I have been OW, and feel guilty, and where do I go from here to put things right?

[usurper]

I'm a name changed regular because I suspect I will get a flaming.

I'm single, and met someone off the internet 3 months ago. Before meeting (which was in a public place, etc) during chatting etc he told me he was separated. I discovered after we met he was not quite as separated as he had led me to believe (ie. not at all). However, I spent almost 4 weeks seeing him, and having sex with him, before finding my conscience and backbone from whatever black hole I'd lost it down and saying he needed to leave if he wasn't happy, I wasn't seeing him while he was lying any more. That was 2 months back. He's now left her, but has told her he has left her "because he met someone else". His children are furious (late teens/twenties) and his wife is devastated.

I don't know what to do now. I do want to be with him. The guilt is pretty huge given that I have been the catalyst for this damage. I don't imagine I can ever put this right. Is there any advice? He's also 20 years older than me, I am closer in age to his children. Is this all doomed to disaster? He says he is in love, and I think I am, but is it just lust? I feel so, so sorry for his wife and my actions were indeed disgusting.

The advice is that 'all's fair in love and war'. The marriage was rocky or he wouldn't have been on the internet looking for someone else. We can all get swept away by emotions against our better judgement. Divorce is always traumatic whether people expect it or not.

The only caveat is that you should be very, very wary indeed of a man that will behave this way. If he can leave the ex after just a few weeks, he sounds rather impulsive and easily led. Rebound relationships are not particularly sound ones either. You could easily be his mid-life crisis.

Eyes wide open, keep your head, don't romanticise and, above all, stop feeling guilty.

Sorry to give you bad news, but from his pov it may have been an exit affair. I wouldn't hold out hope for it to develop into anything lasting.

I think the best thing for you to do is to put it behind you, and stick to availble men in future.

Just stay away from him from now on. He sounds a bit silly (being kind) and not good relationship matierial at all.

All you can do is move on to bigger and better things. He sounds like he decieved you and so you shouldn't feel guilty.

Usurper - you are where you are. No point torturing yourself.

Take a few steps back, give yourself some breathing space & think about whether or not you really want to be with this man. Could you have a decent relationship? Remember he has started out by deceiving you & presumably his wife. The only person you can take full responsibility for is you - so just take your time & don't leap into an instant relationship just because he has left.

Have been here myself, 15 years my senior, met through friends but told me he was seperated, turned out he wasn't, left his wife after three months and there followed 2 very difficult years where I hated myself, hated him couldn't get over the fact I was kept in a very small box away from the rest of his life because noone would ever have accepted me, it was truly truly awful and I brought it all on myself. I have learnt there are no happy endings where affairs are concerned, even if the two of you are relatively happy it will always feel tainted and you will always have his wife and children as part of your lives, I felt premanently jealous and insecure , again all my doing. Honestly, can't reiterate enough what a huge mistake the whole thing was, I can only say in my mitigation I was very vulnerable when we met and he lied about the status of his marriage. Please don't go there.
Happily some time after we broke up I met a great man who has fully committed to me and I to him and I now have the chance of all the things I dreamed of, marriage and children of my own. I guess if he is 20 yrs your senior then this is unlikely to be an option if that's what you want.

The marriage was rocky or he wouldn't have been on the internet looking for someone else.

Really? I wonder if he'd bothered telling his wife that before he signed up!

Do you really want a lying cheating second hand man who is capable of devastating his children from som floozy he meets off the internet?

Good luck to you!

You cannot "put things right". What's done is done. The marriage clearly had serious problems for him to leave.

For everyone's sake including your own, do take things very verrrry slowly with this man. His wife will be angry with you & his head will be a mess from leaving such a long term relationship. Be careful.

Rather than man up and leave his wife he was on the internet looking for other women. Do you know how many he met before you? How many he cheated on with his wife before you?

He lied to you when you met directly to your face. Why would you want to continue a relationship with someone who did that?

