how many more?

[marble]

....men will leave their longterm marriage and kids for the ow. God it becomes so predictable and well.. tiresome.

Mine left me 18 months ago after 20 years together. Have just found out about a friends...same thing.. 20 years and kids.

I am well on the way to recovery almost divorced, but she is at the beginning of what can only be described as hell on earth. I am going round in abit to offer comfort and support.

The pattern is always the same...h becomes distant, stays out, is critical of wife, nasty, moody and starts saying he hasnt been happy for years, wife has never loved him properly, shown enough affection...boohoo bla bla bla....they leave and low and behold ow emerges suddenly from thin air.

Just gets me so angry the way they just decide they can walk away and start a new life and we are left to hold everything together....KARMA...JUST FEELING VERY ANGRY and cant bear that my friend is goin through the pain that i did.......rant over!!

people change

you cant help that

its not just men, women do it too

Yeah it is the same old clap trap that cheaters churn out, why can't they just be honest and say I am bored with you and with married life and I want out! Apparently most divorces are filed for by women and most men won't leave a marriage unless they have another women to go to!

I agree, they do come out with the same old script. We saw my SIL go through a devastating divorce when her H left her, two teenagers and newborn baby for OW.

When I found out about my H's affair, I reminded him that he was disgusted and angry with both his father and BIL for leaving their wives and families - he said that he never planned to leave us so it was different for him it never occured to him that most men start an affair without the intention of leaving their marriages...

it never occured to him that most men start an affair without the intention of leaving their marriages...
Possibly, but many start affairs because there is something very wrong with the relationship. I'm not condoning affairs as the way to a deal with problems with a relationship, but people (and women do it too) don't leave relationships for other people if they were in a relationship they thought could be saved. It's a horrible way for a relationship to end, but I don't think the fact that other people are involved means it wouldn't or shouldn't have ended anyway :(

Bollocks

People leave good relationships for someone more exciting all the time.

It takes two to make a relationship work, but it only takes one deluded gobshite, who thinks he/she is involved in some big romantic love story, to smash a family to smithereens out of utter selfishness.

People have affairs for different reasons. It is far from always the case that it's symptomatic of a bad relationship. It can just be symptomatic of a bad person.

MadAbout - your husband was pretty confident that he could have his affair and you'd put up with it. Otherwise how could he justify it as not being a potentially marriage-ending course of action?

I never said it was always the case. Sometimes it is a case of someone just being shit and leaving for something/someone more exciting, but far from always. Certainly in the cases I've witnessed in friends and family, it has always been because the first relationship was very wrong.

I left my marriage without having an affair, but if either of us had (and my husband was trying to arrange infidelity) it would've been because of the problems we had.

And in the cases of it being because the person leaving is bad, then how can that have been a 'good relationship'?

What surprises me so much in this scenario is that the men don't see that they are not just leaving the marriage but leaving their families. It would terrify me to deliberately leave my children, I just couldn't do it.
And after decades of investment in raising a family they just shit all over the most precious, beautiful thing they've done in their lives. Do they think their DCs will feel the same about them?
And... the OW FFS? How can a woman see them doing that and then have DCs with them? Don't they know they're going to do it all over again? EEEwwww I just wouldn't think they were worth having at all!

Ultimately we all have it in us to be bad. Of course you can have a good relationship with someone who hasn't yet given in to their tendency to be a selfish, self-obsessed twat.

I suppose if a man ( or woman ) is bored shitless with their marriage they have the right to a better happier future with someone else - I'm all for staying together for the sake of the kids but I'm ( almost always ) told that's wrong and a totally out-dated concept - and it's usually women saying it to me.
You can't have it both ways can you ?

Most affairs are about how the betrayer is feeling about him/herself and their own issues - my H could have talked to me but instead made some very stupid and selfish choices by having an affair.

The affair started out as a close friendship and after months of flirting became sexual - he had become addicted to the feelings of being wanted/flattered, and gradually became more receptive to the idea of having an affair. The detaching took a while and self denial kicked in. As soon as he got found out and the bubble burst, he was horrified at the realisation that he might have to leave his family.

I asked him what he thought would happen should I ever found out - he said that it was something he refused to think about. Self denial can be so powerful and they really do get caught up in their own world and get carried away by events.

This process shows how easy it is for good people to become selfish self obsessed twats.

Our marriage was a good one, but like all marriages, it did have some weaknesses and these, along with his character flaws and issues (e,g middle age) made him very vulnerable to having an affair.

I now realise its dangerous to think that having a good marriage is enough to affair proof the relationship and reading Not Just Friends by Shirley Glass has been a huge eye opener about the reality of affairs happening in long term marriages.

Really good post anothermum, makes complete sense