What makes a woman happy to be the Mistress?

[RedishBlonde]

This link got me thinking - forum.psychlinks.ca/relationships/829-the-other-woman.html

I suppose I'm interested in the "professional mistresses" - The women who seek out and only have (the majority of their) relationships with married men.

My sister (on her own admission) seems to be attracted to unobtainable men, whether it is emotionally unavailable men or attached men.

She has recently been exploring and resolving some emotional issues that stem from her childhood and speaks of these men within the context of these issues.

Now, I'm not making excuses, I have no sympathy for a woman that willingly enters a relationship with a married or attached man but there has to be underlying psychological reasons behind their motivations.

I believe that all ow are fully aware they are being lied to, not just the predatory ones. I suspect they pretend to fall for the married mans lies because they don't like to admit they are happy with being used.

Tbh, I have often found the idea of an unobtainable man (attached man) appealing, although I've noticed only when I'm feeling low on self esteem and NEVER when I'm at a happy place in my life. I have never acted on this and wouldn't, mainly because I know it's a sign I'm not in the right place emotionally. I believe a happy, well adjusted woman wouldn't willingly enter herself into a complicated relationship.

What are your thoughts on the motivations of OW? Are you a mistress? if so, do you explore the reasons behind why you're happy to take second place?

So people are tools, widgets who must have utility or they are useless.

I am quite partial to my DH's widget though

I think Anna has a point

or summat

It is not necessary to be an inanimate object (tool or widget) to have utility.

I am constantly amazed by all the women on MN whose partners contribute very little indeed to their lives and still put up with them. And, on MN, most posters cry "get rid" very quickly once a DP/DH's uselessness becomes apparent.

Of course, there are also plenty of women out there who contribute very little to their male partner's life.

I am a great one for love, and am immensely attentive to those who are near and dear to me.

Love is not martyrdom or self-sacrifice or a one-way action.

my DH's widget contributes lots to our relationship

I would go so far as to say it is a vital piece of kit! It needs the odd service, a spit'n'polish on occasion...but I expect it to give many more years of faithful servitude !

'Love is not martyrdom or self-sacrifice or a one-way action. '

No, it's respect. And betraying your spouse precludes that.

Yes, I agree, AF. I've found DH's widget an invaluable tool with which to intensify our relationship.

In fact, I value his tool so much I'd prefer it if he didn't use it with anyone else.

And he promised me as much.

So if he does, I'm well within my rights to declare the contract null and void.

Respect is a two-way street also.

yes, expat

if he were to sub-contract out his tool...you would be well within your rights to terminate it

with a fucking sledgehammer

anna...are you still yapping ?

< tunes out >

< thinks lovely thoughts of widgets'n'stuff >

That's been put to me before by a married man too - best way to find the best man is take one before he's single. Perhaps I'm sufficiently happy single that I'm prepared to forgo that. Also though I'm putting the anti-adultery view here it's of course not as simpler as both sides would like to think. Some people have no marriage, it's just a shell and the issue of who sticks their widget where is irrelevant. I would have rather coped with legions of other women than been treated as badly as my ex husband treated me. Adultery would have been de minimis. I've never been cheated on to my knowledge however.

" Bonsoir Tue 30-Mar-10 13:35:20
The marriage market is just like any other: the very best goods never reach the open market. Houses, jobs, partners, you name it - if you need an estate agent/recruitment consultant/internet dating service to market you, you aren't top league. Best to avoid advertising that fact, IMO! "

Apologies for suggestion bonsoir was married. If when you marry the mistress you create a vacancy I assume it's wiser not to marry the new man.

But I don't assume that men and women stray solely because they aren't happy at home. Plenty are very content but an opportunity presents itself. A good few continue without anyone knowing and I am sure some would say it improves their marriage and some have a written or unwritten agreement that both can play around elsewhere but for most people they don't want that, of course they don't. And plenty will get pregnant "accidentally" so their lover will put his second family above his duties to his first too.

