I had an affair and I want my affair partner to be discovered

[Gemitf]

Had an affair with a married man who has young children. I’m also married with young children.

Since it ended recently, he has gone back to his wife and kids and is living happily like nothing ever happened. I know his wife to say hi to as our kids are at the same school. Everytime I see her it kills me. I can’t bear knowing that he has ‘got away with it’ and hasn’t taken any accountability for his actions.

These feelings are made worse by the fact that my marriage has suffered so badly as a result. I haven’t yet told my husband, but I know I am going to have to if I want any chance of saving the marriage. I can’t continue living dishonestly for the rest of our lives. I assume he will (rightly) want to divorce me. Everything inside me wants to tell my affair partner’s wife what has happened so that he can experience the pain I am experiencing. The bitterness I am feeling is so strong. I want him to be exposed. Should I tell her?

Personally I would tell no one not a whisper to my best friend, sister, mum, ex lover’s wife and ESPECIALLY husband. Think of the families involved including your own children.

So you want to tell her before you tell your husband? What if someone knows about your affair and does the same to you? Get your own house in order and leave them be. You will not feel better for telling her, it will just engender a whole host of other difficult emotions and difficult social dynamics. If anyone should tell her out of kindness it should probably be your husband but he can't do that until he knows, can he? Get on with it and stay away from her.

I love how at no point have you considered the impact on her kids, never mind yours considering they go to the same fucking school.

You just want to blow up everything because you didn't get what you wanted in the end.

Wow.

Telling her won’t help. It won’t change how you feel about your own life and marriage.

I am the queen of keeping secrets (not related to affairs, I have never had one) and honestly, when you do stuff like this, you have to accept that you live with the fallout alone, other than sharing with a therapist or anonymous strangers online. That’s the deal.

But he’s now dumped you and you ARE considering breaking up your family and telling his wife. He’s not totally stupid!

This 100%

You want to tell your husband? So that you can relieve yourself of guilt. You should keep your dirty secret, not put him through the anguish.

You should have thought about that before you started cheating on your husband with a married man. You are no better than him, if anything you're worse as you want to hurt his wife out of spite. An absolute hypocrite, "for her own good" my arse. Suck it up, put it behind you and spend your time trying to focus on your marriage. Tell people is purely to make YOU feel better, and you're willing to blow up other people's lives to make you feel better after you did a horrible thing.

OP, you are getting a hard time because this is AIBU. You are also being asked to think about her feelings, which I appreciate isn't your primary concern right now.

I was once in a surprisingly similar situation to you. FWIW I believe you about him ending the physical and trying to keep the 'emotional' aspect of the affair as that happened to me.

I ended up as somebody's mistress, aged 19 and single, and wanted to tell my ex affair partner's spouse about us, once it ended. I realise now I just wanted him to take some accountability for the situation, which he spectacularly dodged.

Now I realise that I have a much more peaceful life, and was able to move on in a much less complicated way, than I would have been if I had told her. The negative attention from my ex would have been unbearable at the time too.

I do have some residual guilt for not allowing her agency in the situation, by withholding information from her about her relationship. But she didn't know me from Adam, lived in another country and I realised it just wasn't my job after all.

And what guarantee was there she would have believed me?

How did you see this affair ending when you began it?

You don't really mention your own kids or their feelings in all this. You seem more concerned about the pain you are in and causing pain to others.
As other posters have said get some therapy. You need to work on your own self esteem if an affair was all your dreams and hopes. A therapist will help you get to the bottom of you and why you feel the need to
A) turn to an affair to make you feel better about yourself
B) Seek out revenge
I'm guessing the hurt goes deeper than just this affair and that you had low self esteem before the affair even before marriage.

If you never intended to leave your dh over this then this is for the best. The longer you carry on an affair then the more chance of you being found out.
He wants to continue with an emotional affair which is still an affair. It's an ego boost for him.
Don't tell your dh. Don't tell his dw. Block him. Don't meet up with him. Take back control by doing that. Fix your marriage.
You'd regret telling her and be honest with yourself as to your real motive. I can understand you wanting to get back at him. The true way is to be happy by sorting your marriage, being happy and for him to realise that your world hasn't crumbled without his dick in it.

Shes getting a hard time because she wants to smash up the lives of her children, her affair partner’s children, her husband and her affair partner’s wife seemingly on a vindictive whim. I actually agree that AIBU is often a brutal, sometimes mean place. But this what OP wants to do is a really awful, stupid thing that has the potential to ruin so many lives and is totally different to your situation.

