Being the OW - why?

[StrawberryEater]

AIBU not to understand why some women choose to be the OW? I’m not talking about those who just want sex and don’t care if the man is married, I mean the single women who knowingly enter into long term affair partnerships and particularly those who hope the man will eventually leave his wife for them.

I think so much less of men who have affairs that I cannot imagine wanting to be with someone who would do that. I’d just not respect them. And wouldn’t the former OW always wonder if he was going to cheat on her next?

I find it baffling and am genuinely interested to hear from anyone who has done it. Honestly not to flame you! I just can’t get my head round it.

People don't have affairs when they are happily married.

i don’t think this is necessarily true. I was the OW at one point. I was young (22, final year at uni), he was older (early 30s, mature student in my class). I’d just come out of a really long relationship and kind of blossomed socially in my last year at uni. He only joined us in that year, and was very popular, gregarious and we just clicked. There was a lot of socialising, residential field trips, lots of drinking. Tbh I didn’t even really twig for quite some time that he was married and only met his wife once.

I was head over heels for him, utterly smitten. Looking back there were lots of other reasons that people have mentioned - insecure ‘what’s next’ stage of life, big changes going on, the ego boost of being ‘picked’ by this popular guy. Maybe also doing something ‘naughty’ after being a grade A good girl all my life. But there was also just sheer attraction.

It went on for a year. I don’t believe for a nano second that his marriage was ever in danger or that he wasn’t happy with his wife. He certainly never complained about her or anything to do with being married. His wife got pregnant very soon after we stopped meeting up, they went on to have another baby and as far as I know, 30 years on, they are still happily married, they’ve probably got grand children by now.

Have you actually sat down with his wife and had a conversation about this?

Or has this monumentally easy going attitude of his wife just been relayed to you by your affair partner ?

It all sounds a bit...

She told him this
She told him that

I know 3 women who’s relationships began as affairs. One was in a relationship herself. All younger than the married man.
Two are still blissfully happy many years later. The other remained married until he died. All 3 went on to lead happy, fruitful lives and all 3 had plenty of money and treated like princesses by the cheating partner.
None of them went on to have children so that contributed to the balance of power. All women earned good money.
All 3 men already had children. Of those 2 sets of children never spoke to their father again, one has a very strained relationship.
The men never cheated on the new partner.
I also know of two women who cheated on their very kind, pleasant husbands with absolute dicks. The cheated on men did a lot of childcare and were all round good eggs. The cheating wives both ended up marrying the OM. Both awful and at the opposite end of the scale to the first husbands. Both OM you would not trust. Both women cited that their first husbands were boring.
Humans are complex characters.

Or affairs happen when someone isn't properly committed to their marriage and making it work

I do agree that often people are not as happy as they make out.
The vast majority of people cannot get everything they desire and need from one person. They just can’t.
In the past, women mainly, tolerated this existence. Times have changed.
Im not saying it’s good but it is life.
You only have to see the ridiculous posts people put on sm to know that people tell lies.
Gushing over their “perfect partner,” when every knows including the wife, that he is screwing around.

I fell in love with a married man. I’m not proud of it. Absolutely nothing happened until they had physically separated and started the divorce. But our feelings were there. They were simply not right for each other and had a very long and toxic relationship. We have been together 10 years now and are very happy. But yes the guilt is still there about the beginnings of our relationship.

Sometimes it’s because they have very low self esteem

Sorry but this is nonsense. It’s blame shifting at its least and victim blaming at its worst.

The problem with this mentality is it gives out the idea that we can control another persons behaviour by ‘keeping them happy’. We can’t.

I’ve known two cases where the reason they cheated was because of an unhappy marriage but I’ve also known people who had affairs in happy marriages because of mental health issues, I know people who had affairs because their boundaries weren’t firm and once they’d started it was like a snowball, I know people who’ve had affairs because they just enjoy the thrill and the wives (sadly in two cases) choose to stay for their own reasons, I know people who’ve had affairs who suffer with addiction issues, where the affair became another addiction. Among many many others.

Unhappy marriages don’t cause affairs.

Unhappy PEOPLE cause affairs and then the pain is passed on to the betrayed.

That’s why affairs are an utterly unacceptable way of dealing with unhappiness because they pass pain on to an often innocent party who has their personal agency and right to sexual consent removed plus is being gaslit, manipulated and lied to.

There are plenty of articles out there debunking the unhappy marriage nonsense. It’s so sad that it still permeates through thread after thread on mumsnet. Once we start talking about this more maybe unhappy people will start to deal with what’s going on for them instead of doing something so utterly destructive and self destructive.

