To disagree with the statement "the other woman owes you nothing"

[Sarahcoggles]

I see this time and again on MN.
Woman posts that husband is having an affair. She hates the OW and is very angry with her, as well as being angry with husband of course.
Then a load of posters pile in saying she should direct all her anger at husband, as he was the only one who owed her anything. The OW owed her nothing, so she shouldn't be angry with her.

I think that's wrong. We all owe our fellow human beings respect and courtesy. If I bump someone's car in a car park I should leave them a note. I don't owe them anything, I never promised I wouldn't bump into their car, they didn't put their trust in me not to bump into their car , I never promised to pay for any damage that I might do to their car. They don't even know me. But it's still my fault, my carelessness, and common courtesy dictates that I should leave a note and be held accountable.

Why is it perfectly fine to have a relationship with someone else's husband, knowing that you're going to hurt that person, just because they're a stranger and you never promised you wouldn't shag their husband?

Personally I think both parties are equally to blame, just in different ways.

@5128gap

And that's fine if you chose to make judgements without the full facts available to you, it is your choice.

Its also a long way from the behaviour of the cheating partner, who is always acting in full possession of the facts.

It's also fair to say some people require a little more evidence than the words of a cheating man. To administer your own consequenses upon someone elses family without full facts and disclosure, to act upon unreliable evidence.

In many cases this can be seen as as a failure of justice.

I had an affair with a married man, while I was also married. Managed, incredibly, to keep it under wraps.

If I had bumped his wife’s car, I’d be incredibly apologetic. An accident. I’d leave insurance details, make sure a thing that was my fault was resolved.

If the affair had been discovered… no, I don’t think I would’ve “left a note”. I would have apologised profusely to my own H, but I’m sitting here reading opinions and searching feelings and, no, I can’t find what emotion/apology/debt I owe her.

I think @ReneBumsWombatsis on a quest to free om and ow from any kind of blame, whereby the reputation of said om or ow is never questioned or frowned upon.

No, you're on a quest, most likely a misogynistic one, to create a world that benefits cheaters by telling them that they're not solely responsible for shitting on their families and other people had a duty to remove all temptation from their paths.

OM and OW can be very dishonourable, but they're also totally irrelevant. I can decide I want to shag your husband...so what? As long as he sticks to the straight and narrow, nothing will happen. I don't have that power. He has.

It's so sad and frustrating that so many women are so wedded to the need to blame women for shitty men.

@5128gap

So your excuses for the affair are reliant on the reliability of your witness.

An unreliable witness, akin to taking the word of a known criminal (a cheater) over the word of someone you don't actually know.

It wouldn't wash in a court of law.

But I've found people tend to make up their own laws concerning affairs whereby they act as judge, jury and executioner.

If a woman has reached the point of engaging in a relationship with a man, typically she will not be seeing him simply as 'a cheating man'. She will have been shown a side of him that makes him seem worthy of her attraction and feelings. In fact the very side of him that has also misled his wife, who knows him far better and for much longer, into trusting him.
Obviously the fact of their marriage should be enough to make someone avoid a relationship with a cheat, and they show poor judgement at the least. I'm not suggesting otherwise. But poor judgement and failure to do due diligence are not the same as a deliberate act of harm. The question was, how can OW knowingly cause that level of hurt, and my point was, it's often not knowingly.

@ReneBumsWombats ReneBumsWombats ·But why would you want to shag someone if you think that cheating would make them a lowlife?? Pretty low standards! It makes no sense! I guess it's something about 'testing them' and then going - oh I did you a favour, look what he did with me. Either way it's pretty warped.

Well firstly, I'm not making excuses for an affair. I'm not having one.
Secondly, it's not a court of law we're discussing, it's a relationship.
So there are no 'witnesses' simply one man telling one woman his version of his relationship. The OW will not be preferring his word over that of someone she doesn't know. How could she? Unless the wife turns up to give her side of the story, the OW only has one word to go on, his.
You're right though, people do tend to make up their own rules and act as J,J&E, but on this thread its the OW in the dock, so not sure what your point is?

*No, you're on a quest, most likely a misogynistic one, to create a world
that benefits cheaters by telling them that they're not solely
responsible for shitting on their families and other people had a duty
to remove all temptation from their paths. *

Don't be silly, what I do find refreshing though is the female collective that exists all be it silently in many cases to stand by one another in their values and ethics.
It's a club I'd sign up for, and have done.

OM and OW can be very dishonourable, but they're also totally irrelevant.

Oh no, they are not irrelevant although you wish them to be so, their actions are judged totally seperately from any cheating partner, their actions are rarely forgotten, it is behaviour that leads to a reputation that can unfortunately follow them around for years.
I'm sure there are people who regret their behaviour and the way they have been judged, it can cloud and overlook many other good things about the om or ow, fairness is rarely a result.
It can be an extremely cruel badge to wear and I've seen those people being very harshly treated and viewed, I suppose preventative education would be better than trying to make a wrong, a right, after the event.

Even if never found out some people are haunted by their own guilt, equipting yourself information wise about the behaviour of cheaters would probably help more than trying to expect absolution.

