To think that a good person can have an affair?

[Turtle89]

Can an inherently good person in a reasonable marriage fall in love with someone else and still be the same good person? What if they never told the OM how they felt? What if they kissed just the once? Can they still be a good person? What if it goes further? Where’s the line that turns a good person into a bad person? Or is it not that black and white?

FWIW I haven’t had an affair. I consider myself to be a good person but I’m wondering if my personality and self identity would change if I told OM how I feel about him or if I kissed him. Or more.

If you are going to keep it a secret from your OH then you are being deceitful and that's a bad thing to do, people who decide to cheat are good at telling themselves (and others) all sorts of excuses as to why its not bad. But it is.

How would you feel if your dh had an affair - would you still think him a good person - or would you be humiliated and hurt?

I also think when there's an affair on the horizon people put so much effort into flirting with this new person, meeting them, hiding things. If they put half that effort into their marriage they might save it.

Are you actually already having an (emotional) affair with OM, eg spending lots of time with and confiding in him?

Hard to “fall in love” unless you’ve already made a series of dodgy judgments, at best.

Open marriages are one thing - if both parties consent - but isn't it funny how these "can't help falling in love" people aren't honest with their partners so that the partner can go out and get some of that irresistible love, too?

Hey OP, why don't you be honest with your husband so he can go get his leg over elsewhere, too?

Fair's fair. 🤷‍♀️

People need to stop being so black and white. Deception is not a good thing but does it make you 'bad'? What are we, 8? People are not 'good' or 'bad' we are complex, nuanced, multi-faceted and perhaps for some people, monogamy is not right. I guess the real issue is that if your dp is being monogamous and you are in what is supposed to be a monogamous relationship, is it fair that you are playing by different rules?

Fact is, it will go pear shaped. It just will. You can not just have a person in the wings satisfying some part of you without it damaging your relationship with your dp. The fling will go sour at some point. You will be hormonally all over the place with your 'new love' hormones making you literally crazy. If you think you can genuinely carry on an affair in secret and it not impact your marriage, you are deluding yourself. There will be much pain that innocent people will suffer.....and you too will suffer and ultimately you may lose everything you have. As tempting as it may seem, it is just not worth it.

I believe you can be a good person who falls in love with someone outside your marriage. I believe you can be a good person who makes a mistake and kisses the OW/OM. I don't believe you can be a good person if you're having an ongoing affair behind your partner's back.

There’s no such thing as ‘inherent goodness’. You are your actions. If you act unfaithfully, you are someone who behaves selfishly, cruelly and unfairly. Those aren’t good actions, so a person who does them isn’t good.

It depends on the affair. I've known people who had "exit affairs" that really were miserable in their first marriages and have then gone on to be very happily married to the OM/OW for decades. People like to think taking a mistress leaves a vacancy but I've only seen that be true with serial cheats. People can all sorts of underlying emotional issues going on that mean they find themselves attracted to someone else. If you're experiencing those kinds of feelings it might be wise to unpick it all with a therapist before you act ok them and cause huge amounts of upset.

As others have said, falling in love with someone else, not bad. Acting on it and having an affair on the other hand is a very selfish and nasty thing to do. As was said before, it isn't just the sex, its the lies, the deceit and the disrespect that comes with it which makes it such a vile thing to do.

I suspect most of these responses are from people who have either a) never found themselves in a situation where an affair would be tempting; or b) have been cheated on themselves.

FWIW, OP, I do think nice and good people can and do have affairs. They're generally a symptom of something that's gone wrong elsewhere. Some relationships can't be "worked on" - but sometimes even then, staying in a dull, going-nowhere marriage whilst having an affair can be a good idea. Divorce is hellish all round. Affairs don't tend to last forever. I'd just say you'd need to be very, very discreet. You'd probably also have not to mind much if your DH also had an affair.

I don't believe in good or bad people, just good or bad choices. I think you can find yourself attracted to someone else, but you don't have to act on it
Acting on it when you are married, especially when it's a colleague, would be a bad choice.

