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 agree that people want fidelity, but if you can't have that, I'd settle for honesty.

I adore my DH, but completely accept that life is unpredictable, and we could grow apart or 'fall' for other people. I respect and love him, and even if I was no longer 'in love' with him I couldn't betray him by cheating or lying to him. I'd have to tell him it was over.

I have a relative whose DH left her and their 2 young DCs 3 weeks before Christmas. He basically moved in with another woman (though she didn't know this at the time). As a teenager I saw him as the evil man who left his family for 'the slut' . As I got older I realised that they had been in a volatile relationship, and that he was not solely responsible for the marriage breakdown.

I do still think that he behaved unacceptably though. She could have coped with a split, but the discovery that he'd been lying and cheating basically destroyed her trust in other people.

This man, who was running from the responsibility of being a father and hated that he was no longer the centre of his DW's attention, married the OW. He saw his children only at his mother's so he didn't have to deal with their 'clutter' at his new flat. His new wife was 40, and with her biological clock ticking, 'forgot' to take her pill. Within a year of their marriage they had a baby, and she barely acknowledged his existence.

Most relationships which end because of an affair are either

pretty bad to start with
or
Just wrong because at least one of the couple is not as committed to a monogomous realationship as the other.

IMO

I sort of agree MP that people (maybe women more so) tend to be too paranoid and too sure that their partner is tied down. As you say, you never know what will happen and we all, even married people, are actually free agents. In fact if not morally.

BUT affairs are, very often, a terrible thing. Often I think an affair isn't a "new relationship" at all. It's a symptom, often of depression or addiction or lack of ability to communicate, so that the adulterer sees the chance to have a lovely clean slate and fun time with this wonderful woman from work or whatever - and it's all a bit illusion. The affair is carried on in hotels and sneaked moments and it's all exciting and "naughty". They may think they are in love but a lot of the time they don't actually know each other properly, don't see each other in a domestic context and would not actually be happy together. Marriages break up, children are devastated, wronged partners are left carrying the can, and all for what - often a "new relationship" that either a) breaks down after a few months when it transpires it can't work in the real world, or b) just repeats the pattern - more heartbreak and more abandoned children a few years down the line.

OK sometimes people really do meet and fall in love and leave their partners and it IS what they should do. But I think that's actually quite rare.

Er, I wasn't being 'catty' I was asking an honest question! Which I think MP read as such and has answered. And it seems to me that her answer is that no, they don't necessarily expect that they will be entirely faithful to each other. That's fine, some people are fine with that. I'm not and that's allowed too.

Batters that quote was Jimmy Goldsmith iirc. He married Annabel (who I think was his mistress) and had other mistresses after that marriage.

And I DO think that anyone who met their partner when he /she was with someone else has to realise that it could happen again. And if everyone's fine with that, no problem. But assuming anything else because 'you're different' is potentially naive imo

"His wife didn't understand him"
"He will leave when the children are old enough"
"But I Loooooove him! "

The cries of mistresses everywhere. Not a happy place to be imo.

Snowleopard, agree completely with your post, especially this bit:

"Often I think an affair isn't a "new relationship" at all. It's a symptom, often of depression or addiction or lack of ability to communicate, so that the adulterer sees the chance to have a lovely clean slate and fun time with this wonderful woman from work or whatever - and it's all a bit illusion. The affair is carried on in hotels and sneaked moments and it's all exciting and "naughty". They may think they are in love but a lot of the time they don't actually know each other properly, don't see each other in a domestic context and would not actually be happy together. Marriages break up, children are devastated, wronged partners are left carrying the can, and all for what - often a "new relationship" that either a) breaks down after a few months when it transpires it can't work in the real world, or b) just repeats the pattern - more heartbreak and more abandoned children a few years down the line."

Absolutely. I think people who think they're all fine and dandy are kidding themselves big time very often.

But assuming anything else because 'you're different' is potentially naive imo

I sort of agree but also part of me doesn't, because all relationships are different. If I said to my first husband "I'm in love with someone at work" he would have said "OH DEAR GOD YOU BITCH MY LIFE HAS FALLEN APART" where if I said that to DHdejour he would say "Oh god, I'm really sorry, let's talk about how to deal with this."

And also the sexual dynamic between a couple makes a HUGE difference to fidelity (at least it does for me).

I DON'T agree with Snowleapord's post that affairs are a "symptom" of anything.

