Are affairs super common?

[User5512]

Every other joke is about 🙄 affairs! Are affairs that common? I thought something like this would be scandalous in my friendship circles, but I heard the other day about a someone I know breaking up with her good friend as she developed feelings for the husband 😳They are 40 ffs !!

Both men and women are having affairs in equal numbers. The idea that women aren't isn't true.
Anecdotally both DP and I have been cheated on twice. Emotionally both of us are fine, however, the fiscal cost is eye-watering. Both of us have high sex drives. I think there's more to affairs than sex. More akin to an addiction.

You either are happy and satisfied in a marriage or you’re looking outside it - that’s pretty black or white to me.

As an aside, I’ve just been reading about paternal discrepancy following PPs’ claims that this is around 10%. It’s actually around 1-2% in the UK, which sounds more realistic:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternity_fraud

I am so fed up with the rhetoric 'if you don't have sex with your OH then obviously they will go elsewhere'. Perhaps if the OH wasn't so pathetic and could communicate better and make the person feel more appreciated then they would get more sex, but that would involve putting in effort and their own demands aside to address the issues rather than the knee jerk reaction of 'im not getting sex I will go elsewhere' such a pathetic excuse.

It's funny how many people assume that if the man is "looking elsewhere" then something MUST be missing at home.

The two men who were hitting on me at work for months, and who both seemed a bit obsessed, were both very close and intimate with their wives from what I could tell at work events! One wife had been the OW in her husband's first marriage, no doubt assuming something must have been lacking in his first marriage. She always seemed so smug, like she "won" the prize, and clearly had no idea how he behaved the minute she wasn't in the room. Married men who try to cheat are behaving in a sleazy way, stop making excuses.

I don't know any normal, decent, secure, well-balanced person who has had an affair.

Everyone I know who has had an affair is a selfish person either with a superiority complex or a really damaged sense of self worth.

Well apart from being a bit "no true Scotsman", you're assuming that you know who has had an affair amongst all the people you know, and you simply don't.

There was a poster earlier who decided that everyone who had an affair is slushy about their partner on social media. There's a tendency here to take any trait one doesn't like and decide that that's the kind of person who has affairs. Real life isn't quite so straightforward.

That's exactly why I said, everyone I know.

I'm not assuming anything. I'm not talking about the people I don't know because that would be impossible obviously. Just talking about the people I know, like I said I was.

What you said was "I don't know any normal, decent, secure, well-balanced person who has had an affair."

Even assuming there is an agreed definition of "decent, secure, normal" and all the rest, you simply don't know this. You do not know the deepest intimacies of everyone you know, even the ones you really like. I realise you could say that anyone who has an affair isn't decent etc, but that's the "no true Scotsman" bit.

And I actually think a lot of people who have affairs are pretty secure. That's often what gives them the confidence to do it. I'm amazed when I think of some of the ways I've known some men to be caught. They were so careless, I have to assume they were so secure that they just thought the universe would hide it for them because it would do whatever they wanted. Don't we have a thread every other day about someone seeing their friend's husband, photos and all, on a dating website?

Affairs aren't all the same. Some cheaters are selfish tail chasers, some are fundamentally good but weak and lack strength of character, some are in mental crisis, some have been treated like dirt by their partners - cheating really isn't the only way to shit on someone. Anything that starts with an assumption that all cheaters are a Certain Type of Person - usually one you didn't much like to start with - is based on a flawed premise.

I don't know anyone who had an affair including me and I'm divorced thrice but none for adultery. My parents did but that was in the 70s when swingers were everywhere. I'm the only one in my friend group that's divorced and none of them have had affairs either. So I would say no they are not from my cosy little bubble.

I think we are talking at crossed purposes here and am unsure why you are so defensive and insisting on arguing against my experience.

My point was that of all the people who are or have had affairs, this applies. I cannot talk about what I do not know, nor did I.

Anyway, this is kind of derailing a thread and I don't think it's adding any value to it. You have your opinion and I have mine. Thry differ but neither is less valid.

Common among low quality people, yes.

If your relationship isn't working out then either work on it, or end it. Don't jump into bed with someone else. An accepted open marriage is different to the betrayal of an affair as well.

My point is that your experience isn't as universal and absolute as you think it is. You've said that you don't know anyone who has had an affair who isn't <<insert subjective definitions here>>. Even if we all agreed on what constitutes those definitions, without a perfect insight into everyone's private life, you simply cannot know that. You would probably be amazed if you knew who had been unfaithful. I know I have been.

The fact that you can't take some disagreement from me without imagining that I must be "defensive" (over what?) and "insistent on arguing" (you're not, of course, just me) are just adding to the impression that some people like to imagine that any behaviour they don't like is part of a cartoonish persona that they've made up because it's more palatable. Which is understandable I guess, because affairs are horrible and destructive. But it still doesn't mean that everyone who has one fits the same character profile... just as everyone who counters you on the Internet isn't actually just defensive and argumentative and whatever. They may just have a counter response to something you've said and be participating in the discussion.

