Indeed it is often the case that pair relations with "outsiders" get started during the engagement. These "outside" affairs received a great deal of public attention during the war and were generally thought of as purely wartime aberrations, but like a good many social phenomena they seemed products of the war because they have been much more visible. In actuality these quasi-subsidiary pair relations have become a typical adjunct of the engaged pair relation.
It must not be imagined, however, that the only pair relations having important consequences for the engaged couple are those with other potential mates. Here again what are commonly supposed to be peculiar attributes of the (in this case, "disloyal") love affairs are for the most part attributes of the dyadic relation itself. A young man engaged to be married may have a strong pair relationship with his mother, his father, a brother or sister, a friend of his own age and sex.
While none of these possibilities represents in our society an appropriate heterosexual love object for him, yet pair relationships with one or more of these will have consequences for relations between his fiancée and himself -- consequences most often not essentially different from those engendered by an outside love affair. The pair relationship between any persons tends typically to have an exclusive, all-or-none quality with respect to the emotions and loyalties of the two people. Hence the coexistence of another pair relationship involving only one of the partners tends to constitute a threat to each relation unless and until some form of accommodation is evolved.
