Editing Love triangle (section)

===Marital breakup===
When a love triangle results in the breakup of a marriage, it may often be followed by what has been called "the imposition of a 'defilement taboo'...the emotional demand imposed by a jealous ex-mate...to eschew any friendly or supportive contact with the rival in the triangle".{{r|pam1998|p=168}} The result is often to leave children gripped by "shadows from the past...they often take sides. Their loyalties are torn", and – except in the best of cases – "the one left 'injured' can easily sway the feelings of the children against acknowledging this new relationship".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Satir |first=Virginia |url=https://openlibrary.org/books/OL2064856M/The_new_peoplemaking |title=The new peoplemaking |date=1988 |publisher=Science and Behavior Books |isbn=978-0-8314-0070-5 |location=Mountain View, Calif |pages=181–184}}</ref>

As to gender responsibility, evidence would seem to indicate that in [[late modernity]] both sexes may equally well play the part of the "Other Person" – that "men and women love with equivalent passion as well as folly"{{r|pam1998|p=166}} and that certainly there is nothing to "suggest that a man is better able to control himself in a love triangle than a woman".<ref>Copeland, p. 47</ref> Stereotypically, the person at the center of a rivalrous love triangle is a woman, whereas for a split-object love triangle it is a man, due to the same reasons that [[polygyny]] is far more common than [[polyandry]].

Those who find themselves tempted to become the Other Man may, however, still find a cynic's advice from the 1930s pertinent on "the emotional position of the adulterer, and why to avoid it... ''Did I know what a mug's game was? – No. – 'A mug's game,' he told me, 'is breaking your back at midnight, trying to make another man's wife come''{{-"}}.<ref>Legman, pp. 432–433.</ref>