He's not a bastard but he's behaved like he is. Confused.

[ComeDownToMe]

DP and I have been together nearly 2 years. We live together and it's great. We get on fantastically, he's witty, engaging, kind, supportive. The sex is amazing and we enjoy each other's company.

It started out as a casual relationship and I had a lot stronger feelings for him than he did me. But we ended up spending a lot more time together and grew a lot closer and our relationship turned serious.

The thing is one of my closest friends recently discovered her DH (now STBXH) was cheating on her and I've seen at first hand how broken she has been. Her ex has been an utter cunt and makes my blood boil.

My DP cheated on his then wife and she slung him out so I know everything I've said about my friend's ex I could equally say about my DP. I didn't feel good about this before but it's even worse now.

Can men really compartmentalise to such a degree they don't think about how much hurt they would cause someone they love.

I will probably be criticised for this and rightly so but I wasn't particularly judgemental on men having affairs before as long as no one got hurt. Now I've seen the hurt it feels a bit different.

I don't think of my DP as a bastard but he's done a lot worse than my friend's ex and I've called my friend's ex every name under the fucking sun.

How do I resolve this in my own mind.

I'm not following what the fuck some of you are thinking here. I'm not trolling and I haven't copied another thread if I'm following correctly??! I'm not his ex posting as the ow so she can enjoy me getting ripped to bits on here so it's not a reverse thread.

If I wanted to be a goady fucker I would have said I was the OW at the start and not avoided it when you guessed.

I've explained why I posted and it wasn't to defend my relationship with him which seems to be what I have spent a lot of the thread doing.

I appreciate the posters who have tried to be constructive. I will talk to him again. Cheers.

There is another possibility, of course...

Lweji, do tell

If the OP is not a troll and people recognise details from another thread from the point of view of the cheated on wife...

alternatively this is an incredibly common situation and it is not at all surprising that the details look like those from other threads. Men do this all the time, OW fall for it all the time, wives are deceived all the time.

I used to think my exH was a rather unique character, from reading MN I discover he was a 'type'. Wish I'd found MN years ago!

It is a script, and many aspects (blaming the victim, a classic example) apply to other situations too.

Which is why everyone on the thread had pretty much the same opinion.

Regardless of the veracity or not of the OP, it's applicable to many situations and to many readers out there.

I've been in the OPs shoes once.

I met him when I was 29 and had been through a string of bad boys and along came this lovely man who treated me like gold. He was going through a divorce when we met and he was quite cut up about it. The wife had fallen in love with someone else and was leaving him, so he was a sympathetic character in my eyes.

After I was well and truly in love with him and he'd made me feel like I was the love of his life, he confessed he had not been faithful to DW.

In fact, for 15 years together he had cheated (always one night stands, sometimes with prossies, sometimes with girls he knew) and it had happenned once a year or once every two years.

I was horrified by the confession and almost broke it off but he told me all the same things. He felt awful. He had loved her but she didn't like sex and did not give affection. He felt rejected and was lonely. It would never happen with me because our sex life was out of this world and I understood him like she never had.

I lapped it up. It made me feel special, as if I made him a better man.

And you know what? He never did cheat on me. He was faithful for years, devoted, kind, loving and every day I was with him I felt wonderful.

Thing is though, 5 years into it, I got ill. I was stressed out and developed and anxiety disorder that meant things changed and I needed support. Oh he stayed faithful and devoted but he just didn't have what it took to love someone when they were no longer fullfilling his needs and he left me.

Oh he was as devastated by the split as me (perhaps more so) nd he actually never met anyone else; but such was his character that he did not make a good partner.

He was a person who would lie rather than be honest. He kept telling me my illnes was not a problem and he only loved me more, instead of discussing how it was affecting him.

He was a person who cared really about himself over others, even those he loved.

He was a person who was just not capable of weathering the tough times.

Over time, I came to look at things from his exDW's perspective and I reckon he probably did like dirty sex more than she did - but then why the fuck did he marry her? How can he blame her for him pretending to be someone he wasn't in order to be with her.

Sometimes you just don;t see clearly when you are in it, but nowadays I could not and would not be with anyone capable of lying to their DW, incapable of moving out and divorcing before sleeping with other people or someone who could compartmentalise to this level.

Like your ex, she didn;t have a clue...she STILL doesn't have a clue any of this ever happenned and he robbed her of her life in many ways.

I have no doubt he absolutely loved her, and me, to the best of his ability. I reckon he probably loved me more than he ever has or ever will love a person -but it didn't mean he made a good partner.

Baby thank you very much for posting, a lot of your post hits a chord with me until you got ill. It seems very similar to how I feel and how I think my DP feels. I am sorry he let you down when you needed him. Your post is very helpful as I found myself agreeing with so much of it, lot to think about.

Not quite in the OPs shoes of course. She knew from the off that he was the cheat, whereas you were a victim of a much cleverer liar who only turned out to be a cheat later after you were enmeshed already. I really can't get over why you thought affairs were ok OP, and I don't mean that in an "aren't you a bitch" way, I mean it in a "you must have real problems deep down" way...

