marraige is about give take etc etc but at the end of the day if i was not happy and couldnt see it working i would leave. why live a unhappy life?

Good posts Soapbox.

So MP if your dh had affairs while he was married to someone else and you are now married to him, do you trust that he won't do it again or do you just expect that he'll sleep with someone else at some point?

"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"

Hear, hear...
Not just in this thread but MN "passim".

www
i got with my dh when he was still married and living in the marital home with his child. we are now married nad have 2dd's if i spent evry day wondering will he repeat it all and find another 19yr old and stat again i would be a bitter twisted woman. i would end up ruining the perfect life that we have. he left that marriage because he was not in love and was unhappy not because he fancied a change of scenery. like it has been said by someone somewhere affairs happen when things are not right. if mp is happy and everything is right why would she worry about being cheated on? of course that is just my view mp's may be different

no time to read thread but I agree 100% with OP.

Actually thanks for starting this thread mp - I read part of the slappers thread the other day and got depressed - I kept typing posts and deleting them

You have said what I was trying to say

Yes it may be "weak" "cowardly" "callous" "dishonourable" etc, not the ideal way to go about things, but we are only human. I will admit to showing all of these qualities in my time. I'm not proud of myself.

I'm thinking of friends and family who have ended marriages/long term relationships and I can't think of one single person who did not leave for a new relationship (myself included).

Oh www- that was a bit catty wasn't it?

What you are saying is that once unfaithful, always unfaithful. That simply isn't true and I think you know that.

What's evident from so many posts here is that there are a lot of very bitter people out there- who can't accept that love dies, people's feelings change, mistakes are made, and families split up.

Someone asked a while back why a partner couldn't have the decency to end a relationship amicably, before moving on, if he had promised to love and respect her when they married. The sad truth is that he/she just doesn't care any more.

This thread will run and run...because people are trying to find logical, simple answers to a range of complex, emotional behaviour.

It is tragic when families split- and too many people walk away too soon and too quickly. However, there are two people in every marriage. No-one can make your partner leave you unless they want to leave. If they aren't happy with you, it may be heartbreaking, but it's not wrong- people just change.

With something like 40% of all children being born to unmarried couples, it seems that monogamy and commitment is not as common as you'd all like to think!

batters thats so bitter of you. so what are you saying? i should expect my dh to go looing for someone else

hls good post

but there are lots of long term monogamous relationships which are not marriages so that bit about 40 % of children is a bit irrelevant

im sure most people do want monogamous commitment they just dont always achieve it

Who was it who said something along the lines of "When you marry your mistress you create a job vacancy"?

lol - actually that was how DH started his speech at our wedding...

TBH I hate making this 'personal' because I am not sure that personal experience is much of an argument. However, we are well aware of where we have come from and the sort of people we are (i.e. very much enjoying falling in love and having sex). We are quite honest about our feelings for other people and our difficulties in being faithful. We are also quite aware of the misery of living with someone when you would rather be living with someone else. He is free to leave whenever he wants, just as I am. Statistically we both come from previous 'broken' marriages and 'broken' families so we have approximately 95% of chance that we will not stay together.

We've been together for 12 years and have had lots of ups and downs and I'm sure will have lots more. But I don't worry about infidelity, I worry about ill health. Ups and downs of relationships are a small part of life in my head. I spend less time worrying about where DH might put his dick than where DH might put his sick elderly mother.

We have both spent a lot of time in therapy. I think being a serial adulterer is a bit like being an alcoholic - you take each day at a time, you are always in recovery, and you have to be honest with yourself and with your family about your actions and feelings.

I hate the term 'slapper'. I don't think it's appropriate in this context either.

I do think that I would never get involved with someone who was still in a relationship though. It's not the 'once a cheater always a cheater' idea that bothers me, more the lack of respect.

If you've made the committment to live with someone, share your life with them, have children with them, surely they deserve honesty? If the relationship isn't working for you talk to them. I'd be really worried about being involved with someone who felt so unable to communicate their feelings, that they'd rather go behind their partner's back and start something new than tell them it was over.

I've never been cheated on- to my knowledge- but I've seen the effects it's had on friends and family. It causes such devastation.

But IME people don't actually WANT honesty. They want fidelity. And when one partner can't deliver on the fidelity then it throws them into turmoil.

no zippi- it's not irrelevant- the proof is that co-habiting couples are many more times likely to split up than marrieds.

i left my partner of 14 years with the thought that i may be alone for the rest of my life. Our relationship changed and it wasn't worth fighting for anymore. There had been no-one else involved for either of us.......

Three weeks after the split he announced he had someone new (a mutual friend as it happens).....i had no intention of finding someone else, quite the opposite in fact. But i did meet someone.....and he is still married although separated before we met. We've both been very careful to make sure our relationship is based on love, respect etc rather than it just being a soft place to fall after a very emotionally hard few months for both of us.

When i told my ex that it was over, the first thing he asked was if there was someone else.....and i told him there wasn't, and it was for that very reason that i knew i was doing the right thing. I think if had an 'overlap' i would have been very confused if i was leaving ex because the grass was greener or because our relationship had genuinely fallen apart.

I've seen all manner of heartbreak around me over the years with friends breaking up.....and have come to the conclusion that emotions are very hard to control.....you can think you are in love with the person you are with, but then meet that one person who sets your soul on fire. You can stay with a person until something better comes along. You can find your soulmate at the first stop and live happily ever after.
We're all different, our consciences all work on different levels....i couldn't have lived with myself if i had cheated on my ex, but i have friends who did just that deliberately to have a 'valid' reason for leaving.

There seems to be an assumption here that women can only function in a relationship. It reminds me of girls at school who could only exist if they had boyfriends.

The "valid" reason thing is interesting. I suppose it makes it easier to cite a reason for the divorce. Otherwise what do you do if one party wants a divorce and the other doesn't?...

Bridie maybe the assumption is that people can only function in a relationship?

MP said something about relationships being the normal human condition - we are drawn to be with someone, whether monogamously or not. I think that's true.

(Obv massive exceptions and I'm not saying people can't be happy when single)

The world is very couple-orientated (I remember thinking all the time when i was single).