EA are they ever okay?

[tiredmumof3]

Until I started reading stuff on here I didn't even know EAs existed. To me an affair was a physical thing, not a flirty friendship.
But can they ever be ok? I have gone from being so unhappy with my DH for almost 10 years (and yes we have tried talking over and over again) bottom line is he wishes he had never got married and had a family but is ok with his life. Works a lot and really has been pretty thoughtless towards me for many years. Xmas was a crisis point, I said I would leave, he agreed to marriage counselling. Then changed his mind a few days later :(
NY I started flirting with a FB friend, it was reciprocated and now we text a few times every day. There is an attraction but it will never be acted on. For the first time in 10 years I feel attractive, admired and happy.
In the last 2 weeks DH has behaved totally differently towards me, can't do enough for me and is acting like I'm the most fantastic wife ever. I've had the courage to stand up for myself against his usual cutting remarks and he seems to be actually appreciating me.
Am I doing something so wrong? I do worry that DH will find out but if nobody knows and nobody gets hurt is it really such an awful thing to do?
Standing by to be flames for this but hoping for a bit of sympathy.

I have no right to criticise having had one myself but my advice would be to stop it now as it will only end in tears.

hmm, i'm going to get flamed. but keep it up. he's into you now.

Iamreallyfabnow - whose tears? Mine? I've spent 10 years crying from unhappiness anyhow. I have no illusions of a happy ever after with this.

Two wrongs don't make a right. He has acted poorly in the past and now you're having an emotional affair as a result of his behaviours towards you. That is only going to compound the severe difficulties you've already had; it certainly won't solve the underlying problems within your marriage.

Why are you both within this marriage now, why is this still rumbling on?.

Why did you also agree to leaving the marital home, surely he should have left.

Think your H is being very selfish here and you're not happy either. Neither man is the right one for you actually.

If you have children I feel sorry for them because they will likely be both hurt and confused by the actions of both their parents. Both of you are teaching them damaging lessons regarding relationships.
Think carefully about the effects of all this on these children.

No it's not okay. You're being very controlling and expressing a choice in life covertly. Your marriage isn't a game of smoke and mirrors, yet you seem to be suggesting that because you're having an affair, this has produced benefits in your H.

Maybe he took you at your word and is trying to improve things, but he clearly doesn't know that you've given up so much that you're deceiving him, so you are setting him up to fail.

And if you are who I think you are and you had another thread about this, you're intruding on someone else's marriage too.

Make an openly declared choice and stop pissing around with everyone else's.

I see why you're having this FB EA, but how would you feel if your H was doing it? And more importantly, it's not really helping you long term, is it, just (temporarily) bolstering your self-esteem. In fact it might be doing more harm than good if only because it's detracting attention from the urgent issues within your marriage.

If H is making an effort (apparently oblivious to this FB guy) maybe you should be jumping on that as a good chance to revitalise your marriage?

And you need to find alternative ways to feel good about yourself than flirty texts with a FB friend

Well, in my case my tears.

If you are unhappy in your marriage do something about that. This other guy is a separate issue.

I had one. It was a good thing for my marriage.

Actually, it happened before I got married. It was a friend of ours who we saw regularly.

He made no secret of his feelings for me and I, assuming that technically I wasn't doing anything physically wront, allowed it to carry on.

With hindsight, I didn't treat him very well at all.

To cut a long story short, things reached a point where they were getting very emotionally complicated, there was a drunken kiss. It was all getting out of hand.

I fessed up to DH (well DF) at the time. He was furious, obviously.

However, looking back. It was a good thing. I realised that I wasn't the perfect, never do wrong partner that I thought I was. Realised that it was DH that I wanted to spend my life with and that he deserved more respect than I was giving him.

He realised that maybe he did take me for granted and should probably treat me a little better too.

We are actually all very good friends again now (although there was a long time when we weren't).

But when all said and done, it was not pain free, lots of people got hurt and it was certainly not my finest hour.

No you're right, we are both in the wrong. Divorce really is not an option, I feel very strongly about that. When I said I was going to leave it was because I was so unhappy and at the end of my tether. But I know I would not be able to support DC on my own and end of day my DH is a good man but he just isn't really that in love with me anymore. We married young and are both vastly different people to who we were. I have tried and tried to be a good wife for so long.
Actually my DC are very happy at the moment. They have a mummy who is happy and smiley and they are loving that.

Divorce is an option for your H though - you have already given him grounds, because an EA has frequently been cited as "unreasonable behaviour". I'm sure you could counter-allege your H's behaviours, but divorce is something you don't appear to want?

