I know a friend who does this and this has been her MO for as long as I have known her for over 15 years. She was divorced over 15 years ago, is quite attractive and likes male attention, but if a single guy asks her out she runs like a scared rabbit and has 100 reasons why “this would not be a good time for her to be dating”. She has expressed her fear that she falls too easily in love, and would not be able to walk away from a bad relationship if it went south as she would be emotionally invested. On the flip side she has had a series of serial affairs with married men over the years.
She professes that she wants true love and would be willing to date if Mr. Perfect delivered himself to her. I talked with her about doing online dating, but she insists it’s nothing but losers and perverts. She’s also oddly antagonistic toward her single female buddies who (when they tired of being single) took a very proactive stance in dating and usually acquired an SO (and generally pretty good quality ones IMO) within a few months to a year. She thinks they were “acting like tramps” in dating all these men.
In all other respects she’s very good person, but I’ve never understood this odd dichotomy. It’s not even like the married guys were her Mr. Perfects if they were single as she quickly tired of their foibles. She’s taking a pretty big risk with these affairs as things could get ugly for her professionally if a wife in these scenarios decided to get nasty.
What drives this behavior? Why take such risks when she could probably get plenty of quality single men with just a little overt effort?
I think because they are married maybe she sees some inherent ‘value’ to them over a single guy- obviously they had qualities that made some other woman want to marry them, which maybe makes it seem worth it for her. That, and the fact that even though they are married, they are still willing to have an affair with your friend, is probably a big ego boost for her.
Maybe with single guys, she’s too paranoid she’s compromising on something or other. I find it kind of funny that she worries she’ll be ‘too invested’. I mean, what’s the difference (on her end) with being friends-with-benefits with a single guy or a married guy? I wonder if she’s targeting married guys as an excuse to hide her own flaws- if it goes south, well, he was having an affair, its his fault, since he shouldn’t have been sleeping around in the first place. Maybe she feels like she gets to have all the fun of a relationship without any of the [cough] responsibility.
I had a friend who used to only date married guys as well. Turned out, she had a pretty serious fear of commitment, which makes some sense to me. Not that I am condoning dating married men, because I am most assuredly not.
Married or otherwise unavailable men are “safe”. A married man isn’t likely to want more from the relationship except something casual, unless he decides to leave his wife, and the odds of that happening aren’t usually all that good. Someone who is afraid of commitment isn’t going to have to worry about a proposal feom a married man, nor is that married man likely to ask for any other kind of commitment.
My crystal ball’s take (not for every woman who does this, but for this particular one): not only is she not interested in a new LTR, she’s terrified of having one again. These guys are “safe” from that point of view; they’re not going to end their marriages for her - not does she want them to. These relationships are her version of a one-night-hookup.
ETA: I promise Fluke’s post wasn’t there when I started to write mine.
I have known people like this, and in my experience they do it because they don’t actually want to be in a relationship. Maybe it’s busyness, or fear of commitment, or something else, but when people continually choose unsuitable partners* it’s because, no matter what they say, they don’t want a relationship.
If her complaining annoys you, you could confront her with it, but you may lose the friendship. Alternately, when she starts on about how she can’t find someone say, “What do you think you can do to fix this?” and let her talk. If all she wants to do is bitch to you, tell her that you’re sorry she’s unhappy, but you’re tired of this subject and she has to stop moaning about it all the time because it’s draining to you. It’s super hard to say that, I know, but you don’t have to always be her sounding board.
If her complaints aren’t that onerous and you’re just wondering why she won’t try to fix this, then realize she has what she wants. Sometimes people are most happy being miserable.
*similar to this is people who get crushes on people who are unavailable, either because they are seeing someone or perhaps they’re gay, or just very uninterested. Obviously this happens to everyone at times, but for some people every person they like is unsuitable.
I used to wear a wedding ring when I was out and say i was married just to meet girls like your friend. In some ways I was married but not to another person, I was very involved in a pursuit that I was not ready to compromise my time for.
