Why is it always the OW's fault?

[shewhowines]

I see time and time again where the husband who cheated, is allowed to stay or is wanted back or is the poor bloke who couldn't resist temptation. The scorned wife spends all her emotional energy blaming and hating the OW.

Whilst, yes of course, the OW is morally in the wrong, but it is the DH who chose to have an affair. It is him and only him who can be blamed. Unless the OW is a close friend, she is a free agent and has not betrayed you. Yes, she shouldn't have got involved with someone who is not available, but she should not deserve all the vitriol normally dished out.

AIBU?

I think it is never her fault

I think it can be.

I have been in the position where it would have been very easy for me to be the other woman. I didn't make a move, in fact I got myself away from him as much as possible.

I was very attracted to him, but as far as I am concerned if he is married he is not on the market.

I'm always a bit on the fence about the general MN consensus that the OW should not be blamed. I am more of the opinion that she should not be blamed entirely eg "that bitch stole my man!" But I do think they deserve an equal share of the blame.

I totally agree. If you have a relationship with a married man (and you knew he was married) then you have to bear some responsibilty for the breakdown of that marriage.

From an emotional POV, as others have said, it is much easier to hate/blame the OW as they were the person that you are less emotionally involved with.

I think there can be an element of 'magical thinking' on places like mn, where there are a lot of women with partners. Sort of, if I can blame the OW on this thread, I can prevent any damage to my own relationship: because relationships don't break down because men stray, rather that other women are predatory.

Although in RL, while I will call out OW-blaming I do think OPs in that situation can be cut a little slack. It is easier to blame someone or something else, rather than acknowledge you are married/in a LTR/made children with a complete shit of a man.

I have been in the position where it would have been very easy for me to be the other woman. I didn't make a move, in fact I got myself away from him as much as possible.

But its still on him to say no and be faithful. If you had gone after him all guns blazing and he had cheated, its still him to blame in regards to his wife. You wouldn't have owed her anything iyswim.

"I didn't make a move, in fact I got myself away from him as much as possible"

Meaning you were pursued by a married man... His initiative rather than yours. If you'd gone for it and his marriage had subsequently floundered, it really wouldn't have been your fault.

Because it's easier to blame the other person than it is to realise your partner looking or not found someone that was making them happy in a certain way you was not?

That may be purely because the other person is more fun by the fact you don't have to worry about feeding the kids/paying the bills so it's all frills and fun, which is why the cheater does not want to her caught they "love" their partner but the fun shows them something else which they give into rather than being mature

I think it's weird that you think that if a couple manage to fix their relationship after infidelity that the man has "got away with it."

It's also extremely silly to be comparing the way a person feels towards a stranger and the way they feel about a member of their own family.

If a person you don't know does you great harm by sleeping with your husband and wrecking your marriage, then that harm they did you is ALL you know of them. That's it. Why would you feel anything for them other than loathing?

The betrayal by a person you love (or loved until they ripped your world apart) is obviously different and you are likely to have very conflicted feelings afterwards. How could you not? You have possibly years of happiness and love to weigh against recent pain and hurt.

It's pretty idiotic to demand that a woman think of the OW in the same terms as the man who cheated on her.

Do you think she should ask her to come and live in her house and have sex with her just so it's the same as the treatment her husband is getting?

I think it's natural to feel jealousy towards someone who you perceive has taken something away from you. Even when the logical part of you knows that your DH is the one responsible, there is still the feeling that if she wasn't around to tempt him, it wouldn't have happened.

There's comfort in that, because to look at it any other way necessitates a whole new perspective on your DH. As long as the OW is deemed an evil temptress, the problem in the marriage is confined to "the affair" - as if everything else in the marriage was and is fine, so as long as the OW is removed from the equation everything can get back to normal once the initial hurt has died down.

