AIBU to ask how you sleep at night if you’re the other woman?

[DoYouHaveAHeartOfStone]

Got a frantic call from my cousin that she’s caught her husband cheating, gone over to hers & seen that his iPhone is synced to the iPad & photos of a very cosy day out with his fancy woman have pinged over all at once 🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️ There’s even messages from the other woman saying “I know you have a wife & kids, but I hope you pick me”

It’s easy to always blame the other woman, we are so quick to do it. But F me this is just god awful & I don’t get how you’d sleep at night knowing you are happy to help break up a family? I’d love to hear from “other women” to know how this works in your head? Did you end up staying together? Did he leave his wife for you?

I am not and never would be ‘the other woman’, but I do know that he’d be an ex-husband if he did that to me.

It helps to think of the other woman as completely irrelevant, don’t give her any headspace and concentrate on the cheating spouse. A man can’t be ‘stolen’ unless he wants to be.

It's vile behaviour, not much sisterly regard showed by that type of woman thats for sure.

Obvious attempt at fishing for article fodder.

Not every OW knows she's an OW, a lot of men spin lies to their OW including: 'the marriage is dead', 'we're getting divorced soon', 'I don't love her anymore', so it looks like the relationship is all but dead in the water and the only thing left are pretty much just the formalities of divorce. Of course every circumstance is different but I don't think in the main there are hordes of OW bursting with glee at the chance of breaking up a family.

One other thing and I've said this before: It's not the OW that took the vows.

You’ll get a lot “she didn’t make any vows to the wife, she’s done nothing wrong” etc…
But morally it’s a shitty thing to be party to regardless, I couldn’t knowingly be party to causing another person heartache and upset regardless if I have a responsibility to them or not.

I’m happily married, have been for a very long time and I would never be the other woman, but you absolutely cannot blame her.

She has no loyalties to the family; he does. She isn’t forcing him to have sex with her. He is choosing her.

It's awful behaviour and I would never do it but so many people - you and your cousin included - focus on the other woman.

The other woman may have questionable morals in most people's opinion, but the only person who owes their partner any loyalty or respect in this is the man.
That's it and that's what needs to be focused on, he has done this, he doesn't value his relationship and he is the one in the wrong.
The other woman is sleeping like a baby.

@Lockheart

Obvious attempt at fishing for article fodder.

Yep. Quite an amateur one, at that.

When a man marries/ leaves his wife for his mistress, he creates a vacancy.

So it’s entirely up to her how she sleeps now, but in the future…..

Everyone experience things from their own perspective. Its human. The other woman will have a totally different image of the situation, built mainly from what her lover will be telling her. She will believe it because she is naive, blindly in love, or because sometimes, it is the truth.

If you somehow build a picture of a spiteful, selfish, abusive wife, it's not so hard to sleep fine at night.

ps: never been the OW, never been cheated on when in a LTR (of course, as far as I know!)

@Lockheart I wish it was a fake story, but it’s the darn ugly truth.

...a very cosy day out with his fancy woman...

Are you a time traveller from the 1700s, OP? If so, that'd surely make a good topic for your journalism internship essay.

I have never been the OW, couldn't be arsed with the drama and dealing with someone with so much luggage

but why do you think anyone should care about people they don't know? Why should they put complete strangers above themselves exactly?

Bit different when you are cheating with your best friend's DH, but some people are just weak.

These threads make me laugh. It's as if the guy is absolved of all blame.
Look a bit closer to home to blame someone - for example the person who promised to stay faithful to you.

Men feed a lot of lies to the OW. They believe it because they “love” them. It’s exciting because it’s wrong and all the other cliches.

Also, not everyone gives a shit about other people or who they hurt.

Ultimately though, if someone wants to cheat on you they will and it’s them who are the problem. They either didn’t have the guts to leave if they weren’t happy or more likely, wanted a bit of excitement on the side.

My ex had an affair with his secretary (would have been the perfect cliche if I wasn’t ten years younger than her), he told her I was mad, that I was controlling, that we hadn’t had sex in years, that we lived separate lives - all news to me (she told me all this in an email after she dumped him I couldn’t have cared less).

I see things in quite a cold way so I just waved him off and wished them well. He was most angry that I didn’t wail and scream at his feet but what would have been the point? I couldn’t make him love me enough to stay faithful.

She dumped him in the end because day to day life wasn’t as exciting as an affair.

@CassandraX

...a very cosy day out with his fancy woman...

Are you a time traveller from the 1700s, OP? If so, that'd surely make a good topic for your journalism internship essay.

Don't forget the use of "darn". It's ok OP, you can swear on here but probably not in your article

The username is jumping the shark a tad.

@rosamacrose i’d usually think the same, but it’s legit the truth. The pair of them out by the seaside together kissing & hugging while he’s said he’s at work. Made me sick to my stomach seeing it

@DoYouHaveAHeartOfStone

Got a frantic call from my cousin that she’s caught her husband cheating, gone over to hers & seen that his iPhone is synced to the iPad & photos of a very cosy day out with his fancy woman have pinged over all at once 🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️ There’s even messages from the other woman saying “I know you have a wife & kids, but I hope you pick me”

It’s easy to always blame the other woman, we are so quick to do it. But F me this is just god awful & I don’t get how you’d sleep at night knowing you are happy to help break up a family? I’d love to hear from “other women” to know how this works in your head? Did you end up staying together? Did he leave his wife for you?

That's an odd comment from the OW "I know you have a wife and kids but I hope you pick me".

How odd.......

Daily Mail journalist

Isn't that an oxymoron?

A lot of OW are deeply insecure
It tickles their ego to know that by sleeping with a married man, they are ‘winning’ over another woman

A lot of OW are just shitty human beings

As several replies on here have already shown, some people think it’s entirely valid to go through life not giving a single shit about other people, and trampling other humans to get what you want is absolutely fine

Welcome to mumsnet OP. Which tabloid will you be representing today?

As an aside, we get one of these threads about once a week in fact we tend to get a glut of them “how do you live with yourself/have you ever been/what would you do if you found out if you were the other woman,” interspersed with “I’m the other woman and am shagging a married man how do I get over him?” They’re boring, and a bit predictable.

Why isn't your post asking how HE could do this, how HE sleeps at night? You even acknowledge that its easy to blame the woman. How about you don't then and accept he had full agency here and this is how he chose to act. It's pure misogyny that 'the other woman' still gets the blame for men's poor decision making.