So, here I am at the age of 37, hoping that a married man is going to leave his wife for me. How did my life come to this? :-(

[ThunderHeart]

I've been married since I was 19, and have 2 primary school aged children.

Dh is a decent enough man, but he is pretty rubbish as a husband. He's hurt me very deeply several times over the years, and each time I stayed in the relationship because I have always been utterly besotted with him and could never imagine my life without him (especially once we had children).

However, once my youngest child went to school, I gradually started to detach from dh for the first time in my adult life. I started finding time spent not with him more enjoyable than the time I did spend with him. It was a totally alien feeling, but I loved it. I finally felt free. None of his selfishness or thoughtlessness could hurt me anymore, because I was finally getting to a point where it didn't matter to me.

It was around this time that I met someone else. Someone who is so so different to dh in every way. We've been 'together' now for nearly 4 years.

When it first started, I had NO intention of leaving dh whatsoever. My life was quite nice, and new man, whilst lovely, was just my way of feeling better about myself after all the years of being let down by dh.

But it didn't turn out like that. New man is everything that dh has never been, and I feel more loved by him than I ever have by dh. He adores me, he doesn't need to tell me - I just know, and I've never felt that before.

He will also ALWAYS make his children his absolute top priority in everything. Providing them with a stable family background is very important to him. At first I was glad of this, as I felt equally determined to do the same for my children. Our relationship was conducted entirely separately to family life, and that was just fine.

It's been so long now though, I'm starting to feel that everyone in this mess is living a lie, and that we are now robbing our current spouses of a fairly significant chunk of their lives

I'm possibly ready to start thinking about leaving, but I very much doubt that he will even consider it.

Cannot believe that bit by bit, this is where my life has ended up.

It's not about meal tickets. Our society is premised on people pairing up and cooperating in little financial units, pooling two incomes to afford a modern mortgage, picking up the bill for the other if one of you is out of work. Dividing the work of the family between you so that for periods, one goes out to work and climbs the career ladder; the other focuses on the family. That's not treating your partner as a meal ticket; that's what marriage is supposed to be! That's why adultery is a fraud against your spouse.

It's not about meal tickets, it's about enabling one's spouse to make financial/career decisions on the basis of the full facts.

We have some friends who split a few years ago. The wife was always the main earner, working in London through the week and returning to the family home on weekends. To facilitate this, the husband got a job in a school so he could work term-time hours. When the wife announced that she was leaving for her OM, our friend was 60, so far too late to change career or go back to what he did before the kids came along (sales). He subsequently discovered that his DW had been shagging other men for the last 15 years (in the hope, I suspect, that sooner or later one of them would leave his wife for her). He's lucky that his share of the marital home will buy a tiny cottage where he lives and that he has half of the DW's pension, but he will still struggle and will certainly have to work beyond retirement age. The point is that he would have made very different decisions in his mid-40s if his DW had been more upfront.

The wife may have set her career aside for a while with young children. She may have gone the SAHM route for a few years, she may have taken long maternity leaves, or she may have been on a mummy track of limited or no travel or part time hours, all of which mean reduced or no income, and a reduction of the amount she can pay into her pension fund.

Women base their decision to forgo their full potential income or sacrifice it altogether for a few years, with the pension considerations that go along with that calculation, based on the availability of their DP's income to still provide enough to provide an acceptable lifestyle and also to provide an acceptable level of pension funding.

When a man and his GF decide to have an affair and to dump their spouses at the point when their children are independent but not to tell those spouses, then it is normally the dumped wife who ends up taking a huge financial hit. Quite often it is too late to retrain and try to get a job in a new field that will make enough money in ten years to enable comfortable retirement. Or it is too late to get back on the partnership/ownership track in a professional career.

The wife who has had extremely important information withheld from her by people who are planning to reduce by a considerable amount the financial resources available to her at a point in her life where she can't recoup those financial resources is the victim of a massive fraud and a very cruel lie. What a wife could do with the information that her husband is having an affair is file for divorce and start rebuilding the financial aspect of her life. As I said upthread, the difference to her between having the information available to make the necessary choices about the relationship and the vital financial decisions that are in her own best interests could mean the difference between a decent assisted living facility when she is 88 and inform, and a shit hole.

Quite often the betrayed husband has not taken career breaks and may well end up in a position where he retains his financial resources (this is especially true when the ex-wife remarries or cohabits soon after divorce and she has worked even part time over the years). Men tend not to take the career hit when they have children that women do.