I don't know why you feel sorry for his wife. She gets to live her life without a total twat badger now. Once the hurt and anger dies down she will be celebrating. I doubt she will ever care about you enough to pity you and you don't deserve pity. But a little part of me feels sorry for you, living with such a man......he will either dump you or cheat on you down the line. I bet your best friend dumps you soon as well.

My DP was really fucked off with her for looking as he said she didn't have a fucking clue he was cheating and he does think she 'snooped' (his word not mine)

I realise that's his explanation. Also, personally I like my privacy and would not share phone messages or emails with anyone not because I would cheat on them, but because they're my messages (and the people sending them send them to me, not any partner). However, if you look at some of those many threads you've been avoiding you'll see that the reason people look at their partner's/ spouse's phones is because they have a gut feeling something is wrong. It goes back to what people have been telling you - there's no such thing as an affair that hurts no-one because the partner doesn't know - on some level, many people have their suspicions.

Also, think about where you started from. Your initial narrative with this man was that it was casual and that being the OW was OK because it was just casual and the wife would not get hurt because she wouldn't know. This has somehow morphed into:

he fell in love with me when we spent proper time together and had the chance to develop a proper relationship.

Now I realise that in your head, it started casual because it was an affair and then got serious when he was "free" from his wife, but have a think about the mental gymnastics you've performed in between those two statements. From an affair not mattering, to you mattering because you're different.

It may work for you, who knows but he doesn't sound to me like a decent person or one who has changed. I'm lucky I haven't been cheated on but I've heard some very charming lies in my time and that's what it sounds like he's feeding you.

OP, I understand why you posted. I think it's simply that his wife wasn't a 'real' person to you. I presume you didn't know her, had never met her and as an unknown entity you could block that from your mind. It also helps that he would tell you the usual lines that his wife didn't have time for him etc etc, which makes it all the more reason to put it from your mind. Now your friend is on the receiving end of an affair it has bought it all into sharp reality and you obviously feel terrible guilt. That is normal. If you hadn't then there would definitely be something wrong with you.
That said, you are now where you are. You say you are both very happy together and have no reason to worry at present. I am going to go against the grain here and say that I think you have every reason to believe it will last. There are many many men out there who have affairs according to the 'script' . And whilst the script is trite is very often none the less true.
Many women fall in love, marry the man of their dreams and decide to have children. Then it is the children who instead of gluing the marriage together become the reason for it falling apart. In my experience, the 'child-centric' marriage is to blame. The woman (very occasionally the man) centres all her attention, love, devotion to the child/rein expecting the man to do the same. Because the huge majority of childcare is done by the mother whilst the man is simply not able, due to working outside the home for often long hours. A divide then happens automatically, whearas previously the man and woman worked and spent their evenings/weekends together connecting emotionally and physically this often disappears when the huge demands on childcare appear.
Couples drift apart emotionally, she gets all her love/emotional fulfilment from the children and he is left out. Eventually looks for love outside the marriage. I am definitely NOT saying this is right in anyway. In a perfect world BOTH parents would be sharing childcare equally and creating time for each other as a couple, sadly this is not the reality for many couples.
The successful marriages I know (and I am now late fiftys and have seen many many sad upsetting divorces) are almost exclusively because the couple made THEIR relationship the most important part of the marriage and focussed less on the children. (I do not for one moment suggest neglecting the children ) they make time to go out child free, book weekends away child free and focus on each other.
In your case, you have already stated that children aren't on your agenda, if that is indeed the case and you can both focus on each other's emotional needs, there is no reason why your relationship cannot be long and happy. The fact he previously cheated does not mean he will do it again. He may do, he may not. It's not a given by any means. My dh of 26 yrs cheated on his first wife. It happened for a reason - and he couldn't live with the guilt and left within six weeks. I know he would never do it again. He may of course leave me for another or I may leave him, but the guilt of cheating didn't make for a good feeling and he acknowledges he should have left first but he is human, he made a mistake and I forgive him. (Not sure about his ex-wife though !)

It might well last.

His marriage lasted for a long time and he wanted it to last forever.

Once he's got a woman at home, he seems quite happy.

It won't stop him having flings with other women.

But why upset a situation where a gullible go shite who thinks you are amazing and does your housework is happy to let you live in her house?

He'll keep that and go for extras elsewhere as he always has.

If the OP was special to him he wouldn't have waited until she was his only option to choose her.

Stop doing his share of the housework OP.

I didn't think affairs were ok, I thought they didn't cause harm if they went undetected. I know now it was fucking stupid and selfish of me to think it was harmless.

When my DP and I started our affair I didn't think there would be a fallout from it. I certainly didn't imagine she would ever know. In my mind I wasn't hurting her.

I was stunned and shocked when he said she knew about us. I felt incredibly guilty and ashamed. Then he was free to have a relationship with me and I blocked it out as much as I could and only really had his side of the story.