When you have embarked on an affair with the OM, and either see the devastation it brings to your DH and wider family, or realise that the OM isn't a better partner, because all relationships eventually become "reasonable" - just like your marriage, you will look back and you will know that there were about 10 seconds during which you could have saved everything good that you have now.

That 10 seconds usually exists right at the beginning, when you are still kidding yourself it's not an affair. It's the 10 seconds you hesitate before texting him to ask him out for coffee, or the 10 seconds before you send him the flirty picture. By the time you get to the hotel room, it's going to be too late. Save yourself and your DH a lot of pain and back away now. There is no good in any of the "what ifs" you are toying with. It is all unfaithfulness.

FWIW I know a "good" man who had an affair. All along the way, he told himself it was just joking, just flirting, just going for a weekend away as friends, just booking one hotel room to save money.... but right at the start, if he was honest, he'd have said the intention was always that they would end up having sex. It destroyed two families and he was no happier in the new relationship because the problem wasn't his DW, it was him. It doesn't make him a bad person. He's one of my best friends, but he went down in my estimation and he bitterly regrets what he did.

There are a huge number of people having affairs of every type from casual sex to grand passions, now and always.

If your aim is to be a good person, I wouldn't recommend it. But I also don't think everyone doing this sort of thing is bad either. It's too common, and marriage can be too bloody hard. I was never unfaithful to my husband, but too often we had periods of claustrophobic misery when I devoutly wished that someone - anyone - would take some of the weight of the relationship. I used to hope he would have an affair so I could get an evening to myself tbh.

There is no such thing as a good person or a bad person. We are all shaped by our own childhoods, experiences and intellectual capacity. We are all also driven by our very own narratives that give us our identity but your own narrative of who you are very rarely matches someone else's.

Affairs are messy and complicated and cause a lot of hurt and damage. Yes there are some emotionally stunted people who can not function as well as others and lie and cheat without shame or guilt, but in my experience affairs happen within the context of two very different relationship stories.

I think we can rarely say from the outside whether someone else's marriage is really "reasonable" . My mother had an affair. I don't think it was the best choice she ever made but my parents' marriage was effectively dead before that, and an affair was not the worst thing that was done in their relationship by a long shot. Sure, she should have left before meeting someone else, but my father always said he'd refuse to pay a penny towards his kids if she ever left and she was scared of us ending up in poverty. My grandmother always thought he'd kill us if we left. Yet, when they finally divorced, plenty of people said that were shocked because they thought my parents were so happy. So yeah, I think an affair is generally a selfish move but you never know for certain what goes on behind closed doors.

Of course good people have affairs. People who have affairs aren’t inherently evil in some way.

I think it can happen to anyone and has nothing to do with being a good or bad person. But if it did happen I would be more worried about my partner then whether I was objectively still a ‘good’ person. Don’t talk yourself into something on that basis as it will mean sweet FA in the end.

*than

You aren’t a good person if you are considering it.

I think good people make mistakes. I think if there is something wrong in a relationship sometimes it’s easier to try and check out emotionally or look elsewhere. The problem is it hurts when an relationship ends and you have to deal with that pain sometime. You can’t run away forever.

It really doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. Could you live with yourself if you had an affair?

I don't believe one affair makes you a bad person. I know a couple that started out as an affair (the man was married, the woman was single) and I believe they are both good people. This man cheated on his wife but he's also dedicated his entire working life to helping others and is so kind and caring to everyone, how can that be a bad person?

Saying that, don't do it OP. Just don't. It very rarely ends well and there'll be stress and heartache all round. It's really not worth it.

I just dont get why anyone would let themselves get close to people if they truly loved their dp. I find other men attractive but i avoid getting close. Others would befriend them and flirt on fb.

A good person can develop feeling or fall in love with someone else.

However a good person would end the existing relationship before starting a new one.

So no. You can’t be a good person and have an affair. It’s a huge betrayal of someone you apparently love or have loved, to not even have the decency to tell them it’s over before you plunge into a new relationship.