Part of Plan B is preparing to Divorce, MEDC. During my membership I have seen hundreds of marriages come back from the brink at that stage here on MB. No exaggeration.

agreed... but when a person has no doubts about their actions, it is a personal choice

I think Jo's point is it's NEVER over till the divorce. (Sometimes not even then)

there is ALWAYS doubt in other words

She makes good points... but sometimes it is over.... and should be.

not true. some people have very clear resolve to divorce and NEVER give a cheater or an abuser a second chance. That is their right and it happens a lot.

Then make it over and get a DIVORCE FIRST ... then date.

you are entitiled to this view.

MEDC - The point is you have to act according to your beliefs. I felt I was still married, and had betrayed my beliefs. Didn't matter that I was done with WH, and he was done with me. It is something I will always regret. And it ruined a good friendship too.

yes, I agree 100% Believer... I have said you need to act according your own beliefs. Some people feel they are no longer married once they are assaulted by infidelity or abuse. I agree with you... which is getting to be a habit.
Sorry for the loss of your friend.

Sometine you still feel married even when you are divorced! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" />

Almost as soon as the paper was dry on my decree absolute I began seeing an old friend of 20 years.

I think it has everything to do with where you are emotionally with your ex-partner and less to do with your legal status.

Even now - six months after my divorce and 20 months after my separation, I am nowhere near ready for a relationship.

Yet I'm still in one. Daft cow that I am. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" />

Alph.

I know at least two couples that that have Ms that started off as As. They seem to be doing ok. It might be rare, but sometimes the OP does turn out to be a better choice than the current S for a LTR.

MIM -

There is no doubt in my mind that some OP's might be a better match than the spouse. The problem is that affair relationships never have a healthy start.

Think about it. In a normal relationship, you get to know the person by spending time with them, talking to them, seeing them in different situations. After a couple dates, you might invite them to your home, or go to theirs. There is a period of adjustment.

An affair relationship skips many steps. It is usually kept secret, and tends to move very quickly. All the checks and balances are gone.

And the worst part is that you know that you have a partner that, when things get rough, takes the easy way out. And your partner knows the same thing about you.

...and then there's the uncomfortableness that comes if anyone asks the couple how they met and they're not in a position to lie about it <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />.

But face it - is the situation any different for us that choose to remain in an M with partners that have already demonstrated to us that they are capable of turning to someone else and deceiving us in the worst possible manner? In fact, it might be even worse - at least in the case of the "affair" M, one or both of the partners have gone through the pain of a D, and remembering that might be enough to convince them not to stray again.

Good question MIM. Hopefully someone will have an answer. I ended up divorce, which was not my choice, but actually much easier that recovering the marriage.

and many WS feel they are no longer married when they feel attracted to the OP

you are not married based on whether or not you feel like you are married

people who live together (shack up) often feel like they are married too ... but they ain't

you is or you ain't

and if a BS decides to date or sleep around or whatever because their heart has been broken too many times ... they do it because they feel like doing it ... NOT because they are single-not-married-divorced

I feel like I am not happily married on occasion ... so what? ... my feeling does not change the fact that I am married ... coz I IS married <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/pfft.gif" alt="" />

so, if someone has the belief that marriage is based on a feeling .... then dating while married becomes "OK" ... because a change in feelings then take a higher priority than vows of committment

feelings always change

it's nature


Pep

Forget who posted this, and it is kind of long, but here it is -

CAN A MISTRESS EVER BE A SUCCESSFUL WIFE?
By ELEANOR BAILEY, Daily Mail

14:40pm 24th June 2006

Having strayed once, will he stray again?
You're having an affair, he swears he's going to leave his wife – so far, so predictable. But what if he really did leave her? What are the chances of it turning out happily-ever-after? Not very high, says ELEANOR BAILEY:

You might not remember Rosetta Bain, but she was the woman who stole Anneka Rice's TV producer partner just six months after Anneka had given birth to his son. Rosetta, the high-flying, glamorous mistress, became Tom Gutteridge's new wife – then, three years later, received her comeuppance in spectacular fashion when Gutteridge dumped her for a woman ten years younger.

