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?

[InvisibleKittenAttack]

I think we all judge people based on what they say and do, and I have noticed that people who are prepared to be the OW/OM tend to be very selfish people who can't be trusted, oddly, those who are in a relationship who have affairs aren't always terrible people who will always stab you in the back. The mindset of someone married who cheats is often different to the single person who seeks the attention of someone who is already in a relationship.

You aren't wrong to distance yourself from your friends who are happy to sleep with married men, they don't have the normal "break points".

[pigeondujour]

I do think it's weird though how someone can treat their partner really unkindly and disrespectfully in other ways for years and years (you only need to look at the trending page on here at any given moment) and it isn't looked on as badly as cheating is.

[treaclesoda]

I posted upthread saying that I disapprove, and I do, but I wouldn't be so naïve as to write off every single person who has cheated as scum. Life is complicated and it's not for me to class them as scum.

[purplecabbage]

An old friend of mine told me about his affair and I did feel shocked, dismayed and yes, in judgement of him. Because I suppose the highest moral imperative (imo) is to communicate and not to act out.

He told me that sex was missing from their 15 yr marriage, that is his justification which to me doesnt validate his actions in the slightest.

I know it's not my business, but then again, he did bring it to my attention directly. He is conducting an affair, ie medium to long term duplicity - and therein I think is the problem for me.

[MrsKoala]

I don't think it's black and white. I think if you look at history, art, music, literature, tv, politics etc you see it everywhere. It wouldn't be so ubiquitous if it wasn't common. As its so common i just see it as a negative aspect of the human condition/love/passion/whatever you want to call it.

I was brought up to think of it as sad/bad but not making someone evil or 'scum'. It was relatively common in friends and family and I can be honest and say i have had an affair too. I know it was wrong and of course i had my reasons.

[Gingerbreadmam]

i would try not to judge but still would. i am of the mindset if you're not happy leave.

A friend was telling me earlier in the week how she cheated on most bfs in her 20s. I didn't share my feelings on the subject but i did find myself thinking about it a lot afterwards. it's the deceit.

[Instasista]

Ncrant I just try not to judge people because everyone makes mistakes and you never know for sure you don't do something you think adhorrant right now.

Also yes, it's none of my business and I don't care much what other people do

[Camnico]

Hey OP as I said I don't judge, however, if my best friend (for example) was being cheated on and I knew and didn't say anything I don't know if I could forgive myself. I would hate to be in that position. If you know a lot of people who are cheating/have cheated then people obviously think, I'll tell her cause she won't say anything.. but really, potentially it could be causing you unnecessary stress.

Does that make sense lol?

P.s if their telling you they are making it your business.

[VestalVirgin]

Having affairs with married people is just plain stupid. Starting a relationship with someone you 100% know has no problems with cheating?
That's guaranteed to cause heartbreak, unless you are not emotionally involved at all.

The cheating spouse is ultimately the one who does wrong, but there's really no need to enable that sort of disgusting behaviour.

Life is complicated and we never know the whole story.

I cannot think of anything that would justify cheating. Except, perhaps, being stuck in an abusive marriage as a housewife and thus unable to leave. In which case I would expect to know enough of the story to know that.

[sniffle12]

I was in a friend group made up of several couples. A man and a woman from two of the couples were having an affair with each other for over a year. One of them even went ahead with a wedding during that time. Some time after they both ended their relationships, presumably for each other, although I don't think they were ever honest and their original partners may well not even know.

The friend group disintegrated but if it hadn't, I can't honestly say I would have really been able to ever respect them as I did before.

[Leviticus]

YANBU.

I know a really nice couple through work, both really lovely to talk to. They got together through an affair when he was married with two young DC. He left his wife and they promptly started their own little family.

I just can't like them

[Mulberry72]

My DF had an affair with a woman he worked with when I was 13.

Mum forgave him and he came back and they seemed to move forward from it.

I can never forgive him for what he did to DM & my siblings, and he knows it. It was horrific at the time and I was left trying to keep it together with DM & 3 younger siblings, so people who have affairs are in my book, lower than a snakes belly.

[NameChanger22]

I agree. I do judge them. I wonder why they don't get out of their unhappy relationships first.

[PoorYorick]

if you don't judge, what do you actually think?

Unless I know them very well, I don't really think much about it at all except that they're probably unhappy. That's pretty much the only constant I've seen in people who have affairs. They aren't happy.

I used to be extremely black and white about affairs. They were always wrong, you just leave first, unadulterated shitty thing to do. And as I got older and saw a few people who I knew were good people have affairs, I knew it wasn't right but I could also understand how it happened. One friend's husband was always away, he never came to any family events, he paid her and his kids no attention, he had no respect for her. He wasn't abusive but he was cold and detached and felt that as he was the breadwinner (she was a SAHM), she had no right to complain about his complete and utter lack of affection and interest. She did end up sleeping with someone else and no it wasn't right but she'd been starved of anything resembling a human relationship for a long time, with someone who had no interest in trying to revive it despite her efforts and simply did not care how she felt. The affair ended and so did the marriage (exit affair, I think is the term).

I couldn't say that what she did was 'right', but I really can't be sending her into fire and brimstone the way most MNers would seem to do. There was a marriage but no relationship. I know that of course she SHOULD have realised she was so unhappy and divorced and upended her kids and found a new property and got a solicitor and all that before she succumbed to her emotions but, well, people just don't always work that way.

