I am the OW and in love but am I being used.

[Toomanylipbalms]

I have got myself into a situation where I am the OW. He is married, lives up north and we see each other when he comes to Ldn for work about once a week. He says his marriage is more like two flatmates than husband and wife and that they are in separate bedrooms and not having sex. He has two kids under 12. He’s recently got a new job where he will be in London for a few months but then the contract is home based so not sure what will happen. He says it will make it easier to start the separation and not be so bad for the kids. Im not sure if he will actually do it, he says he is scared of losing me and scared I will lose patience with him. Is he having his cake and eating it? My sister is the only person who knows about him and she says he is as it’s unlikely he will be able to afford to get divorced and live down south since his kids are still young, surely he must know that?

I'm not sure which is sadder. The man who goes out spinning this shit to women about them being in unhappy sexless marriages or the woman who is prepared to enable someone to cheat on their wives or partners and not give a shit about the poor wife and kids just so they can get a fuck now and again (and always on the man's terms).

I mean, it's not like single available men are an endangered species. I'm one. And I genuinely was in a sexless relationship for four years. I didn't go out and cheat on my partner though. Not once. Never even entered my mind. I had respect for her and respect for myself.

Where's your respect for his wife, his kids and more importantly yourself, OP?

“I must put my happiness first and see if this is the relationship that will work for me”

If you think a good route to personal happiness is being the OW and hoping for an exclusive relationship with a man who cheats on his W, lies to you (his story about being “flatmates” will be a lie) and may be willing to abandon his young DC you are likely to be sorely mistaken!

Someone so confident in having an OW will very likely have cheated before. What a catch eh!

Your desire for a good, long term relationship and sadness about not having found one in your 20s/30s doesn’t justify behaving unethically, which you’ve been doing. But that aside, your choices are highly unlikely to lead to YOUR happiness.

I'm with Weezol and Priscilla on this one, btw - I don't have any feelings towards my ex's OW. She could have been anyone: he was out looking for women to chat up. She has been taken in, and if she does have children with him then she will find out what kind of a dad he is too.

My newly divorced Mum started an affair with a married man when I was 2. He made lots of promises to her about leaving his loveless marriage etc etc. And sure enough, he did come to my Mum - after his wife had died, 35 years later. She's had such a limited life, waiting for him.

Even if he does leave his wife and children for you You’d never be able to trust that in the future, he’s not cheating on you and then leaving you for the new other woman.

The London dating scene is horrible but this isn’t a solution. It’s not really real - sneaking around, not being able to meet friends and family.

Sorry, you are being used and you are worried about that? Can I remind you that there are children involved, why don't you worry about that instead!
Ok, the marriage would not have survived anyway...maybe. How can anybody be ok with playing a part in splitting up a family!
Op, yes you are being used, they probably are not living as 'flat mates' in fact they are probably having lots of sex! (Thats usually a line a cheater says)
He probably will not leave her for you!
Yes, you may feel hurt but that is better than the hurt the kids will go through.

Are you young as you come across as naive? He can divide his life up conveniently geographically and is giving you the "we're just friends not lovers" and "staying together for the kids" line. Yes you are being used and may wake up one day and wonder why you have wasted time and energy on someone who chooses to manipulate women for his own gratification. Work on your self esteem and ditch him for a real relationship rather than waiting for whatever morsels of attention it suits him to spare.

You’re an away day shag, a convenient place to park his penis while he’s in the big smoke. When he becomes bored or the shags become inconvenient, he’ll be off and the gamble you took on hooking up with a man whose prepared to lie and cheat to get what he wants, won’t have paid off.

He saw you coming and if you’re desperate enough to buy into the ‘separate bedrooms’, ‘we never have sex’, and ‘I’m staying for the kids’ holy trinity of bullshit, then it’s difficult to have much sympathy for someone so willing to trade in their self respect so easily.. I think deep down you know where this is going but your self respect has been damaged by the amount of bullshit you’ve been swallowing and you won’t walk away for fear of being exposed as just another woman who fell for the charms of a cheat.

So good luck in prioritising your happiness, even if you ‘win’ it will come at a huge cost, so even if you do ‘win’, you’ll also lose.

There’s no happy ever after here, just further damage to what little self respect you have left. You are a willing participant in this but you also have the power to walk away, not doing so, is a choice.

