Cheating - what's a dealbreaker for you and what could you forgive?

[tallielikesthesky]

Friend has just told me that 6 months ago she discovered her 'd'h had had some sort of 'almost affair' and it's shocked me how different our opinions on it are.

Apparently she found messages on his phone - OW lived in city her DH was travelling to a lot for work at the time and there were weeks worth of daily texts messages, talk about sex (likes etc, not sexting) , references to them meeting up, to ow being a good kisser and something about them sharing a bed but not having sex (OW had apparently broken it off saying she couldn't go any further than they'd gone with a married man but apologised to the wanker that he hadn't got what he wanted but she'd hoped he'd enjoyed spending the night with her).

Friend said she was upset but because she could tell from messages that they hadn't had sex and it was over she didn't really consider it an affair and had forgiven him. Apparently him performing oral sex on someone else or having full sex are the only dealbreakers for her.

I know it's easy to say things hypothetically but to me that's a proper affair and I just don't think I could forgive him. All the secrecy, kissing and sleeping in the same bed would be too much for me and would ruin any trust I had in him. I reckon I could forgive a drunken kiss with a stranger but nothing more.

Now I'm wondering which is more common. At what point would you be unable to forgive? Sexting? Kissing someone else? Sleeping in same bed? Receiving/giving oral sex? Full sex?

At what point do you think an emotional affair become unforgivable?

And.....sorry to blather on...one of the best things that has come out of this is I am being more selfish. I have spent the last 16 years putting myself last out of everyone in our family. I have been the backbone of the family and over they years become ONLY that - I did nothing much outside work and family. Since dday I have made, or at least strengthened, friendships and made time for them. I have got involved in an outside interest that I have always had but done nothing with until now. I tell H that I want to go out and if there is a clash we work it out, I don't assume my needs come second. If there are 3 things I am now sure of they are:

1. There will no forgiveness a second time. I can't do it again. It has taken a toll on me (and H) that I couldn't survive again.
2. I will never never never allow myself to become subsumed by my family and their needs and wants again. They are part of my life, they are not all of my life.
3. Marriages need work. They need to prioritised sometimes above the children. That came hard to me but it's a truth. We have a bolt on our bedroom door and it gets used.

Good to see you back Orm.

I identify so much with what you said about putting yourself last - such an easy trap to fall into and now that I am much more selfish and have a life outside of my family, I am a lot happier in myself. Looking back I was very much in a rut and couldn't see a way out.

Our marriage was child centred too which made it very vulnerable.

Hi choc! Good to see you too x

Ledkr I would have said the same that no relationship needs a trial run and the fidelity should be a given, but unfortunately it did take the worst to happen for us both to realise what we had. Ideally it would have been like that from the start but the truth is we had both started to drift from each other and as per Shirley Glass says he allowed a window to open to someone else and a wall to come up between us.

I'm in no way a doormat, I could be financially independent , and I'd never stay because of the kids, but I did because he wanted to be with me and I him.

I won't lie that I still look for red flags all the time but he does everything in his power to make me feel secure.

My husband said he liked what he saw mirrored back in the other woman's eyes, she was giving him attention and he felt all shiny and special. He now realises why he felt like that, had he not , he would be gone.

Am not sure about the capable woman at home to organise!

noddy What I actually said was: Selfish self obsessed work-a-holic types need a stable balanced capable person at home to run their lives. It was in the context of well's H having taken up with someone of a similar personality, which imo won't last....

Oh I see. I think the reverse tbh someone having their life 'run' by someone else is not healthy in a relationship at all

I'm not so sure about that either, but for (probably) different reasons than noddy.

Being a balanced, capable person can sometimes translate into being the one who does everything, while the self-obsessed one gives rather less to domestic and family life.

So if a relationship between self-obsessed people doesn't work out, the answer is never to find someone else who'll pick up all the slack that's now missing. The answer would be for those self-obsessed types to stop being self-obsessed and start doing things for themselves and their families.

I was the competent, organising one in my marriage, despite being a high earner with a career that is at times, far more demanding than my husband's - then and now. It's been one of the most liberating changes in our marriage. My husband now organises our family life far more than me at times, including our social diary, remembering birthdays and buying presents, menu-planning and cooking for special events, thinking ahead about what laundry/ironing and dry-cleaning we'll all need. For most tasks now though we organise things as a team and it immediately ceased being my sole responsibility, like it had felt before. For my husband this meant challenging his own laziness and selfishness and for me it meant giving up on being a bit of a control freak.

For years now, it's been how it should always have been, but to me it makes sense that the person who's giving more of themselves to a relationship and family life is less likely to want to jeopardise it.

Not different reasons at all. I just think that doing everything shifts the dynamic in a relationship and the doer takes on a sort of managerial role which the one artwork expects but doesn't neccesarily respect. I know I did everything when I was with ex and he thought it was my job! He had all his 'fun' with his assistant at work who didn't manage his life and do his washing!-

I wanted to come back to Mrs. Melon's point too. Yours is a very balanced post, but it still conveys an assumption that an affair must be directly attributable to something having gone badly wrong in the relationship, or when there has been a breakdown of it.

That isn't the background to all affairs. That is why it can be such a shock when they happen.

That's fine Noddy and I agree. I didn't want to assume that's what you meant.

Oh dear, all I meant was the husband was a selfish self centred git, and given he had paired up with a similar type, well good luck to them not really

Nothing more than that!

Sorry yes I did think that after I had posted, I think until or if it happens I really don't know what I would think or do in the situation. I guess what I mean is that I could be more understanding if I already knew there were underlying problems and in an ideal world would like to think DH would not do it but I honestly believe you can never know.

I have just found out that some friends of ours have separated due to an affair, the wife had no idea and was always telling us how good things were, we would never have thought it in a million years and nor would she!