If you’re wondering if no contact works on a married man, this strongly depends on what you mean by “work.”
If work implies a man processing things and communicating with you, no contact probably will work. The guy will likely miss you as a person and have a friendly conversation with you. He might even ask how you are and express the desire to be friends.
However, if you’re hoping that no contact makes the man you like leave his wife and be with you, then no contact might not do that. The man probably won’t leave his long-term partner for you and jump into a relationship with you.
That is known as cheating and monkey-branching and would start a new relationship on cheating terms. It would likely affect the guy’s conscience and your faith in his ability not to cheat and remain faithful.
You must remember that a married man is married for a reason. He’s committed to a relationship and doesn’t want to give up on it. He made an oath to do his best—and he’s doing just that.
If he comes to you, it will be when he’s certain the relationship with his wife isn’t working and that he deserves happiness in life. That’s when he will look for new romantic partners to fill the void.
You could be the person he replaces his wife with provided that his wife hurts him, makes him uncomfortable, starves him for validation, love, or closure, or for some reason makes him want to feel important.
You made a certain impression on him when you still communicated. And if that impression was good, you could be the first person he contacts and wants to be with when his marriage falls apart.
But trust me when I say this; you don’t want to be that person.
You may not see it right now because you’re attracted and attached to him, but you don’t want to be the person who destroyed someone’s marriage.
You want him to focus on his marriage and choose you only when you’re his only option. As long as you’re tempting him to abandon his partner and focus on feeling good with you, you’re seducing him with quick fixes that are the opposite of what a healthy marriage is all about.
Marriage requires relationship-solving skills, perseverance, and a lifetime commitment. Discarding marriage and choosing someone else afterwards is just plain wrong. It throws away a bond and makes the person who gives up regress maturity-wise.
Put yourself in his spouse’s shoes and ask yourself. Would you want someone to do the same to your husband? Would you be okay with that person getting in between you and your partner and looking for the perfect timing to break up your marriage and steal your husband?
You probably wouldn’t want that. You’d expect that person to respect your marriage and find someone who doesn’t have a ring on his finger.
It doesn’t matter if they’re happily married or struggling. Those are just excuses people use to justify their immoral deeds. If he’s married and they’re still together, they’re actively or passively working on their relationship.
You need to respect that, let their relationship be, and if you want love, find a person who is available to date.
The only exception is if the guy is married but not in a relationship. If he’s working on divorce and doesn’t live and sleep with his partner, it might be okay to pursue a relationship with him.
Just keep in mind that since you have to resort to no contact, the guy probably isn’t emotionally ready for a new relationship just yet.
He’s either trying to get back together with his partner or doesn’t like you or get along with you. Either way, no contact is probably the right thing to do.
So if you want to know if no contact works on a married man, the first thing you need to do is ask yourself why you want it to work on a married man. The guy is clearly taken, so a relationship with him would not only be immoral but also difficult.
Even if he slept with you and told you how great you were, his focus at the moment is on his spouse. He’s trying to get things back to normal with his spouse.
Your relationship with him shouldn’t have progressed this far. You shouldn’t have flirted, slept together, or bonded the way you did.
Because you did, you have no choice but to go no contact and let the guy focus on his partner. If you ignore my advice and pursue a romantic or sexual relationship with him, you’ll be seen as a homewrecker and a person who couldn’t control his or her urges.
You need to remember that there are plenty of available men out there and that you should look for someone you don’t have to do no contact on for him to find you attractive and be with you. You should look for someone who can give you what you need straight from the get-go.
In this article, we talk about whether no contact works on a married man and discuss how you can get into a relationship with a married man virtuously.
Can a relationship with a married man work?
I’m not saying a relationship with a married man can’t work. Many married/taken men cheat on their partners, get together with someone else, and have decent relationships with them despite starting new relationships after cheating.