Questions
• Can an affair turn into a successful marriage?

Rosetta, single again at 47, felt compelled to apologise publicly to Anneka. "Tom used to tell me that Anneka was neurotic," she explains, "and that she tried to come between him and his children from his previous marriage.

"I got to the stage of wondering why he didn't leave Anneka sooner if she was so terrible. Of course, now I realise she wasn't. Now I know he's saying the same sort of thing about me."

Some mistresses are satisfied with playing second fiddle to the wife - or realistic enough to know that the relationship wouldn't work any other way - but most, like Rosetta, live in hope that one day the situation will change and the man will be all theirs. However making it down the aisle is no guarantee of a happy ending, as Rosetta discovered. Her message to the mistress is: be careful what you wish for.

Ruth Houston - a cheated-on wife who exacted her revenge by writing a book called 'Is he Cheating?' and reinventing herself on TV as an infidelity expert both here and in the US - confirms: "studies show that only three per cent of the cheating husbands who divorce their wives marry their mistresses, and when they do these marriages have a very high failure rate - between 75 and 90 per cent.

"If he cheated with you, he's likely to cheat on you, because cheating is his way of dealing with marital problems. Instead of seeking professional help or trying to communicate with his mate, his solution is to have an affair."

Serial strayers

Marina Wheeler, wife of the philandering Tory MP and writer Boris Johnson, has been suffering the humiliation of her husband's second very public affair within two years – yet she had formerly played the mistress herself. She became pregnant with their first child while he was still married to his previous wife, so she shouldn't have been totally surprised when he started straying again.

And Francesca Annis must always have known that if Ralph Fienne was capable of leaving his first wife, Alex Kingston, for her, he could do it again - and sure enough her publicist announced their break-up earlier this year after he had an affair with a young singer.

As Sir James Goldsmith famously put it when he divorced Ginette Lery and married Lady Annabel Goldsmith, "When you marry your mistress, you create a vacancy." And he was something of an expert in the field, at one stage maintaining three relationships (and families) around the globe.

So can an ex-mistress wife ever really feel safe? "I felt like I had to sleep with an emotional gun under my pillow – I needed to protect myself at all times," says Nicky, 35, who married her lover after they had both divorced their spouses.

"When we were having an affair our relationship was so simple - we both went to the same trade shows around the globe. We were together six to eight weeks a year with no strings attached: it was exciting. But when I left my husband, taking our two kids, and moved in with John, suddenly I was the woman at home.

"I couldn't travel as much without having my husband to cover the childcare. So now I was sitting alone for weeks with John away." And no matter how John attempted to reassure her that he was being faithful, Nicky felt she had no reason to believe him.

"I soon became convinced, if I couldn't get hold of him in the evening, that he was with another woman. Once he caught me checking his mobile phone for received calls and he got really angry. He snapped, 'Don't you trust me?' I felt I was turning into his ex-wife, who I knew he despised for being possessive.

"He had the same bored look on his face that I'd seen when he talked about his ex. Maybe some women can marry their lover and feel confident about it, but I felt like I'd made a pact with the devil. I felt I didn't really deserve to have him all to myself when I'd stolen him from someone else. Even on the day we were married, I was paranoid. It wasn't a joyous occasion."

The marriage didn't last. Nicky still doesn't know for sure if John was faithful to her, but she doubts it. That fear was enough to causes a rift between them, and she ended up back with her steady first husband.

"The reasons I had an affair in the first place - that I thought my marriage was boring, that my life at home was pure drudge compared to my life as the mistress - those feelings disappeared completely when I achieved my dream of marrying John.

Mistrust

"It was too much of a roller coaster. The mistrust was too stressful to live with. I couldn't cope. I'm just grateful my first husband gave me a second chance and I've got my family back."

