215: Secretly Dating While You’re Married

Hi everyone, I’m Dr. Marie Murphy and I’m a non-judgmental infidelity coach.  If you are cheating on your partner, or having an affair, or engaging in anything you think counts as infidelity, I can help you deal with your feelings, clarify what you want, and make decisions about what you’re going to do.  No shame, no blame, no judgments.  A lot of the so-called advice that’s out there for people who are cheating is little more than thinly veiled judgment, but that’s not what I provide.  I give you guidance and support that respects the fullness of your humanity, and the complexity of your situation.  No matter what you’re doing.  When you’re ready to resolve your infidelity situation in a way that’s truly right for you, I can help you do it.  There are two ways you can have me as your coach.  We can work together one-on-one via Zoom, or you can enroll in my self-guided course, You’re Not the Only One.  To get started with either of these options, go to my website, mariemurphyphd.com.

All right.  Today we are going to talk about a thing that some people do, which is test the waters by secretly dating while they are still married.   

Sometimes clients who are married will come to me and say something along the lines of, “Okay, I’m married, and I’m pretty sure I want to get divorced, but I’m not COMPLETELY sure, and I don’t think I’m going to be able to decide whether or not I want to stay married unless I date other people for a while, and see what else is out there.  I want to know what my prospects look like before I decide whether I want to get divorced or not.”

Sometimes people explain their desire to do this by saying, “Well, I haven’t really dated in a while!  It’s been years since I’ve been out there, dating people as a single person.  I have no idea what that’s like!  Maybe I THINK I want to leave my marriage, but what if I do that, and then I find out that the dating scene is crazy and I can’t meet anybody and then I really regret leaving my spouse?  So obviously the solution is for me to stay married AND date other people.  THEN I’ll be able to figure out what I want to do about my marriage.”  That’s how some people think about their situation.

And I will tell you that some people think this is a really good strategy for figuring out what they want to do about their love life!  If your marriage is good in some respects, you may be having a really hard time deciding whether or not you want to leave the relationship.  And if you’re excited about meeting new people but also terrified that dating might be weird in all kinds of ways and ultimately unsatisfying to you, it can SEEM like testing the waters a little while you’re still married makes excellent sense.  It can seem like staying married, AND dating other people is a very practical, pragmatic solution to the perceived problems.  

To be clear, when I see people doing this, they’re dating other people without telling their spouse that they’re dating people, and they are not telling the people who they’re dating that they’re married.  And to some people, this seems like a perfect solution: you get to see what’s out there in the land of dating without relinquishing the safety net of your marriage.

Before I go any further, I want to clarify something.  What I’m describing is different from people consciously deciding that they want to stay married, AND they also want to secretly engage in infidelity, and perhaps for the long haul.  They aren’t intentionally deciding to stay married and also cheat.  That is a thing, but that’s a different thing.  What we’re talking about today is what happens when people think they need to date other people, while they are still married, in order to decide whether they want to stay married or not.  They’re doing this on a trial basis – at least in theory.  And, to reiterate, they’re doing this without informing any of the parties they’re involved with of what they’re up to.

Now theoretically, you COULD do something like this, but you could make some slight adjustments so that the whole thing is a little more kosher.  You could tell your spouse, hey, I want a non-monogamous separation for six months.  I want to be able to date people!  I’m not sure where I am in regards to our marriage, and in order to decide how I want to proceed with our marriage, I want to experience dating for a while.  And then you could go out and date people, and you could tell the people you date that you’re doing a trial separation with your spouse.

But some people don’t want to do that, because for them, that would defy the whole purpose of dating while they stay married.  The whole point is that they don’t want to rock the boat that is their marriage!  They want their bird in the hand!  And they also want their two or more in the bush.

And on the one hand, I am completely sympathetic to this desire.  A lot of people really don’t want to give up the safety and security they derive from their marriage, or their committed relationship… but they are also deeply ambivalent about that relationship!  And at the same time, they really like the idea of dating new people, or meeting someone new and great, but they’re also kind of freaked out about what dating will actually be like, or whether or not they’ll meet anyone they connect with.  And a lot of people don’t know how to wrassle with these competing fears and desires, and so they end up doing all sorts of interesting things.  Like secretly dating people while they’re still married.

So even though I am sympathetic to the reasons why people do this, I will tell you that what I do see, over and over, is that when people attempt to date while they’re still married, things can get annoyingly complicated, and sometimes very quickly.  And I’ll talk about what that can look like in a moment, but before I do, let me just be very transparent and tell you that when I have clients who are telling me they want to secretly date people in the service of making a decision about their marriage, I try to talk them out of it.  And one of the reasons why is because if you want to make a decision about your marriage, you have to be willing to make a decision about your marriage.  That is a distinct task, and if you avoid it, you’re not going to make a decision about your marriage.  That sounds tautological because it is tautological!  If you want to make a decision about your marriage, you need to do that.  Secretly dating while you’re still married is not going to make that decision for you.  Will it somehow help you make that decision?  I am not going to tell you that it’s impossible, but I will tell you that I have yet to see it happen.  

