Yeah, I think one should try to observe what we might call a social contract here–you don’t go around trying to break up relationships, and other people won’t generally go around trying to break up your relationships.
In my view, there is a bright line and that is marriage – an unambiguous social and legal signal regarding a couple’s intentions. If they aren’t married or engaged to be married then in my view you are well within your moral rights to snatch away if you can.
I’m not sure what we’re talking about here. If you’re sneaking around and sabotaging an existing relationship, that’s one thing…but if you’re being yourself and there’s an attraction, I see nothing wrong with seeing the person. That’s what dating is all about! It’s not up to you to break up with someone else’s significant other. It’s up to them to lay out the terms of the relationship with whoever they’re seeing. Your responsibility is to determine if you want to date someone exclusively or give them space to play the field and find out who they want to be with or whatever.
I personally do not tend to express attractions to people in monogamous relationships; in practical terms, this means “people in relationships” unless they have given me reason to believe those relationships are not closed. I tend to feel that it’s burdening our friendship with unnecessary information, since I will respect the parameters of other people’s relationships and thus will not be acting on any such attraction in any case. If it comes up in conversation, then whatever, but I’m not going to induce it to come up in conversation.
I have no problem with it. It’s up to the person in a relationship to set limits, not the other person. I have a problem with “steal” in this context–what, the person in a relationship is being forced to have sex or whatever against his/her will? I wouldn’t want to date anyone who is so weak minded that he would leave me for some flirty bimbo. Also, if successful, the other person would do well to keep in mind that if it happened once, it’ll happen again
I certainly don’t agree, living in a LTR myself without benefit of marriage or a ring. But again, if the partner can be snatched, the relationship wasn’t strong in the first place.
Unless the person is married, I don’t see what’s so unethical about it. If you’re interested in someone, you try to persuade them to see you. Why be so hands off just because someone is already in the picture? The whole point of the dating game is for two people to find each other fall in love. Maybe the person who is in the relationship is continuing it just because it’s easier than getting out, and they’re heart isn’t really in it. How would you know if you didn’t try?
Again, I agree that married couples are off limits. But short of that, I don’t understand why you need to stay away just because there’s some sort of pre-existing relationship there.
I’ve done this before. It never ends well. The best that can happen is a great first date followed by “I’m seeing somebody” (translation: “Good try, sonny, but he’s more man than you”). :rolleyes:
I don’t generally go on a date with someone unless I’m pretty good friends with them (the exceptions I made to this both ended horribly), so I’m a bit more serious than most people might be by the time I go on a date with someone. I guess it would be OK if it weren’t a situation like that.
I think it depends on whether the person is happy with their relationship. Sometimes, it’s because the person in the relationship **doesn’t know **what a healthy relationship looks like. This was definitely the case with my sister.
She was in a horrible marriage for a long time and had two kids with this guy. They yelled at each other a lot.
She met someone “shortly after” they filed for divorce (You’re free to make your own assumptions). though she didn’t end up with that particular person, the next guy she dated was a prince. And is. He proposed in front of all of us on Christmas Day a couple years ago and are now happily married. Though I can’t speak for what the kids went through as the divorce was coming about, I can say from spending time with them that they’re averagely-happy well-adjusted kids.
I think it’s wise to leave happy successful relationships alone. Especially if the third person is only in it for the physical and not the devotional.
But if a person isn’t happy in their relationship, and it takes a connection with a new person to illustrate what a happy relationship looks like, I could argue that one would be doing a greater good by pursuing that relationship.
I’ll have to admit that I have been guilty of the behavior described in the OP - dating a married woman with the intent of seperating her from her husband, and suceeded in doing so. But in my defense, it was an unusual situation. Firstly, the marriage was abusive and unhappy, and everyone except her husband was of the opinion that she’d be better off with nearly anyone else. At the I figured that breaking up that marriage would actually be a good deed, and still think so now. Secondly, our relationship was entierly initiated by her. While we’d been friends for a while and I’d made it clear I liked her, the progression to actual dating and a physical relationship were her doing.
In restrospect, it wasn’t so much trying to steal someone’s SO from them, as being in the right place when their relationship fell apart, and not waiting for the divorce to be legally finalized to start seeing her.
I wouldn’t have done it if they’d not been obviously unhappy, or if she hadn’t initiated things and made it clear that she’d be leaving him soon.
I came here to post the same thing. Steal? If he wants to be with someone else that badly, you can HAVE him. You steal property, not people. You own property, not people.
More and more that I think about it, I’m inclined to agree - go ahead and try to steal them. But the truth is, I don’t think I’d want someone who was stolen. I can see some of the scenarios in this thread, like they were being treated really badly, but then that’s a lot of issues & baggage for me to deal with anyway. In the end, I don’t want someone who’s wooed away so easily…what’s going to keep him with me next time?
My rules: wives are a no-go, not because I feel guilt over a piece of gold but because of the hassle they’ll bring, and if there’s kids then forget about it altogether, it’s not even on the table, I don’t care how milfy it is. Key words in milf being “like to,” not gonna. Fiances are borderline, with no mercy whatsoever for the 1+ year engagment situations, those are fair game. Everyone else is open season unless she’s with your bud or something. My rule of thumb there is, if I wouldn’t loan him my car, then I don’t owe him anything.
If a guy wants to keep his baby, he better treat her better than someone else will. A lesson best learned early.
Better you take my fiancee today than someone else take my wife tomorrow. I’d like to know if my fiancee’s a whore.
Suburban Plankton sort of stole me away from the guy I was seeing when he and I first met. We were in college and I’d been seeing this guy casually for about 3 mos. I’d actually been sort of seeing two guys, but the other one had been recently lured away by another girl.
I don’t think any of us did anything wrong. We were young and in college. We weren’t in long term, committed relationships, but we were dating. It wasn’t a big deal.
If someone is non-exclusively dating, then, well, they’re non-exclusive.
If they’re dating exclusively, which includes marriage, engagement, living together etc., I think it’s disrespectful in the extreme. I don’t really get the ‘marriage as dividing line’ thing -there are so many couples who are in long-term committed relationships that, for whatever reason, just don’t have the piece of paper. What difference does that make?
And yeah, it’s not, like, a mortal sin to pursue someone who’s in a relationship. I think it’s sleazy and, as I said, disrespectful to the relationship and the people in it, but if they’re getting anything other than discouragement from the party in a relationship, that’s sleazy too.
How would you define “treat her better”?
I must confess that I have only skimmed most of the responses so I may be parroting someone but here I go…
It shouldn’t matter.
When I am in a relationship, I couldn’t give a shit whether or not someone tries to woo my girlfriend away from me. I’d be offended if someone did it right in front of me but the way I look at it, if my girlfriend is effectively wooed and leaves me then it wasn’t exactly the strongest relationship in the world.
I guess my answer is that there isn’t anything wrong with it. At the same time, I’m not sure I’d want someone I was able to woo anyway.
This, of course, only applies to people in full fledged relationships, not simply dating.
It doesn’t strike me as an overly ambiguous term, but I might define it as “giving her whatever it is she thinks she wants.” A feeling of romance, better sex, more money, more chemistry, make her laugh, a feeling of emotional or social security…it’s different for everyone.