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?

You need to just take a step back, pause for a bit, and consider...

How long have you been married?

How long has the affair been going on for?

Why did you start this affair?

• feeling ignored by DH
• feeling flattered by AP's interest and attention
• feeling like life is passing you by
• DH is boring
• no passion in your marriage
• wanting out of your marriage but too cowardly/scared to end it

Why did AP end the physical side of it?

Would you have continued the affair despite any guilt?

Did you want to leave your marriage, and him do the same, and live together? Or was it only ever an affair?

The fallout from the affair being revealed will be huge.
Probably marriage-ending for you, and him (although some spouses choose not to break up their family).
4 (?) children's lives devastated.
2 innocent adults betrayed and heartbroken.

Think about all of this before you take any action, and think about how you will do it.

I genuinely mean this kindly: go and get yourself to therapy. You can’t work through this on your own, or on a mumsnet thread.

FWIW, don’t do anything while you’re in this level of pain. It will blow up in ways you can’t foresee or control. You will hurt far more people than just your AP. You also absolutely cannot continue meeting up in secret without the affair resuming. Although I think you know that already.

I can’t bear the thought of my AP being allowed to carry on happily with his phoney life while mine implodes.

It's the life with you that was phoney though.

Sometimes marriages do break up because a partner has met the person they believe they want to give it all up for, but not in your case. He sounds a scumbag anyway but hurting the wife to get back at him is cruel.

Why even ask on here if you just intended to do what you wanted anyway?

What a waste of everyone's time.

The poll result tells you what people think on here.

@Gemitf please tell him that he is a piece of shit and that he should tell his wife. Tell him to stop messing with your head and that he is a dirty, stinking, low life, scum bag and that he is not to contact you again. Ever! Not to even look at you and that he is a deceitful, failure of a husband, father and man!

Why would anyone want to be with a man who cheats on his wife?

And walk away with your head held high and try to save your marriage and sort your life out!

You’ve already ruined your life as it currently is so why make it so much worse seeking out revenge? It won’t make you feel better in the long run.

The best thing you can do for yourself right now is to find a good therapist and work on why you had the affair in the first place - happy and contented people don’t have affairs.

I hope you are able to find peace op, please forget about this man and his wife, you need to work on your own disaster.

Hell hath no fury as a woman scorned eh.

Noone forced you into the affair. Take responsibility for your actions.

Christ on a bike op this guy just wants to have his cake and eat it. If you want to save your marriage, block this guy, stay the hell away from the manipulative asshat and keep your mouth firmly shut, then get on with your life and hope you don’t get caught. Is that morally ideal? No. But your kids deserve the best chance at not having to go through a horrible divorce and they (SHOULD) come first. You’re both being horribly selfish but he is taking the biscuit trying to keep you hanging on. He’s going to destroy ALL your lives and you’re the only one that can stop it. Get a grip OP

Honestly, you haven’t been in a proper relationship to have fallen in love properly. This is all lust and excitement because you both know how wrong it is.

Real life together would look very different and I doubt your relationship would last the stigma of having started by destroying two families.

Block him. Don’t tell the wife. Get therapy. Then decide whether you tell your husband.

They way you are feeling now is all your own doing. Don’t do anything rash as you will not be able to take it back.

Why don’t you tell him to man up and tell his wife himself as that is what he should be doing, tell him you are going to tell your husband who in all likelihood will tell his wife and he should be the one to tell her out of respect for the poor woman. I think she should know Have you thought that he is only saying he still loves/wants to see you incase you tell and blow up his marriage which he obviously wants to keep more than you ?

Don't lie to yourself. You are entirely motivated by the worst of reasons. If you had the slightest care for this woman and her children you'd not have had the affair.
The same with your husband. You managed to cope well enough with the dishonesty when you were getting something out of it.
If I were you I'd be concentrating now on doing now further harm to innocent people. Which means not inserting yourself into someone else's marriage any more than you already have and getting your own house in order.

You had an affair with the H of one of the school mum's. That's pretty self-destructive in itself. If that comes out, no-one in that community will want to know you. It will also affect your kid's friendships as you will almost certainly find that play dates dry up. Your kids may get bullied if the other children hear about it.

