How can someone cheat if they love their partner?

[Whathappensnowthen]

I'm feeling pretty low at the moment and trying to make sense of things. I'm not looking for sympathy, but perhaps some rationale behind things.

I have started making plans to leave my husband in the new year. The financial side will be most difficult to sort and I still have things to find out, but if all goes well I may be in a position to buy out my husband from our property. I finished things with the OM because, obviously, that was the right thing to do anyway (and shouldn't have happened in the first place), but the whole thing has hit me hard, harder than I thought it would. My situation with this chap was FWB at best. I had long ago fallen out of love with my husband and although still married, felt emotionally detached from him. I guess that made me more susceptible to 'falling' for someone else (although I thought I could handle a FWB situation). However, one thing that always stuck out was how much my OM professed his love for his wife. When I first knew him as an acquaintance he rarely spoke of her and when he did it sounded like their marriage was in trouble. When he first did this I tried to end things, but he talked me round.

I'm not trying to justify my behaviour, I'm ashamed enough as it is, but how can you cheat on someone if you really love them that much? I couldn't have done what I did if I still loved my husband, I know that much. I'm feeling so low because I have completely cut ties with OM and, quite frankly, I miss him. I don't have the right to miss him, he was never 'mine', but I feel pretty bereft actually.

Ultimately I have to knock some sense into myself as I have all my children to care for and soon (hopefully) I will be sorting our lives out for the better, but I just need help in moving forward.

"However, one thing that always stuck out was how much my OM professed his love for his wife. When I first knew him as an acquaintance he rarely spoke of her and when he did it sounded like their marriage was in trouble. When he first did this I tried to end things, but he talked me round."
So he didn't mention her lovingly until the affair started. (I'm thinking 'my wife doesn't understand me'.) Then when he had you hooked he said he loved his wife so that you wouldn't expect him to leave her for you (he wanted his cake and to eat it too). When that backfired and you tried to back out, he 'talked you round'.

I would say he may or may not love his wife. Whatever he said at any point before, during and after your affair was a lie, it was whatever he thought would string you along best. He's a cunt.

A cheater may love you (and others), but he loves himself more

because for some people love and sex are all that linked.

but more likely...
he probably professed how much he loved his wife do u wouldn't get ideas about running off into the sunset with him.
and possibly to make u jealous and insecure so ud be more likely to be at his beck and call.
to make himself feel better about his behaviour.
to try and convince himself it was true.

It's not possible. If you love someone, you can't and won't put them through that. You might enjoy the life you have with them, you might like the attention and kindness and companionship, but it's not love.

I'm not religious at all but at a wedding we went to year ago someone read out that "love is patient, love is kind" quote from the bible which basically says "love doesn't shit on the other person" (may not be a direct quote). I've always held true to that idea; if you love someone you might screw up sometimes and get stuff wrong but you don't deliberately embark on a course which would lead to so much pain and hurt. If you do it's simply not love to begin with.

Because sometimes the OM/OW is better than the one they are already married to and they don't want to start a shitstorm until they are sure of their feelings.

Or they are arses.

Or a mixture of all of it.

Everything about this kind of this is terribly black and white on MN - in RL it really isn't.

And for a lot of people, love and sex don't have anything really to do with each other.

Thank you for your replies. They do help.

I find it ironic that, although many of his personality traits were (and are) quite endearing and things I would look for in a partner (and probably what attracted me to him in the first place), the fact that he can do this to a woman he says he loves proves that he is not 'partner' material at all. But having said that, I do realise my behaviour doesn't win me any prizes either.

The passage Ami refers to is from the bible in 1 corinthians . It's often read at weddings

" This love of which I speak is slow to lose patience - it looks for a way of being constructive. It is not possessive: it is neither anxious to impress nor does it cherish inflated ideas of its own importance.

" Love has good manners and does not pursue selfish advantage. It is not touchy. It does not keep account of evil or gloat over the wickedness of other people. On the contrary, it is glad with all good men when truth prevails.

"Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. It is, in fact, the one thing that still stands when all else has fallen."

( from JB Philips translation )