So now all of my cards are on the table.  I have yet to see a client who secretly dates people while they are still married find that doing that helps them make a decision about their marriage.

But I continue to see clients who think that secretly dating people while they are still married IS the way for them to go, so when I work with folks who are doing this, I encourage them to be very honest with themselves about what they are attempting to accomplish.  

So for starters, when someone tells me they want to secretly date other people before they make a decision about their marriage, I ask them why they don’t just make a decision about their marriage.  I point out that if they ultimately want to make that decision, they might just want to _make that decision_, without distracting themselves with a whole bunch of dating drama.  And if the issue is that making the decision about the marriage seems hard, why not just do the hard thing and get it done, so you don’t have a hard thing to do lurking in the future?

But of course, sometimes people DO just want to put the hard thing off.  Sometimes secretly dating instead of making a decision about their marriage seems a lot more fun to someone, and they cannot be talked out of doing that.  That’s one thing.

ANOTHER thing, though, is that sometimes people are CONVINCED that having more information will help them make a decision about whether they want to stay married or not.  

And I actually think that whether or not having more information about “what else is out there” can help you make a decision about your marriage is debatable.  But I’m not going to get into that right now.  What I want to stress is that when I get to this point with a client, this is where I ask them, “Okay, what exactly do you want to learn by dating?  What specific information are you seeking?  What would you need to investigate or assess through dating in order to make a decision about whether you want to stay married or not?”

And often, folks give me some pretty vague answers to those questions.  They just want to see what it’s like!  They just want to explore the realm of dating and see what happens!  They want to see if there’s anyone out there who they’re attracted to!  They want to see if there’s anyone out there who is attracted to them!  

And beyond that, they want some sort of unmistakable proof that staying married is a great idea, or that getting divorced is a great idea.  They want their dating experiences to make the decision of whether or not they want to stay married for them.

But here’s what often – not always, but often – happens instead.

The person who is married puts up a profile on a dating app.  Or on a few dating apps!  And I’m not talking about Ashley Madison.  I’m talking about dating apps for people who are ostensibly single.  And they present themselves as single!  

And then lo and behold, they start matching with people on the dating apps!  And, as some of you may know very well, getting into the dating apps can be like developing a crack habit.  You might not get all of the physical consequences of a crack habit, but you get a lot of the psychological ones.  You may become OBSESSED with the apps and chatting with all of the new an interesting people who pop up on the screen of your device.  And that isn’t NECESSARILY a terrible thing – although then again it just might be – BUT if what you think you are doing by testing the dating waters is making a decision about your marriage, let’s all be really clear about something.  Getting all obsessed with dating apps is not how you make a decision about your marriage.  Sorry, not sorry.  And I’m going to say it again for emphasis.  Getting all obsessed with dating apps is not how you make a decision about your marriage.  Making a decision about your marriage is how you make a decision about your marriage.  

And then, beyond the apps, there’s the matter of actually going on dates, and meeting the humans you’ve matched with in real life!  And this can be the source of much excitement and consternation and ups and downs and highs and lows and surprises of all kinds.  And again, this isn’t necessarily a terrible thing!  This is a pretty common experience of dating.  Sometimes it’s great!  Sometimes it’s not!  Sometimes it’s really weird!  Sometimes it’s boring!  Sometimes it’s exciting!  Sometimes you meet wonderful people!  Sometimes you meet people who are not so wonderful!  All of that.  

And theoretically, simply experiencing that could be very instructive.  If you knew that you just wanted to test the waters and try dating out, and just have some sense of what it’s like, getting out there and meeting some people and going on some dates could give you all of the information and experience you were seeking.

But the problem is that a lot of people don’t know specifically what kind of information or experience they are seeking!  They don’t have a clear agenda.  They aren’t conducting a clearly defined research project.  They’re just fucking around to see what they find out.  And when we do that, several things tend to end up happening.

The first is that the person who is married and dating doesn’t assess their experiences in any deliberate or systematic way.  They don’t know what they’re looking for, and that’s one problem, but they also don’t examine their experiences to systematically consider what they have found or learned or discovered through their dating experiences.  And that’s a problem!  If you’re just collecting data willy nilly and you aren’t analyzing it AT ALL, you aren’t doing research.  And if you’re telling yourself that you’re secretly dating to learn some things but you aren’t specific about what you’re trying to learn, and you aren’t assessing what you are in fact learning, then that might be a problem.  Or at least, it isn’t much of a solution!  

