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.

What colour - are you with anyone else now and how long did it take you to move on? Do you still this of this man as someone special, looking back?

Your situation sounds identical to my friends!!!

Some men, and women, are chronic philanderers and will always have roving eyes looking for excitement while some genuinely fall in love and take action. I can't imagine a man who's happy to sneak around for more than a year is likely to deliver on a single promise to his mistress, but there are always exceptions.

I talk from experience as a work colleague and I had an emotional affair. We were both in happy-ish marriages and realised that our work friendship was becoming more than it should. It wasn't physical, there was no telling lies or indulging in nights or weekends away, but we realised that we were becoming emotionally reliant on each other in a way we shouldn't. Within an incredibly short space of time, he left his wife because he knew he had feelings for me that weren't going to go away and he couldn't stay married knowing he felt that way. To try and save my marriage, I left my job and went no contact with him. .

We're now married, and have been for 10 years, so yes, people can and will leave their marriages, and not always after a passionate affair. We both wish we'd met as single people, but we weren't, and we've had to make peace with that.

A relative of mine had an affair with a married man back in the early 1920's. She was single - got pregnant, and he refused to have any more to do with her (being a single mother was a HUGE deal back then). To her credit she kept the baby and brought it up alone.

But even knowing it was social death for her, plus her family would kick her out and leave her with no money (no DSS in those days), her married man, who had promised faithfully (ha!) he would leave his wife, hung her out to dry.

I'd love to know who he was...

What colour - are you with anyone else now and how long did it take you to move on? Do you still this of this man as someone special, looking back?

Your situation sounds identical to my friends!!!

I thought the same! She will one day look back with regret and won't want to talk about it because she will wish she had acted differently. You can't tell her that, though!

I have children with someone else now, but we're talking well over a decade later. Well over 15 years actually, time just keeps flying by - it'll soon be 20 years ago. The person I'm with is very different but we're not all that close and I can't even describe him as my best friend (my sibling and work friends are probably more in tune with me) which saddens me but it seems to suit him. No one is really close to him, it seems that's how it's always been.

Initially I had declared my intention to be single forever, the idea of being married again scared the life out of me. I remember going to weddings thinking 'you fools, why on earth would you want to?'! I saw it as them heaping a whole lot of hurt on themselves, partly because of my ExH and partly because of my OW experience. But over the years people change, and I began to mellow a bit again.

I had my first relationship about 18 months later, though I knew he wasn't the one. He was away a lot and so we trundled on for years, off and on, and then eventually I dreamt we were getting married and I woke in a cold sweat. A panic, actually! I knew I couldn't stay with him if I felt that way about him, and so I ended it. Within a month I'd met someone else, having vowed that was me done with men, and I was reluctant to get involved with anyone else so soon in case it was rebound. However, I felt instantly comfortable and so chanced it, and although we aren't close like I look for in a relationship (he doesn't bother to know who I really am, so guesses wrong all the time), I stayed with him and had children with him.

As to whether I look back on the other man fondly, I have mixed feelings. The trouble is, when I love, it's honestly forever. When I had an abusive relationship he wasn't always angry and was sometimes amazing to be with. I knew I had to leave him and I hated his anger but I loved his good parts and always will. It's the same with this older married man. I hate that I felt he pushed me into something more than I was comfortable with, and I dislike his ease with his unfaithfulness, and of his taking advantage of me the way he did, but I also loved his humour, his wisdom and consideration, his emotional intelligence. So I think of him with deepest regret but also gratitude for the good within him, the good that I needed at that time. I did love him and out of love for him I now wish him the best, which involves his wife, so I wish them both the best, I'd get makes sense. I suppose while my love is real I don't know if it's based on a lie, as I don't know how much of him was real and how much was an illusion. So I try not to think of it at all, because there's no good that could come of those memories. They serve to cause guilt and regret, and it's too late to change anything so it's not healthy to dwell on it.

