Why do people have affairs?

[navada]

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.

[cincodemayo]

Yes but your husband would have to pay for his children, assuming he's not skipping the country too? Do you own your own house? If so what about the equity?

[Darkesteyes]

cin is your post at 17.39 addressing me

[snowyskies]

Barely any equity (yes I've checked) and actually he has thrown the leave the country card at me. It's a universal one used by EA's I believe. That or he will give up his job so I can't "screw any money out of him".

[snowyskies]

Darkest- think it's aimed at me.

[Darkesteyes]

snowy a friend of mine went through the same thing many years ago. Its not an easy situation to be in or to extricate yourself from.
Makes my blood boil.

[backonline]

cinco the sums very often simply do not add up, especially if you factor in abusive partners who may not want to pay up.

Many people today are simply not that well off, they can only afford to exist because they live as a couple. Not everyone couple can afford to live as two individuals. Not everyone has lots of equity. Even with some equity house prices are so high that you need to be earning way over the minimum wage to buy one. Renting is not easy without a job as many private landlords will not rent to anyone on benefits.

[backonline]

cinco can I ask you why you think that there are people living on the streets, in hostels, b&bs etc. Do you think that they all chose this life? (I accept that some do, but all of them?)

[Hatpin]

I'm desperately sad to see the posts on here about children not knowing that their parents have a crappy relationship.

Some children do notice and that's just as much risk to take as the effects of separation of the parents imo, especially because the pretence of staying together for the children discourages discussion, whereas separation requires an explanation to the children, and gives them the opportunity to ask questions and make sense of what's going on.

I don't even know if my mother knows about my father's infidelity. I noticed something was badly wrong when I was 15 but was too afraid to ask what it all meant. Five years later I accidentally had my fears confirmed.

I've never spoken to my parents about it and they have no idea that I know

They thought they were being good parents but it looked like papering over the cracks to me.

My father's selfishness and disrespectful behaviour and my mother's martyrdom are the elephant in my family's room.

[Feckthehalls]

TOTALLY agree with abitwobblynow ( does that make 5? )

yes of course some children do notice.
Yes of course if one partner is an abuser the other should not put up with it.
Yes of course in lots of cases , separating is the right thing to do, and I commend those who have the courage to take that path.

But it is just nonsense that ALL children of unhappily married parents can tell, and are suffering, and the parents should separate.

[cincodemayo]

Agree hatpin.

I think there's another elephant in the room too. While I totally accept that jobs are hard to come by, private rents are expensive, fathers who evade paying are feckless, I also think there are people who make every excuse in the book for having affairs rather than look a bit closer to home at their own selfishness and yes, victimhood. I don't think for a second believe that they are staying in their marriages because of the children, because all the evidence is that unhappy relationships damage children. It's delusional to think that children don't know their parents relationship is miserable either.

[Sioda]

Cinco This thread was about affairs. It's moved on. Most of the recent posters are in abusive relationships and your attitude to them is really inappropriate. These fathers aren't feckless, they're abusive. Their partner's affairs are really neither here nor there and aren't about selfishness. More likely to be low self esteem caused by years of abuse. Abusive partners don't have any right to fidelity. Yes they may be deluding themselves that the kids will be ok but it's mentally, emotionally and practically difficult to leave abusive relationships. Not impossible no. No one claimed it is. But it is hard. If you don't understand that then you should consider yourself lucky. Try reading up on it and how it happens. The EA support thread has lots of links.

So people tell themselves that the kids will be ok while they're trying to deal with the situation and hopefully work on an exit plan. And maybe the kids will be ok. But if you actually cared about those kids you'd realise that calling their mothers selfish for having affairs and talking about their 'victimhood' and how they're making excuses for their affairs doesn't help anyone. I don't have any patience for people who make excuses or blame their marriages for their affairs either. But abusive relationships are different. Stop dodging that.

[cincodemayo]

The feckless comment was about fathers not paying, but those same posters cannot claim that a man is a 'great dad' while simultanously claiming that they take seriously his threats to skip the country and not pay for his children and that this prevents them getting out of the relationship.

Neither do I think that being in an abusive marriage explains away getting involved in some other woman's abuse, by having an affair with her husband.

[cincodemayo]

It goes back to what I was sayign earlier. Great dads don't abuse the kids mother or threaten to deprive the kids of money or the right to have him in the same country.

[Sioda]

Having an affair isn't abuse cinco. It might be a horrible thing to do to your partner but that doesn't make it abuse. Don't muddy the waters. I agree with you about abusers being by definition not good fathers for lots of reasons. But, again, how is calling abuse victims selfish for doing something as relatively irrelevant and petty as an affair going to help them to escape their relationship and thereby hopefully help their kids?

[Darkesteyes]

Showing someone NO affection over a long period of time and then crucifying yyour partner for going elsewhere is about power and control.
I didnt realise for a long time that this was emotional abuse.
My ex OM was single with no children.
Cin there is a discussion coming through my Twitter feed at the mo saying that Rihanna is a bad role model for going back to her abusive ex.
All of the people tweeting on my feed are saying that they are sick of the victim blaming that is going on. Like it or not the tide is turning.

[cincodemayo]

Someone lying to you, deceiving you and in some cases gaslighting you and making you think you are losing your mind most definitely is abuse Sioda and I'm shocked you'd say different. If someone feels abused by that, they are abused. All affairs involve lies and getting someone to believe their life is different to what they think it is so that is emotional abuse across the piece. But in some affairs, there is plotting, financial infidelity, accusations of paranoia and madness and a determination to ruin the other person's life. If you've ever read Lundy Bancroft, you would know that affairs are always an emotionally abusive action towards a partner.

