OW perspective

[ListenBeforeJudging]

I'm fully expecting a flaming...this will be long.

I've spent many months lurking and reading the posts about all the affairs and suspected affairs and to be honest, it's helped me get over my own hurt. It's not often that the OW perspective is aired and I wanted to just let you all know that we're not all evil home-wreckers. There are always two sides to the story.

I had a male friend at work. We were good friends for quite a long time - nothing more in it. Then one day, out of the blue, he confessed that he'd fallen for me. I was gobsmacked, hadn't seen it coming and immediately distanced myself - I was angry with him as I didn't know what he wanted me to do with that information as a) he was married and b) I'd never thought of him like that.

I had a lot of time invested in our friendship and knew him well (albeit only at work) and knew he wasn't the typical straying type. I considered him a genuine friend so over time we talked it through. He confided that he felt that his marriage had broken down and that he'd been wanting to leave for at least two years (they'd been married for 8, had married young, no kids and it had descended into something platonic). He was terrified of leaving as he knew his wife was still in love with him and would be very hurt. His whole adult life, his family and all his friends were wrapped up with her.

For months we tried to put the situation behind us and carry on as normal but he told me that for the first time, he knew that he had to leave as if was capable of feeling the feelings he had for me there was no way back to fix his marriage.

We became closer and I started to develop feelings for him but still nothing happened between us. Then he told me that he was going to tell her that it was over. I was away and didn't see him for a week and when I came back he said he'd told her that he wanted out and that the 'wheels were in motion'. It was then that our affair began. We fell deeply in love.

With hindsight this was my biggest mistake and greatest regret. Long story short she was devastated, he couldn't go through with the pain he was causing her and for the next two years we had an on/off relationship (while managing somehow to have a consistent friendship) while he tried to extricate himself from the situation.

Then she found out. He cut me out of his life 'temporarily' while he 'sorted things out' (by this point we no longer worked together). I waited 3 months before seeing the light and telling him that it would never happen and that it was over. 4 months after that he left her. It was too late for us. There had been too much pain caused.

He was the love of my life. I still miss our friendship. I've felt the worst pain of my life over this.

My point to this story? I never planned to fall for him although I accept that I made some bad judgements and got in over my head emotionally. I've spent the last two years regretting what happened. I dream about his (now ex) wife often and want nothing more than to contact her to apologise for the part I played in her hurt - but I know that would just be indulgent and of no value to her when she's trying to move on.

My genuine belief is that if all was well in a marriage there would be no reason for a man to find solace/confidantes elsewhere. My advice? Talk about your concerns with your DH - before things get to the point that you can't communicate anymore.

He does not have the perfect wife there is no such fucking thing

Exactly my point I really would recommend you reading Glass - you might learn something about the reality of affairs

40 - sounds like you chose have an affair instead of leaving your spouse. I bet you stopped investing in him once you begun your affair.

Thanks for reply not yet.

You see I wonder what might have happened if rather than embarking on the affair you simply turned to your husband and told him you were so unhappy you were on the brink of one or on the brink of leaving - whether that would have provided the result you needed? You did chose to have the affair and gave yourself permission to do so. Which way would you do it if confronted with similar problems again?

Oh Sugar, you've hit a new low in your most recent posts. Maybe because you feel attacked for your choices, you are hitting out at someone who really doesn't deserve your jibes about her marriage. That's spiteful and misdirected anger. The people you should be angry at are your lover, yourself and possibly your own partner, but not MAHC and certainly not the man's wife for what you perceive as her failure to keep him faithful.

If you weren't so afraid of reading about triangular relationships, you'd see the psychology involved in them and the harm they cause not just to the people and families who are being deceived, but to you as individuals.

You admit it's wrong on an ethical level, so you have to create elaborate reasons for why your relationship is 'different' and why it is somehow less wrong than any other triangle.

But it isn't. 6 years of doing something that you know to be fundamentally wrong and indefensible must really mess with your values. It must feel hollow every time you reprimand your children about lying, or every time you find out they have hidden something from you that would have changed your decision. I'm sure that must affect a person very strongly and is why I think you are behaving so unkindly here.

If you were emotionally healthy and were truly happy with your choices, you wouldn't feel this attachment to the belief that affairs only happen in unhappy relationships. You'd open your eyes and ears and listen to the testimonies that contradict that myth. But like I said, you aren't brave enough to do that because that would mean confronting your own behaviour and that of your lover's. It might cause you to pause and wonder whether your own relationship could have been saved if you hadn't spent 6 years having an affair with someone else. Or whether your lover's marriage would have improved as his selfishness receded and family needs lessened.