Seeing my friend brought the full horror and devastation of the wife's side very sharply into focus for me. It has really affected me seeing her in such a state and knowing the reason why she's in bits.

I hate myself for what I have fucking done. My DP has been a fucking bastard. But we have a great relationship and I love being with him and he feels the same.

I don't want to split up with him but I want to know how I live with what we have done. It is really troubling me and is my reason for posting for advice.

Deal with it or dump him, it's that simpe love.

You should feel ashamed, you & he are a pair of twats who deserve each other.

You sound like some pathetic teen who thinks she's half of Romeo & fucking Juliet-I've said it upthread & I'll repeat it for you, he only 'fell in love' with you when his wife fucked him off-you are a make do & always will be, good luck

I don't think we can help you, tbh. The majority of us aren't going to say, it's OK, forgive yourself, forgive him, what's done is done etc.

I think you should split. Then you can find someone your own age, someone for whom you are an active choice not a fall back option, someone you can respect as a good and moral person, maybe someone with whom you can have a family, someone who will enable you to respect yourself again.

I don't think you're in love with him - I think you're in love with the idea of what you want him to be. Infatuated.

He's not what you want him to be, what you've fantasised him to be - he's just not - you were living happily in a bubble of denial until you saw the state your friend is in. Now it's all crashing down around you.

I only mentioned I earn more than him because a poster thought I was only keen on him for lifestyle reasons, thinking younger woman likes older rich bloke with money, which is not our situation.

He did provide properly for his family and still does. He's not poor. He has an old car because he just considers cars useful to get from a to b and his does what he needs it for.

He paid himself what he needed financially to cover his family's living expenses. He doesn't pay himself more for tax reasons and he prefers to leave the money in his company and re-invest it. His wife is fully aware of all of this, he hasn't hidden money to diddle her in the divorce.

How can you sit with your friend, calling her ex every name under the sun - when you know your partner is capable of, and has done, just the same thing. That's what you're trying to come to terms with.

I don't see how you can come to terms with this now, you love your life with him - but it's just a fantasy. It's not real. You're clinging onto that fantasy of him - but you're just beginning to realise the reality.

I think your prospects are fine. You two are a good match.

Your the type who has (more than one?) affairs with married men. He's the type who has (many) affairs. You're together now... What's the problem.

Why is it so hard for posters to believe he does love me. I get it some of you don't think he's capable of real true deep love and I kinda get that view. But I am really so awful he'd only be with me so he gets lots of sex and his housework and shopping done?

He fancied me the 1st day we met and was always coming up with excuses to spend time with me before we started our affair. He wasn't getting sex and housework off me then.

We deliberately didn't get too involved when we were having an affair because it could have got complicated. We kept it as just simple no strings sex as it was easier. I was in love with him before we started having sex, nowt would have happened if I hadn't had those feelings as I knew it was wrong. I said I had stronger feelings because I knew he wasn't in love with me then but he liked me loads and frequently said he loved spending time with me but it was limited because he was married.

This is not me slagging off his wife but he wasn't happily married. He didn't want to leave his marriage because of his kids and the stress and upheaval. They had grown apart, rarely went out together and didn't have a spark anymore. I am not saying it was down to his wife.

He's not slagged her off to me but they grew to have different priorities. She went on at him a lot (his words) and they did their own thing.

I'm sure he does love you, in his own way. But the issues are:

1. he didn't love you enough to leave her for you
2. even after the truth came out he would have chosen her if she hadn't kicked him out
3. 10+ years of cheating means it wasn't a mistake, it was a lifestyle that he enjoyed, until he had the inconvenience of getting caught out and kicked out of the family home
4. it's pretty easy for things to be great with the two of you while you're child free, haven't come across any major bumps in the road and the sex is still "mindblowing". I'm not sure I'd be so secure in my relationship in a few years time when the sex has dwindled.

And I'm not sure why you assume he liked you for anything more than sex when he pursued you, you've said yourself you were one in a long line of no strings flings.

We are emotionally close and talk lots. We like a lot of things the same. We laugh a lot and have a connection. He's the most unselfish lover I've had and loves spending hours pleasing me. We have lots of kisses and cuddles outside of bed. He's very loving and affectionate. He is really good to me. I feel like I am walking on air when we're together.

He frequently tells me he loves me and he is pleased the way things have worked out (hurt aside) Family and friends have told both me and him how much happier he seems. It is not me wishful thinking that our relationship is great.

He fancied me the 1st day we met and was always coming up with excuses to spend time with me before we started our affair. He wasn't getting sex and housework off me then.

No, but he was after the sex. That's why he was so nice to you, he wanted to have sex with you.
Worked quite well for him, no?

He didn't want to leave his marriage because of his kids and the stress and upheaval.

His affair, his serial cheating, has caused his kids untold stress and upheaval. He has damaged them. He did it. You talk like he's doing some noble act in having an affair instead of leaving his wife. Get a fucking grip!
He put his own physical gratification above the needs of his children because he's a selfish bastard.

If he loved you and wanted to be with you he would have left his wife for you.

I'm sorry but you need to wake up.