Affairs - why is it always the woman's fault?

[Pinkie29]

Just looking for a general opinion please.

A friend of mine for the last 15yrs is seeing a married guy and has been for about 8 months she says she loves him etc he makes her feel special after a really bad break-up 2 years ago it's the first time I've seen her genuinely happy since.

I doubt he'll ever leave his wife they've been married forever and have 3 grown up children. My reason for posting almost all our friends have stopped speaking to her? Telling her she's being heartless towards his wife how could she do that etc has she no morals ironically 2 of the friends were married and got with their current partners by way of affairs so surely are in no place to judge? I know it's not right but I just think its nothing to do with me, she doesn't know his wife btw.

Whenever a man cheats it's always the other woman that gets the blame I can understand this if it's a friend or relative but if its a work colleague or some random girl they met the wife/gf is always gunning for them they seduced him enticed him put it in a plate etc rather than just accept their beloved has been unfaithful of his own accord and should direct their anger at the husband not the other woman

Pinkie are you new on here? Have you not seen all those threads from women who were hurt very badly by their husbands while their affairs were going on, but didn't know why? It's very naive to think that an affair is an isolated act and doesn't come with a set of behaviours and actions that are very hurtful in their own right.

Spree - the pain will pass - I promise it will. No one can take away your self-esteem - that is absolutely yours to own. Don't let anyone make you feel bad about yourself, especially someone who has hurt you.

Sternface - maybe my use of the words 'sticking around' was not helpful. If you replace them with 'staying married' does that change it? To some degree a marriage, and particularly one with children, is both a gift and a burden. There is a degree of burden on anyone who has children. A 'cheating' spouse who is careful and doesn't let their OH know, may be having their domestic needs met, but they are also preserving their family life and taking their share of the burdens too.

All the time he is missing from family life to be with his OW he is passing the burden of it to his wife. Any time taken off work needs to be made up and therefore means less time at home. Any money he spends on his affair means less for the family pot. And that's not even going into his wife and family being denied his full emotional presence. If this was the right thing to do, why do you think it needs to be kept secret from everyone? Shouldn't his wife be given the choice about whether she's willing to share her husband in exchange for him staying in the marriage?

No sternface not new on here just never had a need to post in the Relationships section, not naive in the slightest thank you just clearly have a different point of view to others. I ended a relationship because he was a cheat, I didn't give a damn who it was with or her reasons for getting involved as didn't even know her (pre social networking) gutted at the time obv but times a great healer.

Maybe it's I'll never get by head round, yes affairs are devastating but as I've said unless the ow is known to the couple the anger should be directed at the dh not a stranger who has often fallen in love with the wrong person these things happen unfortunately.

Who knows why men stray usually opportunity or think they wont get caught but they are the ones betraying their vows for whatever reason and screwing up their marriage by their own choice to enter into an affair

and if he just left - does that make it better? Then he only has to give a percentage of his income - max of 30% of his net income, if done via CSA and he has more than 3 children. He'll probably be the non-resident parent, thereby automatically pushing 80% of the childcare onto the resident parent.

Just extrapolating here. I do sometimes wonder if I should have gritted my teeth & stuck with ex-H.

Interesting, PostBellum. Did you kick your exH out then? Is he still with OW?

I think a lot of people underestimate the fallout of separation and divorce on top of betrayal. An exH is never out of your life if you have DC. Finances are invariably tighter. Children react in different, sometimes difficult ways. Shared parenting and step-parenting isn't always easy. Adults don't always behave honourably post break-up.

I wonder if leaving the bastard might be the easy part, sometimes.

I hope most people in the world care more about strangers than you do, Pinkie.

The fact that you don't know somebody doesn't justify doing them harm (and an affair is harmful to the person being cheated on and any children).

And neither does "falling in love with the wrong person".

It's not love if it's based on selfishness and deceit. Unless you're an animal you should be able to control your urge to rut with any man who gives you a load of bollocks about how he and his wife are barely married any more.

Yes, I started divorce proceedings with ex-H. He wanted to stay married, but remain 'friends' with OW.

He is still with OW and now has a further 2 small children with her.

I fell very much out of love with ex-H & it wasn't the affair that was the deal-breaker for me, but his bad attitude towards family life.

I am worse off financially, but better off emotionally - but I do wonder sometimes if I shouldn't have stuck with it. However, I do feel that by having the affair he made it easy for me to split up with him, something I would never have done on my own. I would have just continued tolerating his awful behaviour & attitude. If he had left me, because he didn't love me anymore that would have possibly been even more devastating than his affair - for me anyway.