If I'm right and the OM is married, I'm pretty sure you don't want to be the cause of someone else's divorce either, yet you are risking everything and relying on him being as skilled a deceiver as you are and his wife being rather less trusting than your H.

Your DCs won't be happy if their Mum has an affair, I assure you. Stop deluding yourself that you "deserve" this happiness. Either commit to your marriage and improve it jointly, or get out.

Well how nice for you that you're happy. However, this isn't all about you. Your actions have an impact on your H's and your DC's lives as well as the OM's life and his family (if he has one).

So while you're having your ego stroked and strutting around like a preening peacock, those innocent subjects are unknowingly living in a house of cards of your making that will collapse on top of them without warning.

As WWIFN said; stop pissing around.

Hardly strutting around like a peacock. Just feeling like there is more to life than being unhappy.
Right I get it, I'm totally in the wrong here obviously. TBH last year I thought my DH was having an affair - read dodgy text on his phone his behaviour changed etc and all I felt was relief. I'm not trying to punish him for anything!
Definitely a lot to think about here, and I am thinking about it all but having been brought up in a single parent family and then with a total b*stard of a stepfather I stand by my opinion that divorce isn't an option just because I'm unhappy. I can be a good mum to my kids, I can try and be a good wife and will accept that is my lot.
I thought I might get some practical advice on here but obviously I don't deserve that :S

Of course you deserve practical advice.

And you have got it.

Just because you don't like it, doesn't mean that it is ill-intentioned or unhelpful.

What advice did you want? yes, go ahead, it'll all be fine?

The only practical advice is to stop what you are doing and talk to your husband in the hope you can have a better relationship. You must have loved him once to have married him.

Do I confess to my H if I talk to him? Or just keep quiet about it forever?

Keep quiet.

I told my dh as soon as this man contacted me and he has been really hurt by it all.

And yes I did of course love him once. But when somebody spends years putting you down and making you feel worthless it eats away at that love. No matter what I do I am never good enough. Last year I was "too fat" and had that commented on endlessly (size 12-14). Now having spent months unable to eat properly because of a stomach ulcer caused by living with this stress, I am now "too skinny" (6-8) and he makes fun of my sticking out hips etc. All a separate issue I know but it is not just me being selfish and greedy and trying to hurt everyone, it's me finally feeling like I deserve more in life. I know really this isn't the way to get it but not sure how I can give it up.

Stop telling yourself that divorce isn't an option. That kind of thinking is keeping you in this rut.

Your children won't thank you for subjecting them to your miserable marriage, I guarantee you.

He will use your emotional affair as yet another stick to bash you with. He has abused you verbally for years as well.

Presumably your children have seen if not directly heard your H, their Dad, talking about you in such a manner. You think as well he's actually a "good dad" to these children?. They've seen your reactions to all this.

What are you both teaching your children about relationships?. This sham is no relationship template for your children to be witness to; if they come to realise that this is a sham as adults (and when they leave home what will keep you together then?)they will despise the two of you for continuing with the charade. They won't actually care that you came from a single parent family and had a rubbish stepfather (very sorry to hear that btw)so you did not divorce because they could at that time accuse you of putting him before them.

It isn't an option. Years ago my DH told me if I divorced him he would emigrate and never see DC again. I will not allow that to happen. They have a right to have a father in their lives.
I'm wrong in what I'm doing. I know that. I guess I need to accept I have to put my life on hold for a while yet until my DC are older.

If you can keep a lid on it.. it's obviously having a positive effect right now but it's a bit too much game playing for long term.

Men are such idiots sometimes. Don't want you until someone else wants you or you don't want them. Ridiculous creatures.

Euw he's a piece of work.

gosh with that threat he deserves all he's getting

Attila - actually I had a stepfather who abused me and my mum allowed it to happen. And I vowed when I had children I would never let another man into my life who might hurt them. So my choices are stay like this or leave, deprive my DC of a father and stay single for the next 12 years. If you only knew how it feels to have those as the only options in your life you would maybe understand this whole situation. I'm not a bad person really I'm not.

He'd emigrate and never see his children again just to spite you? That's how little he cares about them and yet you're staying with him for their sake?

I think you should look at getting some counselling or something because your reasoning and judgement has become seriously warped. I say that with tough love.

THOSE ARE NOT YOUR ONLY OPTIONS. YOU HAVE BEEN BULLIED AND EMOTINALLY BLACKMAILED INTO THINKING THEY ARE, BUT THEY ARE NOT!