OP, I wonder if you do actually regret the affair, but you need to feel that you don’t. Why else would you come on to a forum and profess that you had an affair and have no regrets? What purpose does that serve other than to help you to validate what you did in the past?
For context, I had an affair eight years ago. My ex husband was emotionally abusive on every level. I had never heard of coercive control until recently but he ticked all the boxes.
Never physical, always emotional. Made me move away from my friends and family on several occasions, actually every time we got settled somewhere and I started to make friends. Switched off the boiler in the garage so I couldn’t have the heating on when he wasn’t home. Put taps and bugs in the house, told me that because I liked a bit of rough sex it was as if I enjoyed him raping me. FWIW he never did, but the suggestion was there.
I could go on but you get the idea. And truth is that it happened so slowly throughout our marriage that I didn’t see it until it was right there on top of me so to speak.
So when I started chatting to someone and we got closer I suddenly realised that it was possible to have people in the world who liked me for me.
We got far too close too quickly and ended up sleeping together once.
My H found out and filed for divorce. He would actually have taken me back, but at that point I realised that I had permission to leave.
And you know, for those who say that if you’re unhappy you should just leave, it really isn’t that simple when people feel that leaving for any other reason than infidelity or DV is wrong. I was actually told that I would be unreasonable to leave or expect support from anyone if I ever left, and this was from family.
Anyway I left, I didn’t get together with OM, and it didn’t matter what I had been through before, because in the eyes of others an affair obliterates all other wrongs. As soon as you have an affair all the other wrongs were probably your fault as well.
But unlike you, I regret having an affair more than anything else in my life. When things have gone wrong for me (and they have, on a huge level,) I wonder if this is actually karma coming back to bite me for the hideous person I obviously was/am.
I dread the day ex sits the DC down and tells them what I’ve done as he has promised to do. And for what it’s worth, he is now equally gaslighting and abusive to his new partner.
But the difference here is that I do regret having the affair, and the only reason why I talk about it on here is because it’s not only the destruction of a family which can result, but the destruction of your personal self.
I left an abusive marriage, but I think less of myself now than ex could have made me feel, and sometimes I question whether I should just have stayed.
But I still maintain that affairs are not black and white. But they are still not a good thing to do. Not to others, and equally not to yourself.
Needing to come on here and shout from the rooftops that you’ve had an affair but have no regrets just makes you look a bit proud of what you’ve done. Or alternatively that you need someone to tell you that what you did wasn’t wrong.