With my 1st wife, when I found out about her affair/OM...she went straight to saying "you should start dating other women" and inside of me when she said that I was like "I 100% plan to do so". I pretty much started dating right after BD with her and given the sexless marriage, her blatant affair and explicit "permission", I felt absolutely no guilt about dating.
With my current sitch...well only because Miss Sunshine came to me did I consider dating her. She's flaked out so it's a moot point now. Only IF while I'm rolling along to D were some lady to come to me and express an interest in seeing me AND only IF I had a strong mutual interest in her would I be ok with dating before D. I've got many friends who are like "you should start dating/let us set you up" and I guess if they did and there was a mutual interest I'd consider it, BUT right now I'm just truly blah to the whole proactive desire to want to date. I mean I guess once the D is final I will put myself back out there?...eh, but honestly I could see myself being quite a bit longer before I have the desire to go looking. I think a week or so ago I passed my WW in her car with someone in the car. When I mentioned it to some girls at work they were all like "well you two are now a year apart so yeah probably she is seeing someone else". Said in such a matter of fact way that the aspect of "Um we're still married" was not even an issue or thought.
No right or wrong answers on this one. Way too many variables. My gut feeling is that whenever a person is ready within themselves to start dating then that's when it's ok. Each of us must answer for our decisions in life and who am I to tell another what is right and wrong. My biggest concern for anyone would be if dating before divorce were to somehow possibly royally screw you from the legal perspective, then that person must be smart enough to cool it until any ramifications from them starting to date have passed. For so many folks on here who get dragged completely through an amazingly hellish situation of infidelity and have it literally shoved right in their faces I for one could never blame them if they decided to date prior to D. And we always say...work on ourselves, fix ourselves, etc but what if just by chance the WW was the straight crazy one and we were simply the victims of them...how long then must we suffer and put our lives on hold at the cause of their dysfunction?