WhatColour, when I say I did everything for our home and our family (I work part-time) I am really not exaggerating. All hour organising, DIY, finances, dealt with his family, all things children. I'm not kidding when I say he just changed a few lightbulbs I couldn't reach and drove children places on the weekend. I rolled over on pretty much everything to make his life easier. I absolutely lost sight of who I actually was and what I wanted. And surprise, surprise, it turns out that we as people value what we have invested in. I let him have basically no investment in the family or our relationship. I made his life so easy he just drifted right off from it, because I wasn't demanding his participation. It's kind of hard to explain, but so clear to me now. We never fought, but that is only an illusion of getting along, because clearly no one can agree on everything all the time. And then finally I just felt like he didn't see me anymore.

That's why when I found out I just had the strongest sense that he would never understand anything without feeling every last consequence of his actions. I kicked him out that day, cut off contact unrelated to DCs and turned into ice lady (it wasn't an act, I could barely look at him). And you know what? He had to look at me, realised what he lost and everything I (stupidly) did for him and when that realisation came you have never seen someone just shatter and shrink in front of me like he did. When he moved beyond simple shame to an actual realisation of how much he had hurt me and our family, then I thought we might have something to still talk about. And, slowly, there was.

Now we fight more! For us, and it might sound strange, but we are closer and more real after an argument than we were before. I have set boundaries, demand more of him, both in time and effort and pull him up on things I let slide before (because I thought he had so much work pressure, was depressed, etc. - bollocks). I demand that what I want has equal weight.

My Dad left my Mum for younger woman (who knowingly carried out affair with him). All went swimmingly and they had a couple of DC, until he left her for - you guessed it - a younger women.

Oh to live your life as a classic stereotype - its what dreams are made of.

*dontknowwhatcomesnext thanks for that. I think looking back, the wife probably did everything for him too. Ironically I've fallen into that trap myself before, and I struggle to get out of that kind of relationship because I keep hoping that if I keep giving he will eventually see it and want to reciprocate. The only difference is that I won't leave him over it because of the children, and I think, although I haven't said it, he knows that. I half expect him to have an affair himself actually, partly because I've come to expect that of men, and partly because I know I deserve it.

WhatColourIsBest* do you think though that one of the reasons why you could wrelish in the happiness you felt was because you knew deep down that actually this was the relationship you had and that he never actually intended to leave his wife?

I knew someone who was the OM, to a woman who was very much like some of the men described here (yes, women do it as well,) she had pretty much had affairs for the duration of her relationship, and when she got involved with this guy a friend asked him what was going to happen if she left her partner to be with him. And his response was "she'll never do that." And despite that he stayed with her, with hopes of them being together.

Obviously they never were, and she moved on, but she did in fact leave her partner for the next man she became involved with, decided this one was actually the one planned their new life together, quit her job, moved to where he lived (abroad) and the day she turned up to start their new life together it turned out that he'd had no intentions of having a relationship with her and had in fact been sleeping around for the duration of their relationship. So she had in fact become the victim of the kind of person she was.

Last I heard she was single and living alone.

I know someone who was cheating on his GF with someone else, went on holiday with the OW, telling GF it was a work event in Belgium but he went on an all inclusive sunny holiday to Spain. He went on to commit fully to his GF by marrying her. OW was shocked, thinking he'd leave the GF. Just goes to show, even without the commitment of marriage cheaters rarely want to stay with the other person.

WhatColourIsBest do you think though that one of the reasons why you could wrelish in the happiness you felt was because you knew deep down that actually this was the relationship you had and that he never actually intended to leave his wife?

If I am understanding your question properly, you want to know if the reason the relationship was attractive to me was that I knew it wasn't going to ever get serious or permanent? If that's not your question please give it to me again, but if it is your question then the answer is not at all. It began as a friendship that I got closer and closer to another human. To me he could have been female just as easily. I saw him as more of an adult than me, and looked up to him. It wasn't an equal relationship that way. He probably would've argued that it was equal at the time because he seems to relish in the frequency and intensity of the contact with me. It didn't happen overnight and grew - only with him it became a physical want whereas I more or less jogged along with that because I didn't want to lose the closeness.

I remember going to relate at the time, by myself, to try and train myself into having more healthy relationships. The counsellor told me she got the impression I've got every ounce of my value and importance from him, and she suggested I view them separately from him. She said if he leaves, I still have as much value and importance, and just because he was building me up that way, doesn't mean if he goes it also goes, If that makes sense.