If you decide to be with him be aware that he could be off meeting however many other women he wants to off the internet as he has done to a woman he should have had some decency and respect for at least for bringing up his kids.

"Really? I wonder if he'd bothered telling his wife that before he signed up!"

Didn't realise 'rocky' had to be consensual...

OP plenty of married men go looking for sex, without their marriage being rocky. What a naive thing to say.

Yes it's got disaster written all over it. A big messy disaster. I think it will turn to shit.

Your guilt is pointless. How's you feeling guilty going to help his 'devastated' wife and family?

My own rule is that if a man cheats with me he is likely to cheat on me, so I'd avoid like the plague and I would have left when I found out he was still married.

He has effectively already cheated on you, with his own wife, as he lied to you about being separated.
So, why stay with him?

If you finish with him I suspect he'll go back to his wife, if she is stupid loves him enough to forgive him

All true. Thank you for your time.
What a mess. I suspect she would have him back. He is attractive, funny, loving and has seen me at my worst.

I imagine it is an exit affair - he's cheated several times before. I never thought he would leave. I am falling for him though - I don't want children with him - I am probably being a weak willed idiot. His children and wife want to speak to me. I don't really know what to do.

I have to agree Joan. The marriage might not have been unstable but he certainly was! And there's no 'fairness' about affairs at all.

He's not a good bet usurper is he? If a man is able to deceive his wife and children and walk out on them just because the OW makes an ultimatum (I don't interpret what you did as an act of conscience I'm afraid) then he's not a particularly strong character blessed with moral fibre is he?

He also lied to you about his status and relied on you not being able to resist his charms once the truth was out there. He relied on your own lack of conscience, really.

So you're talking about starting a relationship with a lying, weak and deceitful man who is 20 years older than you and will probably always blame you a bit for forcing his hand despite it being his choice to do so. He will also no doubt blame you for being estranged from his children and living in penury while they take what is rightfully theirs from the finances.

Why would you want that for yourself?

Please don`t walk away from him ...

run like hell.

This is the man you want? A man who can lie and cheat? He has already lied to you and you´ve only known him a few weeks. He is 20 years older than you and behaving like a teenager. Is this someone you really want to waste time on? How would you introduce him to your friends, family? Do you want to build relationships with his angry children?

You made a mistake.

Seriously, run and don`t look back.

If you don't want to be falling for him then cut all contact and have nothing to do with him. It really is as simple as that.

If you want to be with him don't blame it on being weak willed and falling for him have the balls to admit to yourself and everyone else that you want to be.

If he cheated several times before I hope you used protection and I would insist on a full sexual health screening before any more with him.

As for loving. Shame he had to share that around multiple times really isn't it.

usurper, that he has cheated before is not good. I doubt very much the current wife thinks he is loving or funny.

Do not speak to his wife & family. Absolutely nothing good will come from that whatsoever. They should be speaking to husband / father - not you.

You want to put things right by having a relationship with him. How would that work exactly?

Why are you attracted to a man twenty years older than you as a matter of interest. How old are you? About the same age as his kids?

You know the saying, "when a man gets with his mistress it creates a vacancy", is this man who shamlessly lied to you and to his poor wife somone you could envisiage a life with?. Good luck with a life of looking over your shoulder and wondering where he is and what or who he's doing, to quote another poster..run away from this man don't walk.

you would be a complete fool to keep seeing him. i mean the kind of fool who's the main character in a soap opera who's always doing THE stupidest thing she can possibly do in any given situation. and it keeps the ratings up because it's like watching a car crash, no-one could look away.

you were stupid in the extreme to sleep with him after learning he was still married. please salvage your dignity and don't continue with him now.

you will lose him just as you gained him my dear
it never ends any other way

if you want to do right by his family and feel guilty for your culpability, get away from him. that's how you do right. that is the right thing to do, as well as the intelligent thing to do.