No, that's not the point being made.
If I'm a married woman with a loving husband and children, does the responsibility not to hurt my family lie with other men I might offer sex to to refuse me? Or with me, to not make offers of sex to other men in the first place?
And would you, in complete honesty, judge the man as harshly for accepting my offer as you would judge me for making it?

Of course it wouldn't wash in a court of law. For the very simple reason that in the western world, marital infidelity is not a criminal offence.

Abuse on the other hand - be it coercive, financial, sexual or domestic violence - very rightly is illegal. This is the key distinction being missed by some of the more bizarre, outlandish claims on this thread that holding men to account for their own sexual behaviour rather than automatically placing the blame on women is apologism for abuse.

I have never read such arrant nonsense. And to say this on Mumsnet, is to say much.

I honestly don't think this is true. Not these days anyway with only about half of marriages going the distance and separation being fairly commonplace.
Outside of these threads, in RL, most people couldn't really care less if Emma's seeing a married man or Steve and Jane are having an affair. A bit of gossip, a few jokes, maybe some mild tut tutting, but generally people are far too wrapped up in their own lives to assign someone a lifelong reputation as a scarlet woman.
If Jane, Emma and Steve are otherwise pleasant, good company, good colleagues who don't do you any harm personally, most people live and live and their previous 'affair status' is neither here nor there.

I think everyone has a responsibility to respect their own and other people's monogamous relationships. It's not complicated!! And to be honest, I think a lot of people (myself included) would have a slight bias towards being more sympathetic to a married woman who cheats because they automatically assume the husband is a shit. But I can override these biases because I know that's an automatic and not impartial assumption.

Truly I think you'd be unusual in that. The very thought of a woman married to a lovely trusting man (because betrayed partners are always lovely!) with children, going out and asking single men to have sex with her would have most people so outraged they'd barely give a thought to whether the man she asked should have refused her or not. The focus would be entirely on her bad behaviour.

@5128gap Hey yes, it is appalling and I say this as a woman whose husband experienced this in his previous marriage. Yet people assume I'm the other woman half the time when he met me years after.
Really? To me, it seems there's always an element of assuming the woman was 'very unhappy' in the marriage and the horrible man drove her to it, whereas when it's a man it's 'Oh that scumbag was just looking for sex.'

@ReneBumsWombats you don’t seem to have addressed the fact that infidelity causes pain to other people. So, if you “decide you want to shag my husband” the “so what” is that you are knowingly causing pain to another person. And no of course, you haven’t forced him, but you have ultimately colluded in it. YOU have agency, YOU have a choice and you could very easily say no, that’s not who I want to be or what I want to do. And you talk about it being “legal and consensual” which of course it is, to the two people doing it. It is NOT consensual to the third party involved, to the wife or the husband who have NOT consented to another person joining the sexual relationship? And which you are fully aware of? Which ever way you slice it, we ALL have personal responsibility. If you are happy to ignore yours, to live a life of “fuck them, it’s not my problem” so be it. But, it wont bring you, or anyone involved with you, real happiness in the end.

ReneBumsWombats you don’t seem to have addressed the fact that infidelity causes pain to other people. So you “decide you want to shag my husband” the “so what” is that you are knowingly causing pain to another person.

Who? If he refuses to shag me because he's not a sexually incontinent dog, who gets hurt?

The power to hurt you is entirely with him. I can't make him shag anyone. And if he does cheat, who the OW is is irrelevant. The point is, he's a dog and you can't trust him. Are you happy to have him sniffing round me and propositioning me as long as I say no?

Don't waste your time banging on about my agency. Worry about his. It's the one that matters. He promised you he wouldn't shag anyone else so blame him if he does.

@ReneBumsWombats I am interested by the fact that you deny your own agency? You do have a choice here! And your utter denial of the pain it causes? I find that strange, but that is obviously because my moral compass is entirely unaligned with yours. And of course, no one ever wants to be married to a cheating, lying shagger, and yes, ultimately the ow or om is irrelevant, he/she could be literally any other willing vagina/penis. But, as an educated, articulate, emotionally aware person, I know that! So why would I ever want to be that? I wouldn’t, I’m not the repository for some saddos insecurity or entitlement. And I think more of myself, and other people, to knowingly cause harm.

@ReneBumsWombats
I do not believe you can unilaterally impose "moral contracts" upon people in order to dilute your husband's responsibility.

But no one is. Everyone understands it’s the husbands responsibility to their marriage .What you aren’t getting is the OW is a separate issue for the wronged party. She chose to do something she knew was wrong because it benefited her. That’s why they get flack. Because it’s a shitty thing to do.
O don’t even think it matters if the man is married or not actually. If someone is in a relationship they aren’t available.

Of course I get some relationships have run their course and an OW might turn out to be “the one”. But she will still have to wait for the original relational to be over. You don’t give anyone months and months to pick which of you they want ( usually without the others partners knowledge).

Its a bit like those companies that buy up businesses so they can dismantle them and then claim mass unemployment in the area isn’t their fault. When in fact they could pick up the pieces afterwards when it fails ) but then it’s all worth less.

