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.

Good thread, though, MP. I haven't had such a decent discussion for ages, and it really is very useful to see all sides of the story. There's nothing wrong in having your horizons broadened.

As a matter of interest, has anyone ever had an affair entirely without the bravado of alcohol or drugs? I just can't imagine anyone moving in on a platonic friend for a kiss.

yah

Should I elaborate???? It is quite easy to move in for a kiss when you are in love with someone. It is quite a natural thing.

MP - I'd like to think that people have impulse control. Have you never been in love with someone and not acted on it?

Some people just need to be in a relationship all the time, I think they have problems with self-esteem, hardly the basis for a happy marriage. Some of us can not only cope with being on our own we can be happy that way too.

Agree with what Expat said last night, marriage is about commitment and respect for your spouse, your children and both families. If my marriage broke up my main concern would be our children's happiness not finding a replacement for DH.

Gosh yes Brassica most weeks

I am 3 children and I work. I have no help in the house. My non-work time is spent doing chores, looking after DCs and I go running. Not much time for anything else. I could not have an affair. I simply couldn't fit it in. I am not being facetious. But in my position (and I beleive it's far from unique) embarking on an affair would be practicably impossible. It would have to be planned and intentional - not spontaneous and airy-fairy ("oh it just happened").

I think that is one good reason why affairs don't happen more often. Probably as common as any issues to do with infidelity.

"As a matter of interest, has anyone ever had an affair entirely without the bravado of alcohol or drugs? I just can't imagine anyone moving in on a platonic friend for a kiss."

yes, I blame the internet.

There has to be an element of planning in most affairs, surely. They can't "just happen". Unless you have a wild, rampant social life in which you are offered cock/c*nt on a regular basis. Or you have a veritable army of friends of the opposite sex who make it clear that it'd be on offer.

(Sorry for the c-word, but look, we have to discuss it both ways.)

maybe it would pay to think about other peoples feeling before your own for a change. Then maybe we could all begin to act in a civilised manner

It's certainly true that some people cannot function without a couple-relationship and therefore have to have a replacement either in action or panting in the starting gates before ending an existing relationship. These tend to be the very people most obsessed with monogamy and romance:each new partner is The One and it never lasts because these stupid people are incapable of taking any responsibility for themselves, reyling instead on True Love as the great cure for everything.
However, another factor to consider is that people who are not monogamous and show no inclination for monogamy often get coaxed or coerced into monogamous relationships which they can't or don;t want to maintain: monogamy-rejection is treated very much as homosexuality has been (and sometimes still is, by morons) treated: it's just a phase, you'll 'settle down' when you meet The One. This is the most destructive and toxic of all the heteromonogamy bullshit: that everyone must and will surrender, because many people give in to the barrage of propaganda at some point, then hate it, move on, have affairs and a lot of misery and distress is caused before a person manages to realise and accept that monogamy is simply not one of his/her fetishes and not worth pursuing.

i definitely dont seem capable of not having a relationship

madamez I think you have a lot of good points

I do think that there is a part of the "heteromonogamous" cultural inclination (or propaganda as you have it) that encourages affairs, because there is an idea of "the one" which you can end up endlessly pursuing! People fall in love all the time, throughout their lives it is likely to happen several times - but the myth of "the one" means that this fact cannot be addressed rationally.

e.g. Olive, WHY would you go mad if your husband fell in love with someone else, and told you, and was miserable about it? What is fueling that reaction?

tho i didnt intend to be in one at the moment it seems to have happened unintentionally

A friend had a birthday party last month and was propositioned by two married men who were in attendance

It is fairly easy in that sort of situation to get swept away with 'romance' and become entangled with someone

I have a friendly neighbour who brings me flowers and leaves me little charming messages - it would not be impossible to imagine at length various scenarios where it would be easy to get romantically entangled.

And work - sheesh! There is usually a busy stationery cupboard in most workplaces, I am quite sure.

Of course I am 100% responsible for ensuring that these situations don't occur, but it would be silly to say that affairs take a great deal of engineering.

Madamez - most people WILL surrender. When you are seventy, you simply won't have the energy anymore

erm, maybe because I love him and our family and I would be devastated?

and I do think dh is The One, actually, we are best friends and if this makes me 'stupid' then I am very happy being stupid, thanks very much!

well I wouldn't say it was fairly easy to fall into an affair tbh

I would think hmmmm, do I want to ruin my family? erm, no, rather not all the same

and I wouldn't have an affair

No of course you are responsible for not doing it

But I am saying they are not hard to come by

I've forgotten why that point came into it but it did somewhere down the thread somewhere

yes but you say no surely? unless you are a rampant nympho >

Oh Posie I didn't answer this:

I just think if a partner could stop their partner/spouse getting into the situation or themselves then perhaps it wouldn't happen??

I think we are responsible for stopping OURSELVES getting into these situations, if that is not what we want, but I don't think we are responsible for stopping our SPOUSES from getting into these situations.