How do you think you would have reacted if it was the other woman who told you about her affair with dh?

[ThreeTimesALady]

Assuming she's not somebody that you know, or have ever met.

Would it be worse than finding out for yourself?

Would you be glad you finally knew the truth either way?

You are totally contradicting yourself at every turn.

My conclusion - you don't want advice or help.

This thread is as much a part of the emotional drama you have created for yourself as the affair.

Very early in this thread you had good advice. You refuse to take it.

I'm not feeding the monster anymore.

I have seen this happen several times

An OP has nowhere else to talk about her doomed "romance", so plays it out on an anonymous website

laps up the shock and vitriol 'cos at least she gets to air her angst to someone and some attention even if it is negative

OP, you sound like the other daft women who came on here to yap pointlessly about the exact same thing

if you are the one I think you could be, you are intelligent but very very flawed and are utterly wasting your life mooning after a dick of a bloke

it's very sad

You're right AF.

Keeping this all bottled up is killing me, and this forum does provide a small outlet for that.

If it stops me from doing anything stupid in real life then I am very grateful for that.

It is also very enlightening to hear from other posters looking at the situation from all sides of the coin.

I honestly am taking it all in and am feeling differently about things almost by the hour at the moment.

Wasting my life sounds about right too

Why are you not talking to your DH first rather than considering telling the OM's wife? Is your marriage worth that little that your DH's life doesn't even merit first consideration? I have no experience of this sort of situation and feel deeply sorry and it sounds like you could do with some honest conversation with your DH (and it's hardly surprising he seems emotionally distant as perhaps it would take both of you to keep the relationship healthy? and open lines of communication).
Even if you feel daunted to say everything straight away, have the decency to tell him there's a problem and let him know whether you can work on it together or not. And cut the other man out of this altogether?

Hope this helps as you've had so much advice already and also I may have useless advice as can grasp little here but I mean well. But try and remember that even if he feels distant now your DH too has not asked for this, every marriage may need effort at various times and you need to rebuild communication and the dignity of letting him know what's going on

Finish the affair, and keep quiet about everything forever. No need to wreck OM's kids lives.

But.....

The amount of posts here threatening or advocating violence is a little scary. Even worse is the fact that no one else has mentioned anything - imagine if a male was advocating violence.

I can understand where you are and how you got there. When you are bloody miserable there is no strength left in you.
I think you already know what you need to do but where do you find that backbone? I don't know.
My Mum wishes she found her's 20 years ago. She didn't, and it haunts me. Even though I get how she and you got to where you did she never thought about the bigger picture, don't make the same mistake.
You are unhappy, You fix it for you and your children. The answer is nothing to do with the OM or his wife.

All your posts contain the words "I" and " me" too frequently to warrant any sympathy or understanding from me. You are self obsessed, selfish and a liar. Why start a thread and then ignore the advice and just whinge? Take a look at yourself op.

I think that the more unhappy you are the bigger the tendency to fall in a selfish mindset. I sympathize with this, I really do. I think most people would. It would be hard to feel guilt when you yourself is in pain.

I'd suggest you look at the threads of women who are in the position that mans wife is in. It breaks my heart to read them, how desperate they are to claw normality and happiness back into their lives. You probably have an idea of how painful it is but following their stories day by day... you'll really see the true consequences of affairs. That is what potentially awaits the wife...

Even on a selfish level with that in mind - you need changes in your life for yourself. You are not happy. :( But at least you aren't in that situation. Talk to him, tell him how you feel, that this isn't right. Leave him, and work on yourself. Once you make that decision it will take a lot of weight off your shoulders, yes you will miss him... but I know you will have a lot more support for doing the right thing.

This is shitty for everyone involved, but you have the power to make this stop. Good luck

op you say you don't want to do this to your children, but you are actually doing it to them right now. When you have an affair you have already lost an element of control, because the om is involved, and the more you meet up the more likely it is you might be seen by someone either he or you know, and that might get out, and your h or his wife could be told by a well meaning friend, and then you've lost control.

Don't kid yourself that your family and friends will support you - they won't. People may acknowledge that you're in a shit marriage; that your dh is emotionless and your sex life is non existent; but the instant you have an affair the end of the relationship will be your fault and the sympathy will be his.

Just think about that for a minute op. Think about having to walk away from all your friends because they are so apawled by what you have done. think about your ex telling your children what you have done. Think about your family giving support to your dh because of what you have done. And don't think for a minute it can't happen like that because it can.

I am of the belief that affairs are rarely black and white and that they are often a symptom rather than a cause. But that doesn't justify them or make them in any way ok - they're not.