Yeah I don't think many people would stand for their spouse 'sniffing' around anyone, but it still doesn't mean that if someone reciprocates or even initiates knowing them to be married, they're 'ok and shouldn't be thoroughly ashamed of themselves' 🙄 You rightly understand that a cheating married person is mortally incontinent and a lowlife, but you set a very low bar of conduct for single people ...according to your worldview, it's fine for them to go around testing the water to see if they can destroy a family and they don't have to take any responsibility whatsoever. It's completely warped, I don't get it.

The point is, he's a dog and you can't trust him. Are you happy to have him sniffing round me and propositioning me as long as I say no?

I wouldn’t be happy with him but I wouldn’t be upset with you either. You hadn’t become the OW, there would be no issue. It would be my choice to stay or leave ; not his, not yours.
When you become the OW you’ve taken away my choices.

Mmm no abuse apologism is what it is. The MM is essentially commiting fraud to his wife, misrepresenting them and usually his new love interest is affecting his finances both directly and indirectly as he dates her, spends money covering his tracks etc. The wife is gaslit, often physically abused ( infact statistically 98% of victims of domestic abuse report that their partners were unfaithful) and the OW is there, taking away the wife's ability to properly consent to the shared relationship she is now a part of. Whilst the wife is being abused the OW benefits from the abuse so it entirely makes sense to say that putting no blame onto the OW is apologising for their behaviour behaviour contribution to the abuse. It is sad but it is a fact of life. Nobody thinks buying class A drugs from a dealer in the UK means the purchaser is not in some way contributing to the wider horrors of the drug trafficking that goes on abroad to get them here. It's the bigger picture and most people get that but you will too don't worry.

For what it's worth I believe the MM is 100% to blame for ruining his marriage but the OW is 100% to blame for being an accessory to the hurt caused, two completely separate blame-claims. This is of course in the usual situation of a wife unknowingly being cheated on and the OW knowing he is married. I've met a lot of OW in my life and they all knew what they were doing and chose not to care.

This is awful and in this situation you're obviously 100% blameless and the arguments on this thread about blame are not aimed at someone like yourself at all. I hope you're okay.

A prime example of an ow taking hold of someones analagy or response and pulling it out of context to suit their own reasoning.
I know full well it's not a criminal offence thanks for the clarification.

And the abuse comment, what does that even mean, are you stating abuse does not happen during affairs and the ow is not culpable in any way. Well all I can say is you're a very naive woman if you think physical and mental abuse does not occur whilst a man is having an affair.

As a pp states a man capable of adultery is 100% capable of abuse and I would say very rarely is the ow completely unaware that abuse is existing towards the wife in the marital home. In fact this abuse is partly how many ow reconcile themselves into believing the marriage is so bad. It's not the marriage that is bad in many cases it's the abuse that goes hand in hand with the affair, that is so bad. The affair makes the marriage and the man behave badly at home, where previously he had not.

Once the affair gets to the point whereby the ow is covertly covering her tracks with the mm, together in collusion then I would say she knows full well and that increases ten fold as the ow realises the wife is actively suspicious of their behaviour.

The aray of abuse men will use during affairs is collosal and also impossible not to recognise that the ow, had to have known and be part conspiritor and contributor to it, that's what hurts many wives.
For ow to actively ignor the abuse they support and contribute to is appauling and is very much why many women are very unforgiving of ow.

Believe me if you affair with a mm man you must know that you are complicit in abuse, that's what is hard to stomach, the lack of accountability or even recognition that abuse is happening. Ow will always water this down as though a marital home is just a wife wandering arround with a confused look on her face and her mm sighing because he wants to be with her, when in reality there will be screaming, shouting, children crying, in many cases actual physical fights, pushing, thumping, dragging, threatening, choking destroying property, the list goes on.
A virtual hell on earth that's being ignored by another female who's riding high on an emotional buzz.

That's why many betrayed women could never have an affair because they know how bad it can be in the home for the betrayed.

If you choose to believe a mm is not capable of harming his family then you are incredibly idealistic, which also plays into the narrative that many ow are away with the fairies believing in romantic love and unicorns, whilst in reality the family is going through a nightmare of suffering.

Forget about the vaginas you are offering up and how you think that offends wives so much, think about the abuse that always goes hand in hand with an affair.

I divorced my stbexh for many reasons, including adultery. It was an extremely painful and stressful time for me and my dc, especially as he left us in the shit financially. It would have been marginally easier for us if the adultery part hadn't happened.

Not only did he cheat, but he then introduced her to my 5 and 3 yo within 2 weeks of moving out of our home. My dc were given a nickname to call her and expected to play along. They hated her. Years later, they still do, even though she dumped him shortly after meeting them because she wanted to be a free spirit or some shit, and the thought of someone else's kids every other weekend wasn't appealing in reality.

I hate him for what he knowingly did, but I also hate her. They were both arrogant and selfish enough to prioritise their own mid-life crises above the emotional wellbeing and stability of his 2 young children. Both to blame in different ways for their inexcusable, twattish behaviour.