I would have been so pleased had he been free and we had worked out, although looking back we probably wouldn't have had the life we dreamt of. No one really ever does, do they? I never have and I still don't have. I've got a lot to be grateful for in life but I'm more than halfway past my three score years and ten, and I've yet to find the perfect love story!

If I'd have known at the start that I'd lose him I'd have cut ties right there and then. But I didn't see how I could live without him and didn't want to. I definitely wasn't in it for the fact we would end up parting, the whole reason I compromised my integrity was in effort to keep him. And I suppose if I had wanted to have him as a non-committing bit on the side, I wouldn't have stopped contacting him either.

OP you'll see lots of views on this subject.

I've seen all scenarios, serial cheaters, those who fell in love and did marry the OW/OM, those who cheated but were being abused so the OW/OM were a catalyst to go and those who have an affair and never leave.

Nothing is black and white so you can't predict the outcome for your friend on anecdotal evidence.

What's important here is what your friend thinks her future looks like with the older dude. There are so many implications and what ifs. Does she really want this uncertainty in her life. Does she really want to be tied into all those risky outcomes whatever his decision is.

I wonder what her dreams for her life were? I doubt it was this.

My nan has been the OW for 30 years(!!!!). She has put off relationships for this man. She still waits for their one day a fortnight together. It's very sad.

A relative of a relative started an affair with a married man back in the 1940s. He would visit her several times a week, even though he eventually moved quite a distance away, and the visits dropped to only once or twice weekly.
She never married, never had an kids, although she did have a very high-flying career, which was fairly unusual in those days.
This affair went on for decades, through their retirements, until he found the travelling back and forth too tiring. At this point he persuaded her to move closer to him, so she sold her London house and moved to a little bungalow in his village, literally just around the corner from the house he still shared with his wife.
He helped himself to the profit she made on the house move, as well as selling most of her valuable possessions.
Now in their 80's, she became frail and forgetful, so he took to locking her in her house but still visiting once or twice a day.
Then he had a stroke and was taken to hospital, and it was a couple of days before she was found, hungry and frightened.
The last I heard (and this was only a year ago) she was in a care home, suffering from dementia. As was his wife. The same care home. Neither of them knowing anything about the other.
It would be funny if it wasn't so tragic.

upaladder Just sheer madness. that has got to be material for a book somewhere.

One of DW's friend has been having an affair with a man for 14 years.
He has gone through 2 marriages.
1st marriage he was cheating with another woman, not DW's friend.
2nd marriage the wife discovered the affair and left him.
He's now shacking up with a different woman but still sleeping with DW's friend.
She's now approaching 40, has no family and is slowly turning into a bitter woman.

I was the OW years ago, he was a work colleague who I worked closely. He told me he had feelings for me I was totally shocked, we'd never flirted, I thought he was very happy with his wife.

About 3 months later I suddenly felt intensely interested in him, I didn't have to encourage him much and we had a very brief affair. My best friend was so shocked with me as it was so out of character.

I was incredibly lucky, I didn't realise it at the time but I'd been behaving strangely for weeks (started the affair, bought a new car, stopped sleeping for more than 2 hours a night, it didn't seem to matter as I felt incredible) My best friend told my husband what was going on and he took me to my doctor where I was sectioned under the mental health act. That was when I got my diagnosis of bipolar.

Obviously OM dropped me like a hot potato when he heard I was sectioned, I didn't hear from him again and I didn't go back to the same job. I'm mortified that I even went there, I know I was partly responsible but when my illness seemed so obvious to everyone else why did he exploit that?

He and his wife are still together, as are myself and my DH. I feel so terrible for hurting my DH and OMs wife. I've thought about contacting her and telling her how sorry I am but I don't think she'd believe me and I wouldn't want to reopen old wounds for her.

I've probably outed myself here but I guess my point is even when he says you're his "soulmate" and he wants to leave above with you he never ever will. And if you're honest with yourself why would you want someone who can lie and deceive like that?

I am really open with my DH now about work colleagues etc, I worry if I relapse then I would be vulnerable to another affair. (Have relapsed once 3 years ago but didn't have an affair)

I remember meeting my dads mistress (or one of). I didnt know who she was at the time only that for a random work colleague we were popping in to see she had gone to a LOT of effort. She'd got all our favourite foods and seemed desperate to make a good impression. Looking back I realise she must have thought she was about to become our step mum. My parents were just together for our sake but I dont believe he ever seriously intended to leave for this woman. My step mum was someone he met after mum eventually threw him out.

