To think poorly of the OW in this situation?

Then it makes absolutely no sense that you're blaming the OW in any way at all!! 🙇🏻‍♀️🙇🏻‍♀️

Let's call cheating what it is, abuse. It's just plain and simply abuse. It's disgusting to knowingly expose your cherished wife to an STD and to lie to your partner, gaslight and demand privacy you haven't earned.

Agree. Mine swore on my kids lives he wasn't cheating , told me my meds were causing paranoia..we continued to have sex because I believed him, it's likes so sort of coercive control! He made me think I was going mad
I even apologised to him fot accused him of cheating in me..until I found out he was!

"frenzied" lol. Have you swallowed a dictionary? More hyperbole, laughable really.

He's pathetic, she's pathetic and he will eventually leave her for a younger woman too. How could any woman trust a man she took from someone else? You're a better woman than me OP because I would not have been able to control my emotions.

The number of women on MN who have this exact thing happen to them is simply unacceptable. We need to start fighting back, there should be some sort of legal protection for women who suffer like this.

I actually think the insistence that men and women cannot be "stolen" is a tiny bit disingenuous. Yes of course everyone is an autonomous moral agent and can choose not to respond but if someone of either sex makes a full on play for someone else over a sustained period of time, gets to know them, becomes the shoulder to cry on about the "mean" spouse at home etc, coupled with any physical attraction, I think it's naive to pretend that otherwise stable marriages can't be rocked to the core. Literally everyone enjoys flattery and attention, especially if they are in the trenches of family life and day to day domestic grind and they are offered "time off" on a work trip or whatever. In the end, as I said upthread, there's no finite share of blame but a good hard shove on a somewhat weakened wall can topple it when, left alone, it might have stabilised, been repointed and lasted decades.

You've stirred plenty.

Yes. Praying I (a stranger on MN) never have children was an insane thing to say. Really.

As I’ve been refusing to engage with your repeated (and increasingly frenzied) attempts to bait me for several hours now, I wouldn’t say I’m the shit stirrer in this exchange.

A husband is not a ‘thing’ that can be taken or stolen. The fact that you genuinely don’t understand that and - in your now deleted comment - thought it acceptable to pray a complete stranger ‘never have children’ says rather a lot about your moral compass.

I’m no longer going to engage with you, as you honestly don’t seem very well.

A woman who chooses a married man is just scum. They both are. Sorry you had to go through that op.

@ForZanyAquaViewer I was pointing out how society punishes and thinks less of those who try to do things that are detrimental to others.

Why wouldn't it be okay to want and try to take anything else of yours? I could try and steal your beloved pet, or your car, and even if I was unsuccessful I'd be thought of badly in society and probably charged with some crime. So why isn't that okay, but trying to take your husband is?

And if you were married to a man, of course he would be 'your' husband. If I was actively trying to seduce him so I could have him to myself, what would you call it...? If not trying to 'take' him? 🤔

I'm really hoping we'll get the full picture of your moral compass soon 😊

I just think the other person is either desperate for sex desperate for attention or the just love the sneaking around

Ahh, how predictable... You haven't engaged at all with anything that challenges your rigid thinking.

Yes, as even kids nowadays are taught not to harm others, even if they really want to! I suspect you wouldnt agree to the status quo on that one.

You're really prone to exaggeration ForZany. "insane" and "one of the maddest things you've ever read"? Really.

Then you say to DonnyBurrito "I don’t think you’re capable of understanding my (or any) logic." I think you're a shit stirrer.

It would appear so! Very speedily. It’s almost a shame, as it was one of the maddest things I’ve ever read.

Has the cat post been deleted?

Agree. I find a married woman and a single bloke having an affair just as rank as the sexes being reversed.

Anyone knowingly having an affair is a scumbag imo, nothing to do with what sex they are. I despise liars and cheats so can’t begin to understand the appeal of having a relationship with someone who has those vile traits.

Now you’re likening a husband (a human being with agency) to a pet that can be ‘lured’ or an inanimate object - a possession - that can be ‘stolen’ or ‘taken’.

And this is, quite frankly, an insane thing to say: For the love of God, please don't have children

At this point, I don’t think you’re capable of understanding my (or any) logic. As the kids say, go touch some grass.