Now, when I’m working with a client who is doing this, I push them to start to get a little more intentional about clarifying what exactly they are learning from their dating adventures, and deciding what they want to do with that information.  For example, if they meet someone they really like, what does that mean to them?  Is that enough proof that it’s possible to meet someone they’re excited about, and want to pursue a relationship with?  Or is it an indication of something else?  Do they have enough information to wrap up their research project?  Or if they need more, how much more?  And to what end? 

Even if you had very little of what you were looking for when you STARTED your secret dating project, you can always start to refine your idea of what you’re looking for as your dating project progresses.  And I always push people to take responsibility for that.  If you’re not taking responsibility for assessing what you’re learning, you’re just creating opportunities for your life to become more complicated.  

To that effect, here's the second thing that often ends up happening when people who are married start dating other people without having much of a plan: they meet people who start to really like them!  Sometimes multiple people at once!  People who were terrified of never finding anyone who they would experience mutual attraction with go from being convinced they could never find anyone to having to juggle multiple interested parties in a matter of days, sometimes.

And if you’re really clear about what you’re trying to learn from your secret dating project, this might be a great outcome.

But in the absence of having a clear understanding of what you’re doing, suddenly having multiple people who are interested in you can be as much of a curse as a blessing.

Here’s an example of what this can look like.  If you have stated on your dating profile that you are single, but you are in fact still married, it is entirely possible that the people you are matching with and then seeing in real life are going to expect certain things from you, which you may not be able to deliver on.  For example, maybe they expect that you’ll be able to spend the weekend with them.  At a moment’s notice.  Because why not, right?  Isn’t that a nice thing for people who have just met and are starting to like each other to do?  If you have the means, it’s nice to whisk someone off for a surprise weekend getaway, is it not?  For some people it is!  Right?  So what do you do in that situation?  Tell the person you’re dating that you just tested positive for COVID and can’t leave the house or see anyone?  Tell your spouse that you have to go away on an emergency business trip?  For some people, that works fine – but if your job doesn’t involve travel, or if you don’t HAVE a job, this might be a little trickier to pull off.

Unless your spouse is comopletely checked out of your marriage, you may find that finding ways to secretly date people while you’re married is really tough.  For a while, figuring out how to manage your dating life and keep it a secret might be kind of fun.  But you may not find it fun indefinitely.  

And figuring out how to keep your dating life a secret from your spouse is just ONE of the challenges you’re likely to encounter if you’re secretly dating while you’re still married.  Another thing you may have to contend with is the question of what to do when someone you’ve just started dating starts developing feelings for you?  And the question of what to do if you also start developing feelings for them!  Remember, the person you’re dating thinks you’re single.  But you aren’t!  Not yet, anyway.  So what the hell do you do when your new person starts talking about a future with you?  Or does any number of other things that two single people who are starting to really like each other do when their relationship seems to be progressing nicely?  How do you handle the progression of a relationship?  

What I see is that people who are dating while they’re still married have a rather hard time answering these kinds of questions!  They got into the whole dating thing without thinking much about what might happen, or what their objectives were, and they never anticipated that they might find themselves in this sort of a situation – that is, having caught feelings, as they say, for someone.  What do you do if you start dating someone on a whim, and then you start to really care for them?  Do you tell them that you’re married?  Do you come up with ever more elaborate ruses to pretend that you aren’t married?  Do you just break up with your new person?  Do you attempt to divorce your spouse in 48 hours or less so that you’re free to date your new person without that whole marriage thing holding you back?  Do you decide to get divorced, and get that process underway, and THEN decide to tell your new person that you’re actually in the process of getting divorced, and oh, oops, sorry you didn’t mention that initially?

Dealing with these kinds of questions can really complicate your life!

Ethical considerations aside, there are a lot of practical challenges associated with lying to multiple people.  If you’re dating multiple people who all think you’re single, and if you’re also still married to someone who thinks you’re in a monogamous relationship with them, you’ve got a lot to manage.

And what I want you to ask yourself is, do you really want to deal with all of that?  On a purely practical level, do you really want to have to navigate all of that relationship stuff?  I want you to answer that question consciously and honestly.  

It’s important to be aware that if you’ve never experienced any dating-related drama or relationship related drama, or you haven’t experienced those things in a long time, you might kind of like dealing with all of the craziness!  It might be kind of fun and exciting – even if in a torturous way – to have a messy, crazy, complicated relationship life for a minute.  It might be really, really gratifiying to have five people who are dying to get to know you better, while you also have a devoted spouse at home who’s happy to see you at the end of every day.  It’s totally human to relish all of that, even if creating this kind of a situation comes with the potential for some very significant pragmatic hassles.  And of course, comes with some ethical questions.

