Why have an affair if you dont want to leave your marriage?

[bogeyface]

I am confused.

My H had an affair, and was gutted to be found out as a) he thought he was cleverer than that (Hah! He wishes!!) and b) he desperately didnt want me to kick him out.

But why? I have seen on MN where men get caught and beg to be given another chance and I dont understand why. If you are cheating then surely you have checked out of the marriage emotionally and/or sexually, so why not take advantage of not having to have the "I am lleaving you" conversation and just leave?

I genuinely dont get why so many people cheat but dont want to lose their marriages when they are found out.

Athinginyourlife

You've let yourself down by becoming personal and insulting someone whose opinion you don't agree with. Whatever I have written, I've not resorted to childish insults.

I've reported this post to MNHQ BTW.

Bogey I think you have been at the gin again dear.

Why on earth is it pathetic? You are arguing from the POV of someone either having an affair or being an affair partner, and trying to convince themselves that its ok and "different for us". What you are saying makes no sense unless you are or have been one or the other. If you have been cheated on then you wouldnt be so excusing.

This is nothing like what I've said. Read more carefully. I gave examples of close friends who had affairs and the reasns why. There is nowhere in any of my posts that said affairs were acceptable or that it's different for "us"- whoever "us" are

And a counsellor would not say an affair was destructive. That's judgy.

They would ask- Is your affair destructive?

Some of you need to educate yourselves a bit more.

You've let yourself down by becoming personal and insulting someone whose opinion you don't agree with.

And yet implying alocohol misuse on my part is perfectly acceptable?

I am fully educated on affairs thank you, having been the wife that was cheated on last year. You however say you have no personal experience of affairs so I suggest that it is you that needs to educate yourself more. All you know is what other people have told you and thats not knowledge, that is gossip. You dont know if it was the truth or what really happened, only they know that. I suggest you take your know-it-all attitude somewhere else.

Whatever I have written, I've not resorted to childish insults.

And this particular gem deserves a post of its very own

and a

No comment from me Miss Bo Peep in response to your latest posts - like I said, in my experience it detracts from an OP's thread.

Abitwobblynow - yes I think some affairs are about anger, but again sticking to the type of affair Bogeyface is asking about, in my experience the anger (if experienced at all) is rarely with the sanctioned partner, or with the state of their relationship. That anger often has its roots in the wider world - the company who turned someone down for a promotion, the ageing process, old insecurities from yesteryear that have been re-activated. Sometimes too, the anger is with oneself and it gets acted out as a form of self-sabotage.

Fairenuff's assessment about 'happiness' is interesting but the happiness I was referring to was what people say their 'happiness and satisfaction' quotient was in their relationships before they were unfaithful. That's more relevant than asking someone how happy they were when already involved in an affair and as you say, were getting their needs met by more than one person. The question about the pre-infidelity quotient sometimes helps to unravel the cause of an affair.

It's also really interesting to ask the same question of their partners. Often it turns out that of the two, the one who was unfaithful was happier with the relationship overall. This is sometimes because as someone else said, the unfaithful person might have long got used to taking more than giving in the relationship and has only been concentrating on whether their own needs have been met and not their partner's.

Again, I must stress that these observations are in relation to an affair where the person having it is committed to the relationship and is content within it, not other affairs.

It's the thrill of it all. The escapism, the feeling wanted, the being desired, the no strings of it. :(

Bo Peep I am not going to join in on the flaming of you. I know you got aggressive because you were feeling attacked, just as Bogey's feelings have also been hurt.

Please hear my support in what I wrote:
I have meet several who agree wholeheartedly with you about the addictive aspect of it, which is why 'just say no' (and condemnation) does not work. You can actually say 'you are making a big fucking mistake' in a very loving and accepting of the person way. The two are not mutually exclusive!

whilst I respectfully disagreed with you: I have yet to meet a therapist who does not say anything other than 'affairs are a huge mistake'. Because they witness at first hand the pain and the destruction.

And I hope you also note that Stern has not reacted in a hurtful way either. It's her professional non-judgementalism and compassion, see.

Why would any therapist 'approve' of an illicit affair? It seems to from extensive (obsessive ) reading of websites dedicated to OW/OM and BS, that the most univeral emotions are hurt, jealousy and regret. Surely no-one looking in to a relationship would see that as a good healthy thing. Relationships break down, go through bad patches, fail. But an affair is a poor way of addressing this.