It is a perspective that allows hope for the future. Sometimes, it's also true that everything in the marriage was fine - it's a misconception that the relationship has to be struggling for someone to get tempted. Quite often, the source of discontent is external to the marriage, e.g. fed up with the slog of a dead-end job, or worn down by children, then someone comes along who makes you feel alive and desirable and so offers a temporary respite.

Unfortunately, even in cases where this happens it is a mistake to allow any natural antipathy towards the OW to let the man off the hook (or vice versa if it's the DW who's had the affair). Unless he addresses the factors that made him choose to go with it (and it always is a choice, even if a very un-self-aware one), he will always be vulnerable to another.

Whether the OW is naive young thing, scheming temptress, or just an ordinary woman who's made a poor judgement is actually rather irrelevant if you really want to get over the affair either by rebuilding a marriage or by leaving.

All that said, when the OW is someone who is fairly well known to the betrayed spouse, I think it's very different.

I don't see it as an either/or situation. I'd place the blame on both of them.

In some cases the OW might have been fed a load of crap by The Husband in the first place - she might not even know he has a wife/child(ren)

I think it's weird that you think that if a couple manage to fix their relationship after infidelity that the man has "got away with it."

I think a relationship can get over infidelity. But it requires honest analysis as to why it happened in the first place. Blaming the other woman has no room in this discussion. It is irrelevant.

By understanding why the affair happened, you can both learn from it and build perhaps an even better relationship. Blaming the other woman is not looking for the cause and it is you, deluding yourself.

I can totally understand a relationship being fixed after an affair, but only once. If it happened again then nothing has been learned and I personally couldn't continue.

That's true NotActually, I had a lovely friend who was seeing a guy for a few months and truly didn't know he was married. She was absolutely devastated when he told her and ended it right away. I have another friend who was in a very unhappy marriage. She had a short lived affair with someone else. I obviously didn't support her idea of having an affair but she is still a very nice person and still my friend and I did my best to be there for her.

Yanbu but people get a bit weirded out if you don't blame the OW.

Generally speaking, who wants to imagine their husband hotly pursuing another woman, courting her with the same unimaginative tosh he fed you, actively chasing another?

Far easier to imagine the scarlet lady forcing him to abandon hearth and home, whispering lies to him.

Not them plotting against you, or worse, not really even thinking of you at all.

I think the OW, in lots of cases, swallows the MMs picture of the dullard at home and really doesn't consider her too closely.

That must really hurt, hence the disproportionate vitriol handed out here to all most OWs.

"Blaming the other woman has no room in this discussion. It is irrelevant."

Exactly, it's irrelevant.

So it doesn't matter whether she is blamed or not blamed by the betrayed spouse.

You can think a person is to blame for their own shitty actions and apply that to the woman who knowingly slept with your husband and also apply it to your husband.

The horrible thing about threads like these is that they seek to portray damaged and traumatised women as stupid and vain and shallow.

In my case I do blame the OW. She has been a 'good friend' of my now ex for the past 30 years. She decided she didn't love her husband anymore and decided she wanted mine.

She's been out on trips with my kids. She's been privy to the ins and outs of mine and ex's relationship and she took advantage of that.

Yes I do blame him. The only thing wrong with our relationship was that it had got boring and stale and we'd started taking each other for granted. Nothing that couldn't have been put straight. She offered a bit of excitement and he took it leaving devastation in it's wake.

It's early days and I'm not sure how it's going to pan out. But whatever happens I am going to make sure I re establish my life. My social diary is filling up, I am losing weight and hitting the gym. Generally I feel good.

If she hadn't come along we would have probably jogged on bored and fed up with life so whatever happens there has been a positive. Also for various reasons whatever happens between him and me in the future I know their 'relationship' won't last and he'll have lost what was a good friend to boot.

My ex cheated on me and then married his other woman. She claimed itnwas perfectly acceptable to destroy two families as love is important. Funnily wnough, when he cheated on her she hit the roof and lambasted the other woman.

