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.

I think you have it just about right blackcurrants

HOP why is she shitting on another family if the other family never finds out and the OM is actually happier and better able to cope at home because he has an OW? What if before she came along he was descending into debt and alcoholism because he was so unhappy but again felt unable to leave because of his young children?
Yes they do want to change their lives... the fact that they feel they can't is another matter

I think those who are absolute and definite about affairs being connected to marital unhappiness are somewhat naive and simplistic about the human condition and especially how people feel in midlife in very long-term relationships. One of the friends I referred to earlier explained it very well (he's a man). He said that his wife had always given him lots of attention and in fact their relationship had undergone a renaissance before his affair, because their kids were older and less needy. But when his wife told him he was still attractive and gorgeous, he stopped valuing that opinion as much - and in middle age, he knew he wasn't as attractive as he once had been. So along came a work colleague (who it turned out wanted to settle a score in her own marriage and give her unfaithful husband a taste of his own) and of course, told him he was the cat's whiskers. This happened at a very stressful time in his career too and he'd just been overlooked for promotion.

So yes, he was honest that his affair wasn't about his marriage at all. It was about his fragile ego and nothing more. His wife could have done nothing about it. His honesty saved their marriage and fortunately his wife (my friend too) could understand that it had nothing to do with her or their relationship.

As someone in a long and very happy marriage myself, I can understand this. My husband's been giving me compliments for years and I value his opinion above anyone else's apart from my own! But I can see that if I had a fragile ego and had received a few knocks to my esteem, I could be as vulnerable as anyone to a few well-chosen compliments from someone new and exciting.

I do think if more OW realised how common this is, instead of inventing or believing a different story, they would have a clearer and more pragmatic perspective about their role in events.

blackcurrants post has a lot of insight.

House of Plain... this...
^I think the ows here are mixing up "justification" with the word explain. Nothing justifies and affair, but there can be explanations. It's all part of the process cheaters use to make themselves feel better. They need to "justify" it with reasons.

Then you have differing ideas of justification. "ohh it must be love...he's been screwing me for years"....."he's my soulmate"..."it's just me"..it's all just nonsense and all ends up pretty much the same way. Worst of all ows don't realise this is the same spiel trotted out by most married men, it's a script. But like someone said, I do think in a way, ows are gullible. They buy into the whole romance of the perfect guy, whilst he is deceiving his wife and kids, over years sometimes...it's just odd.

I do think though that on the whole most of the explanations are rather selfish. Bar the odd occasion where it genuinely is an abusive marriage, a marriage of power, with sex as a weapon, etc, etc. Mostly though people have affairs because they just can....I've never been cheated on, my judgement isn't clouded.^
You see, I am not trying to justify to anyone. I have to live with myself and I can. I certainly do NOT for one minute think it is love, I wouldn't be so stupid. I am not gullible, neither am I cynical but I am realistic. I know my place in this. I certainly didn't have an affair 'just because I could'. My journey was far more heartbreaking than that and I personally take offence at the implication I am one of the cake-and-eat-it brigade. I am not.

There are many of those out there and I honestly think they deserve every bit of criciticism they get.

Blackcurrants .. I really appreciated your post. It made sense in lots of ways to me. However... I am 25 years down the line in a truly difficult situation and sometimes, just sometimes, I don't want to feel like a bad horrible person.

Mistress, it's really quite obvious that you won't ever "get" it. They are still shitting on their family as it will be affecting them.

That scenario is quite another hilarious script role. The ow/om needing to be needed, a rescuer, valued, justified.

The stereotypes that you keep coming out with are just so typical, I'm not sure if you really are a clueless ow or stirring? It's really obvious to me though why everyone is judging the ows on here, same shit, different day. Nothing special here.

What stern said.

Excellent post house.

OP - yuk to your advice.

My husband had an affair - after individual therapy, he says that the reason why he chose to have one is simply because he was selfish and arrogant enough to take the opportunity, thinking no one would find out.

Nothing to do with his marriage or me.

It was all about HIM and his character failings.

He did not choose to talk to me so I had no idea about his issues.

Instead he and OW chose to blew apart my world.

Yes I think the idea that an OW/OM is an 'aide' to a marriage is one of the most absurd delusions of all. I think for someone to believe this, you'd have to convince yourself that you're taking nothing away from a marriage or family while an affair is going on, whereas no-one I've ever spoken to who's been on the receiving end of a betrayal has said that their partner was ever fully 'there' at home while his/her attentions were divided. Unless you've lived in his house and seen him with his wife and family, you cannot be aware of the damage being done. Because that's not possible, I guess the only way you can live with yourself is to pretend you are doing no harm. But to pretend you are doing good? Wow, that's some delusion.

The reason I avoid men who are married (I'm single and as I said above sometimes they contact me) is not just because I don't want or need to break up someone else';s family, but also because of selfishness. It leads to heartache often on both sides. I have had friends crushed into mental breakdown trying to decide between mistress and wife or one falls in love and other doesn't or (very frequently) they get found out and thought they wouldn't be or their children never speak to them again (applies to women as well as men) or she gets pregnant or blackmails him (or her).