Must say, I haven't had relationship counselling but I've seen various other counsellors over the years, and though they didn't strongly lead me in one direction or another, none of them were completely neutral. I don't think they would have hesitated to characterise cheating as destructive behaviour, not unless my marriage was actually abusive and the affair was helping me to leave - they would have taken pains to be non-judgemental about my reasons for committing that behaviour, but that's not the same thing.

Re. the thread as whole now, I can see an awful lot of black/white, good/bad, loving/not loving, happy/unhappy. In reality I just don't think people are as simple as that. You can love someone and still treat them like shit, through thoughtlessness, selfishness, lack of awareness or just misconstruing what they want. Nobody is 100% good or 100% bad. I doubt anyone is ever 100% happy in any relationship, because that's life for you. Not to mention the sheer woolliness of "love" as a concept - it means so many different things that saying "you did X, therefore you don't love me" is kind of meaningless. Love isn't a magical power that makes you a better person, sadly.

Having an affair is a shitty thing to do, and I hope and believe I'll never do it. But I know myself well enough to know that if I ever did, it would be about excitement, approval and an ego boost. I have a pathetic desire for approval and attention from the world at large, and tend to believe that my family only love me out of habit, or because they have to. Also that I'm kind of repulsive. So winning the affection of someone new is a total buzz for me - it makes me feel like I'm worth something after all. There's nothing DH could do or be to stop me feeling that way, because it's my own shit to deal with and long predates our relationship. I do deal with it, because having signed up to be monogamous with this lovely wonderful man, I don't have the right to indulge it. But if a crappy future version of me ever lost that resolve, the drive to cheat wouldn't necessarily be anything to do with my marriage. It would more likely come from inside me, the needs and quirks and fucked-up bits of my personality.

I agree you can love someone and treat them badly as also you can love someone who treats you badly because people are complex beings.

Its never black and white and I believe you probably could sometimes have an affair but still want to say married. I am not sure of the depth of the love you would feel for your spouse and think it's an incredibly selfish and self serving thing to do.

Yet some people believe an affair does help keep a marriage together for what ever reason it needs to be.

?Once this ego feeding bubble had been burst the reality hit dp like a sledgehammer, ow fell like a deck of cards and were discarded without a backwards glance.(Looksgoodingravy)?

Same in this house, exactly. And:

?But I would say that any unhappiness isnt the result of an affair but the result of getting found out. (Bogeyface)?.

I think this, too. Tears and shame (not called for by me- guilt, maybe), shock and remose. Rigid fear, from what I could tell, about what he may lose, even though in fact he had for several years showed less and less inclination to spend time with me or the kids, money wasn?t a key issue, and he has never been interested in housing per se.

?you get some where the cheater was genuinely unhappy for reasons unrelated to the affair a long time before (Adrastea)?.

Adrastea, I can certainly see that my marriage was not perfect prior to the affair. But it takes two to sort out differences and compromise. And also, it takes stating your unhappiness. I don?t think men, particularly, are very good at communicating theirs and sometimes, for that reason, they are often not keen to hear about ours.

Finally, I really agree with you Sternface, about the hurt issue, for instance ?doing a hurtful thing doesn't become any less hurtful just because the person doesn't know about it etc?.

That is why I say it is a maturity issue.

My h took ages to understand that whilst I was very upset about the infidelity, I was devastated to realise the extent of the lying, and the timescale of it. I could hardly think of a conversation looking back half a decade which wasn?t peppered with dishonesty. He afterwards did a lot of work on this issue, and admitted that he had lied to and, as he put it, ? manipulated me? for probably most of the twenty years, which even now sometimes stops me in my tracks to think of, a year later.

That isn?t an issue about the type of marriage; it is an issue about character.

Which is in turn about lots of things, including maybe background.
Now, I?m sure there are lots of affairs which don?t fit the stereotype of one partner who is more lacking in responsibility than the other. But having spent a year on mn, I keep waiting to see one where it isn?t at least a key background feature.

And

"Yet some people believe an affair does help keep a marriage together for what ever reason it needs to be".

Well, if the marriage was problematic, the aftermath can. Mine is loads, loads better.

But we could have got there without this pain. He had to put me through this pain, and experience the potential loss, to be willing to change.

And I had to learn to show a willingness to walk away, earlier.