I think if the other party is aware of the relationship the cheater is in, he is she is as much to blame. Equality works in the shit situations as well as the beneficial ones.

Agree with Joinyourplayfellows

shewhowines "I think a relationship can get over infidelity."

Not all relationships can survive infidelity, and indeed many marriages that have been rocked by infidelity are feeling the lasting effects of that years later. I know of one couple where the husband had an affair which ended 15 years ago, yet his wife still mentions it from time to time, and they have talked and talked and talked, they have been completely honest with each other, they wanted to make their marriage work, yet the lingering lack of trust and anxiety is still there, and they now feel it always will be.
How is that the husband getting away with it? He and his wife have been living with the after effects for 15 years and will most probably live with them for the rest of their lives.
The OW OTOH has moved on, and the last anyone heard of her, she had married and was happy.

Who has come out of that situation unscathed? Certainly not the MM.

I just don't see how the wife or the MM get away unscathed.

Just because one thing is black doesn't mean another can't be dark grey. Blaming the ow doesn't stop you from blaming the spouse more. How you react to them though is going to be different though as one presumably shares your house and children and the other is an unknown.

Getting away with the blame, I mean. In that example littlemiss the fact that the relationship never really truly recovered is the husbands fault for having the affair in the first instance. He was and still is, to blame. The Ow was a factor in the breakdown of the marriage, but it is the husbands fault.

I think in some cases threads on MN aimed at the OW are because the poster can confront their DH/DP face to face and have the opportunity to say what they want to say to them but, on the other hand, they can't/won't/don't want/ don't have the same opportunity to confront the OW.

A thread can be a way of venting their feelings or saying what they would like to say to her face.

Just because someone who has found out their DP/DH is having an affair and is slating the OW on here doesn't necessarily mean that they think their partner is blameless.

I think it very difficult to apply theoretical responses to an emotionally charged situation. As someone said above (joinyourplayfellows?), in most cases the OW is not known to the family and therefore she is bound to be held up as the villain of the piece. However, I don't think in most cases the MM is seen as an innocent party.

For what it's worth, I think infidelity and subsequent divorce can have effects for years to come. My dad had an affair and left for the OW. That was in about 1988. My mum is still really bitter about it now, even though she is happily remarried and had been for many years. The OW went out of her way to make my mum's and our lives as difficult as possible and my Dad the stupid idiot, went along with it. I'd be bitter if that happened to me, towards both of them.

Oh I'm not saying that the OW can't make life difficult after the affair. I've known cases where she's caused all sorts of upset. But my point is, the marriage breakdown in itself, was caused by his actions. He broke the family up. Afterwards they can make all sorts of trouble, but he by having an affair, caused the break up of the marriage.

YANBU. I'm sorry, but I'm cynical in thinking that some cheated on wives stay for money and not losing the lifestyle, not love.

And if you are in love with someone, or have been in love with someone, its hard to see them as a sleazy predator.

I've lost count of the number of men who have live in girlfriends that they keep secret have come onto me. Its really annoying. I've done nothing to encourage it. So I guess that a lot of married men keep their marital status secret or "grey" until they have got the woman hooked. I've seen it happen to a good friend of mine at work too, and the live in girlfriend blamed her, when in actual fact she didn't fancy the man in question, was repulsed by his disregard of his live in girlfriend, and was only friendly and polite to him because he was senior to her and she was afraid of getting labelled a troublemaker in a new job.

Sure, there must be some predatory women who chase after richer married men, but I suspect in a lot of cases its the men who lie in the first place about their status. You only have to go briefly onto one of those dating sites like POF to see how quite a lot of men behave.

I can see perfectly well why the OW gets blame. If you cast the MM as the only villain of the piece you then demote both women - the Wife and the OW to passive, easily led sheep who follow the dastardly male as though they are on a lead. I think we need to realise that women can be just as devious and selfish as men, not always the poor innocent party.