Oh and I am talking from experience...kind of! I was head over heels on love with a guy. I truly thought he was single. I had even been to his house - no sign of a woman at all! The lengths he went to to lie!
His Fiancée found out about me, the day I found out he was engaged. I instantly stopped things. To this day I hate myself for the hurt I unintentionally caused that lady, and their kids!
I see her about now, do you know what his actions have done to that poor woman? She is now mentally unwell, her poor kids have seen their mummy have a complete mental breakdown. She will never be the same! The day I found out i was the other woman I stopped it. She asked me so many questions. I was as honest as I could be to her, in the least horrible way I could!
I just cannot work out how a woman can be the OW and know about being the OW and be ok with it!
I hope he is using you, you kind of deserve it for being so self centred. I hope he gets his comeuppance too!

You're desperate for a relationship and he's playing the part so you'll be his London shag when he's away for work. It's perfect for him. He says what he has to in order to keep you available for him.

You have a fuck based arrangement which takes place in hotels. He has a life, a family and a home elsewhere that he will prioritise and keep. He will not give them up for you. No one with an ounce of intelligence or self preservation would.

Even if he did (he won't)...why the hell would you want a man that would turn his back on his family for a part time shag? Do you find that an attractive trait in a partner? A total lack of integrity? I know I bloody don't. If he'll do it with you, he'll do it to you...and on that one you may be certain.

Wake up and smell the hotel coffee.

Hmm. Well as previous posters have said it is possible for men to marry the OW and things all end up well (with shorter term repercussions). I know at least 2 couples who fulfill this criteria including one where they both had affairs and are still together 28 years later. So it is possible you are not being taken for a ride.

HOWEVER

Of the couples I know in the above scenario, when they recount their story, what shines through is the certainty, the absolute faith and trust they had in each other, so that they knew they would be together. There were no silly games, no gas lighting, most importantly - none of the dragging on for years and moving the date to leave continually further down the road. In effect their love for each other compelled them to act.

I have another friend who after 7 years of being OW and 'waiting' has been dumped after giving birth to his son. She has wasted 7 years of her life during which her mental, and emotional health suffered from the constant cycle of having hopes raised and dashed. Him dumping her so cruelly (because the pregnancy forced him to make a choice - so he chose to stay with the woman he 'couldn't stand and could no longer bear to sleep with') left her a nervous crying wreck on the floor, and now she's on anti-depressants. Since then she has found out he had a 2 year old child during their affair. A second child with the wife 'he was no longer sharing a bed with'.

I think you need to step away and think about the probabilities here which are not in your favour. Regardless of things turn out in the end you are, right now waiting on him and questioning your thinking and position already. The crazy cycle has been initiated.

You are also contributing to the demise of a marriage and causing considerable hurt to a stranger and his children who are innocent. It does not matter that you do not know them personally. It does not matter that his marriage is about to collapse. What is certain is that with you in the way, any way back for them as a couple, or mitigation, or intervention is pretty much being scuppered. And the prospect of an amicable divorce - which would spare the children some pain - is also less likely.

Do you want to be responsible in any way for that? Men only do this because we let them.

I know you love him, but love doesn't justify every action. Love and respect for yourself is as, if not more important. Only you can decide if continuing with this relationship will facilitate or impede the latter. My advice is step back with a view to detaching and moving on to something better.

"Like I say I do not like the situation, but I feel like I must put my happiness first and see if this is the relationship that will work for me."

You are deluded and you need to grow up.

OP is not young.
It bores me when posters justify adulterers and babble about things ‘not being black and white/nobody is perfect’ script. Fuck up. It’s perfectly black and white, if you choose to cheat on your spouse you’re a piece of shit. Break up and then go and bang strangers. It’s basic decency. No one here calls mistresses sluts or slags, their number of sexual partners is irrelevant, their contribution to destroying lives isn’t looked upon kindly and they tend not to believe they’re being made a fool of until their lover does the same to them, or ditches them for his wife.
Get an STD test OP.

Oh dear.
If you really believe everything he is telling you and what he is telling you is in fact the truth, then you won't lose anything at all by telling him that you won't be the OW anymore.
That you will give him 2 months to end his marriage and choose to be with you.
I would bet my bottom dollar he'll try to talk you around to maintain his London shag and nothing will change or....
He'll continue with his married life with his wife and children and you won't hear from him again - except when he's in London and wants a shag.
Please bend down, pick your self-respect up off of the floor and walk away from this.