Your desire to tell you H is also quite self-destructive as it could blow up your marriage and make the affair come out.

Sending an anonymous message is dumb. The H will lie and the wife is unlikely to believe it. I know someone who got a message such as this, and she simply didn't believe it and put it down to a random troll. Turned out years later when she got two more such messages from two more OW that it was true. The original OW who sent a message must have been furious that her grand plan of revealing the ' truth' had not worked and her OM and his wife stayed happily together.

And stop seeing the OM ffs. EIther try to make your marriage work or end your marriage. Don't live in this half life. The OM wants to be 'mates' so he can pick you up again whenever he wants, either as an exit option if his marriage does not work out or if he gets over his current 'guilt' and decides he does want to start shagging again. He is loving being able to keep you adoring him. Get some self respect and backbone cut him out.

@Gemitf How long have you been married and how old are your children?

Oh I get it you predict your marriage will end when you tell your husband, and you want his to as well so you can have him by default as that’s what you REALLY want.

I don’t think you’re unreasonable wanting revenge, but acting on those thoughts would be disastrous. You need to maintain your dignity, focus on your marriage and kids and forget him!

He wants to keep the “best friends” relationship because it gives him emotional support and an ego boost. A little bit of distraction without “doing anything wrong”. He’s selfish and cowardly. Grey rock him and move on with your life. Don’t act angry, act bored. Nothing like being irrelevant to undo his sense of importance.

How did you meet,was it at the school gates?

I understand the anger.
I'm going to assume he ended it and that's why you're so angry.

Why else otherwise?

I don't think you need to tell your dh.
I know this is controversial but what good would it do?

Learn to live with the guilt and resolve to be a better person.

Direct the anger towards making sure it doesn't happen again.

Has it occurred to you that you need not destroy anybody's life over this?

Have a think about it.

As long as you resolve to be better on the future, nobody need ever know.

Then the affair partner hasn't 'won', has he?

No, he has children and they must always be the first consideration.

Get over yourself. You screwed around. Now deal with it. It's funny how you are concerned about his marriage now you can use it for revenge.

Just focus on trying to be a better person.

You do not know that he is not feeling the same emotions that you are. - that is pure projection on your part. Most men who have affairs feel very guilty about it. Some of them leave their wives for their AP but most do not. There is a lot of truth to the expression, "men cheat to stay, women cheat to leave." I think you were looking for a way out of your marriage and you are miffed that he was not.

I think maybe he’s trying to keep you sweet with the nicey nicey stuff in the hope you won’t tell his wife.

Personally If I were you I’d cut him off completely (it sounds like you are way more attached to him than he is you), see a therapist yourself and work out what you are going to do about your own marriage.

Wrecking his marriage (well it’s already wrecked, but externally destroying it too) when he clearly doesn’t want you to isn’t going to suddenly ‘win’ him back to wanting to be with you.

I think your priority needs to be your own marriage/partner. Please think carefully before involving your APs wife, this could really blow up and have a massive effect on the kids involved too. I’m in my 40s now but remember from my own childhood the fallout from an affair being exposed between 2 school parents. The daughter of one AP was really bullied over her parent’s actions as the daughter of the other party was more popular. It was horrible for everyone, adults friendship groups were blown apart, but i felt so sorry for the kids. I guess you must have weighed up the risks of being caught etc before deciding to embark on the affair?

I think the poster means you want to self destruct. Even if subconsciously. You want your marriage to end. And possibly to be with AP.

That obviously isn't going to happen.

This is my advice:

1. Keep it to yourself. Don't tell the wife.
2. Block the AP everywhere. No you cannot have any kind of relationship with him.
3. Get counselling immediately to talk through your feelings with a third party and get it off your chest.
4. If you want to stay together, don't tell your DP and be a good wife.

Why don’t you tell a therapist. In reality the state of your affair partner’s marriage has no bearing on your life whatsoever, assuming it’s over, so you would be better off focusing on why you think and behave the way you do and what you can do from this point to change. By that I’m referring to you having the affair in the first place, as well as wanting revenge on your former lover as if he somehow forced you into the situation?!