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.

A lot of these replies are very black and white. We are all human and sometimes affairs happen. Are they right no but after being married for 12 years and going through good and bad patches I can see how they could happen.
I am not in any way condoning it but also wouldn't judge someone. No one else knows what goes on in a relationship or how someone is feeling.
Of course if my husband had an affair I would be upset but I would also question where had it gone wrong and can we put it right. Generally a relationship breaking down or an affair does not happen for no reason and I would want to know what wasn't working with us to mean it had happened. It could be a number of things that had led to it including low self esteem. Believe it or not sometimes the one having the affair does so due to a lack of self esteem and a need to feel desired, loved as they are not getting that in their marriage (my experience anyway) I am not saying I wouldn't be angry and hurt but I don't believe it is always only the fault of the person having the affair.
This is different however to the type of person who does and will always cheat. (I know they are out there!) this I would not forgive.

I have both had an affair and been cheated on (both within marriages). I am not a terrible person but I did horrible things to my ex.. Lying, misleading, bare faced dishonesty about where I was. All of that is far far worse than the actual sex. I justified it with what I can now see what utter utter bollocks; limerance, lust, obsession that I convinced myself was love and put me under some kind of imperative that I 'had' to be with him. Fortunately there were no children involved and we had a clean break.

The second one, I was left for ow. Whilst that was terrible at the time, I can honestly say what makes me think my ex is an absolute cock is how he has behaved since with regard to the finances, the kids and toward me who has been left to do all the parenting. In 'an affair'.. the actual emotional or sexual infidelity is the tip if the ice berg of what is actually wrong with the behaviour.

I never believe this 'can't help falling in love' mentality. You can.

This^

Affairs are so cruel. Just so awful, they require deceit, manoeuvering and manipulation of details, times, dates. They require secrets, gas lighting, and sometimes even spite, because some people really are all or nothing people and can't mantain an affair without mentally down grading the person they are with, so they despise them, fuck with their minds, disrespect them, withdraw from them and rain on their self-esteem and break them before the truth comes out.

Then there's the ensuing harm to any children.

Its just nasty nasty nasty. I can accept developing feelings for someone besides a spouse. But not the actions that follow if pursued.

People behave in ways during an affair that they never would previously beforehand.

Of course that same person may jump into a burning house to save you.

So I think people who have affairs are not being good people while having them.

But that doesn't mean they aren't generally good people when alls said and done.

Affairs are messy and complicated.

Having affairs doesn't make me a bad person, but it shows I'm not brave enough to fully leave a relationship I should end.

We all have our reasons for cheating, but once you do, you will never be the same person again.

@Angrybird123 Was your 2nd husband the OM?

There's a bit in a film when the cheating man says, "she meant nothing to me" and the woman says, "while you were with her I meant nothing".

At some point you're treating your DH like crap. That's not a reasonable marriage. Leave if you're not happy. That's OK.

Ugh. Short answer? A truly good person stops him/herself before cheating-- won't put him/herself into a situation where they "can't stop themselves". Of course someone's not an irredeemably "bad person" just because they have an affair, but it's pathetically poor behaviour.

If you're considering cheating (and emotionally, it sounds like that ship has already sailed), there's clearly something wrong with your marriage. Maybe it needs work; maybe it's beyond repair. Either way, that's where your focus should be on the promises you made to your husband not on looking here for some sort of "permission" to cheat or reassurance that you're still a good person if you do.

If you do decide to split from your husband, at least you can approach the "OM" with some semblance of dignity and self-respect.

Yes he was.. The irony was not lost on me and I wouldn't blame anyone who looked at me and thought 'karma'. From a distance its all so obvious and clear. My affair partner was a selfish shit who didn't care that he was helping to cause pain to my first husband (not at all excusing my own role) so maybe I shouldn't have been surprised when that same selfishness led him to jump ship on family life. As I said, it's less the infidelity but the deceit and nastiness that almost has to accompany it that makes it bad. The cheater always wants to justify their behaviour and usually does so by blaming the cheated on person in some way.

I was in a miserable marriage. My ex had withdrawn intimacy on all levels for three years before I asked him for a divorce. He refused to go.to counselling or to properly talk about it with me. I kept hoping things would change. He now says he no longer loved me as a wife during those years.

Whilst he was a rubbish husband, there is no way I would have separated my DD from her dad for no good reason. Eventually I met a man, fell in love, and couldn't live a lie anymore, so asked my husband for a divorce.

Yes there was a slight overlap, so I technically had an affair, but even my ex admits that that didn't end our marriage. It was already dead. He just refused to end it when his feelings went. I decided I would rather compromise my morals than separate my DD from her dad on the basis of a principle.

My ex and new bloke get on well. No hostilities. Because they both know that my new man wasnt the cause. Just the catalyst.

To add - I wish now that I had left before I met DP. But I stayed for my DD. Affairs Don't happen when both parties are happy in a relationship.

I used to think such things were very cut and dried, until I lived through it. Now, I feel ashamed at how much I judged others who had affairs.

