I'm an ow

[fuckitanyway]

I'm in love with a married man. He's my boss.

I am also married and have a lovely life. I love my husband and children. He doesn't hide the fact he loves his family and his wife.

I'm a member of mumsnet for about 7 years now - I'm not trolling - Friday night bumsex, Pom bears etc.

I'm not going to make the bazillion apologies I'm supposed to and know I should because it's ridiculous. I'm mortified, ashamed, I feel such a complete fucking moron at times. I keep doing it - so it's inexcusable and pointless and disingenuous to try rationalise it.

No one plans on leaving anyone. He's 24 years older than me.

It started one year and four months ago and now has run away with me.

I have attempted to post this a million times. I was too much of a coward.

I don't know what to do.

I'm sorry to anyone I've hurt. Could you help me? I understand and accept I'll be flamed.

Leavenheath said We must never under-estimate the power of infatuation and lust and its addictive qualities. I read somewhere that the chemical hit is the closest thing to insanity a person with generally sound mental health is likely to face in their lifetime. It compromises decision-making and objectivity. We were discussing this downthread and how it's the wrong approach to assume that people on the brink of an affair make rational, thought-through assessments of risks and consequences. When addicted, that's not likely to happen.

I've been lurking on this thread for a few days. I've found it really interesting and helpful to me in starting to move on. Having been an OW until about 6 weeks ago I can't agree with what Leavenheath says enough.

I had a brief affair (we are both married with children) and yes, it's absolutely an addiction. You don't make rational decisions and you do things you would never have imagined you would. My OM and I are now separated by 1000's of miles permanently and are not in contact. I think of him many times a day and when I do the physical effects are immediate my heart races, I get that lurching feeling in my chest etc. etc.

There is something I want to say to people who discover their partner has had an affair. It doesn't necessarily mean that the person who has had the affair wants your relationship to end. My OM broke contact with me (we kept in touch for a few weeks after he left) because he knew that unless he did that there was no way he had a chance of fixing the problems in his marriage. I admit I would've kept in touch but I can see now that he's done the right thing for everyone.

We are fortunate that we are so far apart from each other. It would have been so much harder to stop otherwise. I won't say impossible because we all have the choice but, it would have been breaking an addiction.

I hope nobody is offended by what I've written. It's not meant to belittle the feelings of the partner who has been betrayed. It is genuinely meant and a perspective not often heard so I wanted to share it.

Numpty have you never heard about or met people who rewrite history to justify their actions? I'm wondering why you haven't given any credence to that possibility in Catrus's story, despite what she's telling you? (By the way Cat, I hope you're not finding this dissection painful)

I think there's possibly too much focus on what people say and not enough on how they act. It's one thing to say you're happy and everything's fine, but quite another to fake it permanently without this apparent unhappiness and dissatisfaction leaking out in some way. I don't imagine that Catsrus relied on words alone to guage the state of her marriage or how her husband was feeling before he had his affair and left. That doesn't sound like a very realistic description of how relationships work between people who know each other well and have been together for years.

I can see that people might kid themselves that everything's fine until they are given a contrast, but by that stage it's an apples and pears comparison. Intense chemical hit via someone new, versus familiarity and more of the same? No brainer again, if already addicted.

Probably the safest comparison from an academic perspective is to survey a control sample of people who left both their initial relationship and the overlapping one, of their own volition- and ask them which relationship made them happier overall and why.

I know people who admit they re-wrote history, as well as people who say their unhappiness was the real reason for leaving.

If catsrus is saying that nothing about her ex's actions or words (to her or anyone else in his circle) gave any hint of deeper unexpressed dissatisfactions, I see no reason to dismiss the greater likelihood that he was a history re-writer and not someone who'd been bearing a heavy cross for years, either cognitively or without realising it himself.

I'm glad you think ending your affair was the right thing for you purple. Glad this thread has helped you in some way too.

Thanks leavenhewth no it's not painful - I'm a serial dissector so have analysed this to the ends of the earth and back, partly for me and partly so that I can be as honest as possible with my dc when they want to analyse it and understand what was a bolt from the blue in their lives. If I am angy about his actions then it is on their behalf because he tore the fabric of their world apart and everything they thought was certain suddenly collapsed.

I maintain the view, to them and the rest of the family, that he is not a bad person, he's a good person who screwed up. He does have a fundamentally selfish streak and after 25 yrs with him I was well aware of it, but it was outweighed by the good - and there was plenty of good. He was seduced by the idea of a fantasy life that was different to the life we had, and the OW was part of that fantasy. He was a loving husband who supported me in making a major career change, did his share of childcare was rubbish at housework and encouraged me to go off on holiday every year with friends.

None of that is wiped out by what he did. His decision to lie about the OW was a huge mistake - and I suspect he realises that now that the hormone rush has subsided I'm under no illusions that our marriage was perfect - but it did seem to me to be better than many others I knew.

glad to hear it's not painful to discuss it with me catsrus - i read you as another dissector and someone well able to talk about it and explore points of view and i'm glad i wasn't wrong. look leaven she's a grown up who can speak for herself, cool eh?

I'm good at detached and analytical thought (scientist by trade), one of things he found hard to understand about me - but something we used to say was a strength, opposites attract and all that. I was from Mars he was from Venus . I enjoy exploratory talk about marriage and relationships because it does give me more insight into why mine ended, but I prefer exploratory talk to argument and point scoring - which simply backs people into corners defending ideas pushed to irrational limits. I think life is more nuanced than that.

I've followed this thread and think Leavenheath speaks immense and thoughtful sense.

Someone close to me (not DH!) had an affair. It was the addiction Leaven described. He lost weight, he got besotted, he rewrote history to staggeringly suggest that he'd never loved his wife (the person he'd travelled the world with, the person we all saw from day 1 was his soul mate, a woman in a million, pretty bloody hard for anyone not to love, let alone him.) He nearly lost everything. I remember discussing it with him and discovering he thought life with OW would be in some snow white central London minimalist palace (they both had trendy jobs, good salaries) and that they could dance till dawn every night. I asked what colour the DCs rooms would be when they came for half the week and who would care for them. I reminded him that with the maintenance he'd owe, they'd be lucky if they could find a leaky basement flat in Peckham, miles from the bus route, let alone some swanky place. He looked really staggered. It was a total escapist fantasy world - one that didn't include plastic toys and broken nights and the rattiness of a wife who has been breastfeeding for three years without a break.

His wife was a genius. She said he could have his glittering white palace, that she and the DC would move back to her country of origin nearby and he could visit them whenever he wanted. She made plans to leave.

He panicked at the thought of losing his DC and asked forgiveness. That was twenty years ago. Instead, they both moved to her country, far away from OW, and mended their marriage. This time they worked on it together, set up a business form home, took up a sport they both loved, shared childcare. They are one of the solidest couples I know, and always should have been. It was utter chemical imbalance that could have destroyed that family.

They put the effort in. I know them both well enough to be 100% sure it was worth it and that the affair was not a sign that he should have shipped out for something better.