Have any of you married your "lover"?

[MoreSpamThanGlam]

What I mean is, have you been the other woman and he left and then you got married?

Or have you/are you the other woman?

AND - does this mean that you are a troll of the relationship type (marriage wrecker/evil queen).

[LolaTheShowgirl]

Nah, was the other woman....I didn't know...he lied all along saying he lived with his mother when his mother was actually his long time girlfriend and her teenage children! He always said he would leave her if I just hung on til the right time...hmm, no thanks! and if you're wondering this for yourself, just remember...once a cheat, always a cheat!

[MoreSpamThanGlam]

Not really wondering for myself - I was the other woman and we were married for 10 years.

I left him (failed business constant fighting blah blah).

Im just tired of it always being the other woman that is the evil cow and he is poor delusion soul who clearly lost his marbles for a short time.

his ex was a miserable pinch faced sour old cow and remains so to this day - I knew her at school, she was a cow then.

[Rhubarb]

So her being a cow means that she deserved her dh cheating on her with you then?

[MoreSpamThanGlam]

No she didnt deserve that at all. Thats not what I am saying. But they were both miserable ( she has even said that it was relief to be out of relationship).

She was cow regardless of him.

[LolaTheShowgirl]

I do think that if a woman fully knows a man is married or in a relationship, she is a bitch. If I would've known ex was living with a woman and in a relationship with her I honestly wouldn't have touched him with a bargepole and still won't now that he says he is single. I really think it is so disgusting when women are with men that are taken...why??? Even more shitty when children are involved.

[ingles2]

god ...difficult one this...
yes, I was the other woman and yes we have now been happily married for 10 years with 2 dcs
Am I troll, probably, but I did try not to be, including moving to a different continent to get away from him and the situation,.

[Peachy]

I was sort of- I was enegaged although I called it off pretty quickly after meeting DH (had agreed to elave it until post christmas as Dh and I got together in December but coulodn't quite manage it, not a natural cheater)

Whilsta dmitting it's wrong, Ia lso think it was for the best- I have a Dh I love as opposed to a divorce as I would have if I had married ex, and Ex is married to a female equivalent of himself (private educated, mattching mercs etc)- far better all round.

[Magdelanian]

I met a married man and he left his wife 5 weeks after to be with me. We got engaged 6 months later but the relationship only lasted 3 years in total. I hated the upset I'd caused to his wife and it did put a stain on our relationship. However, she'd also been the other woman in the beginning and their affair lasted much longer and he left 3 (almost) babies to be with her.

Shows what goes around comes around and the sort of man he was. I did feel guilty, she moved on in no time but continued to give us tremendous grief. I'm now alone and sometimes wish I'd been easier on myself.

[MoreSpamThanGlam]

I just dont think anyone (unless they really are said bitch) sets out to have affair with married man. I just think friendships can develope - and I also tried several times to end relationship and tbh i dont regret a thing. Bitch I must be - ho hum.

[Rhubarb]

But surely you must know that a fair number of Mumsnetters have been married to bastards who have cheated? Starting a thread like this is just courting controversy. May I ask what the point of it was? To ask if anyone has married their lover? I don't think so, by your own admission, you are not now together. It just smacks of boasting and trying to start something controversial tbh.

If you do meet a married man, surely it would be better to remain friends until he ended it? Ideal world yes, but whilst he is married, he is not yours to have. Of course he is just as much to blame, but if you are single then you don't have as much to lose. It seems rather callous to begin a relationship with a man you know has a wife. It makes you as bad as him. Deceitful and untrustworthy.

[mysonsmummy]

i was listening to bbc london the other day. a woman was on there who had been the 'other women'. she said she had told people 'he will never do it to me' , 'we are special' yeah right - he cheated on her a few years later. i had a chuckle to myself - not sure why.

[Hecate]

I think you did well to last 10 yrs really. IME, very few relationships which began as affairs stand a chance, tbh.

Very many people who cheat with and then marry the person they've cheated with, seem to have 'grass is greener' syndrome. When things are not 100% rosy in their relationship, they look outside instead of inside & latch onto someone who looks like a better offer.

So when the next relationship goes from thudding passion to dull reality, instead of working on it, they start looking for the next green patch and it starts all over again.

Of course, there are always exceptions, but the majority really are GIGS! They want the adoration and the fantasy!

If someone is unhappy with their catch, they should not cast their net again before throwing what they have back into the ocean! That's just cowardly, imo.