See I disagree with that. I was actually very happy in my first marriage but we'd been together a long time, since school, and I fell in lust as a grown up for the first time. It knocked me sideways. Also, no marriage is happy all the time, that's why you take vows for better for worse, to remind you during the shit, boring, skint, baby and toddler rearing years that you promised to stick at it. Not jump ship. Not all marriages that are unhappy for a time are doomed or should be written off, but we live in such an entitled, immediate gratification culture that it's seen as sad but understandable if someone decides to chuck it in during a tough patch.

We are the sum of our deeds. So choose carefully what you do.

A truly good person stops him/herself before cheating

A truly differentiated, functional person stops him /herself before cheating. There is no such thing as truly good.

I agree with you entirely Angry could not have worded that better had I tried. I used to think cheater = bad person. That was until it happened to me. In many ways you could argue I'm a better person for having gone through it as I learned things about myself/human nature that I might have otherwise missed had I remained ignorant in my unhappily married bliss.

No good or bad people, it's good or bad behaviour.

Cheating is bad and uneccessary behaviour.

Leave your husband and let him find someone who appreciates him.

I'm in a similar boat, @sueperbly.

My first husband withdrew not just sex, but companionship and emotional intimacy. I tried to talk to him about it but he refused to discuss it. I decided to leave once the practicalities were feasible, which would be in around 6 months. (We didn't have children.) During those 6 months, I started shagging somebody else, and told him I was seeing somebody else; he refused, yet again, to discuss it or any of our other issues. I then met my now-DH. He was married and was in a similar situation, and had already had two affairs. The main thing holding him back from leaving his then-wife was not wanting to be apart from his children.

Anyway, we fell in love, and within 6 weeks we'd both moved out of our former marital homes and moved in together. We both divorced our exes, and are now happily married with a child. We have his older children with us just under half the time; they love me, and have said that DH and I are clearly happier together than their parents were.

I'm not proud of what I did. I should have left my ex before I started seeing other people. But I don't think I'm a bad person.

We both divorced our exes, and are now happily married

Yeah...for now...

Fuck me, there are a lot of children on this thread. Of course good people can have affairs. Similarly, some absolute cunts might not.

@Angrybird123

I think we all know that marriage is not always a bed of roses. You struggle through tough times etc.

I am always amazed when people complain that others treat their relationships as disposable because people want instant gratification. I have never met anyone like that.

What I learnt in my marriage, was that I could not save a dying marriage on my own. I had tried for years and years to save it. Done all I could. But my husband had emotionally checked out. He was no longer interested. He just didn't have the courage to tell me or leave me.

Meeting someone and falling in love, after years of being ignored and trying to save my marriage, was maybe technically wrong. Would it have been better for my daughter to grow up with parents in a non-loving marriage? Or for me to leave my husband and therefore deprive my DD of her Daddy who she adored, just to make myself happy? As it was, I waited and then met someone who tipped the scales. Meeting him then made it necessary to leave.

I am glad life is so black and white/good and bad for so many of you. That means you haven't been through the pain of living in the awful grey areas in between.

But I do feel a plonker for judging other people, now. The saying "let he without sin cast the first stone", is about right IMO.

Yes I'm baffled by so many people who think life is so black and white, 'good person', 'bad person'.

My DH, I would say, is a good person. Works hard in his job (teacher), genuinely cares for and does his absolute best for his students, cares for his family, gives to charity, loves and has a great relationship with our children, etc etc.
If he had an affair, I would obviously feel shocked, hurt, angry, betrayed; I might not be able to forgive him, I might leave him - but does it negate all of the above and suddenly make him a 'bad' person? I don't think so.
Nobody is perfect, people who are generally 'good' will sometimes do things which are not good. Just as people who at generally unkind, selfish, lazy, whatever, are capable of sometimes doing good things.

So to respond to YOUR situation OP; of course a single act of betrayal does not suddenly make you 'bad'. But this really should not be your primary concern.
That single act or crossing of a line is very VERY likely to end in heartache, broken trust, broken relationships, anger and bitterness. It is NOT worth it.
Take a step back. Work out why you feel the way you feel. Are you unhappy with DH in any way at all? Can you imagine leaving him and ending your relationship? If the answer is yes, then you need to explore this first. Is the relationship worth working on and saving, or do you need to separate?
If the answer to this is no, just imagine how you will feel for years and years and the rest of your life; the guilt, living a lie, hiding such a betrayal from him - and that is in the unlikely event that he does not find out.
There is no way that cheating will have a happy ending. It is just not worth it.

You should watch ‘The Affair’ with Dominic West and Ruth Wilson. It’s absolutely fantastic. It’ll give you a new perspective on the morals of cheating.

Treat other people like you would want to be treated yourself - how would you like your husband to handle the situation if he fell in love with an OW?

Being in that scenario, the fact that you are worrying more about how you will be judged, and not the feelings of your husband, actually shows a great deal about your character, and no. It's not good.

Does it depend on the marriage though?

What if the person having the affair is emotionally abused, ground down, unable to get their partner to agree to a split?

I can totally see how someone in that position might find themselves having an affair. I don’t think that would make them ‘a bad person’, though they might be painted as such.

There are a thousand and one shitty things to do to the person you’re married to. An affair is the one that people see, though, and judge.

Don’t do it. Regardless whether this makes you a good person or not. Work on your marriage. It’s not worth the pain you’ll cause.