Anyone had an affair and not regreted it?

[kitty1]

I had fling with someone and never have regretted it. It helped me realise that my marriage was well and truly over and i couldnt go back.
By the point i had this fling my ex h and i hadnt had not been having sex because he had some issues he coudnt/wouldnt deal with.

I read some where once that when a woman emabarks on affair she has mentally packed her bags and left the relationship , when a man does it its usually because he is bored and craves excitement.

Anyone here feel the same?

lol perfume I totally agree with you. People are people, they make mistakes, grow apart, behave well, behave badly, just normal people.

I think its great that these things can be aired now. Its healthy to look at all sides of a situation - lateral viewing/thinking.

Can I ask any of the ow/om out there, have you ever been confronted by the wife/partner/husband? Have you ever been able to speak freely to each other about what happened?

x

Deb

UUMMM, Where do people get their principals from?

How do we come to the point where we make statements like "sometimes people just outgrow each other" or "their marriage is lacking something so they go looking elsewhere it no ones fault."???!!!

These are hopelessly irresponsible worldviews.

#1. What about the children?,

#2. What about society?,

#3. What about our standard of commitment?,

#4. What about the vows that we have taken?,

#5. What about our sense of accomplishment both now and when we are on our deathbeds?

Dare i say that those with such a low and common view of the precious covenant of marriage should never get married?
If your view of relationships is so limited that you would put an expiration date on it for the simple excuse of...."well I just don't feel like it anymore".

Forgive me but will someone please quote for this hopelessly rational "YANK" the marriage vows that yall commonly use in Europe?......If anyone can even remember them....

Priest not everyone shares your views regarding god/beliefs etc so therefore it would be difficult for some to comment. In fact alot of people in europe choose now to have civil ceremonies in city halls etc which - to my limited knowledge I grant you - dont actually involve god at all.

As for principals, they are individual to each person. Ur entitled to your opinion but not everyone shares it.

God I really hope this isnt going to turn into one of these threads where everyones morals are questioned again and people are told they are evil for getting involved with someone outside their marriage. Save me please!!

deb

There are no 'marriage vows' in a civil registry wedding. The bride and groom just have to declare there is no legal impediment to their wedding and publicly (in front of two witnesses and registrar) state that they take the other as husband/wife.

The exact wording escapes me but can probably be googled. Of the top of my head it's "I know of no lawful impediment why I may not marry XXX" followed by "I [insert name] take thee [insert name] to be my lawful wedded wife/husband".

Those are the ONLY words that can be used in a declaration of marriage. There is no spiritual/religious aspect allowed by law in an English or Welsh civil ceremony. In a church wedding the above words must also be included in order to make the marriage recognised in law.

I have written and deleted so many messages to this thread but I've kept with it. To me this just sums up why I rarely post in Relationships and why I name change roughly every 4 to 6 weeks.

I come from divorced parents, I have been cheated on, I've been the OW and I'm now happily married - life is complicated, decisions are made wisely and sometimes rashly, consequences are lived with.

There is not one set of rules, one book or one "mandate" that answers all those questions or problems.

• Something what helps one person will be totally unhelpful to another.
• Some people post then disappear because they feel the answers are going down a certain track and it wasn't what they wanted to hear - for good and for bad reasons, sometimes they will come back weeks, months years later.
• Some posters do continue to preach the same message, some are better at adapting to each thread and others only post when it is really really something they identify with.
• Sometimes we post because it validates a decision we made in our past, or one someone close to us made and hurt us, and sometimes because we know we made an awful mistake and want others to avoid the same.

I guess sometimes before we post we need to think who is this making feel better - me or the OP or another poster? And for the record this post made me feel better - it doesn't answer the OP (For the record I don't regret my affair) and I'm sure other posters would disagree with it.

Debs- I have been confronted by the wife when i was (unkowingly) the OW.
It was a looooooooong time back now- over 30 years.

I met the man when we were working together on a temp job. He asked me out after a few weeks and we had dinner etc. After our 2nd date he told me there was something I should know- he was married.

My first question was- are you living together. The asnwer was no, she had left him. I agreed to carry on seeing him. He lived quite some distance from me so all our meetings were at my end so to speak. he did the travelling.

After many months I got the impression he was cooling and once after a cancelled date I decided to check him out. I tunred up at his home one weekend- and his wife was back.

She had been back a few weeks but he had not told me as he knew it would be the end of us, and he was unsure what was going to happen- she had left him for another man so it was unclear if she was back for good, and due to his work he was possibly going to relocate - she didn't want to go so he was really keeping all o ptions open with me on back burner.

