AIBU to think not every relationship that starts as an affair is doomed?

[LivelyHazel]

I know this won't be a popular post at all and I’ll get piled on too but I don’t mind I'm genuinely just interested in people's views.

Fifteen years ago I met my now husband through a friend of a friend. We got on well, started meeting up going for drinks, food, dancing and, before I knew it, we were started sleeping together. It lasted about a month.He was married at the time. They didn't have children.

I'll be honest, I never expected it to become anything serious. I genuinely thought it would be a brief fling, we'd come to our senses and go our separate ways.

Instead, after about a month, he told me he wanted to leave his wife. I was actually quite taken aback because I hadn't expected him to do that. He said his marriage had been unhappy for a long time, although obviously I only had his side of the story.

He left, they divorced and we got to properly get to know each other, we took things slowly after that, and we're now married with four children. We've been together for 15 years and have a good family life.

Whenever affairs come up on here, the general consensus seems to be that the relationship is bound to fail, or that the ‘other woman’ never really ends up happy.That hasn't been our experience.

I'm not saying affairs are acceptable or that I feel proud of how our relationship started. I know people were hurt, and I wouldn't wish that on anyone. But equally, I can't pretend I regret the life we've built together.

Not necessarily AIBU more so discussion based on the previous posts I’ve seen on here

I don't know what to think. My ex and fiancee seem very happy and he managed to cheat on me with her for 6 months. She thinks, afaik, that he and I were just friends and I had a crush on him. They've both been nasty to me but from what I hear they are very happy and his friends appear to be keeping quiet about the true nature of our almost 5 year relationship. I do know he told the friends that I was controlling, angry and aggresive. I was devastated when I found out and the pain will never leave me for I almost lost my job through being so upset. I couldn't eat, drink or do anything but cry.

I do know he is a compulsive liar, or was with me and other mutuals or ex friends of his. I often wondered why some people refused to have anything to do with him. Now I know.

I don't imagine they'll be splitting up any time soon as if she knows, she has the skin of a rhino and if she doesn't, she will swallow anything. I wonder if he just found her better than me.

The few affairs I know of that have gone on to be a marriage have been similar to others mentioned. One or both affair partners very unhappy and no children involved.

Personally, I'm not sure if I could be involved in an affair or condone anyone cheating on a long term marriage or partner. I understand that some partners are horrible and that's why the other party seeks an affair but a lot of the time, the victim of cheating hasn't done anything wrong. Example me when I was sitting at home waiting for him to finish 'work'

Well of course not all are doomed but he tried and tested before buying 😆 men only leave for another woman usually. If you hadn’t come along he would probably still be with her. Lack of morals and a liar to boot, I wouldn’t find that attractive in a man personally. I’d be worried they’d do it to me, there would be no trust.

To my knowledge I’ve never been cheated on, nor had a bad relationship, so I’m not bitter!

Maybe I don’t know

To be honest I’m just not really bothered or worried or ever anxious over it, we get on well, I love him and he makes me and the boys feel loved. Maybe it’s all just an act

@Glitchymn1 "men only leave for another woman usually. If you hadn’t come along he would probably still be with her."
Not necessarily.

The OW isn't special, she's just available.
Before my ExH started his affair with OW he went all around the company asking different women from different departments for dates. She was the first one to say 'yes'. All the others told him to 'take a hike'.

(I found this out months later from someone he asked.)

I know a couple who have been very happily married for many years. He was married when they met. He has never blamed his first wife, he just fell head over heels with someone else. I don’t know how they managed it but all these years later everyone gets on fine.

True I never said I was special men are all the same. Men aren’t hard to get it’s nothing special. He tried to leave her 2 years before I met her she refused and begged for some reason. This didn’t have children I think if you don’t have children you don’t really owe them anything why does it matter just let them leave and find someone else

He never blamed her, he simply just fell out of love with her. There is nothing wrong that. How he went about it was wrong but you don’t have to stay with someone that you don’t want to be with just for the sake of it.

I thought you were going to say that you had been married 50 years and your dh had recently passed.

Not that you’d been together 15 years and seemingly very complacent that your relationship with a proven cheater aged 46 was absolutely no doomed.

in any event, in all your follow up posts you seem very relaxed whether or not it’s doomed or not!

Op,
if you find out next week that you’re husbands been having an affair, she is pregnant and he’s going to leave you, and he leaves you and moves in with her.

would you reframe this as something ‘within him’ or would you be thinking ‘well we can’t be a good match, she must be the one for him’

I’ll just leave and get on with life maybe they’re better suited. As long as he still cares for his 4 children. He’s his own person and can make his choices. if he chose to do that he clearly doesn’t love me same way he clearly didn’t love his previous wife.

I mostly agree with this, but if he was so unhappy why hadn’t he left her? I’m assuming he wouldn’t have stayed if she begged after leaving for you, so why wasn’t he stronger previously. Marriage is convenient for men and it worked for him, until it didn’t. You must see it’s a real failing of his character to not have the confidence to leave, and just string her along for convenience. It’s pretty weak. No one’s perfect of course, but that’s a pretty big failing from someone you’re choosing as a life mate.