Of course sometimes it is never found out and I suppose technically does no harm as long as there are no STDs and no more time away from the spouse than would otherwise be the case but very often it isn't only that or it becomes more or they get found out.

I always think it is too complex a subjuect to say there is one reason or one result. There are lots of different situations. I used to read the blog of a mistress of a married friend and the mistress genuinely seemed to like not having the hassle of a husband and just to get the good bits and some money but I never understood it. I would rather have no one than a hidden hole in the corner part of someone.

Oh Higgle thank you so much for your enlightenment. Yes of course - silly me - I should have dropped to my knees the moment he rolled in the door drunk from yet another 'works do' and given him a blow job with a pretty fresh ribbon in my hair
Poor lamb - it's no wonder he felt the need to rip the hearts of my children apart and shit on the vows that we BOTH made and that I managed to stick to despite the strains that our marriage was under.
Still, he's someone elses problem now - I for one relish the day that she asks him to do a night feed

Sternface-so well said!

Of course sometimes it is never found out and I suppose technically does no harm as long as there are no STDs and no more time away from the spouse

Often it does not work out like this - you see cheaters usually have to distance themselves from their spouses and families in order to create space emotionally and mentally for the affair. They may not be aware of doing this but the betrayed party becomes aware that something has changed but is unable to put their finger on it....

Yes, that's true and many get found out anyway, both male and female. On the other hand as other have said on the thread some become much nicer to their spouses as they are actually getting sex. The person I know with the mistress seems perfectly happy with the situation and I don't really think his suffers. Lots and lots of people can fairly easily compartmentalise these things. I am not condoning it. For some reason men (and even someone through work) seem to want to tell me about those things. It's as if because they know I'm divorced and perhaps easty to talk to they will confide in me so I keep hearing all kinds of stories. In fact it's really interesting if you like to be a fly on the wall. It does neatly divide into - just a bit of fun or this is the love of my life and I will leave my wife.

If you haven't spoken to these emotionally incontinents' partners Xenia, you have no idea whether they are compartmentalising or not. They might think they are keeping everyone (including themselves of course) happy but often people having affairs live in such a bubble of self-delusion, it can come as a terrific shock that their emotional absence was felt very keenly by partners and children. It was a sobering experience for my friend to hear from his teenaged daughter that she had 'given up' on him while his affair was going on and that he'd been a crap dad for a while. He thought he was compartmentalising too, but I think the more intrinsically decent the person, the less likelihood there is of compartmentalisation. You have to be quite a cold fish and a skilled deceiver to give absolutely nothing away, in my view.

it's very selfish because it deprives the other spouse of the full facts and the opportunity to chose whether to leave the marriage in those circumstances. Those are years they can never get back.

I can assure you HOP that I very much do get it, and probably more than you do. You lot all go on about the 'spiel' the 'script' and the 'romance' like you know that every single affair is the same and every potential OM says those things. I never had any kind of spiel or script and it wasn't romantic but it was certainly fun. As for Stern and her friends who were giving each other attention and compliments but they still felt the need to have an affair for some reason well fine... but that is not my experience and it still the case that some (if not all) affairs are to do with unhappiness in the marriage... NOT just an ego boost.

stern, no I havebn't spoken to the partners, just the person who is doing the compartmentalising. I take what I'm told with a pinch of salt as you only hear one side of things. I do think there are two categories however - those with a marriage in difficulties who fall in love with someone else and those just wanting a bit of fun in secret. I do not agree that the person cheating is always worse though,. Sometimes they go out of their way to be much more present for their family because they are so happy and fulfilled and getting some sex for once and so concerned to ensure the family is not damaged. In fact they need to be careful that they don't change at home even for the better as that is a sign something is going on.

Certainly one who spoke to me in love with a foreigner who was just after his money in my view (she was of course 20 years younger and impoverished) was totally deluded, asking for confirmation from me that she did really love him etc. I agree with mistressX though that situations differ. Someone else I know has married his mistress after a decent interval and they have a new baby. Now in 80% of cases men and women don't leave their spouse for their lover and anyone contemplating being with someone married needs to remember that statistic as people are led along for years on the basis of a promise the person will leave a spouse and usually they are lying through their teeth and never do it, but sometimes it happens. Mind you that person might well then cheat on the new person with someone else. You can see cycles repeating themselves.

mistress x some spouses reframe the marriage into an 'unhappy' one while they are embarking or have embarked on an affair, for reasons of cognitive dissonance.

In any event I do find the whole 'keep your husband happy or he'll have an affair' message rather and would rather be single, personally. Some men will go for that type of thing but change their mind about it after the initial novelty wears off

Why do people assume that the OW wants to cohabit with the errant H?

