Do women really believe that the wife is a psychotic bitch who doesn't understand him, the marriage is dead anyway and he's going to end it soon?

[duchesse]

And just how young naive would you have to be to believe that crap? I mean, men that have affairs have them with other women. Really for the sake of the sisterhood no-one ought to have any kind of dalliance with someone whose life is not crystal-clear and sorted but apparently many do, judging by the number of women on here who discover their husband/partner is shagging someone else.

So are they just not all that bright, these other women, do they harbour secret misogyny or do they just not care? Or do they so desperately want to believe what the bloke tells them and does it in fact stem from loneliness and sadness?

Abitwobblynow - what on earth are you having a go at me for? Did you read any of my posts at all?

Dprince, have you read the thread title, or the Op?

This is a thread about women believing married men's lies.

Not a general discussion on the evils of OW.

I have a friend (in France, where affairs are pretty much a national sport), who knowingly saw a married man for the best part of 15 years. She lived in constant hope that he would be leaving his wife any moment. She was like a moth drawn to a candle. Every year I told her he would never leave. In the end she moved several 100 km away and finally managed to break it off. She was devastated, even though the man was evidently not worth it.

I just think there's something spectacularly sordid about becoming the third piece of a two piece thing. As Waiting said further up, it is possible to wait until there is clarity before embarking on a thing.

And Morris, it goes without saying that the men who do this are twunts of the highest order. I'm more interested in the psychology of the women who end up being the OW. As others have said, it takes two, and I'm not talking about men who utterly lie about their situation and make themselves out to be single.

In my SM's case, she believed my father to be stuck in a duty marriage with a sickly stupid woman utterly not of his calibre, whilst she was very much more of a match for him. Actually this is true but not entirely in the ways she believes. And my mother is in fact a powerhouse of ingenuity and energy. Only my own anecdote.

I do know one lady who was a long term ow. It's over now, but I felt desperately sad for her. She had never met anybody, had never married despite wanting to have kids, and had very low self esteem. She wasn't even his only long term mistress - he had a few on the go, classic travelling salesman type.

My friend is a lovely, kind person who was royally used and fucked over by a lying, cheating git.

He played on her loneliness and low self esteem. He is scum.

Why dwell on OW all the time on here. Blame the effing perpetrator of the crime.

Because you kind of blame the wife Dirty, and I take exception to that.

I will hold up my hands and take responsibility. The problem is, he won't. So to be told its my fault is kind of galling.

Reminds me of Simon and garfunkel

"man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest."

Never truer words spoken.

Actually Morris I do take issue with your charge that my OP is sexist. Is it sexist to assume that a woman has the autonomy and intelligence to see through a pile of crap being spun her and keep her own council as to whether it's a good idea to shag a man in a complicated situation? I contend that the OW in this kind of situation has potentially a lot more autonomy than the wife since most often she doesn't have children to contend with.

I'm rather with Morris, you know.

I see where you're trying to go, duchesse, but the way you are phrasing it leads straight to Morris' earlier point that you cannot blame OW for believing lies and then not "blame" woman-in-primary-relationship for having "believed" the "lies" that were/are the fabric of the relationship. And what constitutes the "lies" in that situation? When did the "lies" start? Was the man she started out with, and were all the (implicit) promises made at the outset "lies" too? Is she also to be "blamed" for believing those?

I think VanDerElsken posted pretty wisely about the complexity of relationships, earlier. I think there have also been some pretty horrific tales from those who've been on the receiving end of lying.

It just makes me think that it is just such crap, appalling behaviour, when you think about it, that it is really surprising that it isn't regarded as truly crazy, harmful behaviour. I can't help feeling focussing on the OW just takes the attention away from the implications of the Mr BreakTrust's behaviour.

Still, it's OK to ask these questions, and to think about it all. I doubt there really is any one answer.

I really am pretty horrified by some of the accounts of OW's experiences though. Some of these men should really shouldn't be allowed to have relationships with others.

I daresay some wives are like that.
no way of knowing really. Unless you ACTUALLY know them

I hate the way mn groupthink thinks there is a "script " to affairs and they are mostly the same.
They're not

Vanderelsken , brilliant post

Blaming women for men's lies is sexist.

What if he is telling the truth?

Many people are in passionless marriages. If some people lie about this, its hardly the fault of the person they're lying to.

It always seems easier to blame women than men. But it is outdated, sexist and wrong.

Lilacs, you put that so much better than I did!

But you nailed it.

If we're going to hold women responsible for filtering out what liars say to them, why not take it to its logical conclusion, and question why the wife of a cheater naively believed he would be faithful.

Why would a wife believe or choose to believe that her husband is faithful? Erm, very simplistically, because that was part of his vows? Because marriage really is a commitment to that other person in sickness and in health etc, for the major purpose of bringing up children together no matter how shit you both feel sometimes but also for mutual support even if there aren't children. Why on earth else would anybody get married if it weren't to ensure a little more stability than than in the average worm colony?

Being faithful was not part of our vows. It is not necessarily a part of marriage, neither is live. Marriage fundamentally is a legal financial relationship designed to provide protection for the vulnerable members of a family. Anything else above that is negotiable depending on what the two people in the relationship decide they want to make part of their marriage.

*love!!

There is no comparison between the lies a faithful spouse believes and the lies an OW/OM believes. The former has no evidence of their spouse being a liar about extra-marital relationships, while the latter knows that their lovers are lying to their spouses and are therefore by default, liars.

