Having said all that, I do understand men and women are different – so perhaps it is possible for men to compartmentalise to the extent they can connect with a woman even though they still have a spouse or significant other in the picture … ???
From everything I've read here--and witnessed while my H had his own MLC emotional affair--men aren't so different from women in this respect. It's only possible for them to have one strong emotional connection at the time, and they have to hold off/distance themselves from their spouse/affair partner when they are with the other.
I think it's easily possible for people to be in love with more than one person at a time (I can just hear DQ responding "of course YOU can, you're a monster"). What parent isn't capable of loving more than one of their children at the same time. I find it hard to believe that romantic love is somehow naturally wired differently so we can be romantically in love with only one person at a time. I think it's what happens when people are "confused" and "in the fog" when they are in love with two people at the same time, and SOCIETY and THEIR SPOUSES say it's NOT OK. That's the reason I think people feel they cannot be in love with more than one person at a time, because it requires deception and dishonesty when it's not an open situation, and jealousy too (not that children aren't jealous of a parent's love for a sibling, but society thinks that's OK).
So, bunk. Both men and women are capable of being truly in love with more than one person at a time. It's just that they feel it's WRONG, that's all.