I can see that's too difficult, but that doesn't mean your own 'special' circumstances give you an insight into every affair or its cause. Unfortunately for you, you've got an army of couples counsellors who do read widely and do listen to couples dealing with infidelity. They all disagree with you and say that affairs are often unconnected with marital dissatisfaction and are far more about individual personality traits, such as selfishness and ego.

You're probably pragmatic enough to realise that you're both propping the other one up and that your relationship would therefore not survive on its own. For it to function at all, you both need your other relationships and the security they bring. But you can make an informed choice about that - the deceived partners cannot and there's just no talking yourself out of how wrong that is and how it must compromise the values of a person who presumably once held her ethics dear to herself and wanted to instil those in her children. Whether you feel that split is up to you to reveal, but I wonder whether your lover ever wrestles with the compromises he has made to his own core values?

Mad is right about not investing in relationship once the affair has begun. Unfortunately no one can answer what would have happened if you stuck it out a bit longer rather than having an affair?

'Takes one to know one.' ?????

My god, now I KNOW we are all back in the playground.

Actually HoP, my first post yesterday was trying to appeal to posters to realise there is something to learn from everyone. If you had a teenager who was starting on drugs or crime or serious alcohol abuse, wouldn't you take them to a former addict or serial burglar to see the damage caused and ask the former addict to give advice to your teenager to help them understand what they were doing and steer them away, to warn them off? Why are those of us who have been OW unable to be of any help at all in the continued affair/OW/OM debate?

MadAboutChoc: no, I am afraid you are wrong. True, once my affair began, my marriage was dead in the water, I killed it, so to speak, so that could be no more 'investment', if you like. For me, it was the culmination of several years of immense difficulty and loneliness within my marriage. Again, as per an earlier post, I told my DH a number of months before I even met the OM that our marriage was over and I wanted to separate, and it was horrific; I was devastated by the realisation, he didn't get it, didn't get anything really. He never did and it was way too late by then, because for me there was nothing left. What we didn't do was formally separate, because he just wouldn't talk about it. My affair then started....

All these excuses. You can spout all the excuses you like for pages and pages but they will never justify an affair.

Affairs=Lies
Liars can't be trusted
Stop being a liar and get a grip on your life.

It isn't just the wife who is affected by a cheating husband. Children are hugely affected. My Father had affairs throughout my teenage years. This knowledge affected the way I thought of him until he died, I never ever felt the same way about him.

So why isn't he with you Sugar?

He sounds just too wonderful. Wow that wife must be sooooooooooo happy, whether she knows or not she doesn't have his attention his commitment or his real presence.

Does she know about you, Sugar?

WhiteGold... crossed posts.... I did tell him.

If it got that bad again? I would tell him I was deeply unhappy and, if this was the case, on the brink of an affair. And I hope he would do the same.

Choc: not telling 40s story here, but losing her was what cut through his denial and stonewalling, and it looks as though 40 chose her marriage.

Question: What about men who have a long affair, want to be with the OW, but can't bring themselves to leave their family, so end it. Are they just as much of an arsehole as the men that do actually leave? Or do they deserve some credit (wrong word, they're still arseholes who deserve a bashing) for "doing the right thing" in the end?

Bingo Wobbly.

BUT, it is important to stress that is not why I told him, and it is not at all what I thought would happen. I told him I was having an affair so that he would finally realise our marriage had died to such a degree that he and I had fallen so far apart and I had become capable of having one, that I did not want to, or could not, keep going and that I was leaving him. Believe me, it was horrific.

I thought that was it and it was for a while. But somehow we found a way back, and we are where we are today.

Believe in Pink in answer to your question, through my work I have encountered many men who told the OW just that - that they wanted to be with her but couldn't leave their families. Except it wasn't the truth at all. What they will admit to a counsellor (but not the OW) is that they didn't want to lose their wives after all, but couldn't face telling the OW that and in some cases, had too much regard for her to make her wait for a day that would never come. So they make out that if all things were equal and there were no children involved, they would be with her. That allows her to think that she has primacy over the wife and allows his image as an ethical person to remain intact. In very competitive women, it keeps their egoes intact to think that they've lost to the kids but not to the wife, unedifying though that sort of prize fighting is in reality.

In fact it would be far more honest and kinder to the OW to tell her that he has chosen his wife over her. She moves on quicker and learns that what some men say isn't always the truth and that in reality, he is just too selfish to stay in a loveless marriage. If men stay with their wives, it's because there's a lot in it for them, regardless of what they say otherwise. If there isn't, they leave and it's really that simple, but painful for the person/people left behind - OW or wife and kids.