There are also those who are happily married and have a long term lover, a few I know (I a not that lover, they just choose to confide in me - I read the blog of the other woman actually and she does seem content with it, feels she gets the best bits of him; I find that fascinating. I can much more easily understand someone falling in love with a married man or woman and wanting to start a new life with them but much harder to see why a man or woman would want just to be a bit on the side without any hope they could entice him or her away from their spouse)

I have only skimmed through this thread but found it very interesting,
Has anybody pointed out that some woman are mistresses purely because they want to be?
No lack of self respect, no low self esteem, just a selfish desire to have sex with no strings with an attractive, attentive (for the duration of the affair) man.
Not all woman want a full blown relationship and are happy with sex, candlelit dinners, expensive hotels etc without having their day to day life invaded by a 'proper' relationship.

Yes brazenhussy I said earlier today that there are women who can engage in sex-only affairs. Although bizarrely many people (including therapists) cannot quite believe such a woman exists.

MCDL someone called you thick a bit further up.
I can't not comment.
You sound the furthest from thick in this discussion. I particularly agree with your comment about noone owns anyone and if your partner should leave for someone else you would stay amicable ( of course someone had to pop up and mock you for this view )

Someone else said

" The comment above about reputation is correct though - people will always say - she or he cheated and committed adultery - they met when they were still married. It is there. It doesn't help your public profile or the view of your friends"

That is not my experience at all and I live in a very conservative small village. Very few people i know have this viewpoint and they tend to be of a type but I can't say what type because I can't be bothered with the vitriol it would evoke from the usual subjects here.

You can really never say "if x happened I woudl do y" because you don't know how you would react in practice. For example I always said I woudl chop up dh's clothes etc etc if he ever had an affair, but when he did that's not what I wanted to do at all. If you discover that your partner who you love, and who you thought loved you has been lying and deceiving you then the likelihood is that you would be absolutely devastated, and not fine about it it all. Chances are that before you confirm that he/she has cheated you have had months of wondering, worrying, crying yourself to sleep, being outright lied to and wondering if you have gone insane. It really doesn't lend itself to then feeling terribly charitable towards your partner starting their new life, especially if you know they have been having a lovely time in their fairy tale romance/seedy thrill fest, or are going straight into the arms of someone else whilst you sit in the ashes of all you once held dear. Now a few years down the line, assuming that you manage to rebuild your confidence, sense of worth, social life, upset children and for some financial security, yes maybe amicability can be achieved. But it is a hard fought battle for most of us to get there and not an easy step.

Of course not everyone feels like that, but then I'd wonder whether the previous relationship was perhaps rather meaningless to both parties? I've not met anyone who within a few years of finding out about an affair was not incredibly upset about it, whether they rebuilt, moved on or were just left behind. I think it is really pretty naive to suggest that that's somehow the right way to behave.

It's not the right way to behave which is why just about all moral codes prohibit it and indeed plenty of cultures would be happy to say those committing adultery will end up in a fairly warm place. Those rules are developed in part because of the hurt cheating. Also I don't agree that you won't be dogged by bad reputation. People see the serial adulterer and think of that. I quite like Princess D's brother. I like his looks. I liked his oratory at her funeral but I think it is always morally wrong to seek a new partner when you still have one no matter how badly she might be behaving to you. Instead separate divorce and then look. He will be tarred with that and perhaps rightly so as weill people think when they see those who stole men from other women and the man themselves - there go the couple who did it and when the man goes off and does it again as is fairly likely people will be saying well what did she expect?

I can understand nooka's comments too. I remember a couple coming to see me for work. He was so gentle and nice to his partner. At the next meeting I realised why. He was leaving her and their children and moved in with another woman he now loved. he was of course ecstatic although I am sure in that heady bliss of first in-love he was trying very hard not to show his wife with whom he still lived he was on cloud nine. it's total europhoria people can feel with a new lover. It blocks off their ability to see the damage they do. If they could be showed compulsory videos of the next 4 years of hate, chidlren never wanting to speak to them again, women cutting off their ex husband's penis, the life of misery and poverty they end up in having to support second and first families, the fact the new wife ends up being sexless and fat too after a few years... let them see that roll forward grass isn't greener may be they would think twice.

Anyway not always like that and it's just interesting to read the different views and MCDL is clearly not stupid. It's extremely helpful for those who have suffered from a straying husband and those who have taken someone's husband or let him come unto them as it were to hear each other's views.

