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?

CopperRose

It may sound like I'm having an entirely undeserved pity-party, but the situation is as I describe it. And while you clearly have an axe to grind - fair enough, if your husband cheated on you - and shouldn't presume to tell me what I do and don't feel regarding guilt, your assessment of low self-esteem is probably accurate. How would you suggest that I increase my self-esteem?

NatalieKirk

Yes, I realise that there is a fair chance that he lies to me as well as his wife. That said, there are plenty of threads on MN about people whose partners have completely lost interest in sex, so it is not impossible that he is being truthful in this instance.

Holly

Yes, I'm sad, too. Most of the time I try not to think about it.

Janet

I quite like living alone, too, but I would much rather have a permanent partner. I see mine far more seldom than once a week - approximately once a month, if that. I'm very aware that I do not come high up in his priorities - in fact he has cancelled our meeting today because of... Well, who knows really whether his excuse is the truth. He isn't going to leave his wife, that much I do know.

It may sound like I'm having an entirely undeserved pity-party, but the situation is as I describe it.

Yes, and it is a pity party.

And while you clearly have an axe to grind - fair enough, if your husband cheated on you - and shouldn't presume to tell me what I do and don't feel regarding guilt,

I have no axe to grind with you.
My situation is my situation - I merely pointed out that your 'justification' was almost word for word the 'justification' that my ex's OW tried to bore me with.
Regarding your 'guilt' - if you truly felt guilt you would do something about it, but you choose not to.
You choose to do what you are doing, every single time you see him, speak to him, or have sex with him.
You are actively choosing to do these things, so that is why your claim of 'feeling guilty' rings hollow to me.

your assessment of low self-esteem is probably accurate. How would you suggest that I increase my self-esteem?

I would start by leaving him.
If he truly cared about you & wanted to be with you he would have left his wife and would have made an active choice to make a life with you.
He hasn't.
By staying with him you are stuck in a cycle of self-pity, blaming everything else for your predicament and taking no ownership.
If you stay with him, as things are, you will never improve your self esteem.

Respect yourself, and others will respect you.
You cannot build your own self-worth, self-esteem & self-respect if you are nothing more than a dirty little secret in the eyes of your significant other.

You deserve far, far more than that.

Some people are habitual cheaters, who will have affairs/one night stands no matter how happy they are with their partner.

Others have affairs for other reasons. Often because they're desperately unhappy in their current relationship but too weak to leave, the affair seems to be used almost as the catalyst they need to end the unhappy relationship.

I don't really understand why a single person would get themselves involved with either of the above. In both cases, despite the different motivations, the single person will be expendable.

I don't think people who have affairs are inherently bad people, but to have an affair is always an inherently bad choice to make. Some people can't face up to that when caught out and behave appallingly badly, out of shame, others never get caught out and move on like it never happened. Bar perhaps the odd fleeting regretful thought.

I agree it is very hard to generalise about people's reasons for cheating.

I don't know if anyone else is watching the 3 wives, onie husband show on Channel 4 (and on Skygo) but those fundamentalist mormon men opening live with and support and are religiously married to 3 wives+ at once. It is probably a lot more honest than hiding things but still very complex.

The once a week man used to leave work early on Friday afternoons and get back to his wife a bit later as far as I remember. I wonder if these wives (or husbands) often know but just don't want openly to admit it as that brings it to a head. You wonder how they can not know.

CopperRose

You are right in most of what you say, although my "predicament" is not a result of the affair; it pre-existed, and had done for a long time before my resolve weakened.

As part of my self-esteem issues are to do with being on my own and not feeling attractive, I'm not sure that leaving him and going back to being "properly" single will help with that, but at any rate something has registered and I have just written to him to end it.

I do sympathise (and empathise) with your own feelings and how you view yourself Grand, it's just that I can't see any way at all that being the OW will 'fix' anything.
Quite the contrary, it will just make it worse & perpetuate it.

In the case of my ex, he'd been seeing the OW for 10 yrs in total (I was entirely clueless); it was much the same as you, whereby it was an infrequent physical thing but a continual emotional contact (emails, phone calls etc). I think the entire totalled time they physically spent together over the 10 years was probably about 2 months (if even that) - it was snatched shags here & there and practically no actual 'relationship' (as I would view a relationship - going out together, shared experiences, holidays, meeting each other's family etc).

When I found out I left him - he spent months trying to get back with me, he dumped her immediately I found out. When it became clear I was not interested he hooked back up with her & they're still 'together' now - but she's still his 'dirty secret' to all intents & purposes.
She's never met his family, or our kids; they still have only sporadic physical time together because he prioritises the kids over her, and he spends more time in my company than hers tbh (we're amicably co-parenting).
He doesn't respect her, he ditches her plans at the drop of a hat & he sees her as convenient. I would not be surprised if he ditches her if a better offer came along tbh - he's made it clear to me that if I would get back with him, he'd finish with her.

So, what I am trying to say is that you deserve more. Much more.
(As does the OW in my case, but as it was me & my life that she colluded in destroying I actually couldn't give a fuck about her or her happiness tbh).

You don't need a partner to validate or define you, you are so much more than whoever it is that you happen to be shagging.
It's fine to not be in a relationship - what do you get out of the relationship? Where else could you find that?

I like myself, I respect myself, and I absolutely would expect the same from any future prospective partner.
That is how it should be, and we all deserve that as a minimum, you included.

Grand
Well done.
It sounds corny but today is the first day of the rest of your life.
Please do something to help your self esteem. Whether it be talking it over with a counsellor, self help books etc. This isn't a rehearsal- you only have one life. Get out there and live it.
Do not be there for someone who may or may not take you up on your availability.
You are worth so much more.

Please do something to help your self esteem. Whether it be talking it over with a counsellor...

Like the one I've been seeing for the last nine years, you mean?! I think I might just be a lost cause...

CopperRose

Thank you. I have started a thread in Relationships in your honour, as it were.

Some people are habitual cheaters, who will have affairs/one night stands no matter how happy they are with their partner

Others have affairs for other reasons. Often because they're desperately unhappy in their current relationship but too weak to leave, the affair seems to be used almost as the catalyst they need to end the unhappy relationship

So true. My first "D"H was the former type, for at least 10 years. In the end, I became the latter type, out of sheer unhappiness and frustration. I didn't seek it out either, it just kind of happened. There is categorically no way that I would have cheated on him, if he hadn't done it multiple times first. I was in a very bad place, because of what he had done.

My now DH would never cheat, and I would never cheat on him.

Grand I really hope you weren't exclusive with him. That you didn't take yourself off the dating scene, for someone who only saw you once a month!

Grand maybe that counsellor isn't very good?

For me getting married is a life commitment, that takes work...I don't see divorce as a option available to me

Yes, everyone who has ever divorced didn't intend it to be for life and made no attempt whatsoever at working at the relationship [confised].

You do realise that if your husband decides he no longer wants to be married to you, there is nothing at all you can do about that?

Grand I really hope you weren't exclusive with him. That you didn't take yourself off the dating scene, for someone who only saw you once a month!

Well no I didn't, but they weren't exactly forming a queue at my door...

Grand maybe that counsellor isn't very good?

Maybe. But I'm not trying to do it all again with someone else. He is about the tenth therapist I've had and I've had enough. I've told him he's not having more than a decade.