What you and your AP have done to your respective spouses is one of the worst things you can do to another human being - the total betrayal of someone who loves you, and you have no idea how much permanent emotional damage and trauma you are causing. This is the kind of thing that can leave betrayed spouses feeling suicidal - do you actually get that? And wrecking the families of the kids involved too - looking back do you think it was worth it? Will you think it was worth it when nobody wants anything to do with you? It genuinely ruins lives.

You are addicted to this man. You need to go cold turkey and block him.
Move on OP and have some counselling to help you to understand why you did this.

I was going to you YABU because revenge seems inappropriate, given you both did this together, and it would just hurt the wife.

But I voted YANBU, though it falls somewhere in the middle. The reason I reconsidered is that I know if I were this wife, I would want to know who I was married to and have the choice to look after my own health.

So I think it would be reasonable to tell the wife but not for the reasons you have said.

Think carefully before you act, talk to a counsellor first and don't take advice from here too seriously, because you will have to live with the consequences as will innocent parties.

Wow right so in my experience as the husband who was cheated on he is keeping you sweet so you dont talk. My marriage fell apart when I found my then wife was having an affair with a married man she worked with. I know her well enough to know she thought he was the best thing in the world and she genuinely believed it was all for the best. I never told his wife although I came close- 2 reasons i) her AP met me to ask for forgiveness etc and during that meeting it dawned on me that I was stessing out telling a woman i didn't know her husband had been cheating - i told him he was the one to tell her and to do the right thing ii) i had to start to co-parent so had do what I believed was best for my children and that was to have a working relationship with their mum which wouldn't have happened if id told the wife. 2 years on my ex wife is publicly single but last i knew the was essentially this guys mistess - so he keeps the happy family life her life went to shit and she lives on the breadcrumbs. So think really carefully here - you could walk away and work on yourself and possibly save your marriage or start over your life - remember if he wanted to leave his wife he would have - i dont agree with what youve done but you have a chance here

Oh love- you don’t get it, do you? This isn’t his first rodeo. You’re one of many he’s shagged. You didn’t mean anything to him. He’s a scumbag. Get some therapy and focus on yourself.

You don’t get to decide what is for her own good. If you cared about what is for her own good then you wouldn’t have fucked her husband.

If you've got away with it so far, then keep your mouth shut. Your penance (for want of a better word) is to live with the guilt. Your need to confess is to give the responsibility to your DH, rather than accept it for yourself. Or you tell your DH that you want a divorce and then tell him. Do not tell him if you want to keep your marriage.

If your DH does find out, then you should confess everything immediately and in full, hold no detail back.

And if he wants a divorce, accept it. If he wants to continue the marriage but keeps throwing the affair back in your face, then you should leave him because he will always hold it against you.

My exDH hid an affair from me for three years, then confessed on our fifth wedding anniversary at a dinner where he gave me an eternity ring. Yeah, think on that.

All he did was make me responsible for the decision to break up our marriage.

You telling your DH about your affair is selfish.
You telling your affair partner’s wife is selfish.
You having an affair is selfish.

Don't try and dress any of this up as trying to save your marriage.

If you bring this into the open now, all you’ll be doing is throwing a grenade into your children’s lives and the children of this man and his wife.

If you really want to re-build your marriage; do that. And be honest about your long gone affair to your DH when the kids have grown up and left home.

If you want drama and attention, join a drama group.

Sometimes there is value in discretion. If you want to bring your children up in a married home then you will learn that telling someone something that will hurt them is just as bad as the original transgression. Focus on what you can do to make your marriage better.

Me too! Totally agree about the generational harm. Now hitting ‘Unwatch’.

With all due respect, and I say this gently, that’s not his fault though.

Reading that he wants to keep the emotional side going makes me quite cross. He doesn’t want to tell his wife, he wants to not be having an affair and just carry on as “normal” yet he wants to keep you hanging on when it’s obviously destroying you. If he genuinely feels you are more than mates and has all these deep feelings for you then he should declare his love properly and leave his wife for you. If he doesn’t want that then what DOES he want?

I wouldn’t even block, I’d think of every way to cover my tracks of what’s happened so if he turns nasty you can ignore him. And get therapy. If you want to stay married you need therapy before you decide to tell/not tell your husband. Act uninterested. I’d tell him to figure out what he wants and stop using me as some sort of emotional support.

Don’t tell anyone. No good will come of it.