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.

Yes, but at the point I left my husband I had accepted it was to be single, not to be together. I was sceptical he would be able to stay in the marriage, but by then had decided that was his problem to sort out.

I don’t disagree with a lot of what you say. I suppose my angle is that holding people accountable and judging them are two different things.

Gosh you’re very similar to my friend, bur she’s older.

she also had an affair. But the marriage was awful. She confided in me about two years before she left the marriage, I kept her secret.

she ended the marriage, but he didn’t, so she ended it with him and wouldn’t restart. So he then left his marriage several months later

they then started telling everyone they were dating about 3 months after that then he moved in with her.

people always think on here on here once a cheat always a cheat. I don’t think that’s true for many,it is for some. I doubf my friends will cheat on each other.

the issue I suspect you face is he was comfortable with the affair , you did it for other reasons, he was happy to continue with a bit on the side, so I’d say he is much more susceptible to some excitement on the side and a higher risk factor if someone he fancies looks at him the right way

I absolutely didn’t leave ex-H to be with DH, he was extremely clear he wouldn’t leave his wife and although I was sceptical, I’d been in therapy for quite a while at that point, and had broadly come to terms with the fact that if I wanted kids, I needed to park the psychodrama and go find someone else. I happened to meet someone through a totally non-involved friend from another part of my life a few months later, we dated casually for a few months and then covid happened and made it more serious that it would probably have been otherwise.

Hmmm I don’t think of it as an attachment disorder, but I’ll concede I’ve been in relationships almost constantly only a few months between since I was a teenager! Tbf though, I met ex-H at university, we were together for a long time and that makes up the bulk of my dating history. DH had only been with his ex-W, he tried dating after they split up but then covid happened. Both of us are definitely more comfortable in relationships though, DH has told me how he got himself into problems while dating because he would always send lots of messages, good morning, good night, how was your day daily and girls would mysteriously interpret this as high levels of interest 🙄😅

So you were angry with your affair partner for choosing his wife and marriage, over the cheating woman that he'd been having an on/off, emotionally tumultuous affair with for some months, after a declaration of love that took place a few weeks after holding hands for the first time? Or were you more angry that you'd left your husband, expecting him to leave too, but he hadn't, leaving you alone?

I've heard a lot of couples have those sorts of meetings – they seem to work for some people, but they never make much sense to me, as I'd be struggling to come up with anything to talk about! Don't you mostly just skip over most of those topics as you have nothing to say?
We just bring up issues or concerns as they arise – I'd hate to have to think 'oh, I have to wait until the monthly meeting' to mention something that's irking or worrying me.

You can't hold people accountable if you haven't judged them to have done something wrong, though.

Yes I think you’re right he is more susceptible to an affair than I am, both because of basic comfort at living a double life and because he is far more likely to bottle up his feelings if there is an issue.

Although tbf, the driving force behind my leaving both ex-H and DH was wanting kids. I obviously wasn’t going to bring them into my sexless marriage, and I lived in fear of accidentally getting pregnant by DH - we used hormonal birth control and condoms every single time. Post-kids, with so much more to lose along with the marriage, it would be harder to leave. The
flip side being, having done it once, I know I actually can leave in a way I didn't the first time, so I’d hope I would have ended the marriage first…

like you were sincere in your life choices and your original vows?

I was angry at him for choosing her, and what I thought was very little chance of a successful marriage, over me, and what we could have. I knew he wasn’t going to leave for months beforehand. It wasn’t a sudden breakup, we planned a final night together and then it was done. He then came back a few weeks later saying he would leave and I told him to go away and sort himself out. I knew at that point if I let him back, the affair would just carry on as before, but this time with me as single. I wanted to move on with my life, with or without him.

We never skip topics, there’s always plenty to say if you’re prepared to dig under the surface. Even “ugh I have nothing to say about leisure, I have no time” - okay, let’s explore that. We talk as normal in between sessions about anything that is irking or worrying us. The point isn’t to hold things back until the session, it’s just to make sure nothing gets missed. And it can be difficult to say some things apropos of nothing, so it’s a good way in to a potentially hard conversation.

😂 maybe even more so!