What buttermuffin has said

He's lining you up as a regular shag while he has this contract in London. I would bet that he'll tell you during this time he's just going back to see the kids, and come the end of it, he and his wife will have miraculously 'decided to try again'.

🔝💯 I’m not saying he doesn’t like you somehow but his love for his children will be stronger than what you both have.

If he had wanted out then he would have divorced already. He is maybe dissatisfied with his wife but not so much so that he wants to leave her and his kids and split his assets.

Wise words I can attest to: What they do with you they will do to you.

I'm ashamed to be a woman,after reading some of the comments from other women here. It's like the middle east where you'd be stoned or worse.

FFS there is no need to talk to the poster like this. People fall in love with other people who are 'unavailable' all of the time and sometimes it works out. I know many couples who have left for someone else and where everyone is now happier all round.

You have no idea if she is being used or not.

OP I think because of the distance, geographically, this is a tough one.

If he really wants to leave his wife, I think you ought to tell him you will not see him again until he starts to separate formally. You need to think about how it could ever work - would you move north, would he move south and only see his kids at weekends? Could he afford to divorce? Talk to him and get some reality into it. I think HE needs the wake up call of what it means to pursue this with you.

He's a nasty piece of work who is lying to his wife and mother of his children and presumably to his actual kids too. He sounds vile.

But then, you do too. I wonder if that's why you've always been single

I'm reading your responses as a single woman in her 40's, with years of crappy relationship's behind me, I completely understand your feelings of loneliness and yearning to be in love and feel loved.

However I cannot fathom why you've decided to shackle yourself to an unavailable man. Hell would have to freeze over, I would definitely prefer to stay single.

Monday to Friday you don't see each other and I'm guessing you're not "allowed" to contact him. So it's radio silence and he'll send you the occasional text. How is that making you feel less lonely?

You're still a secret because he hasn't left his wife, so that means he's very careful how he touches you when you're out and about. How does it make you feel to be always looking over your shoulder and "being careful" when trying to be affectionate in public?

You can't go to functions organised by friends and family because of all the secrecy and sneaking around. So you still attend on your own or don't go. What happened last week over Xmas and New Year did he promise you that Xmas 2018 will be different because you'll be together? What will happen when Xmas 2018 rolls around and he's still saying I can't leave yet?? I also imagine that his words didn't help to quell the loneliness that you felt last week.

Please wake up OP and send him away, tell him to come and find you when he's single.

In the meantime you're in London and there are LOADS of single men in your area. I admit there are a few idiots out there, but I would strongly encourage you to jump back into OLD and widening your search parameters to include dating younger men.

Please give yourself a chance at true and honest happiness instead of settling for your current existence of empty promises, loneliness and sneaking around.

Good luck

I'm ashamed to be a woman,after reading some of the comments from other women here. It's like the middle east where you'd be stoned or worse.

Oh don't be so OTT.

If you want to see the damage affairs do then read the thread that is linked further up.

I know many couples who have left for someone else and where everyone is now happier all round.

I know of many that aren't. I know of some that are but it took numerous years to get to that point.

My sympathy is for the DW and DC who have no idea that he is shagging the OP, staying at hotels with her.

I'm sure his employers would like to know about that too.

So even in the very best case scenario he's going to live with you during the week and go back at weekends to see his children?

So even in a full time committed relationship he's only going to see you after work during the week - every weekend you will be alone.

Stop being a mug. Your sister obviously has realiaed what he is up to.

Block his number on every single app you have. He has no intension of leaving his wife itherwise he would have done so by now if he had was serious about this.

He has zero respect for you or his wife who he is cheating on. What a weak man he is.

Just end it now.no good will come of it

Polly said People fall in love with other people who are 'unavailable' all of the time

Possibly. But we all have CHOICES.

If you fancy someone and know from the outset they are married or partnered, you are making a CHOICE to enable them to cheat and to be the OW or OM. At that point, you aren't "in love" and can easily choose to walk away.

If you are seeing someone, fall in love, and then discover they are married or partnered because they've been lying to you all that time, you can then make the CHOICE to be the OW or OM or to walk away. It may be a more difficult choice because you have got to the "in love" stage but it's still a choice.