Something that confuses me...

[IHopeThatIDontFallInLove]

Whenever a woman on here talks about being in a relationship with a married man, everyone piles in to say that he'll never leave, he's a bastard, he's leading her on, etc. yet there are so many women on here who have been left by their husbands for OW who they claim to love.

Sometimes the man comes clean and says he loves someone else. Sometimes the wife finds messages or other evidences; declarations of love and the like.

It seems like when it's the wife talking, everyone offers support saying it happened to them, he met someone else, fell in love, behaved like a shit and left for the OW. When it's an OW talking, it's always about how he'll never leave.

What's the reality?

My exhusband met someone else while we were still married. i hesitate to say it was an affair because he didn't love me, I didn't love him, we hadn't had a 'relationship' for years. We functioned as two adults living in a house and bringing up two children, but no more than that.

Anyone telling her that they'd never be together would have been wrong. Having said that, I didn't find out about the relationship, but I did find evidence he was 'looking' elsewhere and kicked him out. I was really only looking for a reason. But he said that he had no intention of leaving, and still considers that it was me who ended the marriage because he had no intention of leaving. He should have. Our 'marriage' was a shit sham. He deserves to be happy and I probably do too. Just haven't found my happily ever after yet.

It seems to me that most people posting on these subjects on MN go by their own experiences and those of people they know. These experiences build up a belief about how things work, which then turns into a 'fact', hence - men having affairs always do this and never do that etc. Every situation is different though, and people and their motives, their principles, the subtleties of their relationships, their beliefs and rules and moral codes vary so much, that it's not as possible to be an authority on the subject as people seem to think. Trouble is, we all think we're right!

And when people think they are right about a subject that stirs something up in them, then they really want others to have the benefit of their 'wisdom', they want to convince others to see things as they see them - and because of their experiences they are pretty sure that what they are saying will apply, not necessarily taking into account all the above-mentioned variations and the fact they don't actually really know the circumstances, the history, the personalities and the beliefs. So they speak as though they are an authority and know the facts of the matter, and then others join in with their take on it, and that's how a MN thread takes off into a conversation/debate/argument.

We all think we know best

A lot of men will not leave unless there is an OW waiting. (Just as I've known men remarry shockingly soon after their wife dies.)

But they also often have to be "forced" by a woman. So wife "chucks them out" or OW "insists they leave" think of Anne Boleyn in Wolf Hall.

If neither insists, or wants the man to make his own decision he will often drift.

I honestly just don't think you can generalise.

I saw a married man for a, while, it never crossed my mind he would leave his wife, to me it was just a fling. But he did leave her, not telling her he was seeing someone else.
I was then thrown into something I didn't really want - three kids alternate weekends, their rows, etc.
After about a year, he went off with another woman.

Yet, on the other side, my friend's husband went off with another woman. Told friend he'd been seeing her a while, and it seems she made some kind of ultimatum. He later admitted he'd practically been living a double life for years, shagging around. Friend is devastated after a thirty years marriage.