To strongly disapprove of people who have affairs?

[ncrant]

NC for this.

Really, AIBU? Is this more acceptable/expected now?

I have several friends who are having/had affairs with married people. They tell me their trouble. They're good people, but I can't be sympathetic, and mostly I don't know what to say. Inside, I am thinking (angrily) - just DON'T do this, it is wrong. Married people aren't available, full stop. If someones still in a relationship, just leave well alone. I recognise that life is very very complicated (and both parties are responsible), but I can't feel any less black and white about this.

So just interested in views. AIBU to completely judge? Should I try and understand more?

I am not perfect, far from it but I have never been unfaithful and never will be. To lie and treat your partner with such disrespect is wrong. I literally never lie to my husband as I could not live with the guilt. I told him once that I had paid less for something than I really had and felt so guilty that I had to tell him the truth.

I have very strong views on marriage and also strong morals. I would not have made my marriage vows if I didn't mean them. My husband has the same views on marriage and infidelity as I do.

What annoys me is that so many people who have affairs say things like "Oh I didn't mean for it to happen" or "we couldn't help ourselves". Really!!! Do some people's clothes just magically fall off and they find themselves in bed with someone else?

I don't think infidelity is ever ok. There may be some circumstances where it is less wrong (if you see what I mean) but most people having affairs are not doing so because they are in such unhappy or abusive relationships

I think the telling aspect about this is that all those saying it's a grey area mention they recognise that it's wrong but they were unhappy, or they made a mistake and they're just human etc etc. And I'm sure that's true, but no one have come on and acknowledged that ultimately what they did caused an enormous amount of hurt to someone who loved them. It's all about what they lost or gained from it.
Affairs are an intrinsically selfish act. And yes, people being selfish is part of human nature, but they're not the type of people I want in my life.
What I went through, I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. I simply don't have it in me to be that cruel to another human being, and I think very little of those who do.

Speaking as someone who is reluctantly involved with a married man, I don't think many single women would choose that fundamentally unsatisfactory state of affairs (excuse the pun) over a proper relationship. I may be wrong, but I know I wouldn't. However life is often complicated, and disappointing.

I found out after my friend had split from her partner that she had been having an affair.
I'm glad she didn't confide in me because I really don't think I would have felt comfortable in her partners presence.

Nutterfly - I had an affair when I was married to exh. It was the most horrible cruel thing I have ever done. The look on my exh face as it crumbled will stay with me forever. 10 years on I still have nightmares about it all. I have acknowledged many times what I did and after it considered suicide (I have bipolar). There is still not a day which goes past that I don't think about it and feel wretched for all the pain I caused. If I could change it I would.

The affair lasted 3 weeks, then I left. I let him keep the flat and all our possessions. I didn't feel I deserved anything. We had no children.

of course I had my reasons but it will never change that what I did was wrong and devastating to him. However, I don't feel I am 'scum'. But I do have self loathing for my actions, it is unfair to say that all people who have affairs don't care about the others involved.

My dad has done many cruel things to my mum over their 46 year marriage. He has never cheated on her though. I honestly believe that if he had been kind and caring an affair wouldn't have been so bad. It's not great but there are many more shitty things that happen in a marriage.

Yes, cheating isn't the worst thing you can do in a marriage but it's not bloody great either.
I don't think that saying that 'at least they didn't do X' is helpful. It's a bit like being burgled and then someone saying 'well I know someone who was murdered. That's much worse.' Well, yes. No one's saying cheating is the only bad thing or that it's the worst thing, just that it is a bad thing.
Someone behaving shittily to their spouse is someone behaving shittily, whether that involves infidelity or not.

MrsKoala I've never called anyone scum. I'm really sorry one of the posters did because that's what everyone latches on and I don't think it helps the discussion all.

I don't claim cheaters don't care. I know they do. My ex really struggled after we split. He wrote me a really long letter saying how sorry he was and how much he hurt. And I know it was true. He really did hurt badly too.
And that's why we got back together. And then he cheated again ten years later.
And because he didn't want me to find out or face the consequences, he lied repeatedly, told me it was my trust issues that were the problem. At the end, I was so anxious and stressed because I was going crazy that I used to fantasise about killing my self every day. My self esteem just about completely disappeared and i was struggling to function.
And yet again when everything came out, there were tears and guilt and horror at his own actions from him. And all I heard was how hard he was finding it and how bad he felt. I believe him too. Cheating hurts both sides, I don't dispute that.
He's now seeing someone else and she seems lovely, but I'm willing to be that in a few years, the same thing will happen and he's going to feel terrible then too.
Metaphorically it's a bit like punching someone in the face and then complaining because you hurt your hand and no one has sympathy.
I'm sorry you're hurting and I don't doubt it's as terrible as you say. I'm not trying to diminish that, but I save my sympathy for those who had no choice about being hurt, not those who did.

I agree. I have never tried to get any sympathy for feeling bad (I also agree with your analogy). Personally I was in a hideous place when I did it. I was wrapped up entirely in my own pain and I wanted to self destruct. It was a totally self indulgent and cowardly way to end my marriage. I didn't have the maturity and introspection to realise why I was doing it.

I suppose it's whether you 'learn' from the pain and own it or whether you justify it and go on to do it again. I would never ever do it again. I can say that because from a selfish perspective it nearly broke me, and I didn't even have children, so fuck knows what it would do to me now.

My dad met my mum when he was married. Again another complicated situation (forced by family to marry young in the 60s as a ons resulted in pregnancy). He was only married months before meeting my mum - the love of his life. My mum even bought a ticket to New Zealand as she didn't want to be a home wrecker. Dad left his wife and they have been together 45 years. No affairs as far as I know.

So it doesn't always follow that once a cheater always a cheater.

