What happened when you told the husband/ wife

[Molly333]

Following on from a recent thread in here what happened when those of you told the partner/ husband/wife of the person who was part of the 'affair' ?

ocelot7

Its interesting that you are saying people are projecting and then do some projecting yourself.

Boney not sure what you mean but yes my worldview is also shaped by my own experiences & what I've seen.
And yes I have felt bullied elsewhere on MN for putting forward a view that doesn't align with some other posters
I probably wouldn't comment on threads which are too close to the bone at any moment in time in an effort to retain some objectivity & to be able to attempt to say something useful

So if we are distressed it's OK for a woman to hit another woman? What if it the wife was having a lesbian affair and the husband came round and broke the OWs hand in a scuffle - also OK?

I totally and utterly get the anger. I've been there - I've lived it. It's truly fucking horrible.

But you still don't get to be violent and cause physical harm. This is the civilised western society we live in where we have laws that protect us. If you don't like that maybe move to Saudi - I know they see adultery a bit differently there and you could get the OW stoned to death.

I don't think you can predict what will happen when you tell someone you probably don't know something catastrophic like their dp is cheating on them with your dp.

They might:
a. think you are lying and be very angry
b. already know and want you to go away, so be angry and offish
c. totally loose their shit and do something awful to their dp/your dp/their kids
d. be grateful you told them but devastated.
e. believe you but want to ignore it and not do what you want/expect them to do.

etc.

I personally have never done it, because I'm too busy dealing with my own side of things. I presume the other dp knows / will find out in their own way or time.

I have been told that my dp was cheating on me by a friend but all that caused was months of agony and denial because I needed evidence and he was adamant it hadn't happened. This friend was a bit of a shit stirrer so her motives were questionable too.

I have told a family members' dp's ow to get to fuck etc when it became painfully obvious all, including family member, knew about the affair. But even then it just caused a massive row and the dp/ow berated the family member as if it were her fault.

So...do what you think feels right but not for revenge and don't have any expectations about how the other dp will react to the 'knowledge' of an affair.

Just to add both all dps who cheated on me are now ex's. One thing I learned is that once a cheater, always a cheater. All cheats I have ever known have gone on to cheat again.

I don't think even one poster has said it's ok to be violent. What they've done is express sympathy for a person who via a sequence of horrendous events ends up losing everything while the people who instigated and drove those events for their own selfish reasons are still together and apparently very happy with no real impact on them or their lives six years on.

"the people who instigated and drove those events for their own selfish reasons" - but they didn't make the wife hit the OW, did they? And not just a shove or a slap - an assault forceful enough to break bones. The wife chose to do that. She made a decision to use violence rather than just shouting at OW (or, indeed, walking away).

I've never met my DP's STBXW, but if I did, I'd not be at all surprised if she made unpleasant remarks, or even shouted at me. I know she's called me all the names under the sun to DP, and that's fair enough. But I'd not expect to be assaulted.

There were some messages earlier in the thread about how adultery is seemingly OK, and adulterers get to walk away without consequence. (I'm thinking of anxiousnow's comments.) On the contrary, marriage is a contract, and in breaching that contract, an adulterer may find that their spouse wishes to divorce them, and in divorce proceedings they may lose many of their assets. (Some of those assets may be for the children of the marriage, but even in a divorce between two childless people, the lower-earning partner will often acquire assets at the expense of the wealthier partner.) So I'd argue that divorce is effectively the action that you can take when the marriage contract is breached.

Good points Toptoe that you can't foresee the exact consequences eg someone mentioned upthread that the wife & OM were murdered when her husband found out.

As I already said. No one said it was ok for her to do it. Not sure how I can be any clearer really.

Absolutely no one condones the wronged party going round and throwing a punch. It was the sanctimonious way in which the poster then got her prosecuted which lost her her job. Which after said poster had gone off with her husband must of been hard. ( understatement). And perhaps more galling is that the poster feels the need to state how happy she and the other men involved all are. No empathy for the ex wife at all.
I wonder what the reaction would be if woman had tried to kill herself rather than hitting the OW? Would we all be saying " well she should have got a grip".

Anyway I think the Op has had plenty of insight into the varied reactions of telling the wronged party.

Shocking justifications of violence on this thread, and yes, suggesting that the OW should not have pressed charges based on her part in the affair is a justification of violence.

The thing with affairs is that everyone sees them in black and white, the cheating partner/other man/woman are the perpetrators and the cheated-on husband/wife is the victim. No shades of grey, no thought that there was likely something very wrong in the relationship to begin with in order that two people actually left their marriages to be together.

For all we know this may have been an abusive marriagE where violence was already present. The wife assaulted the OW to the extent she caused fairly serious physical injuries. It's rare for someone with no history of violence to resort to such a severe violent act as a first offence.

If it had been the OW's husband who had assaulted her when she told him she was leaving him for another man would people be saying that she shouldn't press charges because of what she'd put him through? But because there are women on here who have been cheated on it is clear that there's a lot of projection going on on this thread.

"somebody who has that little control over their emotions, and feels justified in using violence against someone who displeases them, is potentially a danger to others"

So people who are deciding everyday are in control of their emotions and choosing to lie and cheat and destroy everyday. Affairs are dangerous to others. They ruin lives. A punch usually doesn't. Again, I am not saying it was acceptable to use violence I just think that the hurt caused by an affair is far greater to the hurt caused by a punch. Plus the punch is split decision. Was sapphire as smug as she came across in her post to the wife? Again not saying she should have punched her but affairs ruin lives. It is not acceptable to use violence but it is not acceptable to have an affair either. Own your feelings and end your relationship. Control yourself and don't start an emotional or physical affair before ending it with your partner.