Math thank you so much for getting across this message so thoughtfully and eloquently. You have said exactly what I wanted to say but much better than I could.

If I had known about my ExH's 6 year affair I would have made very different choices - not because I expected to have a meal ticket but because I thought we were a team.

With approximately 1/3 marriages ending in divorce (OW or not) basing your financial future on your spouse/partner's ability to provide is a real risk. In the last couple of weeks I've heard of two 20+ year marriages that have broken down. Noone else involved just grown apart, children grown up nothing in common.

Generally on here the advice is to leave an unhappy relationship - what if the main breadwinner is unhappy - should s/he stay out of duty to provide for the other?

I would advise anyone to plan for the worst - that way at least you have choices.

Well tbh I'd probably have been equally pissed off if my ExH had married me and had had planned DC with me despite secretly feeling all along (particularly while I was merrily packing in my high paid job and taking a massive pay cut) that we were "growing apart".

And do you really think that everyone should live their lives and make all their decisions as though they are going to be betrayed and let down?

I wouldn't put it as living your life as though you are going to be 'betrayed and let down' I like to see it more about not putting responsibility for my future financial wellbeing in someone else's hands. Say, for example, your DH didn't have an affair, but you wanted to leave for whatever reason - would you have had to stay because a comfortable retirement depended on it?

Apologies Maths. I have re-read your posts and I believe I was unfair in my last post.

math I fully understand the OP's situation. I wasn't commenting directly on that just the generalisation that affairs are always cruel and selfish. I don't think generalisations are helpful to anyone.

Blood I don't disagree with most of what you say. The situation I briefly described is not a 'simple fiction' it's the life of one of my best friends. As it happens the OM knows the position and is content with it - it suits him. I know the affair is not going to make her happy ultimately and I believe strongly that she should leave her abusive marriage. But I know it's not that simple when you are in that position yourself. In my opinion she's not being cruel to anybody and if she is being selfish I don't think it is unreasonable.

If we are going to talk about being 'simplistic' then generalising about all affairs being one thing or another is simplistic. I'm not claiming no affairs are cruel and selfish. In reality the vast majority probably are - just not all.

It only takes one example to disprove 'all'. (I have another very different example that is the life of another very good friend - yes, there is a lot of it about).

Unsustainable generalisations undermine otherwise valid points.

Btw - I've had some counselling sessions. I know what I want. I'm taking steps to get there but it will be a long journey.

Again it's about the information on which you reasonably rely to make your financial and life decisions. Are you in fact in a typical marriage with a 1 in 3 chance of failure, or is your dear partner embroiled in a long term affair (or otherwise feeling a bit ambivalent about you) in which case your marriage probably has a rather greater chance of failure.

lily, i appreciate what you say. I really didn't mean it simplistically. I really speak from a place of believing that people are not cruel and selfish, but the act of having an affair is. i don't mean it judgmentally. I would even say that your friend will find that the pain caused to her by the affair is cruel in the long run - to herself. Because inevitably the emotions that get brought up are so awfully painful that even those you would wish no pain on are wounded, including her. I don't restrict cruelty just to others. She's cruel to herself to put herself through it. I know. it destroyed me, cheating and being cheated on, and I've seen it do the same to others. I'm not judging. I just feel I've seen awful awful things come from affairs, for all. Not that they;re bad people.

NY, you have missed the point about informed choice. When two people have decided which one of them will stay home with the children or go part time or turn down a promotion that involves travel or longer hours, then that person needs to be kept in the picture when that deal has been shelved.

Keeping that vital information from that person because you are a coward and don't want to face her wrath or her tears, or because you like the way she irons your shirts and her way with moussaka, is selfish and cruel.

"when the deal upon which that sacrifice has been premised" has been shelved..

If you want to leave for whatever reason and staying is out of the question, then do it, and free your partner to find happiness or get his or her financial house in order or both. The key is integrity and the realisation that you should not expect to have your cake and eat it too.

An affair (that necessarily involves deceit) is always cruel and selfish because of the sense of humiliation that is caused when the partner who has been kept in the dark is finally told or finds out. It is also cruel and selfish because it takes choices away from the deceived partner, and sometimes risks his or her sexual health.

