Your views please! Re who really ruins a relationship?

krlyr

trailingspouse wrote: »

If you're in a good relationship, you won't be tempted - so I think everyone involved bears some level of 'blame' - or alternatively, we can all accept that we're only human and sometimes relationships just don't work out.

And if you're in a bad relationship and feeling that tempted, you can end it before you act on that temptation.

Kim_kim

The other woman is not to blame - she made no vows.
The blame is within the marriage.

pogofish

Broadly it depends on the dynamics of the individual situation IMO but I would tend to view the partnered-up one who strayed as having the most culpability.

Ames

Interesting that there seems to be an assumption that the woman* knew she was 'other'. If he's cheating on his partner it's not such a stretch that he's lying to both women.

A woman who knowingly has a relationship with someone who isn't single is in the wrong, but the blame should be with the man who cheated.

*Genders can be reversed of course.

onomatopoeia99

The person to blame for the end of the relationship is the one in it who cheats, because if they are unhappy in the relationship they should talk to their partner or end it, not line up a replacement first. Such is the act of a coward.

selement

I think some people would prefer to blame the other person rather than the unfaithful partner, but to me the unfaithful partner is the one on the wrong.

coolcait

Ames wrote: »

Interesting that there seems to be an assumption that the woman* knew she was 'other'. If he's cheating on his partner it's not such a stretch that he's lying to both women.

....
*Genders can be reversed of course.

Good point.

seven-day-weekend

AylesburyDuck wrote: »

I'd say its not always that clear cut as one or the other, both to blame, and maybe the wife of the cheater drove him to it, who's to know, you cant see inside someones marriage.

It's still his decision, whatever the situation. Get out of one relationship before starting another.

Spendless

Ames wrote: »

Interesting that there seems to be an assumption that the woman* knew she was 'other'. If he's cheating on his partner it's not such a stretch that he's lying to both women.

A woman who knowingly has a relationship with someone who isn't single is in the wrong, but the blame should be with the man who cheated.

*Genders can be reversed of course.

This is very true. In my mid-20s I had an 'affair' with a married man. Only I didn't know he was married!

He told me he'd separated from his wife 2 years earlier and they were in the process of getting divorced.

I didn't find out the truth until a few years after we'd split up - after he'd written to me (days before mobiles/internet) to tell me after splitting from me, he'd got engaged to someone else who had died before their wedding day.

Unknown to him I had his sister's phone number (obviously he'd never let me meet her!)and rang her only to be told the dead fiancee was his very much alive 2nd wife that he'd married less than 6 months earlier. He also had an additional child he'd never mentioned!

He was in the armed forces and in the days before social media and mobile phones etc, he made the deception easier for him.

Who was to blame- he was! I knew nothing about it!!

OldMotherTucker

[QUOTE=Spendless;72212983

He was in the armed forces and in the days before social media and mobile phones etc, he made the deception easier for him.

Who was to blame- he was! I knew nothing about it!![/QUOTE]

It's only now that I'm really processing the affects that my ex's affairs had on me even though we've been divorced for over 12 years (married 28 years ago)

He was in the Army and you're so rught about it being easy before social media. Although it has to be said, I don't know how the heck he's got away with his recent philandering - there are pictures of the child he had with his wife's friend all over FB. She knew about the affair but apparently not the child:eek::eek:


It wasn't until our first child was 2 years old that my ex admitted to sleeping with his mate's wife for the whole time that we were engaged and right up until he went to the Gulf. He cried, begged for forgiveness etc and I had a baby to consider . . . plus, by the time he told me, she had died of breast cancer. Shortly after he went to Bosnia and in the months after he returned, it became obvious that he'd been having an affair with a little red-haired NCO - he even rubbed my nose in it by introducing her to me. I was slow but the penny finally dropped . .

Eventually, back in civvy street, he admitted to his sister that he was involved with another woman - which destroyed their relationship. Thanks to tax credits and finally waking up to reality I divorced him - he agreed to make it quick as long as I didn't name the woman he's now married to (and has subsequently cheated on, proof being this child he has tried to introduce to my children as their sister)

It's worse than Jeremy Kyle isn't it? :rotfl::rotfl:

Whilst I accept that I allowed him to treat me and our marriage in this way, I'm really angry that, all the while, other people knew he was cheating on me. Half the people in the Church when we took our vows knew. Just like we all know what he's doing to his current wife - a lovely lady and a wonderful stepmother to my 3 children.

We all dread the day that she finds out that we all know . . there is so much more than their marriage at stake. His cheating ways might destroy his children's relationship with their step mum.:(:(

So we keep up the pretense too:(:(