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.

@LavenderRoseBush "you’ve painted a very black and white picture that simply doesn’t describe me, my husband or the few people I know well who have cheated"

Well that's not surprising because people who are truly selfish are totally unaware that they are.
The same goes for those with narcissistic traits. Narcissists often lack insight into their own behaviors and how they impact those around them. This lack of self-awareness is a defining characteristic of narcissistic personality disorder.

Errr noooo. There's a bit of 'cherry-picking' occurring on your part.

OP says at 9.33.
"then it wouldn’t be an effective troll if it didn’t upset people."
So make of that what you will.....

I’m simply pointing out that on your own terms, if you think I set out to troll people, it shouldn’t surprise you that I would pick an emotive topic.

I’m actually not trying to troll people by posting an AMA. Of course some people get upset about the topic of affairs, but I have tried to be polite and frank in all my answers.

Do you have any more questions? 😊

You make a good point. I had a conversation with a very old fiance about why we split up many moons ago and he explained. It enlightened me after all those years. We were too young to be honest and talk about things at the time hence I was left wondering ... It made sense. Many of us seek answers to things and at least of people are honest then it can help. It wasn't necessarily you, it was the other person or this or that. It can aid recovery.

I think people generally like to put people in boxes. It makes them feel safer. It's human nature to think people who have cheated are fundamentally monochromatic characters with no nuance - like labelling people in prison as all 'terrible' human beings, all totally commited to evil 24/7 like film villains.

Agree with this. What sets narcissists apart from other people who cheat is how they handle the aftermath.

• Self-serving justification for their actions (the marriages were unhappy, her exH was passive, his exW was too dependent on him)

• Lack of accountability (never confessing or apologising)

• Ongoing deception (even after getting together publicly never giving either ex spouse the courtesy of the truth and seemingly unaware at the ongoing psychological torture this likely causes the suspicious ex wife who never got closure)

There are people who cheat on their spouse, understand the impact of their actions, feel genuine remorse, confess and do whatever is necessary to repair trust (if it’s possible) or at least give their spouse the dignity of being the one to choose whether they leave or stay and work on the marriage. These people are different to the OP and her husband.

So your husband frequently had sex with his wife, while knowing that she almost certainly wouldn't give consent if she knew he was having sex with you?

Does it bother you that he repeatedly had non-consensual sex with his wife?

Or do you just think it's 'grim' because you didn't like the thought of him having sex with someone other than you? (And no, that's not the most messed up part of the affair. The two of you having sex was).

The OP knew perfectly well that it's an emotive topic. It doesn't mean she made anything up. I'm not particularly bothered either way -- we're all anonymous strangers on the internet, and it's not as if she's doing the lazy journalist/visiting perv thing of inviting us to share our tales of adulterous table quiz passion of holding hands under a cushion.

I mean, I don't think it's that complicated.

Now that OP has admitted she's doing this to upset people, I'd strongly advise anyone who finds it distressing to leave the thread. Actually I'd advise everyone to leave it (I will, after this). It was never going to be light and wonder, obviously, but now we know her reasons for it, it's not even going to be informative, and it feels objectively mean spirited. It's not something to feed.

They did say that, and when questioned, doubled down and says there's research to support it! So... who knows, perhaps literally everyone they've ever met who doesn't like conflict has admitted to being unfaithful. Or they're bad at drawing logical conclusions....

Everything about their sex life bothered me. What is said about him, me, their relationship, our relationship. It was all awful. The details and dynamics were a bit of a no go topic, both between us and in my own head. We discussed it very early, I think probably before we’d even kissed, and after that it was only oblique references. As much as possible, I tried to put it in a box and pretend it didn’t exist.

It's interesting just how wholly self-centred cheaters (who haven't grown as people, and now regret it) are; everything revolves around them. I've noticed throughout this thread that there's literally no real understanding of other people's autonomy, feelings, or suffering – the only thing that matters is how something affects the OP. It's main character syndrome writ large.