I can see if you're in a sexless marriage the idea of someone finding you attractive is one which could lead you to have an affair. But two wrongs don't make a right. Having an affair isn't going to make your sexless marriage go away, it is just going to make the ending of it more difficult for all concerned.

You have choices in life, the responsibility for making those choices is yours and yours alone. There's no such thing as can't, only won't. You can end this, you're just choosing not to.

Op, the fact that your DH would be on the list if people to tell if your affair relationship ends is interesting, there would be no more reason then to tell him than now, you don't seem to want to end your marriage now (which telling would probably do), nor to work at fixing it - and telling could be part of that. So why would you tell him?

So that he would end your marriage and you wouldn't have to do that?

So that he'd be angry at you an you feel the need to punish yourself?

So that he'd be hurt too?

Or so that you could share your anguish and pain with him? That's a very understandable position, under any other circumstances, your DH is the person you'd expect to turn to for emotional support when you need it. But a) he won't give that to you, it will just create more stuff for you to deal with and b) if your marriage is as emotion-less and broken as you claim, why is it your instinct is to try to talk to your DH about your turmoil?

Think about it, while your affair is 'active', then there's a good chance you'll slip up and your DH will find out. The point you end it is the point it becomes less likely he'll find out, unless you start telling all and sundry looking for emotional support. (And long term, a lot of people's emotional support will be aimed at your DH, not you, don't underestimate a lot of people's revulsion at affairs.)

Think honestly about why you'd tell him, it the OM's dw, and think honestly about where you'd like to be in 5 years time, will telling get what you want beyond the short term?

Trust me, 2 years! His wife knows.

Not always.

OP, I think I would want to know, I don't care how I came to know, I would want to know.

Yes, you could walk away, but you won't be his last & you probably aren't his first.

So do you walk, leaving him to do it all over again & to keep on hurting his wife, or do you tell her so she can decide of she keeps exposing herself & her children to his lies & bullshit.

You won't be thanked, of course. And telling won't take away your guilt, but it will give her the choice.

Yes but just because loads of you would want to know by any means, it doesn't mean his wife would! We can't tell the OP what his wife would want on her behalf. If you don't know her then it's best not to assume.

Although after two years I'd be amazed if she didn't at least have her suspicions.

So the general consensus is that we need to stop men from behaving badly towards the women in their lives & MN gets very vocal in order to achieve that, yet when it comes to cheating, OW/OM should just walk away & let him carry on fucking whoever he feels like, while destroying the life of the woman he married/lives with etc.

That doesn't make sense.

On the one hand we have the thread of the polygamous couple who are in this together, both came on to share their story, yet he has been accused of talking her into it, telling her she is failing to satisfy her needs, and all sorts, etc. Yet here, a guy is screwing around behind his wife's back & you want to protect him! I get that you will all say you are protecting his wife, but that goes totally against what you are actually saying!

It's mindbending & no matter how hard I try I cannot see why the man on the poly thread got such condemnation, yet this one here is going to get off free & easy to keep cheating on his wife.

Not to mention that on every thread about an affair, we always say that it is the man's fault for the affair, that he made the vows, that he is breaking them & lying to his wife, that nothing ever justifies him shagging someone else. In short, he is always to blame for the affair. Until an OW comes on. Then it is all her fault, she is the lowest of the low, don't tell the wife, let the cheating bastard carry on cheating etc.

I have been here for 10 yrs, and this is a regular pattern.

Smo2 Are you genuinely saying that you would rather you didn't know?

Don't forget, OP, that you may not be the only 'ow' he has been sleeping with over the past two years or so. If his wife kicks him out he might have someone else's welcoming arms to go to. You are dealing with an accomplished liar remember. Yet, best to leave him to it, hey?

In some ways I'm glad she did, and we are working on our marriage with success. However, the hatred I feel for her is like nothing on earth. Why do you hate her more than your dh? I mean, you can't hate him that much because you are trying to work through it, yet you hate her so much, you cannot compare it. He made vows to you, she didn't. Yet you can forgive him?

Secondly, you are repairing your marriage, so you had that choice, shouldn't every wife have that choice [to stay with a cheater & take the risk of it happening again]?

But it is her husband who should decide what to do, not the third party But what if he never tells her, just goes on to have another affair & another?

different I think you are missing the point of OP bias

the MM isn't here asking for advice, the OW is, and she is being given what people think is appropriate for her to do

if he was posting, he would not be given a free ride to cheat again

but he's not here, this woman is and she has spent too long already thinking about her life in relation to him...time to stop

I think the wife should know. But I don't think OP should tell her right now because of all the reasons OP gives. She just wants to stick the knife into someone else and twist it. She wants someone else to feel her pain. Doing that to the wife won't make any difference to OP's pain but she can't understand that right now.