I think it's all too easy to see this in black and white. In principle, it is wrong to cheat - of course it is.

But given that approximately 65% of men and women (and yes, as many women cheat as men) admit to having cheated on their partners (and these are the ones that admit it, presumably there are many who don't) we either need to concede that the vast majority of people are immoral twats with no consideration for anyone else, or that perhaps there is actually more to it than we care to admit.

MIL has an aunt who was the ow for 40 years, she even had a child by the om. His wife had threatened him that if he ever left her she would kill herself and the children. This was later backed up by their children after she died. This aunt and the om saw each other once a week, he paid maintanence for his daughter, etc etc. Even after his wife died they'd lived like that for so long that they didn't change things. He's now dead but she has an incredibly close relationship with his children. I think it's sad because things could have been so different for her, she could have had a different life, with a husband and family but clearly she chose this life and even his children say they know that he loved her and that their mother had always been horrendous (way way before she came on the scene). Was it wrong? yes possibly, but I still can't bring myself to see him as a bastard or her as a bitch. It's just not that straightforward, IMO.

I guess the point is, because you became aware of your exH's affair, unless he was adamant he was leaving you, then you had the choice about whether to continue with the marriage Bugsy. Knowing about it, whatever the outcome, gives people some more choices i.e. not to be responsible for 80% of the childcare and insisting on shared parenting, especially if an exH is only going to give the absolute minimum in child maintenance. Many women in that situation choose to work but that's often only possible if their ex is willing to step up and do 50% of the childcare. Men who only pay the minimum and want to be weekend fathers can't have it both ways. They either look after their own children themselves so that their exes can go to work, or they pay for the childcare so that she can. The other issue is that knowing about an affair and having the choice to end a marriage opens up other choices for a woman about taking a new partner herself. Keeping this secret from a wife stops her meeting new people who could make her happier, doesn't it?

It's all about choices and having the information with which to make them.

Presumably the wife knew then Wannabe and made a choice? That's what makes that situation different, in my view.

Having been in this situation (ex cheated for 18 months before I found out) I held him 90% responsible. I didn't think much of her either by the way as she knew when she met him he was recently married with a 9 month old baby. But he was the one that was married to me and therefore I think the major responsibility was him - she was just stupid and naive and has been chasing my ex through CSA for their child ever since! 10 years on - She even has my sympathies

Agree to a certain extent sternface.

I've always worked, but ex-H would not help with childcare & does only give the minimum maintenance & I had to take him to court for that. In the early days, I had to force him to see the DCs at all.

Yes, I had the choice to divorce him, but thereafter my choices with regard to what he did or would agree to were minimal.

He left us 9 years ago, and although I've had a few significant relationships, I haven't found anyone I want to be with long-term and I've parented pretty much single-handedly, because of ex-H's refusal to do anything other than the minimum. It's the relentlessly careworn side of me that wonders if I had stuck it out, his behaviour may have improved as the DCs got older and at least I could have stayed working part-time and spent more time with the DCs and gone on lovely holidays and lived in a big house etc etc. Most of the time I'm glad not to be with him - but I guess I'll always wonder.

I really sympathise Bugsy, but your exH sounds like a complete arse so you wouldn't have been happy if you'd stayed with someone like that and at least your kids haven't been exposed to his influence in shaping their personalities in the way that a more present and active father would have done, if only by default of his presence. No money in the world can make up for being a crap husband and father. I'm glad you were given a choice though. Sounds like it was a good one.

Pebblestack,

No I would not want to find out. Even if it came out 30 years later.

I do not think it is necessarily true that because someone has an affair that the remaining years of their relationship are a lie. It could be that someone has an affair and after it has fizzled out never does it again.

Should something that goes wrong during the relationship, for a short amount of time, compared to the total duration, really destroy everything that happens there after.

I think that if I knew of the relationship, I would not be able to get passed it. I can not see myself not bringing it up every time we argue about something.

Jinx, maybe it's different if it's a short-lived fling. I was thinking more of long-standing affair that goes on for years.

For the former, I can see the case for not telling. If the betrayer is prepared to live with the guilt and carry on (which is a big If). Though it would be horribly painful to find that sort of thing out accidentally years later.

For the latter, no way would I want to be kept in the dark. That smacks of nothing but cowardly selfishness on the part of the betrayer and weak dependency on the part of the betrayed, if the implication is that they would stay with their cheating spouse no matter what.

Sternface said:
?I know quite a few people who've had affairs and the honest ones admit that their affairs happened because it was an ego boost and because an opportunity presented, not because they were 'unhappy at home'. Remarkably for Mumsnet, a woman poster admitted just that on a thread a while ago and I thought that showed a lot of self-awareness and character.?