And any of those could have cheated again but how would you know? 🤷‍♀️

Frankly, it sounds as though he would've happily carried on forever with his wife, and you on the side, if you hadn't complained. Not a very nice character trait, but then most men who cheat seem to want that. It's not about leaving their wives, it's about enriching their life with an additional woman.
Do you ever wonder, given his reluctance to leave her, and his willingness to lie, if she was the one who ended things between them, or forced him towards ending it, and he's lied to you about that because he was worried you wouldn't give him another chance if you knew?

"We never skip topics, there’s always plenty to say if you’re prepared to dig under the surface."
Genuinely, I would have nothing to say for most of those. Kids, friends, family, health, leisure – we have no major issues, and we're always open books to each other and share our feelings as we have them. As parents, of course, sex is always more difficult to fit in, but we just talk openly whenever needed. A structured meeting would feel uncomfortably formal to me, like a high pressure business meeting. But whatever works for you, in that regard! I suppose some people are just more regimented.

I 100% agree and I also think there is NO WAY that this man won't cheat again. He probably already has! I predict OP will be on here in a couple of years (under a different username) wondering why her husband is distant and snappy.

There's definitely a spectrum and I don't believe it's black and white at all, ok you can hold your boundries and that's fair but to label every person who has ever cheated (to any degree) a serial cheat is just ridiculous. The handwringing of you'll never be happy, always one step away from doing it again, never trust/be trusted again is just projection.

Generally no one knows if their partner is a cheat, you could be married to someone who was a proper lethario in their day and cheated on their ex numerous times. I mean would these people leave their husbands if they found out he'd cheated on someone else but not them?

How would you react if one of your children came to you in the future and was devastated that their partner had cheated?

Do you think that having cheated yourself that would affect how you responded?

Yes I think he would have done, he has a certain passive acceptance about life that manifests on other ways too - it isn’t my favourite trait although obviously I think it’s more than outweighed in other ways!

I know for sure he left her, it was all a big shock to the friend group and I got more than enough third party updates.

I totally get that, I think it’s just a horses for courses thing and we are quite systematically minded horses.

Hmmm. I don’t think my reaction to them being hurt by being cheated on would be different to them being hurt by being dumped. My child is hurting and I will look after them, the whys and wherefores are pretty beside the point.

I think a more interesting question is how I would react if they (or actually, any of my friends) came to me for advice because they had/were in the midst of cheating. In that scenario, I would try to understand why it was happening, and broadly encourage them to end either the marriage or the affair, while accepting it had to be on their timescale, and also that my experience isn’t the be all and end all of human relationships.
I think regardless of whether it was a one night stand, an emotional entanglement or serial philandering, I would encourage them to have individual therapy and - if they want to stay - couples therapy. I would definitely be less shocked than pre-affair me, regardless of who I was talking to or what I thought I knew about their marriage, and more inclined to focus on the reasons why than the affair itself.

Have you heard of the saying "When the mistress becomes the wife, she creates a vacancy"?
Does knowing your husband is happy to cheat worry you?

Does knowing you are happy to cheat worry your husband?

I know it worries my ex husbands current wife! She used to have to watch out of their flat window when he came to my work to pay me maintenance for our DD. He wasn't allowed in to the shop I worked in,as she couldn't watch! 🤣

That’s the main reason I don’t think I would have an affair again even if it all went to pot - I would get divorced first.

Why did you bother to get married again if the wedding vows are not taken seriously first time and your mindset in a supposedly happy marriage is you would get divorced again when the chips hit the fan?

Have you heard of the saying "When the mistress becomes the wife, she creates a vacancy"?
Does knowing your husband is happy to cheat worry you?

She's discussed both of these in some depth - which bits did you not understand? Would be more helpful to be specific rather than asking the OP to copy and paste previous answers.

To be fair, though, she has given a lot of word salad and no actual answers. Deep down, she knows her husband has weak morals, perhaps even weaker than her own. I would also put money that his ex wife dumped him, not the other way around.

I discussed this in one of my first answers, I think it’s on page 1 😊

Side note - not sure if it’s a typo but I really enjoy the image of “the chips hitting the fan” 😂

Holding hands under a cushion, in a room containing both your spouses and mutual friends. Jesus wept.

Can you give an example of a part you didn't understand? I thought she's been fairly clear.

Oh, I understood. She basically admitted, using rather flowery language, that her husband is spineless and untrustworthy.