Generally, I think Incubus has a good point. At a certain age, a woman might decide all the good men are taken and any single men her age must have some fault. So she dates married men. (Of course, the married men who are willing to date her have an obvious fault as well.)
But the OP is saying she has a different reason. She’s looking for emotional detachment and feels she gets that in relationships with married men. I’ve heard this idea before as well, but usually it’s reversed. Single people look for affairs with married people because they’re worried the other person will fall in love not because they’re worried they will.
If she was worried about the men she’s seeing falling in love with her, then it might make sense for her to stick to married men. But if she’s worried about falling in love herself, this is a really bad plan. Why does she think she’s immune from falling in love with a married man? All she’s doing is increasing the odds that the men she falls in love with will be unavailable.
The attitude toward me sounds similar to a woman in my former social circle.
When I was single, she held me at arms length. I didn’t get invited to some parties. It wasn’t me alone, she did this to every single male that came through the social circle. We were frightening, dangerous, damaged goods to her.
The moment I got married, that attitude vanished. I was safe now.
And when I got divorced, she wanted nothing further to do with me.
Same kind of thing as above. Single men are scary and dangerous. Married men are ‘safe’ because, well clearly, another woman thinks he’s safe enough to be married to! It’s kind of like the young women who only go after their friend’s boyfriends and won’t seek out their own.
Re wives I suspect some wives knew but let it go as long as the husband came back. She does not know that I know, that some married women exclude her from their sociali circles because of these suspicions. No wife has blown it up with her though.
Re her ex, it’s true, her ex was an epic womanizer.
That’s a really weird attitude for someone to haven (that married men are better), I don’t get it at all. And I don’t get the thing about single men past a certain age must have something wrong with them. People get divorced all the time anyway. Maybe that’s considered damaged goods, but it’s less damaged than the married-but-looking crew.
If I wanted a married man it would be because I need space. (But I don’t want a married man at all. That’s not the kind of space I want…but I guess I could sort of see someone feeling that way.)
I would think that the most common reason women would intentionally seek out married men is if they get off on the taboo aspect of it.
They can also be widowed, or just not found the right person yet.
I know this is speculation, but it also sounds to me like the woman described by the OP may well be a sexual abuse survivor. This does not bode well for healthy adult relationships in either men or women.
There’s also a weird psychological factor that may be part of this: Established desirability.
A recent study found that if a number of female goldfish are placed in an environment with two unfamiliar male goldfish, ALL of the females will mate with the same male, and NONE will mate with the other. Apparently, this isn’t a case of degrees, in which MOST of the females will mate with the same male in MOST cases, The results indicate that ALL the females will mate with the same male, exclusively, in ALL cases.
the implication is some people will automatically trust the judgement of strangers, before they’ll trust their own. This, of course, ignores the fact that, in the case of the Married Man preference, the Wife may be an idiot, the marriage may be arranged, or it may have occurred for reasons other than any sort of desirability on the part of the Husband.
I’m not sure what you’re confused about here, because you explain the reasons yourself in your OP. She’s told you that she doesn’t want – and in fact is afraid of – a serious relationship, and thus chooses to get involved only with men who are extremely unlikely to be looking for a serious relationship. She’s judgmental about other women who (gasp!) date single guys because on some level she’s aware of how fucked up her own behavior is and thinks criticizing others will make her feel better about her own choices.
Your friend’s got issues, but what you describe doesn’t seem particularly mysterious to me. She’s not trying to “get plenty of quality single men” because that’s not what she wants.
There are women out there who get a real charge out of dating married men as well. I think Dr. Phil had a show about it once. Anyway, these women like stabbing other women in the back. It’s the whole mean girls grow up thing,I guess.
In a small number of states, such a woman could be sued for alieanation of affections. The action is not especially common, because it is not the kind of thing that is usually covered by insurance, and there are rarely enough non-exempt assets to make it worth pursuing.