I've never had an affair nor have ever been in a relationship that started as an affair (not much relationship experience despite my age), but when you think about it realistically, this must be a lot more common than people think- for every couple on this planet, there's no way each and every one of them just so happened to be both single when they met, is there? That would take an extraordinary amount of luck. Plus, couples who met when one or both of them were partnered/married/began an affair aren't exactly going to tell you that when asked how they met by strangers at the pub/dinner party/friend's wedding, are they?! (Well, except on an anonymous forum such as MN!).

I said this on another thread where posters were posting tired old tropes like like ‘when a man marries his mistress it creates a vacancy’…

We have two good friends who left their wives after having an affair and went on to marry the affair partner. They’re now extremely happily married. In both cases, I suspect the first marriages were already beyond saving. The affairs didn’t make those marriages unhappy - they were a symptom of marriages that had already broken down.
What they did was wrong. They cheated. But I don’t think it’s fair to define them solely as ‘cheaters’, as though that one decision sums up their entire character for the rest of their lives.

Some people who’ve been cheated on find it easier to believe their ex is a serial cheater because it helps make sense of what happened and reassures them that the relationship was doomed regardless. That’s understandable, but it isn’t true. Sometimes an affair is part of a long pattern of behaviour; but more often it’s a one-off in the context of a relationship that was already failing.

Goodness… you seem very very… flat. Are you ok generally?

I am matching the energy I think people on MN have a very black and white view on everything no room for any form of nuances just either it’s this or that.

The energy on this thread isn’t “flat”

but from the outset of this relationship… your stance seems to have been flat

It’s not so much that “when a man marries his mistress he creates a vacancy” but more, some people will accept their relationship isn’t working out, recognise that and try to fix it or end the relationship before looking for the next partner. Other people will wait until they’ve got a better offer lined up before they let go of the first relationship. It’s the mindset that it’s ok to try out a new relationship before committing to ending your current one. That’s the risk with marrying your affair partner.

You are marrying someone that if they are still in love with you, alls good. If they fall out of love with you, you might not be the first person to know about it.

I didn’t really care about his marriage at 25. He told me he was going to leave her to get to know me and that’s what he did. I think they were married young and he just didn’t want to be married anymore. We spent time getting to know one another.

I’m not proud of how our relationship started but also life goes on I can’t keep dwelling on it. If people ask how we met we are honest we haven’t made up a story, I personally don’t really care to be judged. I just posted it to show things aren’t always black and white MN like to think life is very black and white no nuances and that all ‘evil’ people suffer. People make mistakes, people aren’t perfect and one decision doesn’t sum up your entire character for the rest of your life but that’s just my take on it.

I don’t think the OP sounds flat at all? She sounds in love with her husband and family and is too busy enjoying her life rather than worry about something that probably won’t happen in the future. There are many reasons that couples split up, why would you want drain yourself by being constantly worried about something that you can’t do anything about?

I wish! I met a couple of my exes in bars, didn’t manage to leave either of them in one unfortunately!

That’s fair enough, I do understand moving on from a 25 year old’s transgressions vs someone 10 years older. I say that as someone who married under 25 myself. You have to accept people grow, change and learn.

Yeah they’re not doomed to failure but I think they speak to the morality of those who engage in them.

But yeah plenty of people are with their affair partner decades later.

I agree with you fwiw.

I think people are complicated.

Some people are compulsive cheaters and those people are unlikely to fundamentally change without a lot of effort and desire to change

But some people cheat because they fall head over heels for someone else and will never cheat on that person because they love them

I also think - but this is for some reason super controversial on Mumsnet - that cheating isn't the worst thing ever in a relationship. There are lots of bad things you can do in a relationship and cheating is just one of them.

People aren't perfect - sure if you are being badly treated, controlled, financially abused etc ideally you get out rather than cheat but equally I don't think that if you do cheat, it automatically makes your ex the victim

And sometimes people just aren't right for each other and it takes someone else to come along for you to see it.

And no I wasn't the OW, nor have I had an affair.

Ex DP (together nearly 10 years) has kids and is married to the OW. They seem happy/normal. He cheated a lot in our relationship but I don't really think he would do it in his current relationship. We were best friends but an awful couple.

There's nothing arrogant about knowing you'd never cheat. I was cheated on by my first husband. It was mindblowingly painful.
So yes, I know that I will never, ever do it to another person, the same way I know I have no intention of ever driving drunk or punching someone in the face just because they annoy me. We all have moral lines we won't cross.
Maybe other people feel its a grey line, but plenty of us aren't willing to cross it because we know first hand how much damage it does.

I wondered about this - OP seems very, well, 'lightweight' almost to the point of being detached.
She says that she started the affair as a 'bit of fun' and isn't too bothered if he cheats.
I know that "love is all things to all people" but.....