AMA My marriage started as an affair.

[LavenderRoseBush]

I’ve been contemplating this post for a while and been hesitant for obvious reasons. But I’ve seen a few posts recently making the assumption that people who have affairs are somehow a breed apart, rather than a significant proportion of the population. So here goes!

To pre-empt the most obvious questions: we were both married, and neither of us had kids.

This is rather beyond the AMA about my affair/marriage, but I come from a family where being able to laugh at yourself was a highly valued quality, and I completely internalised that. The most effective way to make me absolutely cry with laughter is to identify some mildly negative trait I have, or annoying way I’ve behaved, and take the piss. There probably is an element of defensiveness to it, but it’s much deeper rooted than simply talking about the affair. I do think there is a lot to be said for finding and laughing at the absurdity of a lot of situations.

Plus, it was all a long time ago now, which makes it even easier to laugh (even in disbelief) at decisions I made that were obviously ridiculous, idiotic or seriously naive at the time.

Thanks for your honesty. That clarifies to me what kind of person you are now.

Thank you. I see you confirm my observations.

I had a brief affair before leaving my ex‑husband, almost 20 years ago. By that point the marriage was already failing for many reasons, and it wasn’t recoverable. I didn’t want to be with him anymore. The affair didn’t exhilarate me because I’d fallen in love with someone else — it exhilarated me because it reminded me I still had a life to live, and that life could be better than the one I was living.

Because of that, I took full responsibility for the marriage ending, even though I never disclosed the affair. I absorbed everything — the blame, the financial fallout — because I had changed, and I no longer wanted to be married. I didn’t list every reason I wanted to leave him, and there were many reasons, by then, I didn’t care that it looked like it was all my fault. I just needed out.

My question is, when your marriage ended, did you fully clarify the reasons it was over from his side, (aside from the affair) or did you end up carrying more of the blame because you’d had the affair?

Without confessing the affair, there wasn’t really anything more solid to pin on me than co-creating dysfunctional dynamics and enabling his behaviour (written about upthread). This was before no-fault divorces came in and neither of us wanted to wait 2 years, so I filed for divorce on the grounds of unreasonable behaviour, which meant having to set it all out.

I did take the financial hit and made all the running logistically, which seemed fair enough regardless of the affair as I was the one leaving. We were still renting with no kids and young enough to not have any pensions worth bothering with etc, so it was fairly easy. DH on the other hand gave ex-W a serious amount of money in the divorce without a quibble, as much from guilt as anything else.

What were your reasons for not just ending it?

My current DP and I have been together for 5 years. We met at school, had a fling many years ago which fizzled out and then started talking as friends when I was married to my ex-DH. It turned into an affair and I was head over heels, I did question at the time if it was the secrecy that was the draw, but we ended it as soon as it started and it took me many years to get over. I even took paracetamol for the pain! We didn't speak at all for many years. Fast forward a few years, I was on the verge of starting an affair with a different person and so I thought, this is definitely a problem with me, ended my marriage once and for all and had a lot of therapy. My ex-DH is an amazing man, we're still very good friends but sadly I realised long ago that I was just never in love with him. Unfortunately we have two children together and I still wonder all the time what the impact on them has been from all of this. After a while, my current DP and I got back in touch and he had also ended a long term relationship, and we got together, very slowly though, both wary. We still don't live together and I don't think we really trust each other but there's a lot of love and attraction (and history) there between us. My children don't know about the affair but if I could change things I probably wouldn't have ever gotten close to DP.

As for other affairs, I know of 4. One ended after he left his affair partner after 3 years and went back to his ex-DW! My friend's ex and his DW didn't last long but I think they remarried. My friend had used it as an exit affair and moved on. The other three have lasted decades, one of them I didn't really expect to ever work out because my friend (F) was very in love with her affair partner and he didn't seem that invested in their relationship, in fact it seemed like he just continued the affair to avoid causing a ruction with my friend, but after years of the affair, he eventually left his ex-DW and they have just married.

I guess my question is if you'll ever tell your DC that life and relationships are not always so straightforward, and every situation is different? Or if you want to instill in them morals about fidelity being paramount to a person's integrity?

Yes some marriages end, very few people get married to get divorced. However, I wonder if people have the strength of character to end marriages before embarking on ANY form of emotional or physical contact.

I wonder do you feel remorseful, regardless both cheated people had the courage to move on, how do you think your excitement affected

1. the ex’s, that crushing feeling they have been humiliated and rejected. Only by it happening to you do you realise the utter depth of despair many feel.
2. yes they moved on, it still doesn’t make it right or ok. It’s like saying all of this is fine and ok and forgivable as they have new families. The evenings of endless tears, fears, having to tell people, see their parents cry, their nieces and nephews cry and the dreams of their own little families never happening. Please never believe all the reasons your current partner tells you. People say anything to get into people’s pants. “She doesn’t sleep with me anymore” means they could have been going through much longed for IVF or miscarriages, bet some men / women forget to mention these things to new partners.
3. Do the conversations ever manifest in your mind what they had to tell their families, friends or close friends at work?
4. Them going to work trying to keep it all together
5. The stress they had to endure selling the house and sorting out everything they owned in order to having to leave their dream home. All probably happening while you were showing each other off to new friends in fancy locations laughing away.
6. The potential diseases that could be spread. Marriage you may stop using protection, new partners bring in potential new diseases while their faithful spouses are unaware. Never believe the “we don’t sleep together anymore”. Humiliated partners have to go through HIV tests and often they suffer other stress related issues ie come out in hives.

if anyone is reading this about to start on affair have the balls to leave the person first before you start anything. Don’t just hedge your bets.

