What if the love of your life is already married?

As you can probably already tell by the headline, this is going to be quite the controversial one. I have had many back and forth debates with myself about exploring this very issue, but I am usually transparent with you all and never shy away from tough conversation even when some of you respond to let me know what your reservations with an article are.

I come in peace and in no way want to seem like I am encouraging extra marital affairs, but at the same time, I am a realist. We have grown up in and continue to live in a society where a lot of people are stepping out on their significant others in a marriage and a lot of the single public are dating married persons. Which begs the question, how do you navigate such a situation?

That is a question that has plagued me for quite some months now, not because I am dating anyone married but simply out of general curiosity. It is also solely based on the fact that more often than not, you do not choose who you fall in love with, the universe sort of fits all the pieces together for you.

Sometimes you may meet a single and unattached person and other times you may fall for someone already in the throes of holy matrimony. We have been told it is wrong, it is frowned upon, names are called and people are disowned, dismissed and most times left heartbroken.

Yet never have we heard solutions, never have we been told how to leave a relationship like that feelings unscathed, and many times we focus so much on the negative and forget to ask, are the people actually happy?

Was their marriage a mistake and the person they are dating now is their one true soulmate? My main concern is how we move past judgment and initial reactions to a place of possible understanding of the parties involved.

Now, while I acknowledge true love may sometimes blossom at the wrong time, I also know there are lines drawn in the sand. So, I would probably be less understanding of someone who say dated their best friend’s husband or dated and later married his cousin’s wife.

Some things are too damning for even liberal and freethinking me to wrap my head around. But I am human and as such I am not without judgment or bias in certain areas. In certain circumstances, there is no love story you are going to paint for me, wrong is wrong and that is that whereas in others say two perfect strangers I may lean more to understanding the couple and their situation.

I know this is contradictory, but I am sure many of you understand and relate with what I am trying to say.

Infidelity, as I have written about before can be heartbreaking, it destroys a union and the bubble of trust you had come to find joy and peace in is brutally popped.

But if we put infidelity to one side and paint a picture of say a married woman who has not cheated on her husband but knows for a fact she is unhappy with him and has met an individual she feels could potentially be completely happy with is it extremely wrong for her to dip her toe in the water and initiate maybe a conversation? (I am genuinely asking).

We also have to be objective and think about the fact that there is an element of unavailability when you get involved with a married person. A part of them is always going to have somewhere to be another person they are devoted to and when your genuine feelings are involved this might be hard to bear.

There are a lot of conflicting emotions involved, so begs to question whether it is really worth it. But in the off chance that it is, are we writing it off too early because of how society tells us to feel on the matter?