Moving from being the OW to being his girlfriend...

[beingmyself]

I've got my flameproof suit on and will start by saying I know being in an affair is a selfish and cruel thing to do. I did it. He did it. We decided we wanted to be together so after having an affair for several months we both left our spouses. He has moved out and so has my h.
We are not living together though and are not intending to for a while. We are also still secret and will remain so for some time.

Is anyone who has been there brave enough to come and talk to me about the highs and lows of finally getting to be together? I knew it would continue to be a rollercoaster and would really appreciate anyone who's willing to talk about it with me to do so here or to PM me!

Thanks

[Imnotscareditsonlytheinternet]

Missbopeep think you have the wrong person!

[Imnotscareditsonlytheinternet]

Oops sorry just seen your other post...

[Imnotscareditsonlytheinternet]

I agree that it is how you handle things with the kids that matters.

My ex is seeing someone - its a 'secret' from the kids because they do not live together and he doesnt feel ready to introduce them. I only know about it because I found out by accident. Frankly its none of my business, even though I have good reason to believe they were together when we were.

[JulieMumsnet]

Hi,

We know that this is an emotive and difficult topic, but if you could refrain from posting any personal attacks we'd be grateful.

Please do report any posts that you're worried about and we'll take a look.

MNHQ

[LineRunner]

Imnotscareditsonlytheinternet

Concur with that - it's how you handle things with the kids that matters.

[LyingWitchInTheWardrobe2726]

marriedinwhite... But you DID marry and start a family? You had all the hopes and dreams for the future as every person does. They might be affected by their parents' marriages/separations but surely not to the degree where they actually don't have partners and families of their own as a result. I would think that extremely rare.

I know from my own parents' divorce that life was much better afterwards. My mum was certainly happier and my dad, for all his bluster about having access to the kids, hardly ever bothered even though he was free to see us at any time.

[FrancescaBell]

It makes me wonder what sort of people don't think that accusing a poster of lying, 'talking a load or rubbish' and inventing excuses for why she can't participate at that moment in the thread isn't bullying. I'd also hate to think any of you were involved in a disciplinary hearing for someone who sexually harrassed a woman colleague. Presumably you'd accuse the victim of 'leading the man on' and 'being naive about men' too.

Disgraceful.

MN seem to think so too, seeing as some of those posts have been deleted.

[LyingWitchInTheWardrobe2726]

I was wondering too, Francesca, what sort of people exactly condone the bullying of a poster who has started a thread for support. I wondered that very much given that I skip past threads generally if I feel that I haven't anything to say in support.

There doesn't seem to be much fairness in this thread from any quarter so I personally hope that none of us will be on the interviewing side of a disciplinary panel.

MNHQ deleted two posts, out of 534. The illustrative ones remain.

Anyway, enough hijacking of Being's thread from me.

[FrancescaBell]

I also stand by my 'sheltered lives' comment. I've come across men and women who have fallen hook, line and sinker for another man or woman and have left their relationships, because of lust they've confused for real love.

I'm amazed that anyone else hasn't.

In a reasonably long working life I've met probably 10 men and women this has happened to. These are the romantic fools who think that feeling lust for someone else must mean their marriage was lacking, to have lustful feelings for someone else.

I can't believe I'm the only person who's known people who thought an affair was the real thing, only to find out later that it was just lust that was driving them and not proper knowledge of the person they left for.

I've seen some really weird myths being spouted on this thread. The weirdest one is that people only leave a marriage when it's been unhappy.

What rot. How naive.

I've spent many an evening (often with with my husband) trying to help work colleagues get their marriages back after throwing it away for a cheap thrill. Grown men and women crying about what fools they've been, chucking away the best thing they ever had in their lives.

More than one has complained that they allowed themself to be unduly influenced by an OW or OM who was bad-mouthing their wife or husband.

That's what's really creepy about this thread. It looks like the OP was trying to get gossip about her OM's wife even before she had an affair with him. Then once she'd started an affair, she persuaded him that what he'd regarded as normal was in fact emotional abuse.

