I've been the Other Woman. Feel so stupid and guilty.

[working9to5]

I have no excuse.
I always knew he had a girlfriend, though hoped it would end because they hadn't been together long. To begin with we were just friends but there was always an undercurrent.

I should have stopped seeing him when he moved in with her, and I did cool it off for a bit but he started telling me how much he missed me and how he was always thinking of me.

I hoped he'd be with me one day. He was constantly telling me how much he felt for me and cared about me, how lovely I was, how much I meant to him.

The day we first kissed was a shock to us both, but really it shouldn't have been because we'd put ourselves in a position for it to happen.

After we first had sex I tried to end it telling him I wouldn't be the OW. He told me he'd work it out so we could be together.

I only lasted a few weeks before he reeled me in telling me how much he had missed me and wanted to hold me. He told me he loved me.

I tried to end it a few more times but loneliness and his declarations of love always got the better of me. I didn't think of his girlfriend as a person, I convinced myself he was with her for convenience. I didn't let myself think of her feelings or what I was doing to her.

I let myself be convinced that he really did have feelings for me and really did care. I thought he was just playing it safe and making sure it was going to work between us before ending it with her.

It killed me everytime he said he was going 'home'. Because home was her. Being with him was causing me more pain than good, I wanted a real relationship with someone who loved me but instead was pathetically hanging around for scraps.

A few months ago I realised I was never going to be any more to him and ended it. This time I succeeded because I was no longer believing there was any future in it. It still hurts, I fell for him completely and letting go has been hard.

Ironically someone has now told his girlfriend about us. He has denied everything and asked me if I would meet her and convince her we are just friends. Just shows how little my feelings count to him. I've told him I won't do it. I can't lie to save his relationship. If he'd admitted to it and she wanted to confront me I'd find that easier. I know I was wrong and would be willing to face the consequences but I've been complicit in deceiving her enough and won't lie directly to her.

I can't believe I got into this situation. I'm a nice person. I NEVER thought I'd go with someone elses man. I hate myself for doing it. I can't believe I was able to disassociate myself from the reality of her as a person that I was helping to deceive and betray. I feel so stupid for believing I'd have a future with him and am disgusted with myself for even wanting that when he was already with her.

And I'm sorry. To her. And to all the other women that have been cheated on. I really am sorry and I know I have no excuse.

i do not think she was looking for sympathy

i have been cheated on too, as well as being the ow and myself have cheated (with the ex who was cheating, so i unwittingly made it easier for him). does not make me a bad person but good people do occasionally behave in a bad way

From conversations both IRL and OL it seems that a lot of men are being unfaithful but only a few women, so those few women must be doing a lot of men because otherwise the figures don't add up. You've learned your lesson but I'm not sure if you are asking for forgiveness or understanding or both?

AFAIC you're just being human. Lots of people stray, some get found out, most don't or it ends in a sticky situation. To be honest, I'm more surprised when people are faithful than when they're not. I've sat there when women have told me their OH would never stray when I know that they already have done.

You're hurt, his gf is blissfully ignorant, though she may find out later down the line when someone else becomes his 'OW'. He has got away with it once so no doubt he will just find someone else in a few months time.

Cynical?? moi????

Yes , if he gets away with it this time he'll do it again!
I would advise you to tell her the truth with 'dick face' present!

I'm not sure about the comments of him being "the really bad one here" knowingly screwing around with someone when you know they are in a relationship is bad enough. Alot of people are seeing it as he reeled you in with his lies when he was declaring his love for you, how about you CHOSE to believe a man who was willing to cheat to see you, your choice, your guilt both of you have every reason to feel bad and I would wonder too about the reasoning of why you are happy to speak with his gf if it is just to have revenge on him for being a prize prick then you really can't feel all that bad about her feelings as you are going to cause her more pain.
However if it is to apologise and to help her see what a twat he is then go ahead.
Hopefully you can move on and learn from this

'But I'm not sure my reasons for telling her would be the right ones...I think i'd partly be telling her to offload my conscience and partly to get revenge on him for sucking me in with his lies of feelings and love.'

Ah now, come on... be honest with yourself. That sounds to me as if you are ducking out of a difficult situation... having to stand in front of someone in RL and say yes, I was sleeping with your boyfriend!

Not easy at all. I completely understand, I'd be desperately casting around to justify just fading into the background!!

Truth is - it doesn't MATTER what your motives are, because it's just the right thing to do. You've seen this guy's unpleasant personality in its full glory and are relieved at your lucky escape. Do her a BIG favour and draw back the curtain for her too. You really do owe her that..

Yes I agree. If you are truely sorry,then do the right thing and tell her with him present, please!