This is the viewpoint I dislike the most. Things don’t ’lead To love’ if nothing is allowed to happen. Just say no. It’s not that hard FFS.

I have managed to fancy many men and not react to many advances over the years. Vows are not qualified. People who have affairs are scummy people.

If you want to cite the French way of doing things where apparently everyone has a lover outside their marriage, then please make sure the people involved are on board with this. They are generally not.

I don’t think this thread is asking ‘why do affairs happen?’ It’s not difficult to understand why people get themselves into situations and there are lots of reasons. People are not all bad people who do it.

What is less easy for me personally to understand is what is attractive about it in the longer term. If you want a long term and meaningful relationship with someone how do you square knowing that this person lies easily and is therefore likely to lie to you too. Yes, it is a risk you take in any relationship but past behaviour is the best predictor of future behaviour. Don’t most people find dishonesty and selfishness unattractive in a life parter? Obviously not. I wouldn’t like someone to choose me over their relationship with their children. I could not be ‘blissfully happy’ with someone in that kind of scenario I don’t think.

Limited knowledge and no experience but for a friend who dated someone already on a relationship this is what happened and I think it's quite a common scenario. Met and had an initial attraction and got physical quite quickly. Then finds out about the long term partner (and kid) but is told the relationship is really unhappy and they don't sleep together any more and he wants to end it but is thinking about the best way because he has to think about the kid and she will take the kids away if she's angry with him. The physical and emotional attraction is well in place and she really wants to carry on seeing him so chooses to believe him in part because of that and because she has feelings and wants to believe him. The narrative continues of how awful the long term partner is and how unhappy he is and wants to leave but not quite right time and how special his connection is to the now OW.

@Usernamechange1234 I agree everything you said there.

People lie to themselves about this stuff, and compartmentalise things as it’s the only way an otherwise good person can do bad things. It’s a terrible way to deal with difficult emotions.

I think people just fall in love, and sometimes that love goes in the "wrong" places. But it's not always the end of the world. My dad and my mom.got together through an affair and have now been married 50 years - from what they both tell me it's a better marriage for him than his first one (though I guess they would say that.....). My mom made a good choice for her own happiness anyway - they have stayed passionately in love for 50 years, and though not perfect by any means he never cheated or abandoned her or anything like that - he loves her!

I would find it difficult to walk away from a love as true as theirs or a passion as strong, even if the other person was married to someone else. Thankfully I have never found myself in that position, faced with that choice. I hope I never do.

They met through work, so neither "went looking" as far as I know. Of course, I was not there, and my dad's ex wife would I am sure portray it differently - I understand she was furious, tried to get mom sacked etc.

I was OW twice in my late teens & early twenties.

The first time I was pretty dumb, I fell for a sweet taking lothario, 20 years my senior. I believed him when he said his wife just sucked his blood and he would leave her for me. To cut a long story short, he was abusive towards me. I made sure his wife found out and a few other things to make his life as difficult as possible. I think he stayed married for a few years but he and his wife later split up.

The second time was a colleague. I fell for him in a big way. It suited me he was married I didn’t have to bring him home to show my mum and all that shit or domestic stuff. I don’t think his wife knew. I met someone else and dumped him. He later split up with his wife, I think because he was a feckless cock lodger and preferred smoking blow while his wife supported him.

I had extremely low self esteem looking back and didn’t think anyone would ever want a long term exclusive relationship with me. That’s why trying to get a married man to have a relationship with me avoided the danger of rejection and I also felt he was picking me over his wife.

I doubt I would have entered into a long term relationship with either.

Some men are serial adulterers like the first one and would probably fuck anything that moves. The second one was unhappy in his marriage which is presumably why he was looking elsewhere.

There’s a difference between affairs that are years of long deceit and a person who is truly in a relationship on the brink of being dissolved.

My previous relationship was limping badly when I first met DP, I was doing my best “for the sake of the kids” but ex was financially abusive and used me for my home and money. We were no longer intimate in any way. It was so lonely but I kept “trying”. DP and I grew to become best friends over a couple of years…ex was behaving worse and worse and still I put up with it. Then, exes nasty behaviour started unquestionably affecting DD and I knew the relationship had to completely end.

There were two awful months at the end where ex was refusing to leave property (I’d stupidly, stupidly allowed him to become a joint tenant) and DP and I were discreetly together as a couple. I don’t regret a second of those two months - DP is the love of my life and has been for nearly twenty years. My ex - well, I had to report him multiple times to the police, he honestly was a nasty piece of work.

