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?

[PoorYorick]

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.

Yes, I agree with this.

[MrsDesireeCarthorse]

"I don't judge"

Aaaaaaaaaargh!!!! Yes, you fucking DO. Everyone does. Even if it's just to make the judgment that it isn't your business. Judging does not always = forming a negative opinion, as anyone over 12 ought to know.

Also, that is a really sanctimonious sentence.

Having an affair is nasty.

[Disastronaut]

What pooryorick said is so true. I'm another who had a morally upstanding, god fearing father who would never have cheated. And yet he terrorised my mum, he destroyed her. If he'd fucked off with someone else it would have been a blessing for all of us. There's worse things than cheating out there.

[WhooooAmI24601]

My best friend is a cheat. She's always had odd relationships but married an absolute dick of a man who was clearly entirely wrong for her. Nobody was surprised when she cheated on my hen weekend, nobody was surprised when she cheated over and over. Nobody was surprised except the dick she married. She's left him now for the OM and they're happy in their own way. The sad fact, though, is that her Ex (who she has a child with) despises her to the detriment of their child and the new man doesn't trust her nor she him (he was also married when they met). It's a shame to be in a relationship without trust.

I try not to judge because as others have mentioned, nobody knows what's going on in a relationship except for those in it. But I know without a doubt it's not something I'm capable of; Ex cheated when I was pregnant with DS1. The heartbreak and horror and sheer awful fallout showed me that it's just not something I've got in me.

[Disastronaut]

No, MrsDesiree it's not sanctimonious. It's a refusal to damn a vast number of people who I've never met, whose circumstances I know nothing about and whose lives are not my business.

[TheNaze73]

There really are no excuses for an affair. There are reasons to leave relationships though & if things are that shit, you walk. You don't go & fuck someone else

[Rumtopf]

I agree with you OP.
I disapprove of people having affairs and the dishonesty doesn't sit well with me. If your relationship is so bad you're looking outside of it for some reason then end it, walk away and then persue whomever it is.
I've lost friendships because people have confided in me, asked for my support in either lying or listening to their angst. I can't do it. I'm honest about my opinions when asked but I just can't be helping someone deceive and lie to their spouse.

[UppityHumpty]

I know a lot of people who have cheated. None of them are truly happy. One left his wife for the OW who he got pregnant while he was doing IVF with his wife - he's now alone, the OW having left him for a man closer to his age, and his ex-wife is now remarried and expecting a baby. Another colleague liked to sleep around with married managers to get promoted when she was younger & is now branded as an old bicycle at work. She's alone now too after her husband, ironically, left her for someone else, and her son went with him.

Several cousins traded their husbands/wives for younger models and since regret it.

People who cheat are scum but ultimately they do get their comeuppance.

[ForalltheSaints]

I think I tend to judge based more on the length of time a person has been married. Marriages fail sadly, but those who begin affairs within a few months are those I condemn the most.

[Rinkydinkypink]

These is a difference between disproving and thinking they're bad people.

Some people who cheat do it repeatedly have no regard for anyone. These people I struggle with.

I can however understand how emotional affairs begin. I can sort of understand how physical affairs begin. I do think it's down to the person whose married to not cheat on their partner. It's not down to the 3rd party.

I don't think people who have one off affairs are bad people. I think they feel what they don't know won't hurt them. To a point this is correct if it's stopped fast and the partner never finds out. They invest in their relationship, learn from mistakes etc then it can come good.

These I feel are few and far between.

Having an affair does not outright make you a bad person. Its the action that's bad. Like everything else in life it's how you deal with it that determines your character.

I think those who recognise their mistake before it goes to far, stop it and invest in their relationship without hurting their partner by telling them everything are actually the better people than those who continue. Or own up to ease their own conscious. In my opinion that really is selfish.

[Willyoujustbequiet]

Yanbu

Its a truly shitty thing to do by amoral selfish fuckers

[PoorYorick]

you're looking outside of it for some reason then end it

This here is, I think, the crux of a lot of the misunderstanding. A lot of people (the vast majority, I'd say) don't actively seek to have affairs or actively seek to end their marriages. They are in circumstances where they are more suggestible to one, with a certain person. A lot of the venom against affairs comes from assuming an intention where it doesn't actually exist.

But with that said, it does really grind my gears when, like a PP said, people don't own their decision. They will talk of being 'sucked in', 'falling in', being 'pulled'...they will talk about their affairs as if they are things that just happened, and weren't the result of any active choice made at any time.

I don't think everyone who has an affair is necessarily an evil human being, but it does annoy me how many of them don't own their active part in it.

At any one point in the Relationships board, of course, there will be scores of women whose husbands have opted right out of parenting and are off chasing tail and feeling misunderstood while wifey is at home actually parenting and homemaking. That's horrid.

[pigeondujour]

Another colleague liked to sleep around with married managers to get promoted when she was younger & is now branded as an old bicycle at work.

Aye, funny that. Any of the cheating men ever referred to as bicycles?

[carjacker1985]

I personally couldn't forgive cheating but I have friends who have had affairs and I'm still friends with them. Their relationship, their life, their business.

[ShoutOutToMyEx]

Other people's relationships are their business.

I agree with this.

We're all human, we all fuck up sometimes, to varying degrees.

And I don't think all cheating is equal. It's not all black and white and there are so many shades of grey in some situations.

[Ethylred]

Such blanket disapproval reveals a lack of imagination and experience. Oh, and empathy.

[DoesHeWantToOrNot]

See no matter how my ex husband treated me I still couldn't have an affair. So I ended it before it got worse.

Am I as bad as the cheaters?

[sleepingdragons]

I used to work in an industry with lots of booze and conferences. There were loads of affairs: mostly - but not all - men in senior positions in their 40s and 50s with much more junior women in their 20s. I massively disapproved. (FWIW I was a junior-level woman in my 20s at the time).

[JoffreyBaratheon]

I think marriage is an outmoded concept, so fidelity within it - not really relevant as we're no longer all going to church every Sunday and marriage is more about conspicuous consumption now, than, you know, actually having a relationship.

We do all mess up.

I'm probably not a typical person to ask. My first serious relationship was with a bloke who had just got engaged. And all our mutual friends were saying "Oh, M and E just got engaged - I can't ever imagine either of them with anyone else!" I could.

[WhooooAmI24601]

I tend to think it's their life and their choice. Like Maria says, I also hope I'm never in that position.

[loverlybunchofcoconuts]

. A lot of the venom against affairs comes from assuming an intention where it doesn't actually exist.
I don't assume that, but the alternative is that they have absolutely no control over their own behaviour and impulses...and at the point where it goes from a kiss that just happened without planning, to meeting up again and again for more, its just as bad as a plan to have an affair, IMO.
If someone can't resist sex with someone just because they find them appealing, can they be trusted not to do other inappropriate things on impulse? Take something they like from a shop? Hit someone if they're annoying them, even a child?
If someone can resist this impulses, i reckon they could resist having an affair, and either fix or end their existing relationship.

[SetPhasersTaeMalkie]

I don't approve of affairs but I can see how and why they happen.

I was so grateful to my ex for having an affair as it gave me an easy reason to leave.

[SnoozeTime]

YANBU.

[DeleteOrDecay]

I agree, it's even worse if there are children involved and I say this as the child of a broken family as a result of an affair on at least one side.

In the majority of cases i believe if people are unhappy then they should end their current relationship before starting a new one. There may be circumstances where it might be 'okay' (for want of a better term?) I.e if the relationship is abusive and packing up and leaving isn't so simple but in most cases it's unacceptable.