[LaDiDaDi]

I had an affair with now dp when I was married.

Looking back exh and I shouldn't have got married at all and I think that I knew this but didn't know how to get myself out of the situation, was very young and stupid. Dp gave me a way out.

I do regret the tremendous hurt that I caused to exh and our families. It was also a very upsetting time for me and I really didn't know what I wanted/what would be the best thing to do for a long time.

DP and I are now happy together and I recently bumpbed into exh and his new wife which made me realise that actually there was no way that our marriage would have survived even without the affair. We were just not right for each other.

So in short I don't regret the outcome but I do regret the pain that I caused to others. I wouldn't have an affair ever again, not only because I adore dp but because I couldn't go through, or put anyone else through, that hell again.

[luckymumto4]

Yes

We are still together now and still very very happy.

It's not something that I'm proud of but also something that I don't regret either as we wouldn't be so happy now. We fell very deeply in love and that hasn't changed despite being together a long time now.

[Tamz77]

My dad was a womaniser in his prime (8 kids by 5 different women, no less) and although he has always done his utmost to support all children (and most of the girlfriends) both emotionally and financially, I think both men and mistresses often underestimate how much adultery can ruin the injured party. My mother for example never had another relationship after my father, thus she's been alone since the early 1980s. The lies and stress were simply too much for her to deal with the prospect of ever having to face that again. I for one would hate to be a party to that. Also, how do those of you who have been 'the other woman' ever fully trust a partner who's cheated on his wife? That's the bit I'd find hard.

Having said that, the fact is that people can change. I'd guess that most adulterers initially get married with every intention of it being a lifelong commitment while most mistresses never plan to end up as mistresses. These things happen, if when the situation occurs you can sort it out in an adult way with sensitivity and honesty, that's sometimes the best you can hope for.

[Peachy]

I imagine situations var much like anything else and there are degrees of 'badness' just like anything else- if you meet someone and then end your existing relationship its not good (worse so if kids involved) but not half as duplicitous as if you carry it on secretly for years, or repeat the behaviours.

Tamz- had to look twice at your post! My dh's grandad had 8 kids by 7 women, although he will only acknowledge the two born in wedlock (and not one of them these days- that family is given to feuding!). Nobody knows exactly what happened, but DH's Grandmother seems to have snapped one day, and left her two small childrena nd vanished, only being located 60 years later, by which time she anted no contact with her daughters (MIL spent a year in a care home then her dad took her back, albeit as live in slave from what i can see although MIL sees it differently).

[GryffinGirl]

tricky one - no experience of being OW myself, but my dad was (is?) a serial adulterer and my boss, so seen it at very close hand.

what hecate says "So when the next relationship goes from thudding passion to dull reality, instead of working on it, they start looking for the next green patch and it starts all over again"

My boss left his DW and six month old DD for one of our colleagues. Two children and five years later with DW#2, he's told me often that he's bored of domesticity, that DW#2 is boring, too caught up in kids to notice him, isn't the woman she was, is fat etc. Lo and behold he's taken up with another colleague . That was my dad's pattern (and my aunt's come to think of it)

[HappyWoman]

Sorry to but in but i do blame the ow actually - not for the affair as such but because she already knows he is a liar but still carries on and then makes out the wife must be mad to stand by him - and yet it ok for her to stand by a man she knows to be a cheat - at least the wife can say she didnt know all the facts.

What i hate more is the way the ow 'wants' to believe that he must have a crap relationship at home - i think it is a fundemental fault in some men they just dont know how good they have it at home and want to escape the 'boring' bits and just enjoy the exciting sex.

Well i have been the 'stupid' wife and i would have loved to have the time to throw my knickers off and give my h a good seeing to as the ow did but i choose to stay and look after my family duties and did not get a childminder/housekeeper to do my dirty chores whilst i was off thinking i was doing a service to him.

Sorry rant over

That is not to say that it can work out i just think too many people see it as romantic thing and not the reality.

Anyway arent all our partners our lovers before we marry them and hopefully still are after the ceremony too?!!

[NKF]

I'm sure that lots of marriage begin as affairs.

[luckymumto4]

Happywoman

I do so agree with a lot of your points, and in fact as strange as this may sound one of the things that made me fall in love with my oh was the fact that he never ever bad mouthed his (now ex)wife.

