Please help me to stop being such an idiot - married man

[idiotme]

I work with him, for a long time I didn't think of him like 'that' at all as we were both married and I didn't find him particularly attractive anyway. Somehow though over a period of a couple of years of working closely together (during which I had a messy divorce) it got to the stage where we'd built up a friendship that was a bit too close, he quite obviously flirted and could be quite suggestive. I naively told myself that I'd although I liked him, I'd never let anything happen as I didn't want to get involved with someone who was married but I think I'd already allowed myself to get sucked in and started to rely on the contact and attention.

Eventually after a work event we slept together - I was very drunk, he didn't force himself on me and I could have (and obviously should have) stopped it but I feel he did take his chance and slightly take advantage of the situation. Afterwards I told him I regretted it, he said he didn't and since then he's carried on as before, continued the flirting and makes comments that suggest he'd like it to happen again.

I've told him it's not going to happen again but the problem is I keep getting sucked in. I can keep my distance and keep it professional for a while but then if I spend any period of time with him he seems to be able to win me around and it goes back to the overly familiar/flirty stage (although nothing else physical has happened).

I know I'm being a fool to let him use me like this and to be doing this to his wife - he doesn't even make any secret of the fact that he just wants something on the side, he doesn't really pretend to particularly care about me and has never suggested that he's not happy with or doesn't love his wife.

If I'm honest with myself I know it's probably a self esteem thing and I just don't want to let go of the attention but I know I need to for my own sanity. What can I do to stop getting sucked in and put a proper stop to this? There's no way I can get out of working with him although I have stopped attending any events where drink is involved and avoid being alone with him.

I know this isn't the place for sympathy, with all the horrible stories of people being hurt by their husbands and people like me but I just need a good talking to to snap out of it and put a proper stop to this.

i don't know about blame but certainly it is the people in a relationship who have the most responsibility for the relationship. perhaps she meant it that way?

People only have responsibility for their own actions - not other people's.

Anyway, it's a pretty hefty assumption that this man is only cheating because he's unhappy with his wife isn't it?

Especially when the OP says:

he doesn't really pretend to particularly care about me and has never suggested that he's not happy with or doesn't love his wife.

How odd that some posters would like to suggest otherwise.

I dont often feel shocked on here, but I do now.

I dont think the op was saying it was a "drunken shag" either.

Lazyjaney. You sound very mixed up on the issue.
The old expression "it takes two to tango" is probably still relevant.

I think there are reasons some people have affairs, has the op has acknowledged.
But I dont think there are excuses as you seem to be putting forward.

I think the first two steps to ending an affair is to firstly acknowledge it, and secondly to be sorry about it.

i have never been cheated on and i've never cheated on anyone and i'd like to believe i would never do anything with anyone who was married. i have seen a lot of hurt from affairs.

the thing is though that everyone has different morals and you cannot control the world and everyone in it. all you can do is try and make sure you marry someone with the same or very similar morals and levels of integrity as you if you get married. you can't control every woman in the world as to whether they too may fall for the sleazebag in a weak moment, or deliberately or otherwise. you only get to control your choices.

so at the end of the day it would never be a third parties fault if my relationship failed due to me marrying an adulterous shitbag. it'd be his fault and ultimately it'd be down to me to try not to end up with a shitbag again.

i do think it's a waste of energy when women focus on the OW. i also think it's often a way of trying to redeem their partner (and their choice of him) by throwing all the blame on her.

it's not healthy.

you can disagree with an OW's morals, fine, me too tbh and i also think she is a fool to herself to get involved with someone willing to cheat on their life partner but tough you know? there are billions of women out there with different morals to you and you have zero control over that.

it's your husband who has committed to you and your children and who you have chosen and allowed to become such a central part of your life. it's him who has betrayed you.

Dont agree swallowedAfly.

That is far too simplistic a statement.
What about all those women who didnt know they had married or were with a man who was capable of something, if someone he fancied made herself available and dangled herself in front of him?

tbh though, I am not the best person to answer your post. I am pretty sure you are going to get some forthright and more knowledgeable replies from others!

And some women are more than capable of being seductresses.

Meh, it's not only 'sleazebags' who have affairs. I've been on MN long enough and have seen enough in real-life to know that more often than not, they are just ordinary regular people who up till they had an affair, absolutely had 'morals and integrity'. So it's not a case of silly women marrying men who weren't on the same page.

No-one can cheat unless they've got someone to do it with. The responsibility for cheating lies with both, but never with the person who's being deceived.

And no, it's not happened to me either AFAIK. But screw blaming the innocent party either for making a crap choice of partner in the first place or for something she doesn't know is happening.

how do you dangle yourself in front of someone?

and how do you accidentally fuck someone else because they were dangling there?

you are doing the exact nonsense i was talking about of removing male agency. the point of your marriage vows is that you're not meant to fuck anyone else even if they do somehow magically dangle in front of you seductively.

do you think men are helpless dicks without brains?

morals and integrity until the moment they had an affair?

how does that work? does a woman suddenly remove their morals and integrity by this 'dangling' business?

Yes, morals and integrity.

