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

She assumed the relationship was just a fling with no future and was surprised that he seemed to see it more seriously.

Not sure about others, but the man I went on to marry, I didn’t feel “easy come easy go” after a month together.

@villadicance" I don't think that if you do cheat, it automatically makes your ex the victim"

I disagree.

It not the cheating that's the problem IMO. It's the lying and gaslighting that goes along with it. To say nothing on spending family money on someone else, without your consent, money that you've helped to earn for the marriage.

When I found out my exH was cheating it was a relief because I then knew I wasn't losing my mind.

You need to have been in the situation to understand the impact it has on your psyche.

For me it's the sheer arrogance of thinking they wouldn't ever do it to you too.
Also I couldn't respect someone who was able to lie to and cheat on the person they chose as their partner at the time.
They'll come out with all sorts of excuses 'sexless, toxic, fizzled out' and so on but it really doesn't matter, it's still cheating.

Emotional affairs are just as scummy imo. They love to give themselves this huge pat on the back- "We were very decent and honest because nothing happened until we ended our relationships!!".
Pull the other one, you were still lying, sneaking around and betraying your partner, you still snagged the second it was officially over so get a trip.

According to MN every cheater needs hanging and will definitely do it again, every affair relationship is doomed, nobody ever tells even the smallest of fibs in a 'proper' relationship and life is so cut and dried that every relationship ends neatly until the next one neatly begins.

Real life isn't like that. People get together in all sorts of ways. People cheat for all sorts of reasons..shit happens. I know quite a lot of people who got together for an affair and it's lasted ever since, for many many years of marriage and kids etc. Affairs are still very taboo (rightfully so) and a hell of a lot more common than people think

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Call no man happy until he is dead

Shame on him if he fools you once...
A man who marries his mistress creates a vacancy...
You can never trust someone who has cheated. Ideally, you should believe your partner if they say they're working late/seeing friends/you should never feel the need to look at his/her phone.
But with someone who has cheated, you can never have that level of trust. I suppose it's up to any adult what they do (though it seems weird to marry if you don't believe in vows), but if kids are involved, you're also teaching them not to ever have proper trust.

You’re just making assumptions.

Did you and he discuss expectations around fidelity when you got married?

But there are all sorts of similar things, is the point.

One of my close friends found out her DH had spent 85k in secret gambling, similar deceit/more financial pain.

I have a family member whose wife is emotionally abusive and is just constantly shouting at him and controlling every aspect of his behaviour. That's pretty awful too.

But on here it's like cheating is the only possible bad thing you can do in a marriage. And somehow it's always men and the women being cheated on are perfect and never did anything wrong

Fair enough

What on earth are you waffling on about?

If someone posted their dh was a secret gambler - he would be slated

If someone posted their partner was abusive - the partner would be slated

At your wedding… did loads of people know about the affair?

Woman next door has three children to her ex husband....and youngest child with her now husband. The youngest was conceived whilst her third born child was only 4yo....and she was still married to her first husband at that time. I couldn't imagine playing away like that especially with children involved. Disgusting. They deserve each other by the sounds of it. I wouldn't trust her current husband as far as I could throw him. Obviously sniffing around married women (with children). Boak.

I also wonder this about how those stories go at weddings......interesting. I suspect my NDN doesn't brag about their situation.

There was nothing stopping him from recognising he was unhappy in his marriage and breaking it off before dating another women

You see, I don’t agree with that. I think people put up with unhappiness and not being content and think that’s just going to be the way it is. And then they meet someone else and realise that life could be better. I think that’s behind a lot of affairs and second marriages.

I knew someone who was a pillar of rectitude and whose wife was highly intelligent and also chronically ill. They seemed to be devoted. He then started an affair with someone he’d known for years and left his wife. He married the woman he was having an affair with and it was a happy marriage until he died. The extraordinary thing was that his ex-wife, who had been bedbound, was up and on her feet and functioning as a fully healthy person within the year. I think they’d both been really unhappy but istuck together because they believed that that’s what they should do.

His children, who were adults, did come to terms with it and, for circumstances that I won’t go into, became close to the new wife.

@villadicance "One of my close friends found out her DH had spent 85k in secret gambling, similar deceit/more financial pain."

That's not a good situation at all.
But he's not in love with a fruit machine, isn't shagging it regularly on the QT, isn't going to catch an STD off it and going to leave her for it, is he?

In fact he needs to stay so she can help him get out of the crappy situation he's created.

Agree OP. A famous example would be Agatha Christie's first husband Archie. He treated her terribly, but he did stay with the OW, Nancy Neele, until her death and it seems the relationship was happy.

I dont judge you or your husband Op. Sometimes people just marry an incompatible partner initially.
We cant help it if we connect with someone else. We are allowed to leave relationships.

Surely pretty much everyone attending knows that the pair of them are cheaters?

And this is the point I was making - it's like cheating is considered so much and entirely worse that any and all other bad behaviour

If your husband has lost 85k secretly gambling well at least he wasn't cheating!

No, I'm going by what you've posted.

Okay

I guess they didn’t mind coming to the wedding

I imagine there was a fair bit of whispering!