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.

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.

We really need a vomit emoticon.

he is pleased the way things have worked out

NO SHIT SHERLOCK

You clearly refuse to believe any different. No one on this thread has agreed with you. So what are you hoping to achieve? If you're so adamant that all is rosy, get one with it then.

Was he your first married man? I'm just curious.

Remember that you are still under the spell of a recent relationship. It's easier to be happy and walk on clouds. When there are no kids to deal with daily and it's all still new and exciting and you have an adoring partner. The proof of the pudding will be in about 20 years. But by then you may have found out that he had been cheating on you from 5 years into the relationship and that you wished you had had children.
Is your post supposed to change people's minds and tell you that you're great together and it all worked out for the best indeed?
If you are convinced of it, you don't need to explain it and you just carry on happily. Are you really convinced, or is it a mind construct that you are clinging on to?
If you are convinced, then just walk away from the thread. If you have doubts, analyse them carefully and find out why you have them and if they are actually quite important doubts or can be dismissed.

Your relationship sounds great currently. But the issue is not the current state of your relationship, it's the fact that your relationship had a not-great-at-all beginning (and I don't even mean the hurt you caused his wife, I mean the fact that he wasn't even planning on leaving her for you, you were his second choice after he got kicked out) and is not likely to be great in the future if life gets in the way, the sex dwindles and he gets itchy feet again. All relationships have ups and downs, and lucky you that you're currently in an "up", but I really wouldn't trust him at all to be faithful when you get to a "down" phase.

Alpha 1) he held back so our relationship wouldn't get complicated. 2) he put his kids 1st and didn't intend to fuck up their lives and didn't want the stress of a divorce if it could be avoided. 3) he cheated because he wasn't happy 4) we won't be having kids which is a joint decision. I think we've had a major bump with him going through a divorce with the consequent issues with his kids and it's brought us closer together rather than caused problems. I don't expect the sex to dwindle, we have both got high sex drives and it is fantastic.

We were friends as well as lovers and of the flings he had ours was the most involved.

Besides, his family is not going to tell you you are a home wrecker bitch, are they?
I'm sure they are having their own mind constructs to stay friends with him.

It would be interesting to have an impartial opinion.

I didn't think affairs were ok, I thought they didn't cause harm if they went undetected.

What if he has an affair that you don't detect? How would you feel then?

She'll be fine, honestly. She'll bend over backwards to keep him, she'll make sure the house is always lovely, the sex is regular, she'll stay away when his kids come, she won't have kids of her own. She's one of those types of women who believes in serving your man above all else.

"We were friends as well as lovers and of the flings he had ours was the most involved."

How serendipitous that the most involved came along when the wife booted him out,

"Major bump" lol.

He would not have bothered with your happiness if he could have gotten away with having you as his bit on the side. Have some respect for yourself.

... of the flings he had ours was the most involved

Was? Already talking in the past tense! That's a bit revealing.

I think you are totally and utterly deluded - and you're also in denial about this relationship.

3) he cheated because he wasn't happy

No, he cheated, repeatedly, because he chose to cheat. He chose to lie. He chose not to face the consequences of his actions. He chose to create even more distance from his wife (assuming he is now telling the truth) by spending time and having sex with other women.

And think about it. He held back emotionally, but not sexually. What does that tell you?

BTW, how did you learn about the other affairs/flings/bits on the side?

Random if he has an affair I don't detect then I won't know about it so I can't feel anything about it.

Hypocrite I don't think like that at all, you're a million miles away with your thinking. Anything I do in our relationship is because I want to. I'm not 1 of those women who has to have a boyfriend no matter how much of a wanker he is.

In answer to your earlier question it wasn't my 1st affair, I've had several before my current DP. 1 for over 10 years with no consequences which is why I had my previous opinion. I am not proud of it and I am ashamed of it. I know I'm no angel and it does serve me right if I'm now racked with guilt because of my friend and the fallout of my DP's marriage.

But I am really so awful he'd only be with me so he gets lots of sex and his housework and shopping done?

It would appear so.

You can tell by the fact that he was only interested in you as (yet another) bit on the side until his first choice, his wife and the mother of his children, who he planned to grow old with, booted him out.

Luckily he had picked a woman so desperate and stupid that he managed to spin her obviously second-choice status with some obvious bullshit about how he had to keep things right with his kids by not bothering to fall in love with her until she was last chance saloon.

But he's had years of charming the knickers off women and knows the value of good oral sex in keeping a desperate woman on side.

You were easy pickings.

As for deciding "together" not to have more children

Um, no.