I think it’s an objective fact that life and relationships aren’t straightforward, as you have outlined in your examples.

I will definitely try to teach them the importance of integrity and living by their values. Having experienced what it’s like to live a fundamentally “dis-integrated” life where my values and actions were at odds, I know how damaging it is to sense of self.

I would like to (and am trying to!) teach them to recognise, appreciate and live by values including fidelity/loyalty, kindness, respect, fairness etc. But I also think it’s important for them to understand that every one of those values can be corrupted. Kindness into enabling, respect into subservience, fairness into rigid score-keeping etc. Ironically, if I had been less loyal to my ex-H earlier, I would never have married him. Once married, I would have been much more likely to divorce before starting an affair if it had occurred to me that I could simply leave. So I’ll try to teach them to think about their actions as part of a wider context, rather than siloed moral dilemmas.

When it comes to sexual and emotional fidelity in particular, I’ll probably go down the route of “most affairs don’t begin in happy relationships” and “most affairs don’t end in happy relationships”. Also “it’s almost always possible to leave a relationship if the alternative is cheating” although I fully accept there are times when that feels a lot less true than it was for me.

I think I’ve answered this pretty thoroughly upthread 😊

I’ve addressed a lot of this upthread, and particularly in a post on page 10.

Just to answer a couple of new points though - I asked him early on if he was cheating for lack of sex (which was definitely a factor for me) and no, they were still having sex regularly for most, if not all of the affair. I would have a nervous breakdown anytime he was offline for a couple of hours of an evening knowing what was probably happening, it was grim (and one of the most messed up parts of the whole affair).

On point 5 - they had already split up, house sold etc and ex-W got a new partner at the point we went official. We were actually not together throughout his separation and divorce. I’m sure it still hurt a lot, but it wasn’t the scenario you suggest.

On point 6 - I appreciate the general point for the spouses about being scared of the possibility of STIs, but we a) didn’t have any and b) used both hormonal birth control and condoms every single time as I was really worried about getting pregnant.

How often does your ex-husband cross your mind? My ex had an affair and left 20 years ago. I an happily remarried but a week goes by that I don't think about it a bit. I'd like to think I still cross his mind from time to time.

If you weren't happy in your marriage why didn't you end it before starting another relationship? Did you feel any guilt at all towards the Wife?

I don't think you get a free pass because you were not actively involved with him at the time of his separation, divorce etc. You had already been there and did your part ( he is not blameless obviously) .

Pretty regularly. We were together through uni and nearly all of my 20s, so he is part of all my memories of that time. Plus anything he was interested in, locations he was connected with etc. I don’t really dwell on it, but he was obviously a very significant part of my past. I know it’s same for my DH about his ex-W.

I’ve answered this upthread 😊

That was specifically in response to @Noodles1234

The stress they had to endure selling the house and sorting out everything they owned in order to having to leave their dream home. All probably happening while you were showing each other off to new friends in fancy locations laughing away.

In my case, I did all the packing and leaving while ex-H continued to sit around and play computer games. In their case, we were split up at the time so there was no showing off to new friends and laughing away. And definitely no fancy locations, then or since 😂

Why are you still hiding the fact that you both had an affair?

How passive aggressive, you know why, as it would cause pain.

After everything that's happened, and the situation as it is now, what on earth would be the point of telling her that now?

Exactly .
This sounds like 2 lovesick teenagers, not two mature adults.
It seems to me that neither of you were mature enough to have an adult relationship.

I don’t judge you OP. My experience is that many second marriages begin in a grey area. As I’ve been reading this thread I’ve thought of more and more long term marriages that began this way.

My question to you is to ask why you started this thread, knowing what was to come?

@HoppityBun My question to you is to ask why you started this thread, knowing what was to come?

That would be my question as well.

What pearls of wisdom do you think that a cheater could possibly impart to others?

You missed the point I was making or you deliberately chose to ignore it with your jokes.

I wouldn’t go to much effort to conceal it happened now if someone directly asked, but randomly announcing it to all and sundry would feel like a really odd thing to do. To whatever extent people know or suspect about the affair, they know we are now together. Life goes on. Other than ex-spouses, I don’t think anyone would much care, and I definitely don’t think it’s their business. For the ex-spouses, I suppose you could argue there might be some closure (at least for exW, I genuinely think exH is still clueless, despite us being together) but it’s just as, if not more, likely to stir up a whole bunch of pain unnecessarily.