Sorry to burst the little bubble here but I think the OP is being disingenuous, at the very least. Personally I couldn't care less whether she is shagging the entire neighbourhood of husbands (she is welcome to them!!!). But I suspect her motives in this public outbursting of morality are far from squeaky-clean. In fact, I suspect there is one desire only - and that is revenge. By spilling the beans to the unsuspecting partner, she gets revenge on the man who she didn't get for herself. I think that is quite nasy actually, because the one person who is living in blissful ignorance is now going to have to face a horrible situation. No doubt other posters will flood in saying 'well the girlfriend has a right to be told' but actually, what they are really saying is: 'why should he get away with it'.

Who cares? It's not anyone else's relationship. I would be furious if some other woman had the temerity to contact me and rub the details of a sordid little affair in my face. If she had been that concerned about my feelings in the first place, she would not have slept with my husband. So easy after the event to be 'racked with remorse' (yeah, right.) When in fact the real motive is revenge. Creepy.

Sorry guys, you are being spun a right old yarn here.

Shoutyhamster no I don't think it's that...to be perfectly honest it is more that I still care about him and still have problems believing it was all lies (even though I KNOW it must have been) and I don't want to hurt him by telling her. Someone else has already contacted her and given her dates and times and descriptions of when they saw us together and she chose to believe him over the other person. If I contact her now I feel petty and vindictive, kind of "you didn't want me so I don't want you to have her". And maybe his head did just get turned and he deserves a second chance with her. I don't know. But I think that's what I want to believe.

However if she came to me and confronted me I would tell her the truth. And gladly face the consequences.

Tadpole I cross posted with you there. But actually I agree with you. Apart from I am not being disingenious or spinning a yarn. I am being 100% honest here. And I didn't post this for revenge, but I do think telling her would be revenge which is why I have not done so (and I said as much earlier on).

U shud absolutely give his poor girlfriend the truth!! WOt u wud or wud not get out of it is irrelevant, putting ur needs ahead of hers is wot got u into this mess.
If I was with this lying cheating scum, I wud want to kno. For all u kno they cud b planning a family, her believing him to be someone decent + trustworthy he is not. Put her in the picture so she can make her own informed decisions about her future, the poor oblivious deluded innocent woman.

If she asks you, please don't lie to her. She deserves better than that.

If she asked me I would absolutely tell her.

It may be hard to believe given the situation I got into but I never lie, I'm a very honest and genuine person.

But I do feel like seeking her out to tell her would be revenge driven, especially as she has already chosen to believe him.

I'm another one who has been cheated on. H had an affair after a decade of marriage and 2 children. It really hurts.

I would say your current attitude is correct - if she find you and asks you, please tell her the truth. Don't seek her out - just tell her if she finds you - she already knows anyway.

What annoys me is that women in this situation so often talk as if they had no choice in getting involved with a man with a significant other. They talk about being 'carried away by undercurrents' or 'being shocked when we kissed'. FFS, they make a choice to shag somebody else's man, 100% consciously knowing what they're doing.

What they don't seem to realise is that loads of women find themselves in the position where they may feel attracted to, or even to start having stronger feelings for somebody who they know is attached to someone else. I have never been cheated on, but I know that in the past, when I was single, I found myself attracted to, or even starting to fall for, a man who was with someone else.

The point is, if you have any kind of concience or moral code, you choose to be a better person and not an animal following it's instincts, and you do not allow yourself to act on it, and move on and find someone who is single.

I can't decide if OP is geniunely sorry or not from her post. Maybe she's v young, which could excuse it all a bit because naivety can play a part in becoming the OW. But anyway, I hope she's learnt something from all this.

Moomoo if you read my posts you will see that I have recognised and acknowledged all of that. I said I shouldn't have been shocked when we kissed because I'd allowed myself to get into a position here it could happen. I said most people would have been the better person and not allowed anything to happen. I have identified various points where the right thing to do would have been to walk away...

But for whatever reason I didn't. and I'm still trying to figure out why not because I never thought I would be in this situation. I NEVER thought I would be the OW.

And yes I am genuinely sorry it happened, and I want to make sure it never does again.

OP I have to say I only read your first post so I accept what you're saying. I just genuinely don't understand why some women manage to walk away from this situation but others jump in, despite otherwise being a 'nice person' up to that point, as you say.

Seriously - do you have any idea why you got into this situation? If you don't mind me asking, are you v young, or did you maybe have other issues going on?

And BTW I do feel that the real guilty party is the man in the relationship, because he is the one who truly owes his significant other. But I don't think that leaves the OW blame-free, if she knows what she's doing.