I am that poster, and I thank you for your kind words. I think that it is only ?remarkable? because most OW who post don?t get the chance to get to the stage of honesty that I am at because their posting for support is usually met by a barrage of abuse on here (which I totally understand.) I had already done the hard work before I joined MN.

Sassybeast ? you said that a woman who has had an affair with a married man is perceived to be blameless on MN. That is not my experience at all, and I think you will find very few OW posting openly about their affairs because they are very quickly vilified by other posters ? and I can understand why that happens of course. But I have never seen any OW who has posted who has been told she is blameless. Those posters who think that affairs happen when there are relationship problems are, I?m afraid, sadly misguided. Cheating partners use this as an excuse to indulge themselves in an ego-boosting affair and blame their partners for their own selfish behaviour. I had two affairs with MM a few years ago and I was, and still am, happily married. I didn?t seek out either affair, but the opportunities presented themselves and I took them, for no other reason that the excitement and ego-boost that they provided. I think PostBellumBugsy is right about the long history of women being seen as ?scarlet? or ?temptresses? and we seem to be more vilified than men who just can?t keep it in their pants at the sight of an attractive woman. There is a HUGE double standard operating in society WRT the attitudes towards men and women who have affairs.

Pebblestack makes an interesting point about how you would feel if you discovered your spouse?s affair many years after it was over. My DH doesn?t know about my affairs and I hope he never finds out. SoupDragon is right ? not telling my DH does make me a selfish twat. I stayed in my marriage because it suits me, but also because my DH is the man that I want to be with for the rest of my life. I wasn?t unfaithful because I didn?t want to spend the rest of my life with DH ? I was unfaithful because I could be ? because I wanted to know what it was like to shag another man after many years of marriage, and because the opportunity presented itself. However, I recognise that I have taken away DH?s choice in the matter by not telling him. I don?t believe that we are living a lie because my affairs took place for a few months in a long marriage, and because I have made changes to myself in order that nothing like that ever happens again.

Lastly I should say that my friends who know about my infidelity have all stuck by me and been there for me throughout. They were brutally honest with me at the time, which is what you want from those who you consider to be true friends; but because they are true friends they didn?t abandon me just because they didn?t agree with what I was doing.

I would judge them both and if she were my friend, no way would I be condoning her behaviour.

Married men who cheat are scum. The women they cheat with are scum too.

sternface I believe she knew. But afaik she had given him this ultimatum long before he embarked on a long-term affair with mil's aunt, as he had wanted to leave the marriage due to her behavior, not due to the fact hehad met someone else.

Why the aunt stayed in the relationship I will never know. Perhaps she felt she had no choice especially once she had a baby, and was a single parent in a time when that was severely frowned upon. Or perhaps she genuinely loved him. She knew he would never leave his wife - he had never promised to do so.

I don't think there is ever justification for an affair, but I think that sometimes there are reasons why it happens. I remember a few years ago on here there was a poster who embarked on an affair while trying to leave her abusive dh. While many did say she was misguided, they did not villify her in the same way as they would have done had she merely been having an affair because she could, iyswim.

Lastly I should say that my friends who know about my infidelity have all stuck by me and been there for me throughout. They were brutally honest with me at the time, which is what you want from those who you consider to be true friends; but because they are true friends they didn?t abandon me just because they didn?t agree with what I was doing.

As far as affairs go I won't judge anyone. However, I do think that if you participate in affairs you should tell as few people as possible. By bringing friends into the equation it's just like another slap in your partners face. Why do they need to know? Do they cover for you?

If my partner had an affair and I found out that friends knew about it all the time that would be a killer for me to be honest. Like everyone had been laughing behind my back.

CrispyCod - I agree wholeheartedly with what you said. Very few of my friends know, and those that do, except for one, are my friends rather than ours. They didn't cover for me; they supported me when I was going through a very difficult time after my first affair ended. And trust me, no one was laughing behind anyone's back. I behaved appallingly, and it is a tribute to my friends that they stuck by me. They told me that they did so because they knew that what I did wasn't the 'real' me. I hope and think that that is true.

If I were to find out about my OH having an affair, what people say behind my back would be the least of my worries to be honest. I think I would be too busy thinking about what could be happening to us as a family

I had an EA with someone as the opportunity presented itself. It only stayed an EA as we got caught before it could get any further. The worse thing was he was a good friend's husband. I am still paying the price years later and get a burning feeling of shame whenever i think of it.