I hate people who cheat there is no need for it if your not happy in your relationship then do the decent thing and walk away instead of cheating that hurts more than someone just calling it a day. I've been cheated on twice and it really hurts and destroys your trust in people. Cheaters are the scum of the earth.

I judge.

I judge the person who is married, and I judge the other person who knowingly & willingly colludes in the deceit and lies too.

I couldn't give a fuck 'how unhappy' someone may/may not be - if you're 'unhappy' then be a grown up and deal with that.

GrandDesespoir
'....speaking as someone who is reluctantly involved with a married man.'

If you are that reluctant why don't you walk away ?
Or why does he not walk away from his spouse ?
Having seen the hurt inflicted on the non cheating spouses and families , I have no time those who indulge in affairs.

*I pursued him and massaged his ego.
His wife is 20'years older than me.

I still married my DH and continued the affair for another couple of years until his wife found out.

My DH doesn't know and I'm pregnant now*

How is this not scummy behaviour? It has caused untold damage to 2 people, made a mockery of their lives and is now bringing a baby into the shitstorm.

Your husband will probably find out one day. It only takes one person to be a bit loose tongued or an accidental meeting with the wife (you'd be surprised how often people bump into each other in totally random places). You've no control over what she could say to your h if she wanted to. I don't know how you can do it - the stress would kill me!

I can't be emotionally detached from the potential fall out they create for other people. An affair ended my realtionship with my father, and eventually also with my mother, because she never recovered and in the aftermath, in an altered state, did some profound damage.

I have been lugging this very large piece of baggage from my father's affair more than 30 years ago. I work hard on putting it down, sometimes for a decade at a time. But... then I find it still there. Right where I left it. Always at my side.

Like last year, when internet randoms discussing my father's death was how we found out he had died some months earlier.

Or last night when I opened facebook for the first time in six months to find a message from his OW sent late last year, apologising for us finding out secondhand about dad's death, because she had no contact details for us. But then miraculously having remembered my name well enough to find me on facebook, sent me a message to let me know my grandmother had died. The grandmother who I know loved me, but couldn't forgive me for choosing the "wrong" side.

When people I know tell me they have are having an affair I have to excuse myself and then avoid them from that point on. The rising bile, grief at everything an affair cost us... I'm afraid I'll lose control and spill all the heaped up pain, loss and anger on a proxy.

Today I feel like the wound has been ripped open all over again. I seem to spend years stitching it closed, only for social media, or somebody else's idle googling to whack me with another blast from the past, leaving me clutching bits of skin frantically. Trying to pull the increasingly tattered edges together for another round of sutures.

I'm being the think I should just leave the thing open. And slowly bleed to death from it. Because no matter how hard I try to give people what they want and "move on" I get sabotaged and dragged back to a moment of time in 1984 that took a hammer to who I was, leaving me marked for what feels like could end up being forever at this point.

I'm so tired. I'm so sad. The bulk of my life has been lived in the shadow of the pain caused by somebody else's temptation unsuccessfully resisted. I can't be reasonable around people who don't seem to comprehend they are playing Russian roulette with other people's hearts and minds.

speaking as someone who is reluctantly involved with a married man

How can a grown woman 'reluctantly' be 'involved with a married man'?

Is he forcing you?

Is someone else forcing you?

If not, then you are actively choosing to be 'involved with a married man' and that is disgusting.

I work with someone who was in a very long term relationship, engaged, wedding booked. Three kids.
Then turns out he had been having an affair for years.
Him and OW are now married and have a child and he hasn't seen the other 3 in well over a year.
I don't condone it at all. Not in the slightest. But we've never ever discussed it. I've only heard the details through the grape vine.
But it hasn't changed our relationship. Outside of the affair they've both always been good, kind people and as far as I'm concerned that part of their life has nothing to do with me. So I will continue the same relationship we've always had.

Married people aren't available, full stop

Well, that's not strictly true. You could be married but separated and living apart. Which wouldn't be cheating.

There was a woman on here who had been living with someone for 14 years and he was still married to someone else but separated. I don't think you could class that as infidelity!

I think there are stereotypical beliefs about cheating which I've noticed from reading in the relationships thread:

• Married woman cheating with a man - escaping the drudgery of her life, it's usually her husband who is apportioned the blame for her straying.

• Married man cheating with a woman - he is disgusting/despicable/there is no excuse, and the OW is the lowest of the low and is apportioned most of the blame

That's not everyone's opinion but that's the general gist from what I've read here.

I agree there is stereotyping about people having affairs

Also that the person having an affair is unhappy/fallen out of love with their partner (especially for a woman)

It's not true some people do simply because they can there is no emotions attached as to why they do

I also find it frightening how there are threads on MN where people discuss planning revenge. There was a post from a woman who talked about trying to run the OW off the road twice. Very very scary behaviour. And much worse than anything the OW had done. Far worse.

I seem to get men confiding in me over this. They think I am divorced (although no adultery on either side) that I am somehow sympathetic. I say the right things but usually they have been very bad and silly and also assume their wives aren't doing the same (when they probably are).

The blam e of the other women or man is silly. It is the person who is married who bears most of the blame as they are the one breaking their marriage vows and only they are the one committing adultery.

No, they are both committing adultery, it is not a cake where you can portion out the blame, more for the married person, less for the unmarried.

If they are wittingly and willingly in a "relationship" with a married person, that is.

Why would someone want to have an affair with someone who would prioritise their shaggy shaggy "needs" over hurting their shag partners kids? I wouldn't touch anyone who would be willing to make my kids cry.

It is not more complicated than that. People make it more complicated with excuses and validation. But it is choosing your immediate desires over your own kids security and happiness. That is gross to me.