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.

My ex would tell you he was blindsided.

I told him multiple times I wasn’t happy. Told him what I wasn’t happy about. He chose not to hear it and he still insists there were no signs.

Yep that's exactly it. Thank you everyone for making me see he's just a selfish horrible man and that's that.

Leaving before an affair starts is the right thing to do though. It sucks to be the person left but if you develop feelings for someone else and you can't ignore them then you should leave before starting something new. It's not worse than cheating.

He's dressing his behaviour up in a way that makes it acceptable to himself. He knows, deep down, that he's been an absolute shit.

As I said to my ex once, when he was being similarly self-congratulatory, it's the lies you tell yourself that are the most damaging.
That brought him up short.

No love, YOU are delusional. Long term spouses “fall out of love” all the time, it’s called life. “In love” is a chemical state. When you marry and produce kids with someone, the honourable thing to do is to work on the marriage, communicate etc. you don’t just decide “hey I’m not in love any more, see ya” and move on to the next “shiny new object of desire” well, I suppose you can, but it doesn’t make you any better than the guys/girls that cheat.

Yes this is exactly the childish reason for this saying

Very true.

I think Natalie Lue (Baggage Reclaim) does a blog post on this, chiefly about being blindsided.

We all know cheating happens, people fall out of love, etc. But there is something particularly vicious about partners who attempt to keep the show on the road (having regular sex with you, keeping up appearances as though all is well) as the OP describes, only to then drop a bombshell of leaving, etc. That level of deceit is hard to stomach because they have essentially been lying to you for longer than they would have you know. That has always been the worst part for me when relationships have ended 'suddenly'.

Atleast if your partner came to you with doubts they were trying to resolve you wouldn't be completely on the back foot when it ends.

OP, other wise people have chipped in with sound advice, but you're well rid. And his tattoo is absolutely ghastly and thankfully not one you have to look at ever again!

Do people really have this teenage view of relationships that involve children?! No wonder society is f*cked

No man leaves the family home for an empty flat or bedsit. No man. There is always someone else. And if there isn’t someone else, then it’s drug problem.

You will never get the answers or clarity that you want so it is better to think " he was a wanker " and stop the theorising or analysing for your own peace of mind. It is difficult I know. Every now and again something jumps into my mind about my ex H and it's been 8 years.

He still left because of another woman, he didn't just decide the relationship wasn't working, left, and then found someone else, he had already found the someone else. It probably means he was actively looking for someone else at the very least. In his mind he was being unfaithful (if you believe him) he just hadn't acted on his thoughts yet.

It’s funny how blokes feel this need to lie to preserve some sort of ‘good guy’ myth. Of course he was cheating. He was likely meeting, shagging and planning his exit all while being ‘loyal’. Not that it matters now, you are well shot.

What do you mean?

Are you advocating people stay in loveless marriages for the sake of the children?

It's not really clear from your post but if you are, it rarely works out well.

I think people really can’t win if they decide they don’t want to be in a relationship with someone. The other person will usually take it badly and react with anger. I actually think sometimes cheating can feel easier because you can label the person a cheating scumbag and they become the villain whereas you are the victim. Where someone says they’re not happy and leaves, it’s much less clear-cut.

At the end of the day though, we have free will as humans and we don’t have to stay in relationships we are not happy in. Chances are he’s been unhappy for a long time. It hurts but he’s allowed to end it, even if you objectively have not done anything wrong.

The wolf tattoo with Loyalty 😂😂😂😂😂😂

What a dickhead.

But people usually say to cheaters “you could have just left the marriage/relationship, you didn’t have to cheat”. What do you do when you meet someone else and realise you’d be much happier with them? Either cheat or leave your current partner and we’re told leaving is superior to cheating. Or is the answer that we stay unhappy and stay in the relationship at every cost?

You’re saying “loveless” but it depends what you mean by loveless? If you mean loveless as in “i don’t really fancy him/her anymore; I don’t get excited to see them or feel that romantic feeling. However, I still really care about them, they feel like a family member to me” then yes, it’s a teenaged view. That’s not “loveless” - that’s “my brain chemicals have settled down. I don’t feel high anymore. I need someone to make me feel again. I don’t want to have to put in the effort required in long-term relationships to keep the emotional intimacy and spark alive, when I can just meet a newbie and spark the excitement without any effort whatsoever. Who cares if my kids are in a broken family now??”

I think it's far better than cheating:

1. He didn't lie
2. He didn't potentially expose you to stds etc.
3. He didn't sneak around behind you back
4. He didn't have other people know the state of your relationship before you did
5. He didn't expose you to gossip behind your back

None of that makes him a great guy but I'd always prefer someone to be upfront, honest and leave rather than stay, lie and cheat.

My family wasn’t broken when I left my ex-husband. Please don’t categorise divorce like that.

as to the ex who I was talking about - I fell out of love. All the small things he did that annoyed me gave me the ick and made me feel rage. I couldn’t bear to have him touch me. Should I really have stayed?

No of course you shouldn’t. It’s not 1950. In those days women stayed because they had no other option. My grandma loathed my grandad and they shouldn’t have been together but stayed because it was the done thing. They bickered non stop, no love between them whatsoever. Good for absolutely nobody least of all their children who all turned out pretty dysfunctional. Happily we live in a time when we don’t have to stay with someone who we don’t love.

This.

Wanker.

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."

My grandparents went one step further than this by actually meeting at my nan's engagement party! That was in 1934 and they were very happily married for well over 60 years until my nan died.

I don't know what happened to the man she was engaged to, but my grandad had brooding good looks and a motorbike so clearly Fiance No.1 didn't stand a chance.

YABU
Leaving is always better than cheating.

If you ever had any respect for your partner, you would leave if you’re unhappy and not lie and cheat behind their back.

But he did cheat.

Even if there is the smallest possibility that he didn’t have physical sex with her - he still had her lined up and left you for her - I’d definitely say that’s still cheating.

The physical act isn’t the worst part about cheating, it’s the lies and deception that go along with it - all of which he did and so him ‘not having sex’ is irrelevant when he’s still a lying twat.

I do think sometimes you meet someone and things just change

you might have been checked out but willing to stay for the kids and keep your head in the sand. Or be ok with not being madly in love or mildly unhappy.

it may even feel noble to sacrifice personal happiness for your family set up. Until you meet someone that actively makes it feel like you are missing out.

better to be without someone who resents being there. It’s no way to live