Affairs are fun, and easy, and hugely enjoyable - yes of course they lead to pits of despair - but in the normal course of events affairs and falling in love with other people are quite normal and natural. It isn't sympatommatic of anything, it is just life. It takes a massive strength of will NOT to have an affair when you are in the situation where one is brewing. In that sense, NOT having an affair is deeply unnatural. (And perhaps Madamez could argue that not having an affair could be a symptom of our society's unnatural obsession with monogramy!)

"And I DO think that anyone who met their partner when he /she was with someone else has to realise that it could happen again. And if everyone's fine with that, no problem. But assuming anything else because 'you're different' is potentially naive imo "

Anyone?

I was with someone for 12 years, and unhappy for 6. I met someone new and I left my ex.

I am a very moral person but I was unhappy. I worked and worked and worked at my relationship to no avail. I wiash I had the confidence and courage to just leave but I didn't. I met someone I love, we talked long and hard about what to do.

Just because someone leaves a bad relationship because they met someon else, doesn't mean they are going to do it over and over again.

Perhaps what you mean is that leaving your partner for another could happen to Anyone once, might happen more than once with some people but it could happen to anyone once - even you!

I don't believe dh would have an affair as he loves me to bits and tells me so every day

we get on GREAT

however when dd2 was born, until she was maybe 18 months or so, we did not

we worked through it like most people do

and quite frankly were both too tired and haggard for the possibility of an affair

I think you have different views MP than the majority

I would go MAD if dh came home and said "ooooh petal, I fear I may love someone else" I would not be up for a healthy chat, he would be in the wheelybin

I think I would like to think that my dp tried to sort things out with our relationship prior to finding someone else. I have a friend who's dh walked out and she was doubly devastated when he had another woman, at first she thought he had had a midlife crisis... I think it's very rare for a man to leave for noone else. In addition when children are involved they are damaged by a separation and so it's best to not cross the affair bridge until all other roads are explored you owe that at least.

And I DO think that anyone who met their partner when he /she was with someone else has to realise that it could happen again. And if everyone's fine with that, no problem. But assuming anything else because 'you're different' is potentially naive imo

Yes www but what if you DIDN'T meet your partner when they were with someone else and then they were unfaithful? this happens too, so I'm not sure what your point is.

Whether or not a relationship starts from an affair, you have to trust the other person surely? while still being hip to the fact that things might go wrong at some point?

I don't think that is a contradiction.

erm.

slapper is unacceptable. so is the attitude the predatory people 'break relationships up' and should be killed with breadknives.

but it doesn't therefore follow that monogamy is unrealistic per se to my mind.

why does everything seem to always come down to either or on mn?

you can act dishonorably and not be a dishonourable person can't you?

you can aim for and hope to be faithful at all times and perhaps fall short of that? relationships either survive that or don't based on the strength of the relationship.

one thing i've learnt (and i still have a lot to learn) is that a long term monogamous relationship goes through phases and that if you are realistic about how tough the hard phases are going to be you have more chance of coming through them.

'other women' or men are kind of irrelevant imo. they are symptoms.

Oooo, morning paper are you saying that people should prevent an affair, ie prefer it that their dh's don't go out until the early hours or spend time with other women, like say a best friend who was a woman because these things are so easy to slip into? No confrontation just curious.

you can act dishonorably and not be a dishonourable person can't you?

you can aim for and hope to be faithful at all times and perhaps fall short of that? relationships either survive that or don't based on the strength of the relationship.

Hear hear sophable. Agree 100%. People are fallible but not fallen imo

MP if you love your partner, if you fancy them, if you like them, if you are (most importantly) feeling good and secure in yourself, you don't have an affair i think.

if you are feeling very insecure and miserable, don't like yourself or your partner, haven't felt sexual for ages, then you are probably more vulnerable to the possibility of an affair.

oooo, fallible, not fallen: genius!

Not sure what you mean Rosie, or what part of my posts you are deducing that from? Can you explain a bit more?

Kerry it is most definitely not simple. Relationships and what can go wrong etc are very complex ime

Sophable I think that is over-analysing

I just like cock

a great deal

I think it is GREAT

bring it on I say

(well that's my gut feeling)

they why get married then?

MP you twit, you're faithful and in a monogamous relationship, so you can cock about all you like, but you're not convincing me!