On that note, let’s all remember that even if we are totally allowed to be our messy, human selves – even if being our messy, human selves is all we can do – we may want to remember that if we are secretly dating while we’re married, other people may not like what we’re up to, if they find out about it.  And we may care about these people who might find out about what we’re up to and not like it!  And it’s important to remember that our little dating project isn’t just about us.  We may think it’s just about us!  We may think that we can do what we want to do without anybody finding out, or anybody getting hurt, and maybe you can pull that off.   But that isn’t guaranteed.  And it’s easy to forget about that when you’re totally caught up in the excitement and drama of starting up a secret dating project.  It’s easy to get focused on other things.  This doesn’t make you a bad person or a narcissist or a sociopath or a psychopath.  When we get super focused on some things, we may not be aware of or attentive to other things.  That’s just a normal part of the human experience.  

So I want to be clear that I am not scolding you for wanting to secretly date people while you’re married, and I’m not shaming you for getting caught up in what is exciting for you about your secret dating project.  And, it’s important to rememember that the people who are involved in your secret dating project are people too.  And they didn’t consent to being part of your experiment.  

One of the more universal aspects of the human experience that wanting to secretly date while we’re still married so vividly illustrates is that we often want to know for sure how something is going to go before we commit to any particular course of action.  We want to know that something is going to be okay before we give up our other options.  But the irony is that sometimes we HAVE to give up all of our other options in order to give a given option the chance of working out!  

For instance, being married will probably put a significant damper on your dating life!  You won’t be able to fully find out what dating is like unless you make yourself fully available to date.  Simultaneously, dating will probably serve as a very effective distraction from rigorously evaluating your marriage, and actively deciding whether you want to stay married or not.  So in your pursuit of two objectives, it’s possible that you won’t accomplish either one.  Or you won’t fully accomplish either one.

So what’s the solution here?  Well, if you are hell-bent on secretly dating while you’re married, I encourage you to get really clear about what you want!  Do you really want to make a decision about your marriage?  If so, do you really think you need to date before you can make that decision?  If you do, I encourage you to get REALLY clear about what you want to learn from dating, and how exactly that will help you make a decision about your marriage.

So for instance you might say, “Okay, what I want to know is, are there people in my geographic area who I consider to be potentially eligible partners?”  That’s a start, but then you have to define what counts as an eligible partner.  And then you’re going to have to decide how you will know such a person when you see them.  This is not impossible to do!  But it does take more effort than simply saying, “Well, I’m just going to date a little bit and see what happens” takes.  Great news, though – a little more effort upfront can save you a LOT of hassle on the other end!

There are more things I encourage you to get clear on if you plan on dating while you’re still married.  For instance, how long are you going to let your experiment last?  What other parameters are you going to set on the whole thing?  My general recommendation is to think really clearly about what you’re doing and how you’re going to do it, if you are going to secretly date while you are still married.  And if you want to date while you’re still married and you want my help thinking through the specifics of how you’re going to carry out your mission, schedule yourself an introductory coaching session with me, and we can talk about you’re doing and what you’re trying to accomplish and how to make your experiement as successful as possible, on your terms. 

Another solution, is to get really clear on what exactly you hope to get out of secretly dating while you’re still married, and then consider other means of accomplishing what you’re trying to accomplish that are less complicated, and less likely to be fraught with compounding problems.  

For example, as I mentioned earlier, if you really want to date other people before deciding what to do about your marriage, you could ask your spouse for a non-monogamous separation.  You could put yourself in a position to date more freely and honestly, and with less of a tether to your marriage.  This would allow you to get more out of the experience of dating, and it would allow you to get a better sense of what not being married would be like.  You might not like certain things about this arrangement – for instance, you might not like the idea of asking your spouse for a non-monogamous separation!  But being willing to do the uncomfortable things now might make it a lot easier to actually get something useful out of your dating adventures, and it might make the whole endeavor a lot less stressful on the whole.  

And that is just about it for today.  If you are ready to start navigating your infidelity situation in a way that’s truly right for you, let’s get to work.  The rest of your life, beyond the drama and difficulties of your infidelity situation, is waiting for you!  Why wait any longer to start living the love life/sex life/relationship life that you truly want to be living?  When you’re ready for some relief and a clear path forward, there are two ways you can have me as your non-judgmental infidelity coach.

You can enroll in my awesome self-guided course, You’re Not the Only One.  Or if you want my personalized attention, we can work together one-on-one via Zoom.  To get started with either of these options, go to my website, mariemurphyphd.com.

Thank you all so much for listening.  Bye for now.