Agree oikopolis, feeling sorry for his wife and crying crocodile tears whilst having sex with his husband isn't putting things right in the slightest. It doesn't make someone good just because they feel guilty when they do bad things.

Why on earth would anyone want a tosser that would do that to his family, over and over and over... and then, a final slap to have an affair with a woman about the same age as his kids?

Can you not see how sick that is OP?

You can't make this right. Ending it the second you realised he was cheating would have minimised your role in this, but never would it have been alright. Just YOUR part in it would have been slightly more justifiable. But you didn't end it, did you. I understand it's hard to walk away from someone telling you you're all that etc, but you knew it had to be done, but chose not to.

What was it some other OW said this week that stuck in my craw 'you can't help who you fall in love with...' Well actually you CAN.

Having a relationship with him now would be to throw more bad after bad.

Your self esteem must be rock bottom to allow this bottom feeder to keep you on the hook. You need to seriously look at why you would tolerate such a crappy relationship at such a young age. Get to know yourself, your worth and your values.

THEN go look for a boyfriend. One without a wife and kids.

'you can't help who you fall in love with...'

I think that's true. I don't think you can help falling in love, not proper love anyway.

What you DO about it is a choice of course. But the feelings are not something you can control very much, they just happen.

OP, I'm wondering why they want to talk to you...possibly they want to make a case for your departure on the grounds that he is not the sort of man who will be any good for you. Maybe they want to protect you.

Or maybe they want to ask you not to take him away from them.

The thing is, it's not really up to you what he does. It's up to him. You can only control what you do.

I'd suggest walking away for the time being, it all does sound an unholy mess. And it's currently nothing to do with you. They all need to sort it out between them.

And then, if he comes back to you, you need to think really carefully about whether or not you want to be with a man who lied to you before he even met you.

He sounds like he's really messed up, tbh. not someone who is ready actually to start a new relationship. I'd be really wary of a man with such obvious issues. Sorry x

There seems to a load of married men out there on dating sites doing the 'I'm separated thing'. My own very lovely sister nearly got caught in the same trap. It was even worse though. The reason they were 'seperated' was because wife was staying with her patents while undergoing chemo, while he looked after the kids.

I'm going to tell you what I told her.

Get out now before your whole life is destroyed. He will only hurt you, in the same way he is hurting and destroying his wife and children's lives. He isn't looking for a relationship, he is looking for an emotional prop while he gets on with the next stage of his totally selfish life. Then you will be discarded. He will be lovely, charming, make you feel like you are the only person that matters. Because for now you are his excuse to walk away.
You are worth much more than someone else's cheating lying husband.
Good luck.

Usurper. I would contact the wife. To APOLOGISE for all the hurt you have helped cause her [you can have no possible idea how hurt she is]. And explain that he lied saying he was separated, so you have both been lied to. Dump him back into his own self-created shit.

He is NOT in love with you. He doesn't know you. He is in love with his projection, a fantasy, a delusion that you will make him as young as you are. 'You' as a real human being don't actually exist for him right now, except for the tremendous high and self-esteem he is feeling as a result of fucking you, your smooth skin and your no-children-have-yet-to-pass tight twat. He's still got it, he's the man, he isn't getting old!!!!!! Sorry to be brutal, but you need to wake up AND you need to stop feeding his addiction (to you).

This person, and his evident problems (consisting of at least 3 devastated people that you and he have dehumanised in your selfishness, as well as: avoidance, chaos, not being very together, blaming, and not taking responsibility for problems/feelings HE HAS) are very, very, very bad news for you, your well being and your future. If you were in a healthy place you would be feeling revulstion for this sad geezer who wants to run away from people who care about him, and vampire off your youth.

Please don't get sucked into this mess. Please go into counselling NOW to work out why you got charmed into the excitement, instead of seeing the sleazy reality straight off and declining to get involved.

You have really hurt people, and you have allowed yourself to be used. STOP IT. Throw his number away and block his from your phone.

PS google 'limerance' if you want to understand the high of it. It is NOT love.