I also wondered if there was a history of violence Biscuit

Also is the pain of an affair worse than other ways a relationship ends when you wanted it to continue? Or is it just there is an object - the OW - for yr emotions? The most pain I ever felt was when I was dumped a year ago by the man i thought to be the love of my life but there was no OW (as far as I know)

No, you cannot compare emotional pain to physical pain. Where does that end?

Recently there was a thread on here where a man had killed someone who abused his daughter, and the overwhelming response was that there was no justification, regardless of what the other man had done. If someone abused or hurt or killed my child I think I would want to kill or seriously hurt them. While my own pain might justify the thought of doing so, it still doesn't justify the action.

Fact is that more people cheat on partners than don't, and yet we don't condone the idea of aggrieved husbands and wives going round assaulting the other men/women involved in the affairs.

I ask again, if the OW's husband had punched her instead of going round to tell the wife, causing her to have broken bones, would people be saying to her that it was no more than she deserved? That his pain was obviously so bad that he had no impulse control and couldn't help it?

If you found out that your child's TA had punched someone to the extent of broken bones would you really just shrug it off and say that she obviously couldn't help it and you were happy to be alone with your child? What happens when the kids wind her up to the extent she loses control?

Everyone has the right to be hurt over something which upsets them. But we are all responsible for our own actions. The reasons why the wife punched someone are irrelevant. All that is relevant is the fact that she did.

TheRealBarenziah - sometimes getting 50% of fuck all doesn't seem like much recompense for the heartbreak and utter devastation of discovering an affair.

If I found out my child's TA had a conviction for punching her dh's ow I'd be less worried about her moral compass than I would be if I found out she'd been fucking a married man behind her dh's back for years.

Relationships end but affairs are by far the cruellest way for them to end. Plus, the whole concept of an affair is the person not ending their current relationship. Just because something happens every day doesn't make it ok. Children are murdered everyday. Children are dying through lack of clean water everyday. It is a very very sad world where affairs are accepted as acrept able or even asked if that much worse than a normal break up. Your family betraying you?!? I think anyone you willfully choses to have an affair cannot talk from any moral high ground about 2 punches. Again, just to be clear, both are wrong imho

HappyJanuary I agree

TheRealBiscuitAddict

I do not justify the violence used by the woman on sapphire, but I am not going to use it to justify sapphire's actions.

I am not going to claim the she or the OM were in abusive relationships.

But I will point out that emotional abuse can be as bad as physical abuse and have long term effects.

How's this for judgemental : I think people who have affairs are almost always attention seeking narcissists and I completely understand punching someone who schemed to destroy my marriage.

And what if the affair was what it took for the man to leave a violent and abusive relationship? Or does the affair cancel out any previous wrong within the marriage and turn the wronged party from abuser to victim without question?

We know nothing about how unhappy this marriage might have been. But we do know that the woman is violent.

In the past there have been posts from women who are in abusive relationships who have met someone else, and has made them realise they need to leave. As a rule while posters do tell the woman that the affair is by no means ideal, any poster who stated that if the man decided to beat her up when finding out she would have no-one to blame but herself would be quickly shouted down.

How is it that on MN we tell people that:

It is wrong to smack your children, regardless of whether you have reached the end of your teather.
It is wrong to go out and seek revenge on anyone who has been violent to you in the past.
It is wrong to allow your child to hit back in the playground.
It is wrong to hit your partner back even in self defence.
But find out that your partner is having an affair then if you go out and commit GBH on the OW it's perfectly understandable because nothing compares to the pain of an affair.

I think you probably need to use common sense rather than trying to come up with a rule that applies to every situation

I'd love to think a woman in an abusive relationship wouldn't need to fuck another woman's husband to gain the courage to get out of the relationship

While it's convenient to blame the OW, it's the husband who broke his marriage vows. If it wasn't that specific OW, often the husband would have had an affair with somebody else eventually.

And I don't think many OWs "scheme" to end their affair partner's marriage. My DP was in a relationship which was controlling and unhealthy (bordering on EA). Rightly or wrongly, he didn't have the courage to leave until he met somebody who loved, respected, and valued him. I was married too, similarly unhappily. DP and I fell in love. It wasn't part of some kind of scheme to ruin his wife's life. Few things are black and white, and few OWs are unreservedly evil, I'm afraid.

The MN reaction to people who have affairs is really rather different to what I encounter in everyday life. My colleagues and friends all know that I left my marriage because of an affair, and they know DP was married and left his wife for me, but almost everyone has been unreservedly supportive of me and welcoming towards my DP. One of my colleagues (who knows DP in a professional capacity) actually took me aside last week and told me that he was delighted to see me so happy with DP. In real life, things aren't black and white, and people who know us can see how unhealthy both mine and DP's marriages were, and how much happier we are together.

Clearly both myself and DP should have had the courage to leave our marriages before we met somebody else, but we're not evil villains who contrived to ruin our ex-spouses' lives.

TheRealBiscuitAddict

We know nothing about how unhappy this marriage might have been

Yes we know nothing, other than what sapphire has chosen to tell us. Lets be honest about this, this is someone who has cheated on her husband and kids (I am assuming kids). Lied to someone that she married.

Not exactly the paragon of virtue that you would take at face value.

Did she deserve to get beaten, No she didn't. but she is by no means an innocent.

So what most people are saying is that whether or not she 'deserved' broken bones she should have told the police it was nothing (if you read her post she was not the one who called the police)?