But if you or your partner consider yourselves moral people, you’ll most likely have a hard time forgiving yourselves for what you’ve done. Your guilty conscience will plague your partner’s mind for months or years and will make you doubt your partner’s loyalty.
I personally know people who live in fear of being cheated on because of this. They’re constantly reminded that what they did to their previous partners could happen to them as well.
Guilt, shame, and trepidation are essentially their karma. They pay for their immoral deeds with fear, unhealthy reminders, and uncertainty. They may eventually deal with guilt, but until they’ve accepted their behavior and forgiven themselves, they’ll be forced to suffer.
So although a relationship with a married man can work, you probably don’t want to live with the consequences of cheating/destroying a marriage. You want to start a relationship on healthy terms, preferably with someone whose partner isn’t attached and committed to him.
If you try to have a relationship with a married man despite my warning, you could experience a variety of issues.
You could notice that the man:
- isn’t over his wife (emotionally ready) yet
- has a lot of anger inside
- feels extremely relieved and unprepared for a serious commitment
- has relationship lessons to learn and work on
- has emotionally or physically cheated on his wife with you
- feels guilty for betraying his wife
It’s also worth mentioning that some cheaters don’t have a guilty conscience. They think that cheating is okay or that it’s not a big deal. You probably want to stay away from such people as they constantly chase the highs in new relationships.
They prioritize their feelings and ignore morality and the need to be better people.
To avoid acknowledging their mistakes, they might say things like:
- our relationship was going to end anyway
- I wasn’t happy
- there was no more love
- we weren’t compatible
- my partner cheated on me first
Keep in mind that a relationship is a relationship and that revenge cheating or unhappiness doesn’t justify cheating. He might convince you that he’s doing his partner a favor, but that’s just not true. A relationship needs to end (on its own) before a new one should begin.
We all know that.
You might also convince yourself that you saved the guy from a narcissistic ex who wasn’t good for him, but that’s also an excuse. You don’t need to save anybody from nobody. An adult man can get out of a relationship on his own if he doesn’t think the relationship has a future.
He can leave, figure out why the relationship ended, and only then start a relationship with someone else.
Moreover, someone who doesn’t feel bad for betraying an ex and having a great time with the new person won’t treat you any better than his ex. His self-centeredness will tell him to focus only on his needs, which will prevent him from caring about your emotions, wants, and problems.
This is especially true if he feels hurt by you or tempted to be with someone else. The less he cares about hurting others, the less he cares about hurting you.
You’ve probably heard that a guy will treat you how he treats others. If he’s happy, he’ll treat you like a queen. And if he’s not happy and associates his unhappiness with you, he’ll treat you poorly (the way he treated his ex).
Although he probably won’t hurt you when he’s infatuated with you, he will do that when problems occur. And problems, are a part of every relationship. Expect the guy’s morality to be put to the test when he gets stressed or tempted to cheat.
It’d be naive to think that you’re special and that he won’t do what he did to others. People behave how THEY want to behave, not how others force them to behave. He’s the only person in the world responsible for his behavior.
The only way a guy who leaves his spouse for you will improve as a person is if he feels extremely bad for what he did and promises himself not to do it again. Guilt is his karma, but it also reminds him that he messed up badly and that he better not mess up again.
You can take a gamble with a guy who cheated on his spouse with you if you want. Just know that it isn’t the healthiest way to start a relationship and that history could repeat itself.
My advice is to be wary of people with no moral conscience. They’ll most likely betray you and celebrate their newfound happiness with the new person.
Here’s when a relationship with a married man could work.
A relationship with a married man can work only if things happen naturally. The current situation with his spouse needs to end before he can redirect his energy to you.
If he forces things because of you, he could experience stressors, difficulties bonding, and lots of frustration. In turn, complications would soon cause another breakup and leave him feeling even less eager to date.
So if you want what’s best for him (not just you), back off and give their relationship room to breathe. He’ll appreciate it and so will you when you understand that you played no part in his relationship.