OP I mentioned in my last post that if this relationship ended in February, but you saw him only a month ago and he is still able to contact you to ask you to lie, then you evidently haven't severed your connection with him completely.

Why is that?

Actually, without wanting to become self indulgent, and god knows I don't really deserve support...but can anyone help me figure out why/how I did make the bad decisions I did?

I really want to make sure I make good choices in the future.

All I can think of is that he had only been with her 5 or 6 weeks when we got to know each other and talked about her very casually so to my mind it wasn't a 'real' relationship. I was very surprised when he moved in with her because I hadn't thought they were at that stage and he said he may as well because he'd had to find somewhere and he'd been staying over there quite a bit anyway so it was easier than finding his own place.

And then we were friends first, and there was lots of talk of feelings and emotions which made it harder to see I was just a fuck on the side...

I'm not looking for excuses really I'm not but I would like to understand why I got involved and why it wasn't as easy as just walking away when really it should have been.

I had thought my twat radar was well honed after exh but it obviously wasn't. Or maybe I'm the twat.

Actually maybe that's one 'reason'...he is the total opposite of exh, friendly and chatty, affectionate, tactile, involved with his children, able to talk about emotions, told me positive things about myself rather than the negative stuff I had heard for years with exh. So on paper exactly what I was looking for I suppose.

But I still don't understand why I didn't walk away. Am I really that pathetic?

Whenwillifeelnormal because we have mutual friends and some are neighbours. He is also someone my landlord uses for work on the house.

But yes the text/call contact should end, and trying to stay friends was a bad idea.

So he has children and therefore an exwife? And yet you became involved with him knowing all this?(current girlfriend, ex, kids.) Sounds like you have low self esteem and were flattered by the attention and ignoring the complications.
Are you still in contact with him?

Well from what you've just said my first thought is that if you had an exH who treated you badly, you were vulnerable to anybody who knew how to say the right thing to reel you in - which isn't hard to do is it? And you say that on paper he was just what you were looking for, but he wasn't was he? Because surely on paper you would want somebody who was honest and trustworthy, ie single?

Maybe your ex lowered your self esteem so low that you didn't think you deserved any better than being somebody's bit on the side - that you weren't enough for a man in your own right.

But the fact that he had only known his partner for a few weeks shouldn't have made it less of an issue, should it? If you really valued yourself and had enough respect for yourself to demand honesty and respect from a man, I think you would have told him you wouldn't be getting involved with him unless he made a choice and walked away from her first.

So maybe you really just need to work on building your self esteem and self respect.

I am trying to be constructive here and not just bash you, honestly!

I think yes, it's what you want to believe.

To answer your first post -

-'She chose to believe him over the other person': her trust is misplaced. Don't make it her 'responsibility' on the grounds that she's a trusting person. That is so, so disingenuous! If anything, even more reason to tell her the TRUTH, as it sounds as if he could take her for a complete ride again, if he so chose.

-'I have problems believing it was all lies' - but it WAS. Much better to face that - don't make excuses for HIM as a part of making yourself feel better about the situation. You've done the right thing ending it and that it really the most important thing.

• 'Maybe he deserves a second chance' - yes well maybe he does - but that's HER decision to make!! Here you are effectively making it for her which is deeply wrong - far more so than any idea of 'revenge'. If you tell her, she has the option of actually deciding what she wants based on THE TRUTH. She may indeed decide to forgive him and try again.

You're trying to explain it away for yourself, but it's very simple - you have the truth here. By witholding it from her, you ARE making a conscious decision to leave this situation as one of deceit, where he has got away with cheating and the relationship continues under false pretences. Saying that you'd tell her if she asked IS a cop-out, sorry. I know it's not what you want to hear.

I think what's holding you back is your feeling for him. They are just as misplaced as her trust in him. Tell her the truth and do the BOTH of you a favour, rather than continuing to throw in your cards with him, so to speak.

Hope that doesn't sound too harsh. Personally I think he's done a real number on you as much as her. Try and get him out of your head! He may not be a monster but he's certainly not the nice person you still seem to think he is...

Sorry, not first post - your first post back to me!

Oh how incredibly unsurprised I am that you had a knobber XP. YOu were vulnerable to bullshit, and this bloke smelt that on you. He's obviously a manipulative fannyrat and you are probably one of several he's been mucking around with behind the current girlfriend's back.
I would suggest treating him with calm, slightly bored politeness when you have to have any contact with him (I can see that it's going to be impossible not to run into him occasionally without upending your whole life and there's no need to do that.) Put it behind you and don't allow it to blight the rest of your life. Yes, you did something stupid, but it really isn't the end of the world.