I had an affair and I want my affair partner to be discovered

Op, do you want to be with your husband? If no, leave him. Regardless of the affair its not fair to stay if you do not want to be with him and he is second choice.

Its ok to feel how you feel. Your anger is a valid feeling but you must not act on it.

Do you have funds for a therapist to help you work all this out?

I think it’s a cop out to say on here you’re a terrible and nasty person. There was clearly something very wrong with your marriage for you to have an affair. I expect you were hurt and isolated to have an affair. I would say you should recognise you are vulnerable and hurt, don’t hurt someone else and book some counselling to learn about who you behaved in this way. Look after yourself. Good luck.

Dont do this.. apart from all the reasons that people have pointed out , you will make yourself a pariah locally and when you have children in same school, they will suffer by association. the kids with the scarlet lady as a mom who goes after other peoples husbands . They'll be Excluded from play dates , invites , horrible gossip at school. You might want to punish him but don't do it to your children.

So have you been conducting a long affair with him, how long?

OP, he likely found another woman to focus on.

He is keeping you tethered just in case this new one doesn’t work out and he can quickly hop back into a warm bed. The literary masterpieces he is sprouting is probably taken from an online resource or he is using AI tools. Why you even want anything to do with this sad excuse of a man, who knows. Terrible behaviour from both of you.

No, don't tell her. And if you want to keep your marriage don't tell your husband either. Get over it, he already has. Don't throw your life away for anger and revenge.

For her own good? If you thought anything of her or cared about her feelings or anything like that you wouldn’t have done what you did. He chose his wife and you’re pissed off with that. He only wanted you short term so he could have his cake and eat it, you were never going to be the end goal for him. Leave them alone and sort your own life out without involving others

How very indulgent of you! You don’t need to tell anyone anything - and if you were smart you’d keep your mouth shut. Sit with it. Move on with your life

I had the other woman’s husband coming to my house to inform me. They’d been separated for months and his ex had moved out with their son. All he wanted to do was lash out, I felt sick, my daughter was in the other room, he was an absolute prick. He felt that I needed to know.

I was so angry with him and my partner obviously. We are still together after working through the trauma. He didn’t get back with his ex, just an absolute vile man, having the audacity to come to my home.

So no, she doesn’t deserve to be told, her world will come crashing down, and what for? Move on now, either stay with your husband or leave, but don’t ruin another family just because you want revenge, do you want to ruin her childrens lives, for what.

I think you want him to hurt because you’re hurting. You’ve realised now that you probably didn’t mean as much to him as he does to you. He ended the physical side but is still keeping you close incase he wants the best of both worlds.

It’s entirely up to you if you tell your husband but stop thinking about wanting the affair partners world to blow up because you have no idea if it actually will.

Focus your energy on your own family. Think about what you want in life and how to live in your marriage (if it’s still what you want). You’re so wrapped up in what the other man wants and how he feels but it’s got to the stage that it’s unhealthy. Focus on your own life and block the affair partner. Don’t remain friends with him, he’s just continuing to use you

That goes for OP’s family too then.

To be honest if I was married to a cheating bastard I would want to know. It's not really fair he's got away with this. The wife needs to know as he will just do it again and again.

No, there isn’t. You and your affair partner went into this voluntarily with your eyes open. He has chosen not to disclose to his partner and is now getting on with life. Your own marriage, on the other hand, is suffering and you’re not being honest about why you want to blow your affair partners’ up - it’s because he chose his wife and family and not you. There are children involved here, which clearly didn’t cross either of your minds when you were in the throes of the affair. Learn the lessons and move on.

You're pissed off and embarrassed because he chose her and not you.
Nothing in you telling her would be selfless!

Phillip Larkin wrote: man hands misery on to man, it deepens like a coastal shelf.

So you want to destroy another family because you suffer? Is it fair? No, but damn what a bed you made to lie in. And now you want his wife and kids to lie in it as well? You chose to have the affair as did he, but you are talking about something that will create misery. You did so.ething to create misery and now you want to spread it around. That's insult upon injury, imo.