While that's transparently spiteful behaviour by a woman with an agenda, I have always reserved my disgust for the people who allow an outsider to criticise their spouse, without that person knowing anything about that spouse's pressures or frustrations living with the sort of person who'll have an affair as soon as he or she got the opportunity. The loyalty or lack of it was all theirs.

My view was that these colleagues crying into their pints or their Pinot Grigios at their own folly didn't deserve to get those husbands or wives back. Many of them didn't either, to their eternal regret. They were lousy judges of character and couldn't see the agendas of the OW or OM who saw fit to bad mouth their wives or husbands. More fool them.

From a humanitarian point of view though, I felt sorry for them. Theirs was a bitter and salutary lesson to learn. I don't keep in touch with them any more but I hope they learned it well.

I just can't believe that anyone else hasn't actually met someone who's left a good marriage on the basis of a false promise.

There's a world out there that some of you are too blinkered to see.

[mathanxiety]

An excellent post FrancescaBell.

....

Presumably in this case there will at some point in time be two couples filing for divorce, making financial arrangements, making arrangements for custody the children. If two of the parents of these children, one a mother and one a father are unaware that there will be a step father and a stepmother playing a part in their children's lives in the not too distant future then those individuals need to be told about the relationship, and told soon, before they make legally binding decisions and sign their names to any custodial or visitation agreement.

To withhold this information from them as they set about reorganising their lives legally, and coming to emotional terms with their new circumstances, as well as trying to explain to their children how their lives will be, what to expect of visiting their other parents, is shameful. It is absolutely a case of putting the interests of the lovebirds in front of and above every other consideration.

The other parents of the children involved here have rights when it comes to making decisions about custody, and withholding information from them deprives them of those rights since they may well make decisions about visitation or custody without factoring in whether having a step father or step mother would be in the best interests of the children or would be a problem when it comes to co-parenting through divorce and beyond.

[tessa6]

I've come across that too, Francesca. It's absolutely true that the great myth of romantic times is that falling for someone else means something's 'wrong' at home. 'Life has a gap in it. It just does.' And it's a fool who hasn't read or loved enough that ascribes that gap automatically to a marriage. But there are also pragmatists, people whose first instinct isn't towards the romantic who will assume that marriage is for better and for worse, even if there's no better. There are people who think that it's just too hard or too selfish to leave, whatever the circumstance. And there are people, lots of them I think, who don't think marriage through at its inception at all, not the reality of it, and just aren't ready as people for the commitment and devotion and monotony of monogamy. More fool them, sure, but they also know their time alive runs out and if they want to jump ship, they have the sad right to.

Much love can be mistaken for lust, and much lust is mistaken for love. I've seen the reverse too. People too afraid to leave, convincing themselves it was a mirage of a fling whilst staying in shitty, damaged marriages for fifty years and tearing each other apart. I've seen people leave and rationalise their leaving, throwing themselves into happiness out of desperation that maybe they did the wrong thing and, through that, turning out happy anyway. And I've seen people rekindle original loves with apology and self-loathing. I've seen people out-affaired and betrayed down the line by a lover they now realise they could never trust or a spouse they had naively pegged as 'the safe one'. I've seen a lot of things. Not just one. That's what being unblinkered is.

[LineRunner]

It is true, isn't it, that lots of straying partners do go back (or want to go back) to their spouses? So those marriages weren't quite so bad, really. In fact some men and women, as you say, FrancescaBell, are desperately and bitterly full of regrets. 'What was I thinking?' etc.

[tessa6]

Regret is natural at any loss. There is always loss at leaving. Broadly speaking, the reason many people have thoughts of returning home is that the struggle of co-parenting, loss and financial and emotional hardship rarely means that a 'new life' can beat an old one unless the old one was really flawed. That's why people should think very very carefully about infidelity. Even after an infidelity you haven't confessed to, you can never go back. It's too late very fast.

[LineRunner]

God yes. Three little words. 'I'm leaving you.'

Game over.

[Missbopeep]

Francesca- one of the two deleted posts was by a woman naming the OW in her own break up- name and location. It was not about the OP.