With that said, let’s now talk about whether no contact can work on a married man.
Does no contact work on a married man?
If the guy is happily married, no amount of silence or ignoring will make the man want to be with you. No contact will just tell the guy that your behavior has changed for some reason. It might make the guy message you or call you to find out what’s changed, but other than that, it won’t force the man to dump his partner for you.
Not unless you had an affair with him because in that case, he could become afraid of losing you and confused about who to be with.
To become confused though, he needs to question his love for his spouse and wonder if monkey-branching to you is worth the consequences (suffering, guilt, etc). You may feel that it is because you don’t have a partner waiting for you at home, but at the moment, the guy is still willing to work on his relationship.
He’s still devoted to his wife and willing to save his marriage.
That’s why the success of no contact depends on many things.
Here are the most important ones:
- how invested he is in you and his relationship
- what he values more (his long-term relationship or a fling/a potential relationship)
- what his moral values are like
- what his relationship with his spouse and you is like
- whether you or his wife pressure and stress him
- how he perceives you
If the guy thinks you’re an angel that came to save him from unhappiness and misery, he could take the bait. He could feel that he’s losing you and contact you to make the transition from his wife to you.
What he does essentially depends on what he wants and who he wants to be with. You need to let him decide on his own so he can make a decision he’s happy with.
Just know that many men won’t leave their wife. They may not be happy or as happy as they’d like to be, but they’re so comfortable that they don’t want to lose what they have with their wife. Oftentimes, they prioritize their kids or assets and stay with their wives for convenience.
If the guy in question doesn’t leave his wife, he either loves her, doesn’t want to hurt her, or enjoys being with her for the relationship perks. Whatever the case may be, you don’t want to push him to leave her. He’ll do it himself if he loves you and wants to be with you.
You just need to stay in no contact and let him take care of it. Your job is to stay away from him and his spouse so they can figure out what to do. If they want to work on the relationship, they can do that.
And if they think there’s too much water under the bridge to fix it, they can quit.
What they do is up to them. You will probably find out what they’ve decided if he contacts you and expresses interest in you.
Under no circumstances should you converse with a married man and do no contact on him just to persuade him to leave his spouse and be with you. That would be extremely unethical and inconsiderate of his feelings and relationship.
Their relationship may be having difficulties but that doesn’t give you the right to meddle with it. If you truly love this person, you have to give him the space and freedom to figure some things out and decide what’s best for him.
No contact is the best thing you can do for the guy to feel respected and take as long as he needs to resolve his problems.
What if the married man is an ex?
If your ex got married after a breakup and you’re thinking of starting no contact to make your ex realize your worth, you’re not the first dumpee to come up with such an idea. Many if not the majority of dumpees start no contact with the intention to reattract their ex.
They wish to trigger their ex’s separation anxiety and force their ex to want them back.
Unfortunately, they tend to forget that dumpers don’t get anxious after the breakup and that dumpees are the ones who experience separation anxiety. They’re the ones who get dumped, so naturally, they’re the ones who miss their ex.
Dumpers need to experience different post-breakup emotions, such as fear, regular anxiety, and uncertainty in order to come back.
In your case, your ex probably won’t experience these emotions anytime soon. Your ex got married (assuming recently), so your ex has just made a commitment to stay faithful and work on the relationship. The only way his relationship will fail is if they take each other for granted and experience relationship issues.
But that could take a lot of time. You don’t have years to wait for that to happen. No one knows if it even will. But you shouldn’t stick around to find out. You deserve more than that.
So if you’re thinking of doing no contact on a married ex, bear in mind that your ex won’t care about your absence very much if at all. Your ex is in a new relationship with a person he loves and will need a lot of time to see his partner and you in a different light.
It’s better for you that you focus on moving on and forget about doing no contact on a married man. Do no contact for yourself (your healing and well-being) rather than your ex.
Does no contact work on a married man? Have you tried it before? Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments section below the post.
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