You could say absolutely the same thing about other people's inconsiderate driving, neighbours' building works, people building bonfires when someone's laundry is out, climate change deniers who say 'Oh, but the Ryanair flight to Malaga would be going anyway, whether or not I'm on it!', NIMBYs, people letting their children scream in the garden at dawn, windchime owners, double dippers, people who call out ambulances unnecessarily etc etc etc.

Sure? Obviously self-centredness can display itself in different ways, and to different degrees. But very few of those things you list are likely to be as damaging to an individual or a family as cheating is, so I'm not sure of your point?

Don't worry. This man is probably banging someone else as we type.

I think that’s a bit much but there is no way I’d fuck a man who was fucking someone else. Thays all types of desperate. But the op got whay she wished I guess.

People have asked me how I feel about events and how it affected me, not how I imagine others feel/felt. There was a question quite early on about that and other posters shut it down saying (correctly) that I couldn’t comment on how my ex-spouses feel.

I’ve spent a lot of time processing the affair and can acknowledge what I did, and the harm it caused, and the importance of preventing it happening again, without emotionally imploding. I do regret cheating, in the sense of I wish DH and I could have got together without it, for a lot of reasons. I obviously don’t regret the fact that we are together now. There was plenty of self-flagellation at the time, but you can’t live permanently in that state.

That would be good going, I can hear him on a work zoom call next door 😂 maybe he’s making eyes through the pixels. At least there definitely isn’t a cushion nearby!

I know you haven’t asked a question (and tbf, asking someone you’ve accused of being a narcissist whether they think they’re a narcissist is a bit of a Cretan paradox) but I’ll answer anyway.

I think affairs are, almost always, pretty narcissistic acts. Mine definitely was. I was completely wrapped up in my own feelings, absolutely behaved without much care for my exH and rationalised my behaviour. I wouldn’t say justified because I never thought what I was doing was morally okay.

I don’t agree that acting in a certain way for a period of time defines your personality. Actual, certifiable narcissists are not particularly functional people. Their relationships (all types) tend to be superficial, fairly short and prone to drama. They often struggle with friendships and at work. They react to criticism with rage. Neither DH nor I fit this profile. While I understand it’s easier for you to label me a narcissist and tell yourself that you and your friends aren’t narcissists, so would never behave that way, reality is much more complicated.

The way you describe the actions of the non-narcissist adulterer only apply if they want to stay in the marriage. If you want to leave, you are not going to attempt to repair trust or give your spouse the chance to choose to stay.

I know you are intellligent enough to not take me quite so literally. He will cheat on you.

I'm merely responding to your point about Main Character Syndrome. You wrote as though you thought it was somehow unique to people who are unfaithful when it's the most ordinary things in the world.

For heaven's sake, this is as naive as the people who believe in karma lying in wait for miscreants to bop them on the head, or think an old man with a beard is sitting on a cloud ready to damn baddies to hellfire. Will some relationships that start as affairs will end in as messy a way as they started out? Absolutely. Is it a foregone conclusion? Absolutely not.

I'm interested that you think it's the OP's husband who will cheat on her. The OP also had an adulterous relationship, just like her now-husband. Is it not just as likely that she will lock eyes with a handsome stranger on a work trip and throw caution to the winds?

Thank you Ottely Astounding. It is the nonchalant dismissive behaviour the OP brings, as if this saga was an irksome fly. The only emotion I see in any of this is what went on in her head when he was still home with his wife and they may have been sleeping together. That isn’t even a drop of what storm would have been going through the EW mind afterwards.
i don’t think all humans are perfect, but I have slight time for those who stand up and admit the guilt and take the flack and let the ex partner have some degree of benefit from it all.

her exH playing Conputer games or some may lay in bed as the other walks out. It’s probably how they coped, it is about looking past what you have in your mind and give some empathy and look from someone else’s point of view.

I wish no one no harm, but should you or anyone find yourself in this position especially when you are at a vulnerable point maybe the only way to configure reality of what hell this is.

Perhaps read the OPs posts again.

No, I didn't. I pointed out that cheaters are very self-centred. I said nothing about it being unique to them. It is a particularly severe manifestation of harmful self-centredness, though.