[backonline]

I still do not understand why people who have affairs are being vilified here, and told that they should leave; whilst their emotionally unresponsive partners are seen as the victims. I know that two wrongs do not make a right, but we are talking about cases where people have seen affairs as the only way that they can survive, maybe the only way that they can get the confidence to leave.

As people have said, it is hard to leave an abusive relationship and the attitude of some here is, I think, part of what makes it hard.

If a spouse appears to dote on the kids, bring in the money, whatever society expects, but shows no affection to their partner, then that can be soul destroying to live with. It is easy to underestimate the effect on someone's self esteem. If you add in emotional abuse then it is even worse. So the abused partner ends up having an affair, from desperate loneliness. Maybe this makes them realise that they need to leave. But they then have to face society which condemns them (as screwing around) whilst the original vow-breaker (who ceased to love and comfort years ago) becomes the victim.

[cincodemayo]

I don't think men who emotionally abuse their wives are victims and no-one's said that have they? In fact I've said it doesn't matter if these men dote on kids, bring money in - they are NOT good fathers and should be left. But I think having an affair to cope with staying in a marriage like that is the wrong approach, because it makes women stay LONGER in homes that are damaging their children. No-one can ever persuade me that a home where dad is abusing mum and mum is having an affair can ever be good for kids. I've met far too many adults in my long career who are in bits because of that set-up, including the other way round too - an an abusive woman and an unfaithful dad.

No-one has to stay in a bad marriage or relationship. It might be hard to do it and very tough for a while, but it's worth it for the children.

[Darkesteyes]

backonline if there was a like button for your post at 21.46 i would be pressing it.

[Sioda]

I've read it cinco but I don't remember that. That would make something like 60% of men and 40% of women abusers though which would surely make the term almost meaningless? Yes affairs often, or maybe usually, are accompanied by a dose of abuse - lies, gaslighting etc. but they don't have to include all of that -for example what about the one-off fling which is admitted to the partner immediately, where there's genuine remorse and work to rebuild trust? It happens. Hence my reluctance to say that affairs per se are abusive. Maybe that's academic because it doesn't apply here.

But if you're right and that poster is in turn helping the OM to emotionally abuse his partner, where does that get us anyway? Does accusing her of that help her in any way to escape her own abuse? I don't think anyone is saying that having an affair is the 'right' approach to an abusive relationship but it's an understandable one. And some women have said that it did help them to regain enough self esteem to leave. Their experiences should be respected. So you can't say that in every case it makes the woman stay longer.

back you're repeatedly setting up strawmen to make your point. It's not helpful.

[cincodemayo]

There is a lot in Lundy Bancroft's writing about affairs being emotional abuse. But I don't count a confessed, one-off fling an affair if it wasn't pre-meditated. Infidelity yes but not an affair. All affairs contain emotionally abusive acts and so yes it does apply here because there are contributors having affairs who aren't in emotionally abusive relationships (just allegedly unhappy ones) and there's a poster who's having an affair with a married man who's emotionally abusing his wife by at the very least lying and altering her life without her knowledge.

I think there are people who commit emotionally abusive acts but that doesn't make them an emotional abuser. Just like there are people who have affairs who aren't 'unfaithful' for the rest of their lives. I've worked with people who were admittedly emotionally abusive in one relationship, but not in their next one. In my personal life I've also known people to have an affair and never go there again, either staying in their marriages or getting out of them. Not one of those people thinks that having affairs or emotional abuse is a good environment in which to raise children.

As for the people who only have the courage to leave their abuser when they've got someone else to go to - you wouldn't believe how many people end up right back where they started with a different flavour of abuser, because generally speaking, nice people with good intentions don't start a sexual relationship with a woman who's being abused. While she's still living with her abuser, a discovery or suspicion could cause an escalation. The best advice for a person exiting abuse is to spend time on her own helping her and her children recover, not jumping into another relationship. It didn't surprise me one bit that darkest's OM was emotionally abusive too.

For people who are in genuinely abusive relationships, there is help there for them to get out especially if children are involved. Because charities especially know how abuse damages children, even if the parents are saying the children are unaware. Just as there really are alternatives for women who've got no children and are fit and able to work. The elephant in the room is that the 'victim' often displays unhelpful and abusive behaviours of her own; retaliatory affairs, getting children involved in parental disputes, self-obsession, an all encompassing sense of victimhood and these damage children very badly too! They can get out of their relationships, just as their partners could but they don't want to lose material things and some don't want to support themselves and work, or claim benefits and feel they've 'come down in the world'. So their kids suffer. yes, their partners are just as much to blame for not ending the relationship either, but why put the responsibility on to someone else for your kids happiness? Or your own.

Leave.

[Darkesteyes]

www.thirdsector.co.uk/Fundraising/article/1169956/shelter-close-10-advice-centres-lose-100-jobs-legal-aid-cuts/

[Darkesteyes]

www.womensaid.org.uk/domestic-violence-press-information.asp?itemid=2944&itemTitle=Cuts+in+refuge+services+putting+vulnerable+women+and+children+at+risk&section=0001000100150001&sectionTitle=Press+releases

[Darkesteyes]

www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/jan/13/benefit-cuts-threaten-women-refuges

[Darkesteyes]

Refuge say the upcoming rules on the new Universal Credit will end up with them having to close 297 refuges.
But hey cin dont let that get in the way of the fact that you enjoy having people you can feel superior to.


www.insidehousing.co.uk/care/universal-credit-could-shut-womens-refuges/6523130.article