Tell me about an affair you've had or know of where the man didn't leave their wife like they promised

[Dineoutone]

Need a reality check please.

It's not me having the affair - though you'll all think it is! I want to show my friend that what she is doing is wasting her life. She's 27 and he's 52 and promised he will leave his wife. They've been dating for a year and the current excuse is 'when you youngest goes to college.' (In 2 years). Yeah right.

Friend about the same age with a married boyfriend similarly older (he was married to his third wife, don't know what happened to the other wives). They spent about 15 years together, though sometimes off and on. He was an interesting, creative guy in the media and she has always had a bit of a thing for international glamour which he could do a bit of for her. Never left his third wife, died in his early 60s, she decided not to go to the funeral as it would have been stiff with wives, ex-wives and no doubt mistresses.

To me it's fairly sad as there was so much deceit and she lost any chance to have a child of her own. Having said that - she loved him, she liked the life, she made her choices with her eyes open. His third wife must surely have had some idea what might happen in her marriage. My friend has actually had a good life since with a partner of her own.

If your friend is willing to risk deceiving other people for years and presumably breaking some kind of moral code (not many people have a code that ignores secret infidelity, as opposed to polyamory or whatever), if she is willing to risk never having a child and having a severely constrained life for as long as it lasts, either constrained by secrets or by a future of being loathed by her stepchildren, well, she can fill her boots. Take what you want and pay for it, that's what we all do.

I have a lovely friend who spent her late twenties with one dickhead 'I'm going to leave my wife' and then her early 30s with another. The first one she had to emigrate to get away from when it all went tits up and the cheeky twat still phones her with declarations of love. The second one started blocking her calls out of the blue with never an explanation.
She's confident and successful and I have no idea why she went along with the bullshit but she's now mid forties, single and going through menopause when all she ever wanted was a child.

I have known of at least 12 affairs where the woman honestly believed the man was going to leave his wife and then she herself and her dp would live 'happily ever after'.

Only one of those men actually left his wife, and that was only because the wife slung him out.

When I was 22 I had an affair with a married man who was then 37. It lasted until I was 30.

I know this isn't quite the example you are asked for, but instructive none the less.

I was seriously in love and worshiped him. It was a power imbalance relationship (as these age gap/work/affair) relationships typically are.

It wasn't real consensual love ( a point many people miss in this situation - because it's easy to say "both adults/ both know what they are doing). It was an older powerful man seducing a younger woman who was already primed to worship him because of the power imbalance.

He never said he would leave his wife. He always was honest and said he had no intention of leaving. He constantly said "you can love two people at the same time" and raved about how much he cared and loved me. He really didn't.

He is still "happily married". His wife has no idea that we had such a long running (and intense professed love) affair. She is perfectly happy and thinks she has a perfect husband.

He was honest of a sort with me so I was never stupid enough to believe he would leave. Married men never do leave. It's only when they get discovered and their wife decides to chuck them out (which few do actually, they soldier on to preserve their family unit, social circle and social and financial status - delete as applicable).

She is really wasting her time.

The easiest way to flush this out is to tell his wife. She'll be rightly furious, throw some plates, put him in the spare room for a bit; but it will shake itself out and he will have nothing to do with your friend again. The sooner this happens the better; don't let her waste years of her life on this man.

A few I know of well

1 Me ex didn't leave I kicked him out. He'd told his now 2nd wife all the usual 'we don't sleep together, we've never really got on, I never really loved her, I can't leave just now because she's sick/has pnd/controls the money' none of this was true.

"There have been many, many threads on here involving married people who have little or no intimacy with each other, sometimes for years on end."

There are also many where when the wife discovers the affair and is shocked because nothing has changed, still having an active sex life etc.

He's also tried getting back with me several times including within a week of their engagement.

2 a relative was the om he was kept dangling for 15 years being fed excuses. Eventually he moved on. She then started another affair with someone else but is still with same husband. It's not just cheating men.

3 a friend of a friend attended the funeral of her lover under the mistaken impression that the wife knew about and turned a blind eye to the affair and that the wife also had taken lovers, that it was initially a love marriage but had become a marriage of convenience. Luckily she twigged the truth from other attendees before saying anything.

Not all married people stay with their spouse but I agree with the pps who said it depends on the nature of the affair. It seems if they're going to leave it tends to be in first 6 months certainly 1st year.

Have to say I don't think much of your friend either. Has she no morality/conscience of her own? She knows he's married so she knows she shouldn't be doing this!

Many years ago I knew a woman who was in a relationship with a married man. She was his long-term mistress. She remained single. She didn't have children. They snatched a few moments together whenever they could. He apparently said that when his children were grown up, he would leave his wife. The mistress is still single.

If he wanted to be with your friend he'd be with her. He doesn't.

Maybe one silver lining is that he's given her a deadline himself. When he doesn't leave in two years' time, she'll only be 29. A less bleak outlook is that she'll get bored before then / realise she deserves more than this, and dump him.

The best thing for her is to leave him.

The next best thing would be for her to waste another 2 years, realise he is never going to leave his wife, split and cut her losses age 29.

the worst thing for her would be for him to leave his wife and she gets him age 54, with all his baggage, probably not wanting kids, with existing adult children who will hate him and her, as he enters his declining years. Age 47 she will be with a 72 year old - and probably still banned from his family occasions.

She is a fool on more than one level in this relationship.

My dSIL had an affair with a married man - the NDN - went on for a decade then he and his family moved 200 miles away. He said he would get them settled then come back for her. He never did and he never left his wife.