But the biggest irony is that, even if a mistress marriage is not scuppered by the woman's fear - real or imaginary - that she has fallen for a serial adulterer, then the marriage can just as easily founder for lack of excitement.

After the thrill of an affair - the secret liaisons and romantic weekends abroad - marriage can prove a dull reality, a bit like taking James Bond down the supermarket.

"I was waiting in the wings for David for ten years," says Marian, 45 years old, sensible, church going and a thoroughly unlikely mistress. "Finally, when his kids were grown up, he divorced his wife and we married. I was an idiot but I thought it would sort out all my frustrations - no more waiting to see him, no more weekends cancelled at the last minute. I could spend Christmas with him. We could have breakfast together every day."

In the event the marriage was a disaster and Marian left her lover of ten years after eighteen months of marriage. "Yes," she sighs, "I left him. I thought I knew him inside out after so long, but almost as soon as we moved in together I realised I didn't know him at all. Really I'd only seen the good side - the clean, attentive side.

"After a month of being with him full time I started feeling sorry for his ex-wife. He was such a slob around the house! And he was hopeless at getting anything done - I soon found I was buying his children's birthday cards.

"I had felt guilty about breaking up the marriage, but now I suspect his wife was glad to have him off her hands - they remained on suspiciously good terms. In fact he seemed to get on better with her after they split. And I realised that our part time relationship had worked so well because it was part time."

"The more you integrate yourself into someone's life, the more likely you are to experience conflict and disillusionment," says Dr Janet Reibstein, visiting professor at Exeter University, whose research into infidelity reveals that marriages following affairs are particularly brittle, often breaking up faster or not really becoming established in the first place.

"People do not realise how dependent an affair is on the marriage," she explains. In other words, an affair needs the marriage to keep its lustre, to look good in comparison. People believe that they are revealing their true selves in an affair. All those deep conversations, candlelit dinners and long nights give lovers a chance to share their innermost thoughts in a way that a married couple - with children, work, in-laws and hair removal - never have time for.

However, says Dr Reibstein adamantly, this belief is false. "They think that by sharing the deep stuff they are showing their real selves, but actually the trivial domestic stuff - such as whether you leave the toilet seat up - probably says more about you."

Marian's lover David was not being deliberately dishonest by hiding his bad habits for a decade. Part of the allure of an affair, says Dr Reibstein, is that it allows you to believe that you are that more interesting person you show to your lover on your precious, snatched weekends. People deceive themselves that they will continue to be this more attractive self if they end up with the lover full time, which just isn't realistic.

"An affair is just a part of somebody's life," explains Dr Reibstein. "It's a response to something that is deficient in the marriage." If a marriage has become stale, if the passion has gone, an affair can fill that gap.

Stale marriage makes 'affairs seem appealing'

"But once the marriage is over," says Reibstein, "the whole complexion changes because the problems of the marriage, that made the affair seem so appealing, are no longer there." And what works as an affair may not be strong enough to stretch to a full-time relationship.

This was certainly true for Marian. "I realised on the honeymoon that I had undervalued how important having my own space was. I'd never been with him for two weeks solid before. By the end I was desperate to be on my own.

"I used to think I was lonely without him. That was why I got involved with a married man in the first place - I'd been single a long time and thought it was that or nothing. I never realized, until I was with him all the time, how much I valued my own company and that seeing him so irregularly actually suited me very well.

"The upside of all this is that I now really appreciate being alone."

--------------------

I just wanted to pop in real quick and say that at the other site they actually think they number is higher than 3%. They are really making fun of that number when they mention it.

I think it is totally different because that partner did return to the marriage, make ammends and work to build a good relationship with you, hopefully learning that adultery is never a valid solution to an unhappy marriage. Having been through this they are then highly motivated to never do it again.

IMO you're making several assumptions there which may not necessarily be correct for every or even most Ms that have continued after one or both parties have been unfaithful.