I had an affair about 15 years ago. I wasn’t married but with someone with kids. Very very bad relationship - but equally there is no justification for what I did and even my current fiance knows about it as I told him. I am still ashamed about it now but happy to be open and honest about it

It ended (mutual) and his wife found out about it after it ended. I confessed to my then partner prior to this

Affair partner in an effort to avoid any blame reported me to the police as a stalker!!! I’m not even kidding. Police turned up on my doorstep.

At the time, a police charge of this nature would have meant I would have lost my job (very regulated industry and he knew this)

Thankfully I had all the evidence to support that it was an actual affair

So to avoid me actually being painted as a stalker to her (we had many mutual friends) I wrote her a letter explaining it all to her and I delivered it to her works. Explaining that yes I had been in their house, what had happened between us, that we planned to leave our partners for each other and the dates. Again my then current partner supported this - why paint me as a stalker and he gets away Scot free

Your situation is different - you are doing it purely as retaliation that you are going through shit with your partner.

Edited to add - the police were disgusted that he claimed I was a stalker. They even contacted the regulatory authority that I was under at the time and supplied a statement to ensure my job would be safe

He wants access to you with less cost to him (guilt) and less risk. He wants the validation of keeping in touch, keeping you on side, convincing himself he's a good guy.

I wonder what he'd say if you said "sure and as it will be above board we don't need to keep our lunches secret"

Separately - how do you know his wife doesn't know he does this?

Why don't you ask her if she wants to meet up as a group with you and your hubby?

It isn’t entirely selfish, though. I do want her to know the truth for her own good too - I know that if I were in her position, I would want to be told. Is there a way I can let her know anonymously, without any horrible face to face confrontation? I don’t know.

Of course it’s selfish - you only want her to know to punish him.

You hope she’ll kick him out and he’ll have to be in a relationship with you.

If you truly cared about her feelings you wouldn’t have shagged her DH and you would have told her straight away, not after he dumped you.

He’s keeping the emotional side going because that’s the only thing stopping you from trying to ruin his life.
You know if he cut you off completely you would have already told his wife but you haven’t because you still have hope that you can restart something.

Just block him and move on.
End your marriage and be single for a bit.

OP, you are (quite fairly) getting some cold hard truths here. It can’t be easy, and the suggestions of therapy, whatever happens, are good ones.

However right now you are just looking to share the blame and make yourself feel better, it isn’t going to help anyone and will make your husband, and his wife’s, lives, considerably worse.

You want to tell his wife because you want him to hurt like you are hurting, make her hurt because he chose her, and perhaps with the hope if his marriage ends he will choose you (if this happens, it’s not him choosing you, its him being stuck with you.)

You want to blame him for the temptation to keep messaging / meeting rather than doing the right thing and ceasing all communication with him.

You want to tell your husband because it will make you feel less guilty living with the secret.

For what it’s worth I might be able to forgive an affair that ended before I found out about it. I would not be able to forgive if the physical affair technically ended and they kept meeting for “coffees and lunches.”

My opinion is that because you already have issues in your marriage and also because some men after discovering their wifes have had an affair wouldn't stay with them.

However, on the other hand if wives discover that their husbands are having an affair they want to give their husbands another chance and give therapy/counselling a try.
This is because they have children to think of, financial instability and other insecurities.

The fact that this man has stopped the physical side of the affair, its possible he doesn't want his marriage to end. It's also possible his wife may have found out already.

I think seeing this man giving his marriage a chance is killing you. You are jealous and selfish.

Destroying two families all for a fucking shag. How absolutely pathetic.

Just tell them both . Your husband and her. They both deserve to know and not be made fools of by you two

Maybe their partnership is strong enough to work through it, affairs don't always end marriages. What you really mean is you don't see why he should be happy when you're not, think about how you'd cope if you told and their marriage didn't break up. You seem determined to try and blow his life apart, life isn't fair, find some other way to get rid of your anger