AIBU to think that just leaving is no better than cheating?

[Camille99]

My husband left 2 years ago. He just told me he was leaving with no warning. He said he still loved me but wasn't in love with me. We were married for 7 years and have 2 children. He maintains he is a great guy because he left and didn't cheat. He left because he talked to a woman he liked on a night out. A week later he was with her. He actually thinks he's a nice guy and one of the good ones because he left instead of cheating. Like it doesn't cross his mind that he could have not left and forgotten about her and maintained our great family lives. He has even got a tattoo now of a wolf and below it it says "loyalty". You couldn't make it up.

I always agree with your comments @BauhausOfEliott 😂

But also what @JohnnyMcGrathSaysFuckOff and @Sartre say.

It isn't as simple as all cheaters are fucking awful people and deserve unhappiness. If someone is truly happy in a marriage / relationship then it's pretty unlikely they're going to leave. Whether that's for someone else or not.
Cheating is usually the by-product of someone being unhappy and to be honest, I would someone left me in this way than stayed with me and was miserable.

I've said this on here before but my Grandparents got together when they were dating other people (way back in the 1940s!). They went on to have 6 children and were married until my Grandad died 15 years ago and were truly happy. But my Gran once said to me "you'd be naïve to think that every couple in the world were single when they got together. That would be a perfect world and we're far from that."

This is the truest thing I've ever read.

He wouldn't have left his family for a woman he had only known for a week and hadn't even had sex with?
There is more to this story that he isn't telling you.

He potentially would if he had been unhappy for a long time and someone made him see ‘the light’ so to speak. Sometimes people snap and realise they need to get out of a situation, it happens.

Unfortunately, for you anyway, you can't force someone to be in a relationship when they don't want to be, and it doesn't make them a bad person in any way.

He wouldn't have left his family for a woman he had only known for a week and hadn't even had sex with?

Agreed.

But I don't think there's more to the story.

He already told the OP straight and plain that he didn't love her anymore.

I think it's better he left, instead of cheating, and then leaving.

But I agree it doesn't make it any less painful.

OP, come on. He was definitely full on cheating – he just fed you a lie. The woman having lived away has nothing to do with it. She was clearly present enough for him to 'chat to' and decide to end his marriage for, wasn't she?

It means, "I'm comfortable and familiar with you. Life is easy and I could quite easily carry on like this for years but I now fancy someone else and I'd rather have sex with them than continue this charade with you."

And I think a lot of people stay in the "comfortable and familiar" relationship until.they meet someone who is worth dropping the charade for.

Hence the whole ^too bad to stay; too good to leave dichotomy.

Regardless of him cheating or not, he broke his marriage vows, they obviously didn’t mean as much to him as they do you. Just try and get on with your life now, he’s not worth a second thought.

No I do not pretend everything is okay.

But 2 things - 1 I do not bang on every moment of every day in front of the kids etc. Because that would be awful. So there are good times, or apparently so.
2 people see and hear what they want. I will say things like "I am really unhappy and I don't know if I can keep doing this". DH will later say, "you were tired" or "yeah but then we had a really good time doing X with the kids". For him that overrides the earlier convo. For me, it doesn't.

Be honest, had he really never ever shown signs? Arguments, misaligned values, lack of sex? Really?

I mean it's possible but in my view, people "on the other side" frequently fool themselves rather than take responsibility and admit it's over.

Yes probably. I don't really care if he was cheating or not. It's the fact that we are still getting divorced and he's dragging his heels and he's still saying it's all fine because he left instead of cheating.

You are wrong.
Leaving, or ending things, is better than cheating. Of course it is.
I am sure that you have gone through a hellish time having to cope with the fallout of his decision.
But you can't be so flippant to equate his behaviour with a cheating husband that is consistently lying to their partner and putting her at risk of STDs.
It is not even close to being on the same scale.
Good luck.

The tattoo sounds cringe.

Highly likely that he was cheating before he left and is being very careful to spin the 'loyal' story.

He can say whatever he liked – doesn't mean it's true and doesn't mean you have to believe him. Regardless, it's the same as cheating – no matter the degree of it – because he left you because of another woman, whether he slept with her, kissed her, talked to her, whatever. Same thing.

I think maybe the difference is he left for someone else - so he’s already had feelings for someone else before leaving.
but if the relationship is not working and and not happy and someone leaves without it being about someone else then I think that’s different?
OP feels like leaving is cheating because basically he was - being unfaithful and dishonest even if only emotionally. So it would feel different to the relationship breaking down for other reason.

Haha I doubt anyone really believes his version of events. Not really. He didn’t just meet a random woman one night and decide to end his marriage straightaway.

@Camille99 , the men who leave because of most reasons, usually magically meet someone new within days. In other words, they were cheating but didn't want to admit to it.

I think it’s his version of the story to make himself feel better. Maybe he wasn’t in love anymore. But it shouldn’t take a head turn to leave. For a lot of people it would have been a kick to work on their marriage. Sometimes marriage isn’t forever and people change. My marriage ended and I look back and don’t understand how we were together so long. Completely different people who met when we were to young!

Leaving someone after making a commitment (getting married) and having kids is an awful thing to do to someone without at least letting the other person know you are no longer happy and working together to try to fix the relationship.

However cheating is much worse. You are deceived, lied to, you might be having sex with them not knowing their dick had been in someone else. Sometimes they keep flip flopping between you and the OW. Saying they will stop seeing them but then you find out about more lies. Ugh.

You ex is right in that it is better he left before cheating on you, even if he was on the verge of it. He is still a knob though and certainly should not be crowing about loyalty.

It took me a long time to get over my ex cheating and leaving. It took me a long time to let it all go and realise how much better off I was without him. Now I have no expectations of him so he never disappoints.

Apologies, I meant to tag Camille99 in the second part of my reply.

I do think he should have at least tried to do something to fix the marriage and not just left without warning. It seems to me that rather than being honest with himself, he sat on his feelings until he saw another woman as an option and immediately dropped his wife to pursue her.

“ I feel like if I fancied a man in a bar I'd just ignore it.”

If you are in a truly happy healthy fulfilling relationship you are unlikely to be tempted by someone you meet on a night out. This doesn’t excuse his behaviour, I’m just saying that his encounter with this women (which probably went beyond just talking, let’s be honest) was the push he needed to end your relationship and leave. It’s shitty either way, as it sounds like he didn’t make an effort to work on your relationship, just let it fade and then walked away.

I’m sorry you’re dealing with this, it’s really horrible.

Absolutely no lack of sex. I think we'd had sex the morning he told me. We usually had sex most days. That's the difference. He pretended to me everything was fine and then totally blindsided me. One day he told me he loved me so much and then literally the next day he told me he didn't.

Yeah. OP is saying he 'just left', but he left because of a woman and tried to style it out.

I've 'just left' many times when I've reached the end of my rope. And then it's sayo-fucking-nara!

So he says he doesn't love you, is in a new relationship, yet he's dragging his heels on a divorce he should want, is saying what he did isnt too bad, and that at least he was honest with you and is showing you his cringeworthy tattoos? Sounds like a twat who knows hes ballsed up bigtime and doesn't want to face the consequences of his own actions.