Affair guy was also taking advantage of her vulnerability, if I'm honest. She was responsible too, yes (I don't like it when people have affairs and act as though they had no agency in the matter), but he did wield more power in the relationship than she did, and he knew it.

She is not a wicked, evil person.

(Nor is she me.)

[ladyratterley]

YANBU. I'd always thought I wouldn't judge a friends behaviour if they did something like this, after all nobody's perfect and I'm sure we've all done things we're not proud of.
However.. I've recently found out a friend who's in the process of splitting up with her husband has been seeing someone else for a year. She's not told anyone else and is pretending to her husband that she's fallen out of love with him and isn't admitting the affair. I'm aghast at the lies she's had to tell to all of our friends, family and her husband to keep this up! I'm upset about the web of lies she's spun me, so god knows how her STBXH will feel if he finds out!
A friend of mine once said "that's the problem with an affair, it's all lies and letting people down"

If you get to the stage where you cheat on your partner then you should have the guts to end things, not string it out and have an affair.

[NorthernLurker]

I think a lot of people have affairs fir a lot of reasons. None of us are perfect in our relationships. Let she who is without sin cast the first stone and all that.

What does wind me up though is people who won't own what they have done. In particular those who claim their kids are absolutely fine with their lives being turned upside down and mum and dad whacking up with new people before the door has barely closed on the last row.
One of my dd has a friend whose mother absconded from the marital home with a widower. Said widower had kids of his own so suddenly you have a big (5dc) family blending together with infidelity fallout on one side and still resolving grief on the other in to which within a year was added a brand new baby brother. Just what every teenager needs right?

[HCantThinkOfAUsername]

YANBU. Abusive exh was a cheat and he picked up women off a site for married people even though she was single. Ugh

[TruckThisShit]

Selfish fuckers, literally.
I couldn't be friends with someone who did this, having seen the fall out. Just split up if you want a new partner FFS.

[OdinsLoveChild]

I dont judge. Life isn't black and white and my ideals in life may not be the same as anyone elses I know.

I can say 100% of my friends said before marriage they would NEVER stray. Around 75% of those friends have strayed since marrying their partners for a variety of reasons. In some ways I can understand how choosing a lifelong partner when you are young seems easy. Add in a couple of really shit years and experiences and you may see your partner in a different way which may lead to infidelity.

Its none of my business what anyone else gets up to I'm not sure why anyone feels its their place to judge others either unless you are the partner.

[Crowdblundering]

It's also not always that easy to leave a marriage, a home, children even when you are just miserable and not being abused.

Dividing your life up when you are the SAHP is bloody hard and heartbreaking.

[bigmouthstrikesagain]

If my parents had felt this way I wouldn't exist. So I suppose I cannot feel black and white about the issue.

There are many people who are damaged and make bad decisions. Sometimes good comes out of those decisions - having my upbringing means I am not judgemental, but I would not have an affair either. It is possible to be faithful and not be judgmental of others. If dh had an affair I would hold him responsible and probably have lots of contradictory"feels" about the other party but I would be able to move on. I have seen that is possible for people to get past the pain at least.

[Disastronaut]

I don't judge. It's not that I think it's ok, it's a huge deal and it can be devastating. But I think we're all fallible. Humans are flawed, we do wrong and hurt others all the time, even when we don't mean to.

Who am I to know what's going on in someone's life, what their own personal hell is? So yeah, I don't judge.

[PoorYorick]

Oh, and in the interests of full disclosure: I had a father who never cheated and was always very vocal about how wrong infidelity was, how great he was for never cheating, etc etc etc.

Well no he didn't cheat but he was abusive, violent, foul mouthed, foul tempered and controlling. He never cheated on my mother but he frequently screamed at her that she was a piece of shit, she was a shitbrain, he punched her, he broke her possessions, he ordered her around, he was a shit to her.

This is what people mean when they say it's just not black and white.

I know plenty of people who would never cheat on their partners but they don't love them. They just....don't cheat in relationships. Which is well and good but they're motivated more by rules than love and devotion.

On top of all this I will absolutely accept that there are scumbags who don't care who they hurt, don't care about anything but their own satisfaction and are utter arseholes. Absolutely. But I look around at my circle, and I simply cannot say that every person I know who's slept with someone not their spouse is an evil and irredeemable human being.

[TheFarmersWifey]

IME people who do this are often caught between making hard choices. It's very easy to say if you were unhappy you'd leave. But that would bring heartache to the left spouse and the children. Most people I know who have had affairs are not in terrible relationship where they are 100% sure they want out. There are often reasons for staying as well as leaving . Most sit on the fence to avoid hurting the children or they don't have the income or means to divorce.
Some friends of mine who have had affairs agonise over what to do for the best. It's rarely a 'fling' based on sex. And some do end up with the OW/OM once the children are older. I've known friends and family have affairs for over 20 years and then get together in their 70s.
People who are so blissfully happy they can never empathise with anyone who has an affair are lucky. Not everyone is in a blissful marriage.
Overall, I think affairs are bad news, they end in hurt for someone, but life is complicated at times.

[Crumbs1]

Cheating is just plain wrong. Immoral even. Even if you've only been together a few months and are 16 it's wrong; it's lying, cheating and showing little consideration for others. I accept for some people it's not meant to be 'forever' but even then you need to finish one relationship before starting the next. Can't understand why you'd set out to knowingly hurt another pe son because of a lack of self control and hedonism.