"The marriage market is just like any other: the very best goods never reach the open market."

hahaha

Hang on tight, Bonsoir! To paraphrase Shakespeare, 'he hath deceived his first wife, and may thee!'

I can absolutely be sure how I would act, if not feel, if my husband left me . We have three children.

Interesting views here. One of my criteria in relationships was never to get involved with someone who would seem likely to become irrational and go mental if you left them - not that you can ever be completely sure. I do know people who are very unhappy in their marriages but have to suck it up because the wife/husband would make their lives a misery if they left.

In my twenties there seemed to be plenty of older men around who claimed their wife wasn't interested in sex. They hung around with us young funky twenty-somethings, mainly work-related, and didn't get ANYWHERE.
Now I am on mumsnet and read about mothers stuck at home with babs I imagine their husbands to be off slavering. Gross. But it has taught me that lots of men are gross delusional pigs.

Thank u jasper ....

My experience too Staggers - I had serious pressure from a few older married work colleagues to sleep with them when in my twenties. I didn't but I don't say that is because I am morally good, if one of them had been superbly attractive to me, perhaps I would have. I have never been attracted to older men but some women are and if you are an honest, open girl, attracted to a man who tells you that their wife doesn't want sex etc.. what's not to believe when you are young and have no experience of the ups and downs of relationships as one ages?

Such misogony on this thread by some women about other women! I wonder if those who are so judgemental have ever been seriously targetted and lied to by a person with a partner/family because I don't see how you could be quite so judgemental if you had been in that position. I would agree that it is at times of lonliness and vulnerability that it is easiest to be taken in but the idea that there are lots of women going around getting a kick out of "stealing" men is not something I've seen since early teens when some girls wanted to be the most wanted at the disco. The only times I have seen women deliberately target men with partners/families is when in ex-pat communities where the host country is poor relative to the West and some local women believe that a foreign man is the key to financial stability. Certainly then I have seen some mercenary attitudes in some (but no means all) of the women. Presumably the same goes here if you move in the circles of the rich and famous.

Also something I've noticed from the lotharios in the office is that they more often than not don't target the married woman who might have something to lose as well. Whether this is down to fear of being found out by a husband or other reasons such as being easier to play at romance with a single woman, I don't know. Certainly those posters here who imagine affairs as only ssex are mistaken.

As I recently posted on another thread, net dating sites that have a category for casual relationships are full of thousands of married men looking for "fun". Their reasons are wide and varied but a lot of them are missing the feeling of romance and feeling wanted as much as they are missing basic sex.

Of all the women on here whose partners have strayed, how many can really say that their partner was targetted and systematically ground down by a woman? I'm sure it must be a tiny minority. I have had men be unfaithul to me and at all times it was when our relationship was not at its best. I'm a bit old now but if I do get back into a LTR I will know that, if things get to where sex is sparse or we are treating each other as comfortable house mates or conversations are only around DCs, paying bills, I will know to broach how that makes us both feel and be aware that trouble may be ahead rather than burying my head in the sand and imagining that, because I wouldn't search excitement elsewhere, my partner wouldn't.

It's kind of pointless to blame the OW because a man determined to stray will always find a way so better to keep your own relationship alive and look inside rather than outside.

"Not all woman want a full blown relationship and are happy with sex, candlelit dinners, expensive hotels etc without having their day to day life invaded by a 'proper' relationship"

Well, when you put it like that brazen! Sounds pretty damn good.

Not quite sure what misogyny you are referring to Eurostar. If you mean the assertion that women, as well as men, pursue affairs with attached people, what's misogynist about acknowledging that women - like men - are capable of asking for what they want?

I worked with a woman who was a serial mistress. Her boyfriends were always very rich, powerful, married, with children.

She got her kicks out of the jewellery she obtained (and she was specific about what they must buy her) but mostly the kick was from proving that she could have that man. It made her superior to his dreary wife. A particular thrill was having sex in the marital bed.

She really was a gross woman. She is now marrying a super-rich man. I'd say I hope he's unfaithful to her but I suspect she wouldn't mind if the divorce pay-off was suitably generous.

Strangely, her parents encouraged her behaviour!?