Please make me see sense - cheat on DH

[Plzstopthisstupidity]

I started working after a long break when I had my kids. The eldest is 7.

I met someone at work, we currently WFH but will be in office soon.

The talking started as banter and fun, it’s quite obviously turned into flirting and he’s admitted he has sexual feelings for me. I do too, but neither of us ‘wants’ to act on them. We are both married.

I have been cheated on by my DH when I had my first child but we moved on. We are currently going through a rough patch you could say, communication issues mainly. I suggested therapy but he’s not interested as he thinks it’s pointless (but is not against me getting therapy alone).

I don’t know. We say we don’t want to act on it but I’m afraid of these unfamiliar feelings. I’ve never thought I would think about cheating let alone do it. I’m 29. Life has been giving me many reality checks lately. I feel so guilty and it is eating me up.

My colleague and I are aware these feelings are wrong. He has a young daughter and his wife seems lovely although he has mentioned marital problems which I took with a pinch of salt anyway… regardless of problems, it isn’t an excuse to cheat.

Please, Mumsnet, I love you and I love this place - please make me see sense before I do something I will regret.

Thank you.

…but a part of me worries that I won’t be so sensible when the time comes.

You are responsible for protecting your fidelity. You can choose a different path, OP.

Some thoughts:
Your H cheated but immediately confessed with remorse, so you had the facts and made your choices. You set your conditions for staying, which would have included mutual fidelity, loyalty and transparency.

You and OM are keeping a secret together. Whether you continue this emotional affair or escalate to sex, your H is being robbed of his own choices and consent. Would he consent to intimacy if he knew all about your involvement with OM? Would he choose to stay? You don’t have the right to put H’s sexual health at risk. OM’s sexual history/status is unknown, and condoms don’t provide protection from all STDs. And of course there’s also Covid.

OP, if you frequently feel alone and empty, find that you and H are always on different pages, and he refuses to commit to relationship counseling, then you have the option to end the marriage in an ethical manner. The absolutely worst thing you could do, though, is diminish yourself and devalue/betray your family by selfishly pursuing illicit ego validation and sexual gratification with this OM.

You know that you can stop this dead in it’s tracks.

@MsDogLady

…but a part of me worries that I won’t be so sensible when the time comes.

You are responsible for protecting your fidelity. You can choose a different path, OP.

Some thoughts:
Your H cheated but immediately confessed with remorse, so you had the facts and made your choices. You set your conditions for staying, which would have included mutual fidelity, loyalty and transparency.

You and OM are keeping a secret together. Whether you continue this emotional affair or escalate to sex, your H is being robbed of his own choices and consent. Would he consent to intimacy if he knew all about your involvement with OM? Would he choose to stay? You don’t have the right to put H’s sexual health at risk. OM’s sexual history/status is unknown, and condoms don’t provide protection from all STDs. And of course there’s also Covid.

OP, if you frequently feel alone and empty, find that you and H are always on different pages, and he refuses to commit to relationship counseling, then you have the option to end the marriage in an ethical manner. The absolutely worst thing you could do, though, is diminish yourself and devalue/betray your family by selfishly pursuing illicit ego validation and sexual gratification with this OM.

You know that you can stop this dead in it’s tracks.

Thank you. This is another message that reminds me that I can get over this if I try. I know it’s horrible to admit but part of me doesn’t want to try - I just want to feel desires and sexual and wanted. You know that stupidity of secrecy, forbidden feelings, blah blah blah. Utter tosh and yet I’ve fallen for it like a fool.

I need to stop myself and sort this out.

I will try. I will try.

Fwiw, my DH was about 23 when we married and did some stupid stuff in the first 1-2 years. The ‘real’ cheating happened once where he actually did participate in something sexual whereas the rest was stupid messages, drunk texts, etc. Seemingly he has been loyal since just after the birth of my first baby. He does try, we do attempt to work on ourselves, but then somewhere in the middle we fall flat.

He loves our kids and says openly that he doesn’t want to ruin their lives and he wants us to stay together because he loves, respects and cares for me both as his wife and as the mother of his kids.

He’s a nice guy, he really is.

I think this is just the first time I’ve felt wanted and been given attention by anyone else in a long time and I’m just acting like a silly stupid schoolgirl. It’s no excuse.

I can’t stop thinking about work guy and it’s making me feel sick.

I know that it’s horrible to admit but part of me doesn’t want to try.
I can’t stop thinking about work guy and it’s making me feel sick.

OP, you’ve allowed your boundaries to weaken for this destructive trap disguised as alluring new attention.

You identify this as a purely sexual longing, but it’s obvious that your emotions are also tied up in this attraction. You speak of life seeming empty, feeling alone, and shit self-esteem. This affair isn’t therapeutic. Just the opposite. You’re headed for a train wreck.

Try to redirect your thinking to:
OM’s unattractive qualities: He doesn’t respect his Wife or you. He’s a misogynistic operator who divulged (manufactured) private marital problems to set up a ‘connection’ with you. Don’t fool yourself that he wouldn’t also speak out of school about you. You aren’t likely the first vulnerable woman he’s targeted with pretty words and compliments, and you won’t be the last. Of course, you made the decision to reciprocate the flirting and sexual attraction chat.

The threat to your family: Your thrilling secret liaison won’t seem so exciting when your H and children are destroyed by your reckless actions.

The threat to OM’s family: You are choosing to be complicit in his Wife’s humiliation and in the destabilization of her little girl’s family.

The effect on your job: You are making yourself an object of gossip.

Does the value of the thrill make all of the above worth it?

Spoiler alert: it didn’t go well. You were all 100% right. Big, big, big mistake.

Barely anything happened but I’ve made myself a perfect example of what happens when you do stupid selfish shit and now my self-esteem is worse than before and I feel sick when I look at myself… as I should.

Newsflash :

"Woman who got married very young, to the only man she's ever had sex with, feels sexually attracted to another man, after finding out that her Husband committed the ultimate betrayal by cheating on her and who also is still neglecting her emotionally to this day"

Of course you are tempted. You are human. You've been betrayed by your husband. You are not emotionally fulfilled by him either. Also, you are not dead below the waist!

Almost the exact same thing happened to me. I married my first boyfriend at 20. I had never slept with anyone else, and neither had he. Found out several years in, that he had cheated on me - way more than once. I did not leave, as we had children, and he was all I had ever known. About 4 years later, I was in a bar and a man who I was chatting to leant in and kissed me. Although it completely took me by surprise, it was like he had woken me up. At that point, I realised with absolute clarity, that my H had broken our bond, and that if I wanted to leave / date other men, then I absolutely owed him fuck all.

So that's what I did.

No regrets.

Be kind to yourself. I had a mini breakdown when my H cheated on me. I did all sorts of things that were out of character. That's all on him, not you. You didn't break the bond. He did. And if you now do something he might not like, quite frankly, that's tough shit.