He invited me in and the beans were spilled. She was great- to me. Offered me a cup of tea etc. She hurled abuse at him for deceiving me and told him to pack is bags- and choose. she admitted her affair to me.

Money issues were at the route of their problems- he had gone back to college later in life, was earning a lot less than ever and she did not support him.

As it happened, the relocation he had planned did not happen and they agreed to try again.

I don't feel bitter- after many years we got in touch again and have a "xmas card contact" which seems to say no hard feelings.

I have to add that I'd had suspicions for some time- due to circumstances, we never spent a night together, I never saw his home or was invited there- he made excuses- and as time went on I became increasingly suspicious.

It was after a series of broken dates that I decided to turn up, without an invite.

I know this is not an example of a true affair as he was alone genuinely when we met- and I was single.

However, I thought his wife's reaction to me was worth posting. She admitted that she had left him, had not supported him, and was annoyed over his lack of earnings- and she had left him for another man.

It was never a case of tit-for-tat, but she obviously felt that she could not complain too much having been unfaithful first.

What was interesting was that she never ever blamed me for "taking him away"- she just had sympathy that I had been duped.

I think preaching disapproval about this topic is a pointless waste of time.

I'm glad to see that the thread still exists, because I think the topic is just as important and valid a discussion as all the threads supporting victims of infidelity.

I have seen first hand how the hidden wisdom gleaned from opening up emotionally to a third person outside a marriage has been a catalyst to confront issues that were causing great unhappiness. It can remind people that they do not need to feel completely trapped, and it can encourage people to do some work around understanding what they need and want out of a marriage. The revelation may be that its no longer right for them or that it is actually something they don't want to lose. Either way, I have seen that an affair doesn't have to result in the hurtful betrayal its made out to be.

I totally disagree with the statement that "their marriage is lacking something so they go looking elsewhere it no ones fault" and have said I disagree with further down the thread, I find it really upsetting. I have been cheated on twice now, in my first marriage I can see that we had probably grown apart due to getting married very young, but he could have come to me and told me that he was unhappy, rather than leave me for the OW. He recently told me that there isnt a day that passes that he wishes he had not left, his relationship with OW lasted 18 months after he left. So yes there were problems, but he should have spoke to me.

In my second marriage I did a everything I could that maybe had gone wrong the first time round, I never wanted anyone to be able to say that this was wrong and that was wrong. When I found out that my H was having an affair with a very young work colleague I asked why, we had been so happy and the relationship was really good, his answer was that he was happy and he didnt know why he had done what he had and had hoped it would fizzle out. It had a lot to do with his ego being massaged by a much younger OW!

So that is why I find that statement so hurtful, life was good, I now find myself nearly a year on, still wondering why and still looking for my life to once again be happy.

Romney- as a few others have said you are coming to this thread from the wrong side. It is not about the feelings of women who have been cheated on- so it's going to get confusing it this becomes part of the thread.

it's tough though that you have had 2 men cheat on you. It would not be fair for me or anyone to pass judgement on why your partners cheated on you.

However, in your first relationship, maybe there was a breakdown in communication? Do you think you contributed to that- and with hindsight could you see signs that everything was not well?

In the second relationship, maybe he was simply an immature man who liked his ego stroked. Was it simply sex he was after?

I don't know if you ever tried counselling after each break up but I really would recommend it. You see, it could be that you are - subconsciously- attracting the wrong type of men, or have patterns of behaviour that somehow give them license to stray. By that I don't mean you are doing anything "wrong" just that sometimes we behave in certain ways which bring out certain responses from other people and we are too close to be able to see it.

My take as I said earlier on this thread that when someone embarks upon an affair, is that there is usually either something wrong with their marriage or with them!

Whn I say 'wrong with them' I mean that it's that they have trouble with monogomy (not wrong in itself but you should be honest about it ideally), or they have low self-esteem, or they're weak. After all affairs are deceitful, and hurtful. I have cheated and been cheated on in the past; it doesn't tend to end well. I did regret my affair, it changed me and the relationship. Deceit isn't a nice feeling. When I was cheated on I forgave the person, monogomy didn't seem like the end of the world to me (and I was in love with that person at the time).

Then again it's human nature to be weak and selfish and sometimes it's just too hard to stay 'good' and true to the person you want to be.

The thing is, sometimes it's not the fault of the non-cheating partner, and this person has done nothing wrong. But sometimes it IS that person's fault. S/he has been abusive, has a drug or alcohold addiction s/he won't seek helpf for, s/he is lazy and selfish and offers no support or respect or affection to the other partner. But because of the myth of monogamy as the only valid option, and all the other harmful myths (the sort of rubbish Priest is spouting) people often enter into marriages out of inertia, or thoughtless romanticism and then find themselves stuck with someone who is not a nice person after all, or who is an OK person but who isn't really suited to them. An affair then helps the marriage come to a swift and hopefully clean end.