I do also think that these situations can be so varied, I think what a lot of people have said about the grass being greener and the excitment is true in lot of cases (although not in ours, we just fell in love, we have the usual life with kids now but are still blissfully happy). I also think though that it's difficult to generalise too much, some men might be constantly looking for the next new exciting woman or one night stand, others have long term affairs with one woman etc etc

As for my OH I honestly don't think he would cheat again, things happened so intensly and so quickly with us, he left his wife very soon after we had started things and was genuinly racked with guilt. He knew he wanted to leave to be with me but he found the whole situation so hard for every one involved that I'm pretty sure it's not something he would ever repeat.

Oh and one more thing (so sorry for going on!)is that it's very hard to judge without knowing the entire situation and people very rarely do. My OH took full responsibility for the breakup of his marriage, he tried to do anything he could to make things easier for his ex (finacially and time wise) he expected people to stop speaking to him over it and as I said earlier he felt enormous guilt, then we found out that his ex had been cheating on him for a very long time!

Things aren't always as they seem

[macdoodle]

"As for my OH I honestly don't think he would cheat again"
yes well I honestly never ever thought my H would cheat on me nor many others on here...and our relationship started in honesty and trust...

[luckymumto4]

Absolutely macdoodle, I quite agree hence why I didn't say my OH would never cheat

I don't think anyone would be with or marry someone if they believed that they would cheat.

I just think that after seeing what we put everyone through and the pain and heartache it caused both of us would do anything to avoid causing that again.

I know how ridiculous this sounds but we were both very nieve about the fall out things like this can cause. If you want something badly enough sometimes you can justify things to yourself iyswim. That is not something we could ever do again.

[Flllightattendant]

This is a difficult question. I've been someone's mistress, as some already know, and it is something I am thoroughly ashamed of.
I didn't (at least consciously) want to be a mistress, but I fell in love with a man, whom I then found it almost impossible to leave. He was my first lover which didn't help.

I was very arrogant. I didn't think I carried any responsibility for the situation. In my mind it was he who was betraying someone, and he was in my opinion 'free' to love whom he chose - but I did hate the fact he was lying and wished desperately that he would tell his wife, or that his cover would be blown, as it was just so wrong.

I have changed my viewpoint now, but only after the event. I did carry responsibility, and being in a deceitful relationship for four years damaged everyone, me, him, his poor wife, and everyone else who knew any of us. I would never, ever, EVER enter into something like that again and wish to God that I had not been involved with it.

Of course I was blamed but so was he. I realise now that part of me wanted to make a point about him not belonging to anyone, that was me beng screwed up, while he was probably wrestling some other weird demon, which he refused to look at even at the time.

He married again after his wife did find out. I imagine the new wife will be cheated on as the first was. It is like a pathology.

It took me some years to reach a point where I can say I am 'over' it, but that is to do with my own dysfunction and psychological investment rather than it having been a valid relationship.

I am sorry for everyone I hurt, directly or indirectly, but I do often see a mistress taking the flack when perhaps the man having the affair holds most of the cards. I certainly never felt I had the slightest bit of power in the whole set up. He came to me when he wanted to, left me when he wanted to, and lied to everyone including me.

I find it hard to respect women who enter into affairs with married men, but much, much harder to respect a married man who is involved with another woman. I think that's my answer.

[SnappyLaGore]

i was a child when my parents broke up over, amongst other things, my dads infidelity.

its pretty feckin cut and dried when you look at it like that: getting her kicks with my dad fucked up my life and that of my siblings, for some time.

no i dont think the man is some poor delusional thing, sod that. anyone having an affair, or being the other party, is a total shitbag. end of story. it is just not right.

[Anna8888]

I am surrounded by so many divorced people that I find it pretty hard to condemn the way relationships end and others begin. To say an OW is a marriage wrecker is far too simplistic.

We were staying with some outwardly happily married friends last weekend. My partner is a cousin of the wife, and a long-term friend of the husband, and it was he who introduced the pair, so he really does know them well. We have been on holiday with them and spent several weekends with them, so have got quite an insider view into their couple relationship.

From the outside, it all looks idyllic - they are rich, they are healthy, they have three gorgeous children, they are building a huge new house. And yet... we can clearly see the major cracks in their relationship and that the husband is slowly, - unconsciously and unwillingly - but surely destroying the wife and she is powerless to defend herself. And if they don't do something soon, one of them will have an affair. Either she because she needs a confidence boost or he because he will be bored.

That's marriage - it's hard.