Am I a terrible person? I feel awful/

[FleurDeCassis]

Very randomly a guy I knew from school messaged me on FB, he dated a friend of mine whilst we were at school (nothing serious) but apart from that we never even spoke.

He messaged me and it got a lot more flirty. He also has a girlfriend and they have a mortgage together etc

If I'm truly honest I liked the attention (I'm single) but I never had any intention of meeting up with him.

Anyway his partner found the messages and he said we have to end this now.

I just replied with - end what exactly? There isn't anything to end

He replied - exactly.

We haven't spoken since and I don't intend to.

I feel like a terrible person.

Eh? Sorry, you haven't written it very clearly. Do you mean 'flirting often leads to affairs; and my personal experience is that it has always led to affairs'?

I said what I meant . You seem to have got the gist. Have you read the previous posts? It might make it easier for you to understand.

Bizare that we end up arguning amongst our selves and the op is no where to be found.

I'm hoping it's agreeable that those that put their ego/feelings first and before the thoughts of anything beyond their own feelings should feel acountable.

Agreed! That was my initial point and one which I would have liked to focus on

Its only "bizarre" due to women not being able to say its their partners fault and wanting to lay the blame elsewhere other than actually looking at who their in a "relationship" with.

Like I said, there will always be temptation. If the man goes off and invites something else into his relationship that will obviously cause terrible conflict then the woman needs to re-evaluate what she thought she had and not "hate" on the temptation.

You feel bad about it, so you are a good person OP. Sometimes we lose our way (that sounds a bit tripe), but the important thing is to harness it and vow that you don't want to be that person again.

The OP can talk to whom she wants when she wants, she is not in a damn relationship. She can talk to a married man if she wants, she can flirt with a man that has a partner. SO what! The man that is in a relationship SHOULD not talk to her. The woman that is in the relationship with said man needs to look at who she is with....

Women that put some sort of mad onus on the the single woman trying to "take" her man need to wise up and see him for what he is. A cheating arse that is looking elsewhere.

OP, I hope you do come back and stuff these women that think you are some sort of "beast"... they need to get right over themselves.

All I really see here is this bloke from your past messaged you, you had a bit of a flirt then it kicked in that he was married or whatever and you said no to it... Its not a crime and no need to feel bad for it either. You remembered him as he was. He was the creep that was looking elsewhere.

Get real here.

No one has ownership over another whether married or otherwise.

Thats where "trust" comes into it between two people.

"this harlot came along and stole my husband" really? get a grip. No one stole your husband, he went because "he" wanted to.

Two people had a bit of a flirtybchat on FB.

And it spawned this.

So how would you categorise this email conversation then, between Spunky and Sexmachine:

SP: Hey Sexmachine, you up for it this week?

SM: Hey Spunky! Long time. Yep, gagging for it! When are you free?

SP: Thursday? Can you do dinner too? Make a night of it?

SM: Oooh, are you allowed out that long? Special late pass?

SP: LOL, yes, she's away at her mother's.

and? exit.

I have no idea what the hell you are talking about MrsS

It's all a bit hysterical don't you think?

I was wondering if y'all thought it was flirty and potentially marriage wrecking.

Whats hysterical?

Surely a marriage is between the two people that are married?

I was saying that the person IN the marriage or partnership is the wrong one here.

The thread, I guess, Tinks. MN is full of women who get full blown hysterical if another woman as much as looks at their man. It immediately becomes an "emotional affair" at the very least, and there is utter incomprehension that a man and woman could possibly just be friends.

I have a close male friend that I have known all my life. We often meet up for drinks and/or dinner. He doesn't tell his wife because she gets hysterical about me. Fuck knows why, because there has never been the tiniest spark between us, and I have been married to someone else for almost as long as she's been married to him. But that's her problem, and his. Not mine.

Hence me saying he's the arse in the situation

Yep, not disagreeing with you there, Tinks!

Of course the man is the one in the wrong, thats totally obvious. But purposefully flirting with and encouraging him to flirt, its not exactly a nice thing to do, is it? Nothing sexist about it, its the same no matter which way around it was.
OP says she feels like a terrible person, but doesn't actual think she did anything wrong at all, so I don't see the point of the post.

Im away to bed now MrsS... but very nice to have met you, Im sure we will come across each other on the boards again.

You know what I namechanged because I just knew this would get dragged up if I started another thread and I couldn't be bothered with it.

But reading these I want to come back and defend myself.

Here is how the conversation went -

He asked me how I was.

I thought it was odd as we never really spoke in school, and I said that to him.

I then asked if he was speaking to me to ask me out for a friend (a friend of his had asked me out on a date a couple of weeks back and I said no) and turns out they aren't even friends anymore.

He said no, and we reminisced about school days.

Two weeks later (ish) he started asking if I was going to meet this guy and that if he was single he'd love to meet up with me.

I said - again that's odd because you dated my then best friend.

He said that it was always me he was interested in because he was so intrigued by me (no idea why!)

And it just went from there, I thought it was just harmless flirting that got out of hand without me giving it much thought.

I thought it was harmless because I knew I would never meet up with this man for sex.

Then he messaged to say - his girlfriend had seen the messages and had gone crazy and that this has to end.

I said - end what exactly?

It seemed he was making it out to be some torrid affair when in actual fact we never even so much as swapped phone numbers.

Then when I thought about it I realised that I hadn't done a good thing because I'd been part of something that had hurt someone else.

I'm giving her a hard time over the arsey reply she sent to the girlfriend!
"end what exactly?"
Fuck off.

I've never spoken to or met his girlfriend.

I did consider sending her an message to apologise but then thought she'd rather me leave her the fuck alone.