These things are never very straight forward except for the office party sex which lasts 10 minutes.

The men I have spoken to who have done this (I don't tend to talk to women who have affairs) have had various comments. Often it is not wanting not to live with their children (as English law is very sexist on divorce and unfair on men). of course they could just not do it. No one forces anyone to cheat. Others it's just "fun" and often no one would find out. Others had a marriage which was over and then meet the love of their life and live happily with her, wife number 2 forever. I really don't think you can generalise except to say that it is always wrong and it kills no one to deal with an unhappy relationship and if you cannot mend it either part and then find someone else or agree with your spouse if you can both stay married but see others.

In my case, OM ended up telling me he hated himself for the way he was treating his OH and also the way he was treating me... and I hated that he was in that position. I struggled massively, not with letting him go because I had to, but trying to work out what kind of person he really was. I saw him as a good person with a mid-life crisis issue, a sometimes unsatisfactory (not unhappy, he never said that) relationship who had struggled with a difficult decision, and had made the right one in the end ie. not leaving. I never thought he would leave, and I told him that. I respected him for at least telling me.

And yet to get over him, move on, and really focus on mending my marriage, I needed to hate him. I often felt that because he did not tell me was unhappy with his OH, and that their relationship was okay most of the time, that this was a case of him and me just meeting, falling in love ... I still felt for a long time he was an inherently good person and it took me a long time to even start to get over him.

What he didn't tell me, but I found out much later, was that I was not the only OW. What a surprise. That kind of helped with the getting over him part : )

Oh Sternface, if you really are a couples counsellor isn't it a little unprofessional of you to be discussing your 'work' on a public message board? I certainly wouldn't want to see a counsellor who did that. You say that all the 'couples counsellors' on here disagree with me but in this thread alone I have read many many posts from people quoting real life events and funnily enough they do agree with me when I say that every affair is different and some yes some do start because the marriage is unhappy. I don't remember being angry at anyone certainly not OM's wife, and btw Wobbly yes she does know about me.

I think the biggest mistake anyone can make is to say they 'would never' have an affair, or their partner 'would never' have an affair. I always thought that about myself.

There are many who will indeed never have one, because they just don't get to that point. But what people mean when they say that is that 'at the moment, my relationship gives me no cause for concern, so he/I doesn't/don't need an affair' or he isn't/I am not vulnerable to having one.'

Great if you can keep your relationship that way. The minute things start to change and you don't get them back on the right path, surely we all become vulnerable? Some of us will 'deal with it' with alcohol, some with drugs or fags, some with depression, some with going out every night, some with clamming up, and yes, some with affairs. ALL these things have an impact on partners, kids, wider families. Pepople who have affairs are not demons.

Mad I know about the reality of affairs... I am in that reality now

Sugar, you are sinking quite low, in the name of humanity lets all remember there is a lot of pain here. I understand you don't want to see stuff, but don't mock.

Does 'your man' 's wife know about you? I don't remember you answering that.

Stern, now your clarity is making sense! Sugar must wriggle a little bit being told exactly how it is.

Clarification, sorry Sugar I didn't see that post.

She knows about you!! Why doesn't she care? Why doesn't he choose you? Why does he stay?

This is fascinating, please tell more if you are able?

I am not/have not been mocking at all and you are just copying what stern said so think of your own replies. I answered your question when I replied to stern... who is not making me wriggle and is not telling me how it is.
Yes she does

So on the one hand a man has signed out of his marriage when he embarks on an affair, he is distant, he is cold, he picks fault. But then at the same time he doesn't want the OW, he wants the wife? Surely that's taking what we want to take from it to make ourselves feel better.

I would never have an affair because I have values that mean that I would not knowingly get involved with someone who is attached to someone else ...

I think I am perfectly within my rights to know that I will never have an affair 40

BelieveinPink - the man signs out of his marriage when he embarks on an affair, but when the affair is discovered by the wife and other family / friends / community; the affair bubble bursts and in the cold light of day, it doesn't look so attractive, he is seen for what he is as is the OW....

Then the man realises it is his ife, family and marriage that he wanted all along.

That's the way it goes in the majority of the situations.

wife, not ife

I've just read through the entire thread and there are a number of posters on here who claim there is no sympathy or understanding for the OW...

But I think it is also how the OW presents their case

If you continue trying to justify your affair, claiming it's different, special, you get a lot of flak. Same for any H's that had an affair, the more justification, the more flak from their wives.

There was a poster on fairly early called Lowra who told her story, saw her affair for what it was, understood her part in the awfulness of it and basically "owned her shit" and she received no flak at all, was commended for owning her part and taking responsibility for her actions.