I don't get why people think blame is a finite thing and blaming one party means the other gets less blame....you can entirely and completely blame both. Nothing to do with sisterhood and everything yo do with just not being a dick. It's really that simple.

I think it quite natural for a wife in this situation to blame the OW, as well as her husband. What the split of blame is I don't think can be defined. No one in that situation is going to take a minute to think well I blame him 51% and her 49% or whatever.

If you've been blindsided by the man having an affair and up to that point everything seemed fine and you still love him, and maybe, at least initially, you think it could be something you can work through, while you'll have immense anger at him and might never forgive him, he is still someone you've loved, possibly for years, so that initial anger might dissipate, if they decide to stay together.

The wife's initial anger at the OW is justified. It's not misogyny. The OW is a complete stranger who has contributed to her harm so the wife owes her nothing. The OW has come into her world, affecting her life and her children's lives and all of their financial security and well-being, now and in the future - that's if the OW knew about her. Without an OW the marriage might still exist, even if it isn't a truly happy one, and most marriages have ups and downs. Does no one's own mother or parents say you just don't go there? Mine did. Or over the years I heard my mother and her friends talking about situations like these that happened to people within their circle and the devastation caused, as they saw it first hand.

So I think it natural to blame the OW in what is a completely fraught situation. That hate doesn't last forever. People move on. There's lots of variables to consider as well. It really isn't black and white that the OW is due no blame at all. Such simplistic thinking. Dare I say it, it is "fascinating" people have heard oh he's to blame as he's the one that made the promises to the wife, not the OW, and just repeated it - I think that is a trope.

I think maybe it feels better to blame The Evil Skanky Homewrecker With No Morals than the man you fell in love, deemed to be a good man, had children with and built a life together. Otherwise how could you have got it so wrong?

I don't see why we can't just say AP instead of OW. It always brings the 'internalised misogyny' brigade to the thread.

I believe affairs are abusive. They remove personal agency and our right to informed sexual consent. They involve lying, deceit, manipulation and gaslighting. They put the betrayed at risk of sexual, mental and emotional harm.

I don't understand how disliking a person who would involve themselves in the abuse of another is showing internalised misogyny.

And as for 'vulnerability' of APs all I've ever seen from affairs is the passing of their pain on to someone who didn't deserve it (and the children of the primary relationship too).

I've also not known a female AP who didn't twist the knife in to an unsuspecting betrayed when dday happened and sadly that is particularly women APs. My own case included.

Hush now! (though I'm old enough to remember when she was the devil incarnate - though TBF Charles was a figure of opprobrium too)

Why are some posters talking about human beings as if they can be 'taken' or 'stolen away'? They can't. They're sentient beings with free will. Nobody can take them or steal them.

The regular 'you must be an OW' crap comes up here so often and it's the laziest most risible non-comment. Just because somebody stands against the foul language and blame levied at women in an affair, doesn't mean that they're of the same view.

Nobody who is having an affair with a married person is justified in doing so, they're never in the right and what they are doing is causing misery if and when they are caught. The married party takes full blame and responsibility because they and they alone could have prevented it all. The other party has made a shitty decision to be complicit in the affair but they are not responsible for it.

@ForZanyAquaViewer Let's imagine for a minute that you have a husband. You've also got some very young children at home that you are the primary caregiver for. You all struggle without him while he's at work, but know he has to work to support you and the children. You are in a vulnerable position, and you are all very reliant on him. He comes home one day and tells you about a younger female coworker who has struck up a friendship with him. They spend lots of time together as friends, she knows all about you and your little children and how he supports you all. You think she's lovely, and have no suspicions because you trust your husband.

Despite this, one day she decides she wants to fuck him. She starts making sexual advances, arranging times they will be alone for her to flirt with him, and tries her best to turn his head. Let's imagine your husband isn't a cheating scumbag, rejects her and tells you.

Do you still think this woman is as good a person as any? Do you see her in the exact same light as all his other friends (that may or may not know you) who aren't actively disrespecting you, your children and your marriage?

Would you stop them being friends?

I'm very curious about the inner workings of this individualistic perspective of yours and want to understand where your line is!