Maybe later, when she has ended the affair, separated from her husband, had some counselling and started a new life on her own, she could tell the wife.

At the moment OP feels no guilt for the wife or her children, just overwhelming misery for herself. Until she gets past this she is in no state to meddle further in other people's lives.

Three I think you need to assess what's going on on your plate before you start interfering with someone else's to be honest.

You sound thoroughly miserable in your marriage so instead of looking to inflict your misery on the wife and your fellow adulterer's family seek to improve your situation. Have you considered the fact that your husband has emotionally detatched from you as he knows/feels that you are in fact no longer there for him?

Seek counselling, seek genuine advice from people who know you in real life but don't just continue to sit in the puddle complaining that you're wet and dirty.

"He is also cold, distant, thoughtless and massively emotionally unavailable.

He just doesn't need someone close to him in his life."

No, but you do. And if he wants you to stay with him he needs to address this. And I would very much doubt your second statement anyway - he probably just doesn't know how to get what he wants or how to actually BE close to someone.

Can I suggest an alternative solution to this problem? Don't tell your OM's wife, that isn't your fox to hunt. Tell your H. Because if anything will get a reaction from him, force him to do something, anything to change things, that will. Either he will want to divorce you - nothing much lost there from your account of it. Or he will want to make things better.... and you can help there by suggesting what it it you think will work. Presumably you know what you want? And he may decide to tell OM's wife which is absolutely his prerogative and much much better than you doing so.

And most importantly of all, he will get a chance to decide the direction his life is going to take rather than you doing it for him in secret.

Good luck x

It's a strange logic here. It's as though the affair is almost for the families benefit...As though if she didn't have the affair the family would split and so she is having an affair to endure her marriage and thereby keep the family whole.

The lengths the imagination will go to in order to protect one's perfectly created self image.

Rather than look at it coldly and rationally (as no doubt your hated husband would) and see that you fancied a fling and prioritised your own sexual and emotional needs above the needs of your family.

The labyrinth of justification is just make believe. You made a decision to have an affair. It didn't just happen. You choose to make it happen and then continued to make choices. This ridiculous bullshit about not being able to stay away from each other. Give us a break...What are you 13?

The idea that telling the ow is a way to deal with your problem now is just another bad idea and a cowardly way to deal with your problem.

You don't want to live with your husband anymore and don't want to work to keep your relationship together so deal with that. Take steps and take responsibility for splitting the family up. It's not a easy thing to do but it is the brave and best choice.

Your Kids will be grateful for a no acrimonious split where they can continue loving and respecting both mum and dad. Where they don't witness mum and dad emotionally fall apart.

Take steps. Make amends. Sort it out. Stop kidding yourself. Noone's buying it.

So let me get this right..you are unhappy in y.our relationship so you feel the best way to deal with this is destroy another family. If your marriage is over then get out, end the affair and focus on building a life for you and your kids...preferably without depending on a man for your happiness

Sounds spot on mrsthor

I have an idea. Tell your married lover you are going to tell his wife this weekend.

I'm willing to bet he'll dump you as fast as possible. Problem solved.

Or maybe he'll leave his wife for you this weekend? Problem solved, although you'll have a whole host of new problems to deal with.

My Ex had an affair for 2 years - and a child with her - and I didn't know. She revealed it - and he dumped her. If he hasn't left her for you already - he never will...

I genuinely can't tell if you've posted on here about this before, or if every affair-scenario is so mundanely-similar, that they all just sound the same.

As with other women in your shoes, the total passivity in your posts shines through.

You seem to have zero control over our own destiny. You are completely at the mercy of the men in your life. You go where their leash pulls you, even though it's totally not where you want to go. You just let them take you.

The inherent weakness in that is extremely telling. It explains an awful lot about why you are where.

Take some control of the situation. You can, you know.

Thank you for that JapaneseMargaret. It actually makes a lot of sense .

The strange thing is, I'm actually an absurdly controlling, logical, rational sort of person. I drive most people nuts with my OCD tendencies and logical arguments!

Always had a flair for maths and science. Work in a male-dominated, highly academic industry.

But am the complete opposite when it comes to my emotions. I guess maybe counselling would be good to explore why this is, but have no idea how I could afford that at the moment.

I have no idea why my heart always over rules my head. There can be no logical explanation for why somebody makes my heart skip a beat, but once I feel that way all sense goes out the window.

Is your kids welfare and happiness not motivation enough for you to belt-up and stop being such a drip?