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I know he (or she) might be the love of your life, but dating them will come at a price.
By Mitzi Bockmann — Written on Jan 05, 2023
The reasons why you should never date a married man (or woman) seems like a no-brainer — they are married and therefore off the market.
A vow has been made that both people need to honor, and straying from those vows just shouldn’t be an option. Married dating won't end well for either you or the person you're seeing.
Unfortunately, in this world of life and love, it’s just not that simple.
Married people do, for many reasons, get involved with people outside of their marriage. Perhaps they are unhappy, insecure, lonely, or chronically unfaithful. For whatever reason, people stray.
While it seems that the spouse would be the one left most injured in this situation, it is often the person who chooses to date the married person who will suffer the most.
Here are 5 brutal reasons why you should never, ever date a married man or woman.
1. They will never leave their spouse
I knew someone who reconnected with a college boyfriend via Facebook. They struck up an innocent conversation and agreed to meet the next time he was in the city for work.
He was married and she was not. Unfortunately, when they met under the clock at Grand Central Station, their college connection sparked back up immediately.
The connection was so organic and easy. He had been unhappily married for years, and she was very lonely after her divorce.
Within days they fell in bed, within weeks they were professing their love for each other, and within a month he said he was leaving his wife for her. She was so happy. All of her dreams were coming true.
Two years later, she was still waiting for her lover to leave his wife.
Her lover genuinely loved her, but there was always a reason why he couldn’t leave. His daughter was having a hard time, his son was going off to college, a summer vacation had been planned, and the holidays were approaching.
"I'll do it after that," he always promised. And he never did. Never.
There is story after story after story like this one, where the married person swears they will leave their spouse for their new lover, but they don’t.
They don’t want to hurt their children, make a decision that has financial consequences, disappoint extended family, or damage their reputation in the community. So, they don’t leave.
And, really, why do they need to? They have your hook, line, and sinker. You're sitting at home waiting for them, always available for support and sex. They have everything they want from you without giving up their family.
So first and foremost, know that one of the major reasons why you should never date a married man or woman is because they will never leave their spouse. Period.
2. Your life will be put on hold
When you're involved with a married man or woman, your life will cease to move forward in any meaningful way.
Think about when you start dating someone. You meet, you're attracted to each other, and you get to know one other.
You talk about hopes and dreams for the future. You commit to being exclusive. You meet each other’s friends and family. You take steps to move in together and maybe get married.
All of those things are the natural progression of a healthy relationship. When you get involved with a married man or woman, everything is different.
Yes, you have the fun beginning — the meeting, the attraction, the staying up all night talking, the belief that you have found the love of your life. But that is where it ends.
If you are involved with a married person, you will never meet their friends and family, you will never be able to take steps toward a future together. All your talk about a future together will be empty, because your person isn’t leaving their spouse.
So, there you are, in stasis, not moving forward with life and love because you are waiting for your person to take action. You get sadder, lonelier, angrier, and obsessed with the situation you are in.
You give up dating, friends, and hobbies so that you can be available whenever your lover wants to see you. Life as you know it stops.
Life is short and every minute that you spend waiting for someone to leave their spouse and commit to you is a wasted one that will keep you from finding the person who can love you fully and give you the life you want.
3. Your self-esteem will plummet
For the woman I mentioned before, one of the reasons that her lover was so attracted to her, in the beginning, was because she was a hot ticket.
She had a cool studio in the city where she started her own business. She did volunteer work and made a huge difference in the lives of people living with mental illness. She was a great parent and an amazing lover.
All of those things made him fall in love with her hard and fast.
But over the two years, she waited for her lover to leave his wife, her life fell apart. Her work suffered, she lost touch with her friends, volunteering became increasingly hard, and depression was her constant companion.
Furthermore, she detested herself for her inability to walk away from her lover. She grew to realize over time that his promises, while well-meant, were empty.
She knew that she was lonely and angry and that her self-hatred grew every day and yet she found herself incapable of picturing life without him and she just couldn’t say goodbye.
She ultimately ended up feeling like a shadow of the person she was when she started out in the affair. She didn’t have the self-confidence to take the steps needed to get her life back.
She was lost and empty. The love that initially fed her body and soul was sucking her dry.
4. You will always feel lonely
The days that you'll feel most acutely unhappy in your relationship with a married man are those special days — birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays.
You'll spend your birthday alone with a bouquet of flowers that were delivered in the morning. You'll spend Christmas alone, looking at pictures of your lover's family around the tree that their daughter posted on Instagram.
Weekends are spent waiting for text messages. Night times aren't for dating, but for watching TV.
So, as you consider embarking on an affair with a married man or woman, consider that you will spend a lot of time alone, waiting on your person to take steps to be with you, knowing that chances are good that they won’t.
5. Any relationship will be doomed from the beginning
Every healthy relationship is based on two things: communication and trust. An affair involves the absence of both of those things.
Obviously, if you're involved with someone who's cheating on their partner, all trust is nonexistent. How can you ultimately trust someone you know is willing to cheat?
The old adage, “When a man marries his mistress, he creates a vacancy," rings true every time.
Furthermore, the foundation of a healthy relationship is communication. If most conversations are full of lies and false promises that lead to only hurt and disappointment, healthy communication will cease.
Any relationship like this will be doomed from the start. In other words, if in fact your dreams do come true and your lover leaves their partner, your relationship will be doomed to fail. After all that pain and suffering. Doomed.
Asking yourself and others why you should never date a married man (or woman) is an excellent way to keep your heart — and your life — from being shattered into a million pieces.
Moreover, should you ever get the relationship you desire, it will be dead on arrival because trust and communication will no longer exist.
I know that right now, your married person seems like the answer to all of your dreams, but know that they are, instead, the stuff that nightmares are made of.
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Mitzi Bockmann is a certified life coach and relationship coach. With over 10 years of experience, she helps clients find happiness in love and life.