Like everything else, he decided for himself and you went along with it.

Ah, so you're a married man's wanksock.

What a waste of skin you are.

Yeah you come across as the other woman - alls fair in love and war' type very clearly.

I don't think you've got anything to worry about. There are always married men to shag after all.

Your poor mate.

BIWI I used past tense as I was talking about it in the sense of extra marital flings. Our relationship is no longer an extra marital fling.

Lweji we talked about it during our fling. He told me things, I asked him things. We've talked more since things got serious between us as I was clearly wary about his past. I didn't know he had cheated before when we started our affair, I didn't think he was like that even though he was cheating with me.

I didn't know he had cheated before when we started our affair, I didn't think he was like that even though he was cheating with me.

But he wasn't "like that" he was just so terribly unhappy with this awful wife who didn't get him.

But the others, they were just sex, but you, you alone were special.

Yes, of course it is pure coincidence that what he says about you and his own self interest line up exactly.

He's a very truthful and honest man. A man of integrity, if you will.

I actually feel a tiny bit sorry for him - turfed out of the family home he valued so much just as he's getting on a bit and forced to give endless cunnilingus to his most recent squeeze who is someone no man would want as anything other than a bit.

I think OP is what you need to reconcile is not whether your dp is a bastard but the fact that by your logic your friend's nsdh is not a bastard or a cunt he is in fact just the same as your dh and you. And you have no right to judge him unless you are planning on shifting your whole world view.

He is just another person with faults, like you. Their marriage was just another relationship just like any other relationship, just like yours.

It is not some star struck love affair. It is just an affair that is now a relationship and that may or may not work out.

Your dp cannot change his past but he clearly isn't bothered either. After all it worked out ok for him.

So you're a serial adulterer too. And thus also a serial liar too. You deserve each other, and I hope you destroy each other. What do you want from this thread? Why come to a forum that has a lot of people destroyed by people like you?

You're getting an awfully hard time here OP, and I think in this place you're surrounded by women who have been destroyed or watched others destroyed by this sort of thing.

I think you have been young / naive in many ways because you have believed you are diferrent, believed it "wasn't that bad" and you've started this thread because the reality of what you (both) did is now in your face.

I think the thread is asking a diferrent question to the ones you are asking.

You want to know...is he a bad person? Am I? I hadn't really seen this clearly?

Does he really love me? Is he going to do this to me?

To take away the judgement for a minute, most people have fallen for someone they shouldn't have but hopefully now you have had some perspective from your friend of how much pain this causes you might learn a life lesson and make better choices in future.

Secondly, I hope you know that affairs, whether people find out or not, cause enormous pain and suffering.

Thirdly...is he a bastard? Well, yes, undeniably so. Happy or not happy, factually speaking anyone who is capable of hurting and lying to wife and kids for a duration of time for personal gain / pleasure is a bastard. I am sorry this is fact.

Are you a bad person?....I think we are our choices. Your choices stand in front of you right not to decide who you are and what you stand for. If you decide that from today onwards you will not act in ways that are selfish and harm others then you can be a good person. To do that, you have to first accept how wrong you were and feel the guilt.

Does he really love you? Here is where I will agree with you...he might well love you to the best of his ability to love - but please bear in mind this love does not mean he is less likely to cheat on you in future. He likely will.

My son wanted a part in a school play and hoped the boy who had it would break his leg or something. My son is a little boy and I ad to explain to him that happiness or getting what you want and the expense of others is not the best sort of happiness.

I do think a relationship that starts like yours comes with strings attached.

I am sorry...watch him carefully...be the kind of person you want to be and both of you STOP baling his poor ex wife.

1. Affairs are almost always complicated
2. He put his kids first? Is that a joke? He put himself first. He didn't want the stress and upheaval of a divorce, he didn't want to have to live apart from his children, it was all about him. Putting his kids first would have been putting all his energy into making his marriage work, and if it just wasn't working then coming to an amicable seperation. He wanted his cake and to eat it too, and by making that choice he has fucked up his kids lives.
3. he cheated because he could. He could have done the right thing, but he chose not to. He wanted cosy family life and exciting illicit sex.
4. that is not a bump in your relationship. That is "me and him against the world", of course it's going to bring you closer together. A bump in your relationship is one of you getting ill, or suffering a bereavement, or stress at work, or depression, or your sex drive decreasing as you get older, or the sex getting less exciting and more routine the longer you've been together.

You sound so incredibly deluded that I don't think there's anything anyone can say to make you realise. But I think deep down you do realise, since you're having these doubts and you don't know how to reconcile it.

He put the kids first?! In what universe?