VanderElsken's post is right on the money. When we are discussing what constitutes a 'good' marriage we need to be realistic about what that means.
It never means constant hearts and flowers, but ups and downs like any other life relationship.

The thing I will never understand about people who make absolute statements about affairs being the by-product of an unsatisfactory relationship is the assumption that the only thing that people have going on in their lives is their romantic or sexual relationship, whereas most emotionally healthy people are not solely defined by that. Other things like work, children, friendships, sporting achievements, hobbies and other life passions are important and all go towards defining people's esteem.

Equally, those things have the power to knock someone's esteem and so if someone is going through a tough time at work, with children, with money, with their widening waistline and greying hair, then regardless of whether their marriages are satisfying, they can be vulnerable to what is billed as an exciting new adventure, especially if as individuals they are not good at admitting failure and the feelings that go with it.

Affairs like this have got nothing to do with how 'good' a marriage is, but are instead about how an individual person self-soothes when times are hard.

In my work with couples dealing with infidelity it is always fascinating to get them to chart the peaks and troughs of their relationship. In what I would judge as 80% of cases, the affair didn't happen at the lowest trough. In fact there often seems to be no correlation at all between the timing of an affair and a low point in the relationship. Affairs happen at high points and at 'normal' times, as well as low points.

Therefore in many cases, it's not the relationship that's a factor, it's how an individual shares their vulnerabilities with a partner and responds to opportunity when it presents.

I absolutely stand by what I said earlier. No-one can pronounce that they know why affairs happen in every relationship and those who do are either naive, narrow-minded, blinkered by limited experiences or have an investment in making such a prescriptive judgement.

Offred, hello, being faithful and the concept of romantic loving unions have been part of the general understanding about marriage since at least the 19th century when it took over from a decorous business transaction.

If being faithful wasn't part of your marriage vows I can only admire your realism and respect for what vows are; a promise you intend to honor. But to most people faithfulness is very much part of the deal.

In any case, respect of the terms of aggrement is part of any relationship, and marriage is a legal relationship. If the terms can no longer be respected, it doesn't mean one has to stop treating the other partner with respect.

Lies and infidelity, to state the obvious, have no place in most people's marriage or relationship, however it seems that lies - lack of respect - do more damage than the actual act of infidelity.

DH has court orders relating to DSS, who is now 17, dictating a 40/60 contact pattern.

When DSS hit 14, massive pressure began to be exerted, as, according to his mother, he "didnt have to see THAT MAN", anymore. The older he got the more vicious his mother became with him, because she is a bully, she will not even speak to DH because he is an adult who can stand up to her, and hasnt since DSS was 7, when she expected him to arrange (and cancel) own contact, hence court orders.

DSS is an adult in less than 9 months time and is terrified of upsetting his mother, so he is reduced to sneaking around behind his mothers back, and meeting his dad for a hour or 2 here and there, so his mother wont notice.

If I wasnt living it, I genuinely wouldnt believe what the poor kid puts up with, because his mother "needs" him and its his job to look after her, he absolutely believes that.

My point being, the court orders werent worth the paper they were written on, as soon as DSS got to an age where the court considered he could speak for himself.

Dh never said a bad word about her, I have seen what she is like to her own son, through my own eyes.

She had been having a 2 year affair when we met, sadly DH had stayed because he didnt want to leave DSS. When he met me she went spare, because she was allowed to fuck about, but DH was expected to sit at home 7 days a week, with DS, while she did it.

He left within 2 weeks, moved into an apartment, so we could start establishing a relationship.

She is a nasty, spiteful vindictive woman, who cannot cope with the fact, that soon as she was single, OM dropped her like she was yesterdays news, and DHs life is fine.

I pity DSS who is so sucked into the idea he is responsible for looking after his mother, I dont think he will ever break free.

Morris, I have a friend who has done the same, breaks my heart that she has ended up childless as a result of her love for that fucker!

Just to add, I don't think the OP or any contributors were saying that an OW who believes lies from a liar is more at fault than the liar himself, but it's a fair question to wonder why anyone would unstintingly believe the statements mentioned in the thread title when everyone recognises them as the usual clichés trotted out by men having affairs.

The main point is that an OW/OM knows that their lover is lying to their partner and therefore has irrefutable evidence of a capacity to deceive. If you knew a business associate was lying to another associate, would you have complete trust in what he said to you? If there were warnings about a security scam on your bank website and it had received press coverage, would you trust someone who said that he knew what it looked like, but he had a genuine need of your password and was the exception to the rule?

No you wouldn't. And the same applies to OW/OM and partners who discover infidelity. Once a person has evidence of someone lying, it makes no sense to unquestioningly believe everything that person says. That's sensible self-protection.

I hate it when they come out with "it takes two to tango" what the frig does that mean? When I told my long ago ex's new bit on the side that he was married and new wife was pregnant, that's what she smugly told me.

"Being faithful was not part of our vows. It is not necessarily a part of marriage, neither is live. Marriage fundamentally is a legal financial relationship designed to provide protection for the vulnerable members of a family. Anything else above that is negotiable depending on what the two people in the relationship decide they want to make part of their marriage."

Complete nonsense... legally adultery is grounds for divorce. State recognised contract broken.

Nightwatch, I guess she meant that she wasn't the only one to blame, that your ex was also (and largely) at fault. In which of course we have to concede that she was right.

If she meant that you shared some of the blame then I'm afraid she must have been very thick to have misunderstood the expression to that extent.

Well I suppose she was right but, she was so bloody smug about it. I'm guessing he's already moved on to the next one.