FFS people who have an affair don't present with scarlet letters on their foreheads. How many times do you see it said on here 'I was always really against cheating until...' or 'I can't believe he's done this. He was always really scathing about cheats'.

Having an affair doesn't mean a person is without morals and integrity. It does suggest that a person has a tendency to selfishness or an inability to resolve personal issues in an adult, assertive way. Same goes for OW or OM though. There's a reason people make the choices they do, but unless they make a habit of having affairs or screwing other people's partners, it doesn't mean they are morally bankrupt or without integrity.

I don't think anyone's saying a man (or a woman for that matter) is a helpless piece of driftwood who has no agency in the face of a determined suitor. That's why there have been so many posts on this thread challenging the OP's rather passive stance. Because she did and does have a responsibility to tell this man to fuck off. As much as he had a responsibility not to fuck a woman other than his wife.

All I'm saying is that his wife bears no responsibility for this.

Either for marrying a bloke who was going to fail her or for what him and the OP have got up to in recent times.

She's the one without any agency right now. You can't have agency if you're being deceived.

The responsibility for cheating lies with both, but never with the person who's being deceived.

Of course. The person being deceived is not cheating. Therefore they cannot take any responsibility for that.

The cheat tells lies. They plan them, think up excuses, make up reasons to be somewhere else, lie by omission, etc. The deceived person is not doing that.

There is no way a deceived person can take any responsibility for someone else's decision to lie.

Lying and cheating at the expense of another, for your own gain, is immoral.

The op is not lying. She is not cheating on anyone. The man is. He is 100% responsible for his own choices. He is choosing to cheat on his wife.

If a woman who fucks a married man is so entirely blameless, why do so many people make it painstakingly clear that it is a line they wouldn't ever cross?

Because everyone knows it is immoral

yes because we know it's not right and we hope to god we'd never do it. but people make mistakes and people have different morals to us and yada yada.

but in the event it does happen that someone sleeps with a married man the facts are still clear that he is the one who is married, telling the lies, cheating on his wife, risking his children. he's the one who goes home looks them in the eye and pretends all is dandy.

i don't think anyone is saying she is blameless for her own choices but that she is a million miles away from as accountable as he is as the married man cheating on the woman he married whilst she raises his children in ignorance of what she is frittering her life away on.

And whyvdobthis who cross the line so often end up hurt and regretful because they know they did something wrong.

But why do we care who has the most blame. Neither of their behaviour is blameless.
Neither party can hold their heads up high can they?
And neither party can feel good about themselves can they?

It is such a lose lose situation.

I hope you still feel able to post op if you want to.

It is only by threads like this, and obviously stuff that goes on in the real world, that people can be helped and encouraged to stop what they are doing.

Actually I think most of us who've posted v recently are saying more or less the same thing

That the one with responsibilities to a partner and children is most to blame, but that the person they cheat with is not blameless

This all started with a poster claiming that the deceived party has more responsibility than the person who is knowingly having an affair with a married person.

No way can I agree with that, or even contend that a deceived person has any responsibility at all, for what is being kept secret from her.

i think the point with this particular scenario is that the OP has made a mistake in drunkenly sleeping with him. he is making a mistake every single day and interaction with his wife where he doesn't tell her that and allow her to make real decisions and choices based on reality.

maybe that's part of the issue with me - that i personally see lying, deceiving and allowing someone to live a lie as a much bigger deal than sex.

no i don't think she has responsibility for it in a moral sense but in reality she is the one with the responsibility as in it's her life. not as in she is to blame or it's her fault but as in this being her, and her children's life, responsibility as to who she lives with etc just does fall to her. or me, or you etc. at the end of the day it's her life that is being effected and her who will deal with the repurcussions.

responsibility does not necessarily mean culpability. it just means that you are the one invested. the OW isn't invested. she may have done something stupid, wrong, selfish etc but she isn't invested in the situation therefore has no responsibility in the end. not as in she's not to blame but there is nothing left in her hands to deal with and take care of and fix which is what responsibility actually looks like.

i may be making no sense at all.

I don't think the drunken sex is the only mistake the OP has made though. From her point of view, I suspect the sex itself is not the big deal either. It's the validation she's getting from a man who's sexually interested in her. That's what she's addicted to right now.

That's the main mistake- and main issue, in my view.

I'd love the OP to stand back and say to herself: "Why the hell do I find this attention validating? What is that saying about me right now? How can I get to the point where that sort of attention isn't validating, but simply tireseome?"

i guess the point is 'blame' is an imaginary construct that weighs nothing in reality. responsibility is very, very real and has a lot of weight to it.

the man is risking that responsibility, that reality, that weight. the OW is not.

that's not about making anyone innocent but recognising the reality that they when they make their mistake/bad choice/selfish act aren't holding anything in their hands. the guy is - he's holding his marriage and his children in his hands.

responsibility and blame are two separate things and blame will console fuck all realistically.

ooh, I forgot I had read about the drink part. I take your points in your last post swallowedAfly.

Your post of 14.07pm

oh heck. I meant 14.03pm!
[Note to myself. Step away from computer right now]