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?

Blackcoffee - how fortunate that you both managed to find unattached people to cheat with. I doubt very much that the other posters on this thread who have used affairs as exit strategies or who felt justified because they were in unhappy marriages were quite so fortunate. But hey, as long as they've no regrets themselves, who cares about the other people they hurt?

AF, nicely put but that was far from my intention. I was sharing an experience that made a significant impact on me. If there were others I would use them too. Maybe I'm not cut out for this. Sorry for any offense caused.

you too are making unfounded assumptions, deb

wwifn (and others like her) give advice based on the information given

how does any information given on this thread lead anyone to make a judgement on an individual posters RL situation...SJ's character assassination and belittling of another's achievements says more about her than it does about wwifn

all I see here is an opportunity for a few posters to have a go at an individual, and to trot out stuff they think they have seen on other threads

it is shit

Just because my marriage was going through tricky times, I wouldn't of wrecked another one. Afwiw, there's plently of single people to get your kicks with in the world. Both of ours knew that we were married, it was a fling and was never going to walk away from my marriage, even if I had left my marriage, I wasn't going to walk into another relationship. It was exactly what I needed to build my confidence, I told the guy I had an affair with what it was gunna be and he decided to go ahead with it. No one was hurt in the long run. It is impossible to have an affair without regrets, if everyone is honest with what it is and is prepared to put the work in when the aftermath hits.

ok heres my two pennies worth.

I don't normally post on 'affair' threads as I never felt my H had an affair, he fucked around instead which I view as utterly different to an affair; IMO he was massaging his already disproportionately large ego by getting other women twat. He was abusive and wouldn't leave me, I was scared to leave him.

I suppose you could say I had an EA throughout all of this, with a man I always wanted to be with. He was married when I met him, I was single so I left well alone as 'I don't do married men' was my mantra as they could never be mine IYSWIM.

the OM admitted to me after I was married, when I questioned him if he had ever had an affair, that he thought about it years ago as there was a woman he was in love with but he left it alone; he then told me that the woman was me.

For the rest of my marriage until my H died I remained faithful to him, yet in my head I still wanted to be with OM; we still saw each other from time to time in a work capacity and talked on the phone. He became a bit of a sounding board when things got rough with my H.

His children left home and he left his wife telling me that if I left my H, he would look after me. This I never did. I stuck out my awful marrige in a state of fear and then suddenly my H became sick and died.

I am now with OM and it is the only really good relationship I have ever had with a man other than my father and DS.

So, I don't regret having a life spanning EA

yes, smallsteps, I think you stay too

merrywidow, what a great love story!

I have never, ever seen wwifn get "cross"

Aislingoria, I dunno what threads you have been reading, seriously

now if you were talking about me I would say you have a point...

should stay, smallsteps

ovumahead Sun 22-May-11 17:40:55

WWIFN - just inrtigued by your posts and wondering about your qualifications? Are you a marital therapist?

Evidence of other posters asking a question.

I can see nothing wrong at all in asking how someone with a family, a job and a partner has so much time to devote to MN.

Several of you are completely over reacting.

But that is not the point- the point is that some subjects are seen as taboo, some posters are belittled for having another opinion, some people appoint themselves as moderators, and as experts.

No one who posts at length, so often, and so emphatically should be surprised if they are jostled off their highhorse now and again. No one has the monoploy on the "right" advice.

deb, I think personal attacks are not warranted

end of

dressing it up as "being in someone's best interest" is at best patronising and at worst....

yeah bleeding, the Shawshank of EAs

Most of the time I just thought OM was a great and decent man; it was an EA going on in my head for years and because he respected and valued me as a person and talked to me rather than at me, when my H was dishing out the constant character assasinations, it made me realise that I wasn't as shit/useless as my H made out.

He left his wife as they had grown far apart, with no knowledge that I was going to be widowed

at shawshank

I understand that WWIFN has personal experience?

Affairs are a cowardly act - essentially testing the water for those who havent got the bottle to leave their partner without the safety net of another person to fall back on. To try pretend otherwise is disingenuos.

And FWIW, I respected OM I loved even more because he didn't cheat on his wife