A woman who has an affair instead of trying to leave an abusive marriage obviously has some priority adjustment to do. An affair is only going to prolong her misery and if an abusive partner finds out she is risking horrible fallout. Whatever part of her that is self destructive is blinding her to her true best interests, and her affair partner is most likely using her for his own selfish purposes.

re finances - The end of a marriage which as people point out is a partnership is like splitting up a business. You split the amassed wealth up to the point the partnership ends. However with a marriage People can claim on the pension pot.

I don't buy the arguement that all women have given up lucrative careers, some have but we all know women who happily let H be the main breadwinner even before kids came along and then happily opted out of the rat race to be a SAHM because they just had a job they weren't that bothered about. IMHE women with careers tend to remain at work part time to 'keep their hand in' after kids come along.

People can also study retrain and change direction later in life, it's not easy but it's possible.

I suppose I'm of the opinion that you should never expect someone else to provide a lifestyle for you that you couldn't provide yourself.

I wouldn't put it as living your life as though you are going to be 'betrayed and let down' I like to see it more about not putting responsibility for my future financial wellbeing in someone else's hands

This puts it perfectly.

I agree Wild. There's always so much talk about the woman sacrificing her career on MN but many SAHMs couldn't wait to give up work having chosen a man who could provide for them or didn't have a career in the first place. It's a myth in many cases.

Its a bit like when people say the other person needed them to not work so they could. Given millions of parents both work it's just a lot of rubbish. If one has a job with insular hours or travel then the other finds one with regular hours where childcare is available. It's not hard.

It's never wise to rely on another person to provide for you, things can change in an instant. Protecting yourself doesn't mean less faith in the relationship but is a backup plan.

ugh

Daisy, I am so glad that you live in an area where there are all these flexible jobs available that work around childcare and pay well enough to make it worth the fees and where it doesn't matter if you are qualified to do them or not.

Oh, wait...

Wild/Daisy, I understand what you are saying, but in my experience, woman who've been able to return to work after having DCs need to be a) earning considerably more than the average wage prior to having DCs (to make childcare pay) and have a DH who is prepared to accept a hit on his worklife in order to do half of drop offs or pick ups - or they have very flexible family childcare nearby.

So many men I know have said it was "completely their wife's choice if she returned to work or not" but failed to mention they had made it clear that that choice was on the understanding they would still need to be able to go into the office early/stay late/do overtime on weekends/evenings and wouldn't dream of putting in a flexible working request /going part time themselves. I've seen this even when the difference between the husband and wife's wages hasn't been dramatically different.

I went back to work after having DC1, this was only possible because DH was able to get an agreement that he could start at 8am and leaving the office at 4:30pm in order to be back for pick up. 4 years later after mat leave from DC2, my wage was completely wiped out by childcare for 2, and we'd realised in the mean time, DH had had to turn down one promotion in the company he's currently at and turned down job offers externally that would be great career moves for him because he wouldn't be able to do reduced hours.

I'm now a SAHM, overall, our family budget will be better off with DH being able to do longer hours and us not paying out for childcare (which was all of my wage). But it leaves me vunerable, I only intend to not work at all for a few years until DC2 is at school age, but I will need DH's support at that point to return to work. He'll have to chose not to be selfish.

IME, men who chose to have affairs are selfish. Selfish people are rarely selfish in only one area and rarely think that they are being.

Also every crap dad I've met would probably think he's a good dad.

IME, men who chose to have affairs are selfish. Selfish people are rarely selfish in only one area and rarely think that they are being.

So by the same token then women who have affairs are bad mothers then?

A woman who has an affair instead of trying to leave an abusive marriage obviously has some priority adjustment to do

math off topic I know but, I think you are lacking insight into the dynamics of abusive relationships.

EarthWindFire - selfish people (even if they don't cheat on their partner) tend to be rather crap parents IME.

DaisyFlowerChain, it really doesn't matter what the reason is for a woman to give up paid work. It is a decision made by both parties to the relationship no matter what the motivation is.

The problem here lies in one party not disclosing that the long term plan has now changed, at the time that it has changed, putting off the revelation until fifteen or twenty years after the change occurred.

You seem to be implying that lazy SAHM leeches deserve some sort of comeuppance, and that having your H and his long term mistress ride off into the sunset when it is too late for you to make up the financial ground lost while at home full or part time is some sort of karma.

Makes you wonder what sort of karma is in store for the parties whose character defects are cowardice, selfishness, self absorption and lack of integrity.