THe problem I have with the Shirley Glass model of affairs often quoted by WWIFN is this insistence that the betrayed partner is always a saint and the straying partner always the sinner when this is just isn't feasible.

Quite right SGB. I think we all know women who drive their men to drink, the garden shed, or another woman's arms!

It is utter rubbish to always think that the person who is cheated on is a saint.

There is always a reason for an affair; that reason is not always to do with a personality defect or a weakness of the person straying. it might be weakness at the moment of infidelity but a lot has happened in people's relationships before they get to that stage. Maybe as you say they simply married the wrong person and didn't have the strength to go, or maybe they changed as a person and still didn't have the strength to go. That is why people have affairs- they can't let go of their primary relationship for whatever reason.

SGB - I suppose that depends on the definition of saint/sinner?

The person embarking on an affair has at some point made the decision to enter into one - I would always be interested in the thought process that plumped for this option as being the best one available to them. And yes I do believe it is a weakness to choose an affair above the option to confront the issue within a relationship and/or about themselves but then people aren't perfect. However the fallout normally involves a wider circle of people (psychological and emotional health) and the ripples keep on spreading out.

Spring - you're quite right. Affairs are not always the do-ers fault, absolutely.

SJ, to quote: "That is why people have affairs- they can't let go of their primary relationship for whatever reason." That is ONE reason people have affairs. Others are: they want to boost their self-esteem, they're weak and flattered by the attention, you can't always let the person conducting the affair completely off the hook!

I wasn't letting them off the hook at all- why did it come over like that?

They are weak yes, but they also know they are doing wrong- but want to have their cake and eat it. Affairs would not happen if they could leave their primary relationship first. Sometimes they are testing the water- whatever the reason they do not have the courage to go first.

And I know this is hard to take- but when men or women say they have not anything "wrong" to cause the affair, maybe it's more a case of them being a disappointment to their partner, having married as SGB says in the first flush of romantic love- but the partner who strays simply does not want the upheaval that goes with divorce.

Not right- but that's what happens.

Strawberryjelly,: Actuall I was thinking of the men who are selfish and lazy, who bully their wives and grind them down to the point that the only way they get the strength and the renewed self esteem to leave is when another man starts paying them attention. Both men and women mistreat partners, or pressurize them into more commitment than they were ready to make, or indeed snoop and spy and panic about possiblie infidelity to the point at which the other person thinks 'well if I'm going to be accusde of it I'll bloody well do it.'
But it's a big mistake to look at monogamy and infidelity only through a gendered lens.

I will ask it again on this thread.

What about my situation?

My xh beat, abused and raped me over and over and over. I went to a work do, got bladdered and slept with someone who became the OM.

I asked this question further up the thread, twice now I think, to those of you who think it is always the person who has the affair's fault.

I struggle with the idea that the betrayed partner is always a saint which some posters put forward, like SGB, because my ex certainly wasn't and I have the scars to prove that.

BTW I'm not asking this in a way to make it all about me, it's just to try to point out that there isn't a one size fits all solution.

I'm trying to explain that you are wrong in your thoughts that there is something wrong in the relationship. I am not trying to tell you how awful it is being cheated on but that the fault always lies with the dreadful wife!

It seems to me that you are trying to assuage your guilt as you are probably in this situation and want to make yourselves feel better.

SGB I think you are right that sometimes it is a personality fault with the person having the affair.

Strawberry - Yes thank you I have seen a councellor and I thank you also for pointing out that I must have a problem with whom I chose as a partner, think I will just go quietly and slit my wrists now as I am obviously doomed to a life on my own or chose another deceitful lying man! Oh and just before I go, it definitely wasn't for the sex, he got plenty of that at home!!

Romneymarsh - are you seriously telling me that the fault always lies with the dreadful wife?

Romney- if you read my posts they say that the fault is with ether person- but I do believe that there is something wrong in the marriage if one partner goes outside of it- the person who is cheated on may not feel there is anything wrong- but the one who cheats at the very least needs "something " that his/her partner can give him. That does not mean the partner who is cheated on is doing "wrong" it just means the other person has a need that is not being met- and possibly a very selfish one.

Justfor - no that's what this thread seems to be saying! If you read my last post that makes me the dreadful wife twice!

And possibly won't/can't express that need.

I dont' understand why so many posters on here have this one size fits all / everyone who has an affair is totally and utterly wrong - and theres' no room for any kind of different behaviour or different situation, where its' not cut and dried.