Because it's safe.

He will never leave his wife, he makes you feel amazing and you clutch onto crumbs thrown your way because you have no self esteem and look for affection anywhere you can get it.

Because your DF was a cheating arsehole and saw your DM take him back again and again.

Because that's all you're worth. You don't deserve a fully committed DP so you grasp whatever you can get.

It's RARELY about low self esteem. That's a MN trope often wheeled out.

I was the OW, and I was married, so in this scenario he was also the OM. For both of us it as an exit affair. We were both in marriages that were 'okay', plodding along but neither of us were truly happy. We'd also known each other for decades and had a history together - it wasn't a case of lust turning to love, we already loved each other. I would never have had an affair in any other circumstance. Neither of us would have. I'm not proud of it but it wasn't because I had low self esteem, or was delusional or vulnerable or thought I could 'save' someone or wanted a fairytale.

As for the OP's original question - for a single woman I don't understand why you would put yourself in that position either, I would never ever enter into an affair as a single woman, because why would you? It's not a pleasant place to be for anyone - yourself included. It has incredible highs followed by the lowest of lows.

I don’t understand it either. I definitely don’t understand how you can trust someone when your relationship started as a lie and they were married to someone else. Don’t get that at all. I guess if I was ever stuck in a lift with the OW who was shagging my now-ex knowing he was married, I would ask her.

I have always thought that some women see a happy married man and want that life for themselves, hence they get involved with a married man. This is not woman blaming - it takes two! And a man with wobbly morals can easily have his head turned, but I have to say I have seen women target a married man and go all out to get him.

@unripesock Um is there any difference between sometimes and rarely? I hope you feel better for getting that off your chest, but to me you seem to be “protesting too much.”

I was the OW (without knowing it), so it's not always 'the script'. I was seeing a man I met on OLD in the NW. He claimed he had moved from Somerset for work, recently divorced, no kids, and wanted a fresh start. I went to his flat, no pictures of family and definitely kitted out like a bachelor man (only his stuff in the bathroom, posters all over the walls, underpants left on the bedroom chair), we went out for meals out, I met his friends, I was definitely not a secret. We made plans for the future like him asking me to move in with him and naming our children we'd have together. Then one day he ghosted me. I still had stuff at his place so I went to collect it and that's when I found out that he had a wife and a 4 year old that lived in Somerset. He had told them he had a new job in the NW and rented the flat where he could stay during the week and went to visit them EOW. I didn't notice because it matched up with my week to take DD to visit her dad in London. His wife had found out and had come to collect him and make him come home. He got in touch about 4 months after that asking if I wanted to meet up (I blocked him at that point). He was still with his wife but he was seeing other people.

I haven't been able to trust another man since then and I'm not sure I could. He seemed like such a good man but could so easily flit between women making up fake lives and fake futures. It's made me realise you can't tell 'the type' who will cheat.

I had a partner who cheated and left for OW.
OW came with a child who is now early twenties. I stumbled across said child's social media. To give details would be outing, but they have raised an unemployable narcissist nightmare human.
It must do odd things to a young teen to know their mother was an OW and then have to live with the cheating man.

Unripesock, except another poster said it was about low self esteem for her, it's not just about how you perceive the world

I was the OW when I was younger. I didn't know. I met him through work but he was based in a different part of the country so I'd only see him a couple of weekends a month and when he was down at our office for work.
He mentioned an ex who one day messaged me out of the blue. They were very much still together and lived together! He was on the phone to me all the time, I have no idea how he got away with it for months. She called to give her a piece of her mind and suddenly said oh you actually sound lovely I'm sorry for shouting at you! I apologised profusely it became very clear he had lied to us both. That was the end of things for me. She took him back. She also messaged me some time later to see if he'd been contacting me as he was being secretive with his phone. He hadn't and I would've given him short shrift if he had. I assume he was at it again with someone else.
She was quite vulnerable we were in our early twenties and she'd already lost both parents, no wider family, so only really had him.

I'd put it down to low self esteem, low self worth.

I think then you're open to manipulation because someone is telling you that they're marriage is failing but if you are in the correct headspace you would say ok let's wait until he sorts his shit out, or perhaps it's because his marriage is shit and he can't deal with it that he is looking for escapism. A man looking for an affair is effectively poor goods.

Sure there are examples where it's worked out but at a huge cost usually.