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Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

Original poster

Why do people have affairs?

243 replies

navada · 02/02/2013 10:43

Is it always due to a bad marriage/partnership? - or is it pure selfishness?

I haven't had one btw, neither has my dh, I'm just wondering as it seems so common.

OP posts:
backonline · 11/02/2013 16:26

it's really not so hard as is being made out for a woman to leave her marriage. It might mean less money, it might mean getting a job, it might mean a smaller house.

okay, here is the situation with my friend. She has a job which she loves but it involves unsocial hours (occasional night work) and is badly paid so she can only do it if her husband has the children. She has talked about splitting up with him. He has stated that he will provide no financial or childcare support and would go abroad if she left him (he has plenty of opportunities to do this with work). She has no family willing to help. They have a big mortgage and not enough equity for her to begin to buy a house or anything. So if they split up she would have to move to a council house. She has gone as far as looking into this but the only possibility would be one in a very rough catchment area and so she is afraid that her children (one of whom has ASD) would not cope at the very rough secondary school. It isn't the money. It is the co-parenting, the over night child care and the access to non-special measures type schools for her children.

I am not saying that she is right to stay, just that I fail to see why leaving is "obviously the best thing to do".

snowyskies · 11/02/2013 16:27

No I wasn't that child. I lived with just my mum, watching her work four jobs to pay the rent. Never having enough to eat or nice clothes. Damned if I'm doing that to my children.

Multiple affairs is a bit different from one long term relationship I think.

snowyskies · 11/02/2013 16:28

Backon - I'm pretty sure I'm not your friend but that is very similar to my situation. It's a tough decision to make

Darkesteyes · 11/02/2013 16:28

Sioda my DN does NOT know anything about it. FFS FFS Neither does my DB. You may think its ok to offload your problems onto a teenager but i dont . She was 8 when my affair started and DB split up with DNs mum in 96 Not even DB knows about my private life. BLOODY FUCKING HELL

Darkesteyes · 11/02/2013 16:31

SiodaMon 11-Feb-13 16:25:48

Snowy yes but most children would choose chocolate over vegetables all day long too. Ask children who've grown up and have experienced the consequences. And again you've set up a false dichotomy. It's not a happy comfortable life with unhappy parents who don't love each other. They will know, don't delude yourself. Emotional abuse or any abuse is a different kettle of fish. It should go without saying that people who are being abused aren't included in the 'just leave' advice

Really? Interestingly when i contacted WA and told them about my situation with DH and my parents attitudes towards it they told me that what both my DH AND my parents are doing IS emotional abuse.

cincodemayo · 11/02/2013 16:35

No it's not because of my marriage that I don't cheat. It's because of my moral compass. As if marriages run smoothly all the time anyway! If I'd cheated when things were bumpy, it wouldn't have been my marriage at fault it would have been my way of dealing with it that would have been faulty. Do you assume other people don't get offers and are tempted? I have and have walked away, several times, even when my marriage was in a low point, as ALL marriages will have at least once. So stop hiding behind all these excuses and saying that other people don't understand. They've just got different life coping mechanisms to you.

backonline · 11/02/2013 16:35

If someone has an affair then there is the possibility that the children, and the partner, will not find out. If they get divorced then, as someone said, the children are definitely going to end up split between (possibly confrontational) parents. Divorce messes children up too. There is no "obvious" solution when a marriage breaks down and there are children involved. People make do as best that they can. Claiming that there is some perfect answer, and that anyone who tries a different way is somehow evil, does not help anyone.

It is also interesting how women who confess to affairs are treated...

Sioda · 11/02/2013 16:36

back I didn't say that splitting up immediately is always possible. Just that it's the blindingly obvious solution to an unhappy marriage. And a better solution than having an affair. Not that it's easy or the only solution or leads to utopia. It clearly is the most obvious solution to your friend too since she's gone to such lengths to try to do it. You say that your friend has spoken to her DH about splitting up and his response was to threaten to leave the country providing no support to his children and leaving her with their joint debts including a hefty mortgage. That sounds like financial and emotional abuse to me and I'd say that's a reflection of a lot more going on in the background. Where there's abuse like that I have no problem saying that an affair sounds like a perfectly reasonable response to her immediate situation and I hope someday she can escape properly.

Darkesteyes · 11/02/2013 16:40

It is also interesting how women who confess to affairs are treated

Agreed backonline. Its mysogyny. Because when a man is deprived of sex and/or affection at home and goes elsewhere its "oh well hes a man he needs his oats"
Reverse the genders in the same situation though and societys attitude completely changes. Because "women dont really like sex anyway right" and only do it to have kids. Mysogyny.

cincodemayo · 11/02/2013 16:44

backonline that friend's got loads of other options if she wanted to get out enough. She could look for a different job that didn't involve overnight childcare, that paid more than the low-paying one and enough to get a private rent. If her husband leaves the country and won't pay his CSA (idle threat probably), there are benefits. She could get legal advice about what to do about a father who's avoiding paying. There's always a way if you want to do something enough and with integrity.