Sarah and some spouses don't...
Higgle absolutely, very often she doesn't

So Mistress X if they aren unhappy in their marriage why don't they just leave? You see I might be crazy being the unhappy wife, but you OW don't seem to see the split in your thinking. There is only one way of solving a problem. And that is by solving it. But you seem to advocate moving sideways as a perfectly reasonable solution. But it isn't a solution, because it avoids 50% of the problem! Whether that is the shrew bitch wife (who believe me doesn't react to being lied to so well) or the other 50% of the problem which is the cheater. How does sliding sideways, how do you see this as a solution?

Higgle: you make a very good point, again split. Nothing about an affair is just. It is plain unjust and unfair. But if a man has a boring naggy wife, you know the one who is washing his socks and wiping dirty noses because there are things more important than her now and who is trying to solve the unpleasant problem vs kind, caring, understanding uninvolved alluring twat who has no problem to solve and doesn't want anything more ... well how level is that playing field!!!

But you say it is the MARRIAGE that is the problem? Not selfish needs to have an easy life, just for a brief moment, whilst wife is having a fucking riot wiping puke off the floor and cleaning out the lint trap!! Who is showing the real mature love here, really? I can look at my tired sad sorry disilluioned self in the mirror and know: I acted with the real love. I didn't let the most important souls, the vulnerable ones, in this whole sad sorry set up, down. The other two 'adults' in the triangle, did.

Why are you painting such a negative picture of wives... why must they be boring, naggy, shrew bitches? Surely they don't spend all their time wiping puke off the floor?

But mistress you have to believe that your lover is in an unhappy marriage and isn't just after an ego boost don't you? Because to believe anything else would position you as someone who was making someone's marriage worse and another woman and children's life unhappy and miserable. I expect you don't have the stomach to confront that about yourself, so you go along with this fantasy that you're his 'saviour' preventing him from self-harm and causing his wife and family more misery by what you've judged to be worse destructive tendencies than having a secret affair. That's your judgement though. If he became an alcoholic or developed other addictive behaviours, his wife would know about them and would therefore have the choice to stay (or not) in a marriage with someone who puts his addictions first. But a secret affair gives her no choices at all does it? How can you in all conscience approve of the deceit of another person like that?

Because he's 'unhappy'? Well what about his wife's happiness?

I mean this with the best of intentions too, but think carefully about why you are so absolute about affairs always being a response to unhappiness. Why is that belief so important to you, when the more pragmatic belief is surely to say that some are and some aren't? None of us know every person's reason for having an affair, so blanket statements that claim superior knowledge about every set of circumstances i.e.

it still the case that some (if not all) affairs are to do with unhappiness in the marriage... NOT just an ego boost.

If not all? How can you possibly know that? And why is it so important to believe that, for you?

Like I said in my first post, I really do get why women in your situation have to believe all this because to do otherwise would mean confronting the wrongness of your own actions and those of your lover's. And you're not ready for that, because that would mean losing a relationship that has become special to you.

But what ever justifications he gives and you give yourself, you just can't get away from the fact that it's indefensible to deceive someone in this way. If it wasn't wrong and you were both proud of your actions, it wouldn't be a secret would it? And if your love was that strong, you'd weather the storms. But to do so would involve your own losses wouldn't they? Although I'm sure you both dress it up as a noble sacrifice to stay in these (apparently) hellish marriages, what this comes down to is selfishness. It's so sad to see someone believing this rubbish about a man selflessly staying in an unhappy marriage. What a waste of a life to believe something that's so transparently a lie. If your lover was selfless, he wouldn't be having a secret affair and taking away his wife's right to determine her own life. And if you were selfless you wouldn't be trying to find justifications for your own part in that deceit, deluding yourself that you are providing secret medicine for a compulsive personality who according to you would go off the rails if he didn't have you.

Have you actually done any reading about why affairs happen and not noticed the similarities in the OW's stories? If you haven't - again think about why that is and why you don't want to confront the situation you find yourself in.

These threads can get rather sexist. I think the statistics show as many women as men cheat but women are better at hiding it so we could just as well reverse the sexes, have got fat, ugly dull man who has lost his hair and ability to get an erection and wife having it off with someone in the office whilst they "work late". Either way it's wrong and the fall out is usually pretty awful.

Wither way at lot of people are at it
www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2006/02_february/13/map.shtml
That showed 1 in 7 and that is just what people admit to of 48,000 people on a BBC survey.

"A shocking one in five married men who engaged with the survey admitted to straying, whilst only one in 10 women admitted to be being unfaithful to their husbands.
The survey also revealed a new, more ambivalent attitude to extra-marital affairs.
Twelve per cent of women respondents stated their husbands had agreed to their fling, whilst only eight per cent of men said their wives had given consent to an affair, illustrating that men seem to be more tolerant about extra marital sex in the relationship than women.
When asked would they cheat on their partner if there was no possibility of being found out, a quarter of married men (24%) who responded to the survey said 'yes', but only nine per cent of married women said they would consider an affair.
And, when it comes to keeping an eye out for other potential partners, 84% of married men find themselves regularly attracted to other people, whilst only 61% of married women said that they found other men attractive."