@NonPlayerCharacter OK

Agree! Just found out the family friends of ours (who are both 80 years old. Been married forever, the poor wife has such sever dementia that she is basically Comotose the past few years), the husband was going through paperwork the other day and found out the wife had a 15 yr affair when she was younger (found extensive number of love letters)

totally hidden throughout their 55 yr marriage

the entire point about affairs are that they are hidden secrets. Those who are saying ‘not in my circle of friends’ are talking nonsense cos they simply wouldn’t know !

the entire point about affairs are that they are hidden secrets. Those who are saying ‘not in my circle of friends’ are talking nonsense cos they simply wouldn’t know !

And that's the crux of it. Aligned to this is the "only a certain type of personality has affairs". If that were true, nobody would ever be blindsided by an affair. People who are entirely pleasant, secure and all the rest of it can still do it. Once you realise that not all affairs are the same, you can realise that not all people who have affairs are the same either.

It doesn't make it right. But there's something so narrow minded about thinking you would always know if someone in your circle cheated. If they can keep it secret from their spouse, why on earth would you work it out?

oh wow. This thread has been enlightening! When life gets dull and boring, weighed down by the daily grind, relationship/marriage ups and downs, I can tell how easy it is to fall for the slightest flattery. But for these little rays of sunshine (one compliment, one look or even one smile) to grow into a full blown affair ? I don’t know how that can even happen. At workplace - more likely as you develop a personal bond after working together for a long period of time, but how the hell can anyone sleep with a family friend!??

Yup we know someone who slept with a family friend. Really affected the family m, the friend, her family, marriage etc. it can be devastating.

Someone else who the husband thoight she was seeing someone at work and then quickly left that job (she’d been at for a long time) and not much had been said about it.

someone having a (we think) emotional affair with someone at work- second phone etc said she would leave him but liked the lifestyle with husband too much I dunno 🤷‍♀️

Marriage, parenting and having a household, job etc can be such a slog tbh it’s not surprising if someone outside of that (that’s probs finding their own situation a slog too) shows a bit of interest it can seem appealing. But yes for that to turn into a full blown affair it must be bubbling along for a long time or people must be very forward.

Also I don’t know about anyone else but as a 40 something year old woman I have to say there have been some… ahem …. Hormonal changes (plus maybe children being older and less exhausting) that have made my sex drive a little higher…. I don’t know if that plays into affairs too (I hear it’s pretty common this age- the hormones I mean).

@ElevenSeven

WavingCatsandDogs · 14/01/2024 04:45

I've never been hit on by a married man. Nor would I go near one.
I've never worked where they are rife either.

However, I know lots of females who have had affairs with married men or men with partners.

What’s your point - that only scarlet females hit on married men? Married men don’t hit on women, because that’s your experience?

My point was a comment about people being hit on my married men and affairs being rife in the workplace - I have not experinced either, so it isn't all workplaces and all married men.

And why did YOU call those women who are in affairs 'scarlet females' Judgey much! It is different perspective, comment that my experience is not one sided, I have heard of lots of affairs.

I think we are all sharing what our experince is, that is the point of the quesion from the OP.

I have known a similar number of men and women who have had affairs
obviously most affairs are secret though so who knows how common it is.

It’s interesting how black and white some people are on this topic. I think ‘affairs’ encompass so many variations and there are so many reasons why a person embarks on one. I can’t judge people. Not now I know the nuances that are possible. And I feel bad that I ever did judge. You can never know what’s going on in someone else’s life. There are so many comments here saying ‘just leave’ like somehow that’s easy, often for completely logistical reasons. Or that somehow the person having the affair is the one betraying.

For me, I tried everything I could to save my marriage and nothing worked because he refused to participate or even hear me. He’s not a bad man, but he should not be in a relationship as he’s incapable of seeing beyond his own head or experiences. When he refused to participate in our marriage and refused to work on it, he betrayed the marriage vows first. And we ended up with no sex life because sex only happened when I initiated it. And I wanted to be desired.

I didn’t go looking for an affair. I fell in love. I didn’t have physical intimacy with this man until over three years in. And I am making every effort to work towards a practical way of leaving my marriage in a way that will allow both me and my husband to cope financially. I don’t want to take all his money, or leave him with nothing, but I also feel that I deserve to have a life after too.

I am the type people confide in and subsequently know about more affairs than most. There are the skirt chasers, obv but many people over the years have been just kind of side tracked by becoming too close to someone. Sometimes unhappy marriages, sometime not. Marriage is much, much more than a romantic relationship and the ties that bind are strong.

Most people are shocked at what they are capable of.

We also judge others far more harshly than we judge ourselves.