I've known people leave marriages and what they went to didn't work out- but they were never leaving a happy marriage.

It's a myth in my experience that people leave a happy marriage. They might dabble with a 'fling' and they might with hindsight think the marriage wasn't that bad- but when they leave they sure s hell want to and think they are leaving for something better.

Do you actually believe in divorce? It doesn't sound as if you do.

Do you believe that people should stay married no matter what?

I've known people in their 60s and 70s leave for other people- and everyone who knew them said 'why did they wait so long?'
It's a waste of life hanging in when a marriage has died.

I think the mistake you make is not having much imagination about marriages that are hell, and your experiences at work seem to be all of one kind: people making a mistake, bad mouthing spouses, etc etc.
It IS possible to end a marriage - as kindly as possible- and take up with someone else without it being akin to murder.

[LineRunner]

No, there were posts deleted after that.

[morethanpotatoprints]

I think if it is still a secret you are playing at a relationship which would be quite laughable if you didn't have children. What a fantastic role model you turned out to be. You don't seem to have any shame at all. for your dc, family and friends who will have to put up with the gossip that will/is surrounding your selfish behaviour. Shame on you.
Oh well, they say what goes round.....

[mathanxiety]

There are people who are themselves unhappy - people who are chronically unsatisfied, people who swim with one foot on the bottom, people who are conditionally engaged in a relationship. There are people who can be unhappy or unsatisfied in a relationship no matter how nice or fine the other person may be and no matter how well they get along daily, or how satisfying a sex life they have. People who have an eye out for the cows over the hills with the longer horns. And there are people who fall head over heels for someone else and suddenly their perfectly satisfactory relationship seems so old and stale and their spouse so boring and unattractive they can't believe they have been putting up with it all for so long, or that they ever thought they were happy when compared to the walking on the clouds sensation that has them hooked.

You can't be kind without being honest. 'I have had an affair with someone else and want to end our marriage' is kinder than 'You were not enough for me' or 'We weren't happy' or 'I haven't been happy for years'.

What is meant by the question 'So you actually believe in divorce?'
Divorce as a means of respectfully ending a relationship that both parties have tried to keep going is one thing, but divorce when you are going through a bad patch, or as a means of deluding yourself that you will change as a person in a new relationship - no. A new relationship will still be composed partly of you, and the baggage you have always carried around will go with you unless you have done some really careful soul searching.

[LineRunner]

morethan I don't know if it does ever 'go around'. My ExH is very bitter and unhappy, that's clear to see. But nobody wins from that, least of all our DCs.

The OW was discarded ten years ago now. Serial relationships since then.

It's such a shame.

[mathanxiety]

do you actually...

[LineRunner]

As indeed math alludes to ^^

[FrancescaBell]

I can honestly say I've never met anyone who incorrectly labelled love as lust or who designated something that was real love as a fling, but just because I haven't, doesn't mean anyone else hasn't. I'm prepared to accept that others have had different life experiences.

I can't get my head around what motivates some posters to say that another is lying about her experience (Littlepeapod) or worse still as a woman must have invited unwanted attention, or that another (June) is deluded about why her husband upped and left, insisting that no man would do that unless he was as miserable as hell.

It's so spiteful and it's so blinkered.

Support this OP if you want, but that doesn't give you the right to be so downright nasty to people who post with alternative experiences. Or to pour scorn on what they say happened to them.

Why would anyone do that?

Why indeed.

[FrancescaBell]

Do you actually believe in divorce? It doesn't sound as if you do. Yes I do

Do you believe that people should stay married no matter what? No I do not

Don't try to turn me into some marriage fundamentalist to suit your agenda.

I would fight to the death for anyone's rights to leave an unhappy relationship. I've helped lots of people leave them in fact.

Just because you've never known a person leave a happy relationship Missbopeep means nothing.

I have.

We just have different, broader life experiences that's all.

[FrancescaBell]

Count again missbopeep. As far as I can see, you've had a deleted post along with LyingWitch and the poster who people said used a name.