DP's Dad left his DM for another woman when he was about ten. He remembers going to visit his dad at the OW's house once and him and his little brother being right wee terrors the whole time. Then a few weeks later his DF turned back up at the house telling his DM he wanted her back. He says he remembers his mum hanging out of the window of their £500,000 detached house (adding that in for the DM should they decide to rob this thread for copy) saying "it's not me you want, it's the boys!". She took him back anyway. Surprising as she's a real ball buster, but she's pragmatic too. It took a long, long time for DP to forgive his dad for that. He's not a bad man, and I find it hard to reconcile that story with the man I know now.

I have some sympathy with the women here- it's usually a certain type of person, someone with low self esteem, gullible, little or no confidence. Every time he says "I can't stop thinking about you" or sneaks away to snatch an hour with them it must feel intoxicating to someone who doesn't value themselves. That sort of thing can drive sensible people mad, and nothing anyone else can say will snap them out of it. They have to come to the realisation that, actually, this is a pile of balls and he's a friggin drain on their own. The only way that process can be sped up is for the OW/OM to start investing time and effort in themselves and realise they're worth more than being someone else's side piece. Logic does not apply in these situations unfortunately.

I was the OW when I was 31 and it lasted for over a year. He had married and had children quite young and I imagine had a case of the restless 'what ifs'
I was single and had shitty self confidence issues. We were very much in love but he always said that he wouldn't leave because of the children (who were 4 and 18mo at the time). He was very honest with me - he and his wife had a full sex life but he didn't 'love' her.

God knows why I swallowed that bollocks but hey. I ended it a couple of times and it staggered on till his wife found out. He made the decision to stay and she took him back.

We remained in contact for a while and even picked it up again for a couple of months but then I ended it because what was the point?

We are still in touch now 15 years later -strictly platonic- and have made a peace of sorts over the years. He has carried on having affairs and is still with his wife - the kids are grown up and secure and happy.

I'm not proud of being the OW at all and learned from those experiences. However I really think I dodged a bullet in the long run.

Ladyofthecrayon, how did the wife find out? Did you move on/are you with someone else now?

My parents. On more than one occasion. First time was brushed under the carpet and I only found out years later. The second one was a big blow out, everyone knew. He did leave temporarily and moved in with the other woman for a month or so. Then he came back. This was years ago now and he and my mum have rebuilt their relationship almost from scratch but it has caused horrible problems.

The wife did a classic " I know something's wrong" and snooped on his email, which prompted the showdown. Looking back I think thank God she did, as we could have dragged that situation out indefinitely.

I've absolutely moved on, learned my lesson, never cheated again and have been happily with my current partner for nine years.

The OM is actually a lovely, funny, educated, intelligent man who adores his kids. While we don't see each other we email and text occasionally about common interests but I'd be happy for my partner to read them as they're usually boring stuff about current exhibitions or books.

In my teens, we had a neighbour who spent every christmas alone, while her lover spent the holidays with his wife and kids. He always promised he would leave his wife, but it was never the right time and he came up with the endless excuses to delay it.

The neighbour lady lived a very lonely unfulfilled life, always waiting for something that would never happen. Dragging out an affair like this is way for men to have their cake and eat it.

My dad.

He told my mum when he came clean to her it was when OW started complaining that she would get the house and the children he fully realised the shitness of it all. (My mum had always been very loyal and stayed at home looking after 3 kids while he was always away)

Twat though

I had an affair with an older martied colleague. His marriage was empty of love. I told him to choose after his vacation and he chose to stay with his wife because he liked the family life with the kids, their joint finances and wasn't that unhappy with her that he wanted to leave.

I also had a relationship with a guy where I found out that I was the OW. He was going to break up with her, but then ewxcuses that she was sick now and he had to wait blahblahblah the obvious stuff. I dumped him then.

It's no use waiting around. He won't leave or he would have done that already. Your friend won't listen though because she is blinded by love and not thinking rationally.