She then embarked on another one with a guy she met online - he was married with children. The usual baloney about having to wait til the children were older etc. The affair rumbled on for a couple of years - she became increasingly anxious and unhappy - we all told her to dump him. I couldn't bear to hear about it - the whole thing was ridiculous and made me so cross.

Eventually he did leave his wife, but not for my DSIL but for a girl 20 yrs younger than all of them (him, my DSIS and his wife) a tiny blonde slip of a thing he met at his yoga class.

'Men don't leave. Oh but they do leave, they leave all the time! Every week there's a new thread where the H has gone off with OW. Of course not all men will leave but to say it doesn't happen is a complete fallacy.

They never leave! And if they do ..... what are you left with?

They still don't mentally leave

Some don't leave. Some do. MN is full of examples of both. And I'm another one who wouldn't stay with a man who told the OW she meant nothing. What an awful man. And he risked his marriage, lied cheated and caused pain for 'nothing'.

Well you only have to look at this relationship board to see that loads of men do in fact leave their wives!

You say your friend is lovely and kind? Well she doesn't sound it. She sounds like a selfish bitch who wants to destroy a family for tge sake of her own happiness. Yes the husband is a cunt but please don't see the OW as a victim. She has the power to do the right thing and walk away but she chooses not to.

"Apparently he says his wife and him have never got on"

Mine said that too, to his last OW. With the one before her, he described himself as a happily married man, but evidently discovered that didn't go down too well, and changed that bit of the story with the next one.

I never understood why OW would want to be with someone who says he married and had kids with someone he wasn't really keen on. Surely that makes you sound desperate for a partner? And on top of that, slagging off your last partner as a way to impress the next one? Surely not sexy?

Some men leave, some men don't. I can think of examples of both among people I know. I think that shows how many affairs there are.

The weirdest was a couple who worked together (headteacher and deputy) and were having an affair for years and years which was common knowledge. They used to all go on an annual couples holiday together in a big group of friends with everyone knowing about the affair apart from their partners.

Thinking about it I Know three head teachers who had affairs and they all left their wives.

Anecdotally everyone knows examples of men who have left their wives, but statistically it is unlikely.

This isn't about men who stayed, but I know 2 men who left.

The first, a friend of my brothers, had multiple affairs before he left his wife for a young slip of a girl 20 years younger than him. 12 months later she hadn't met his children and he would go back every Saturday to see the children, sleeping on the wife's sofa, returning Sunday afternoon. The OW was miserable, and then he upped and left her to go back to his wife.

The second, I suspect the man had checked out of the relationship before the affair started. The story the OW (one of my closest friends) got told is that he'd been sleeping on the sofa with no intimacy for over 2 years before the (emotional) affair started, but couldn't afford to leave and didn't want to be apart from the children. A couple of months after the EA started he did leave his wife and it evolved in to a full blown relationship. They're still together now, 15 years later, but she was pretty miserable for the first 10 years, sacrificed her happiness and financial security to support his children, who still treat her like dirt, and has missed the chance to have her own children. He's genuinely one of the nicest people I have ever met, and I have trouble associating him with his previous behaviour - but his guilt at leaving, his desire to always do the right thing, and an ex-wife who used his guilt to manipulate him made my friend miserable.

I guess what I am trying to say is, even if he leaves his wife it's no guarantee that happiness awaits.

I know someone who has been the ow for 20 years or more. Her husband died, his friend consoled her, the rest you can guess. He spends 4 nights a week at her house while "working away". His wife is none the wiser as far as I know. They are now in their 60's. Christ knows what they will do when he retires!

I had an affair with an older man - we were almost exactly the age of your friend and her bloke. I was single; he was not married but cohabiting and in a LTR which he said was loveless/sexless etc. Obviously looking back this was not the case and I'm not proud for having turned a blind eye at the time... but anyway. At no point did I ever think it would be anything other than a (very hot) roll in the hay, but he was always trying to convince me we were star-crossed lovers, he wanted to be with me etc. I don't believe he ever would have left his partner even if he did manage to draw me further into our relationship. I broke it off fairly early on although it was on/off for a while (we saw each other regularly through work, urgh) and he got very shirty when I permanently called it a day.

Good male friend of mine was together with a married woman for a year, she was trying to leave her dh apparently but after a year of practically cohabiting with my friend, she dumped him by text and went back to her husband...

As pp have pointed out it's not always the outcome but there you go, two more real life examples. Sounds like your friend is a case of you can lead a horse to water, though; only she can decide to leave and it sounds like she's well ensconced in la-la land for now. :(

Most of he examples on MN of husbands leaving their families are only when their affair is discovered and the wife kicks them out.

Mostly the men seem to want their cake and eat it.

I know of a man who had an affair had a child with the ow and then when child was in teens the man and his family moved away. OW and child are on their own, man did not take them with him nor does he appear to have remained in touch.

My FIL left MIL for OW, but MIL had effectively kicked him out by then as she had enough.

I have dropped a friend that was cheating.

It sickened me.

My friend was with her MM for over 30 years.

His DW was "dying" from the start so he couldn't leave her.

As years went on his DW and children were fully aware of her but they remained married and my friend the OW. He took her on holiday, spent all day with her nearly every weekend, weekday evenings, they were members together of the golf club.

My friend adored him.

When he died she wasn't informed and mutual friends were forbidden from giving her funeral details (though I doubt she'd have gone anyway). She was heartbroken and it was awful to witness.

I know 3 people including my own father, who did leave for the other woman one couple are together till this day 35 years later. But its rare.

My aunt was an OW (we are very low contact but having found out shortly before going LC I lost an enormous amount of respect for her).

She waited 7 years. And guess what! Yeah, he's still with his wife.