What people don't want to do though is give up the things they 'love' like the night job, or the house, or not working at all and they dress all this up as being for the children's sake. It's not. It's for their own sake.

cincodemayo · 11/02/2013 16:46

It's not misogyny at all. I'm just as scathing about men who have affairs and who hide behind excuses for it. You're simply projecting Darkesteyes and you're still not saying why you don't leave your husband.

snowyskies · 11/02/2013 16:47

I had that moral compass too. After 10 years of emotional abuse I had a different moral compass. I refused offers in my early years of marriage too and refused to understand any other way of behaving.

When you've had a man ridicule your body, tell you how crap you are in bed, refuse to hug you or kiss you for YEARS, tell you how nobody else will ever want you because you are too dumb or ugly. Then add that to the certain knowledge (because he's told you so) that he will make your life a living hell if you leave. That's when the compass starts to shift.

I'm a better parent now than I have been for years, I'm happier and that has rubbed off on my children.

Sioda · 11/02/2013 16:48

back"Claiming that there is some perfect answer, and that anyone who tries a different way is somehow evil, does not help anyone."

Who claimed that? Evil, really? Now you're just making stuff up. Stop trying to make those who disagree with you into some kind of bogeyman.

Snowy and Darkest If you're both in abusive relationships then nothing I've said on this thread has any relevance to you. I have some idea of how difficult that is and I wouldn't dream of patronising you by offering solutions. I'm sorry you're in that situation and I hope you both find support.

Darkesteyes · 11/02/2013 16:48

And like i asked upthread Why do the people who dont want sex or affection anymore leave their spouses?
You see Cin. Im not getting my questions answered either. Welcome to my world!

Feckthehalls · 11/02/2013 16:51

darkesteyes I am not surprised you had an affair and I don't blame you at all.
I also completely understand why you choose not to end the marriage in order to keep things as stable as possible for your children.

cincodemayo · 11/02/2013 16:52

If you're raising children with a father like that then you are doing them no favours. No child wants to be brought up by an emotional abuser and a cheat.

cincodemayo · 11/02/2013 16:53

I don't think darkest has got children have you?

Sioda · 11/02/2013 16:54

Cinco, I think that woman is in a seriously abusive relationship. Read her 'D'H's response to her discussion of splitting up. Those aren't easy at all to extract yourself from. Apart from which if he's abusive then he has lost any moral claim to her fidelity,honesty or respect, so let her do what she needs to do to get through the day.

Darkesteyes · 11/02/2013 16:54

I dont have children but my DH is now partially disabled.

Abitwobblynow · 11/02/2013 16:56

cinc you are being a bit simplistic. Men can be really good fathers and providers, but crap husbands. They can use what energy/emotions they have to focus on their children and be workaholics, but be unable to relate to women because of shitty pasts.

When I hear snowy and Darkest, that is what I hear. Maybe because I am in the same boat. Just as people can be mothers, aunts and sisters but still be the same person, so marriages have different facets.

The abuse I feel is subtle, and covert and only relevant to me. He feels equally abused: my traumatic reaction to being betrayed was abuse, for him. So who is right? My children get listened to, hugged and their hands held - is it their problem that I don't? Should I wreck their lives because I don't? Should I have a giant hissy fit and flounce off causing their family home - the one they were born into - to be sold, because I don't have my hand held? Do their lives really need to be impacted because I am not held at night?

Believe me, these calculations whirl around my head every single day. My needs, vs their needs. And guess whose needs ALWAYS win. I am a mother.

cincodemayo · 11/02/2013 16:57

Darkest you asked 'Why do the people who dont want sex or affection anymore leave their spouses?' I don't know. Beats me. But it doesn't matter what they want does it? You can't have any control over that. You can only decide to do the leaving yourself, not wonder why you haven't been left Confused

Feckthehalls · 11/02/2013 16:58

yes I'd like to know why all the affection witholders don't end their marriages.

It might just be that despite being crap partners they don't want to disrupt their children's lives. Just like people the people they are married to who have affairs to cope with living with a crap partner Confused

Darkesteyes · 11/02/2013 16:58

Abitwobbly i think you are a wonderful selfless mother who is sacrificing her own needs for her children. Unmumsnetty (((((hugs))))

Feckthehalls · 11/02/2013 16:59

darkest I nominate you for a sainthood if you are staying partly because you are taking care of your disabled husband

cincodemayo · 11/02/2013 17:01

Look let's not pretend it's impossible to leave an abuser. It is. There is considerable support out there too for women in those situations. It might take a while, but doing NOTHING to extricate yourself from the situation and in fact having an affair to medicate yourself in order to STAY is a really bad idea. What about the kids then? What medicates them while they are living in that family??