did your marriage begin life as an affair?

[thinkingandsad]

Yes of course I have changed my name for this.

That's it really. Were you married to someone else when you met your current partner and were they married too?

Has it worked out and would you do it again?

How did you go through the process of getting together and breaking up your families?

DSRplus8 - go girl!

I have dealt with most of my guilt issues
FULL STOP
Yes, he is torn. I think it's a case of figuring out 'just how unhappy am I?'.
These are big issues and big emotions and BIG changes.
This guy is 41, he has no children.
BIG change.
This guy is pretty OK financially, big home, nice car, holidays.
ALL WILL BE GONE.
Yes, I know you're all going 'pah, materialistic bullshit' Newsflash:
It's not, it's lifestyle, what we know, and as much as we all like to think we are better than that: truth is most of us are not.
And NO, love does not conquer all and honestly, it isn't always enough.

So glad someone threw the cunt word out there!
ROFL
I loved my husband. Allas, he was and forever more will be, a cunt.
I'm trying hard to be realistic, the sad thing is it's the fear that keeps tripping me up.
I keep expecting him not to turn up or to cancel on me or just to stop talking to me and so far, he has not. In fact, he never has.
He is sad that I have so little faith lol.

I wonder if he's going through the motions, the 'two week' thing. He said he owed it to her to give it some thought...
As he said 'I have a safe and loving home'
The question is: Is that enough...?

Please excuse me, I tend to just spill my guts out on here.

spill away, that is the great thing about mumsnet.

there you go then:
He's going home. He's not ready to walk away from his marriage.
They are going to do do counseling and are moving house and buying a cat (or two).
They are moving to where all her family are. He says it is better, this way she will have a support network if things don't work out between them
6 months.
Doesn't want to stop seeing me, doesn't know how to stop. Doesn't know what to do.
Says he's made a decision and still isn't happy becuase it means not having me in his life and he can't handle that
Then he cried, blah blah blah.
The discussion went on all weekend, he asked me not to give up on 'us' just yet. Said he didn't honestly believe that the change of scenery and counseling would change anything but he had to try.
Will finish this later...

Yes, but a brief affair as we both knew we wanted to be together soon after spending time together. Now 7 years down the line and married and no trust issues. The divorces and sorting out things with the kids took time but I have no regrets, sometimes wish I'd met him sooner, but then I wouldn't have my kids. Both our exes now in long term relationships with people who love them in a way we never could.
Affairs don't happen out tof the blue, we had both been unhappy for a long time before meeting each other. Counselling can't solve everything, some relationships just don't last forever, and I see no point staying with someone because our society tends to prize the length of a marriage over its quality.

2rebecca:

He says that is alot of it. What people will think and how they will accept things.
He feels he has to try but just doesn't know how to walk away from me.
I wish I had more faith. My heart is breaking, I want so badly to to trust in him.

Do I wait?

I mentioned the old cliche 'I love you, I will leave etc'. He understood my feelings, he talks in the present as though we are already together and I'm so frightened that I'm being manipulated or played or 'let down gently'.

I have had to sit down and take a good hard look at myself and my issues and my life and it hasn't been easy. I had to open up more than I wanted to with him and now he has turned around and gone home. I am so so scared that he's going to shit on me.
not sure if that is more of a reflection on my insecurities than our relationship
HOWEVER
It's not ideal is it now??

Please, thoughts and opinions wholeheartedly welcomed.
I just feel sick and tired and kinda numb and scared as hell.

OLD THREAD revival!
Looking through old threads, wondering how things turned out for those on this thread, and if anyone has anything to add to the original question

'the children can be happier afterwards... often their lives become more interesting and their parents more involved with them after divorce.'

Mmmm, I'm afraid I am with Curiouscat on this one. How can an 'interesting' life and two lots of stockings at Christmas possibly be a good trade in for parents together?

Not being judgey here, I know shit happens, but I don't like hearing the justification of it being necessarily always better for the children.

So glad thread has been bumped. I cannot believe this is me saying this but I have been having an affair all year. I have been with my dh since I was 15, thats nearly 30 years and always thought we were ok. He works away regularly so I spend a lot of time on my own. We have 2 ds 14 and 16 and I have practically bought them up on my own.
He is ok with them but i not exactly a hands on dad.
He absolutely dotes on me says I am his life but he can also be argumentative and quite smothering sometimes. I always thought I loved him and have never looked at another man in all of these years, but have met someone else and I am so in love with him, he with me.
We haven't had full sex just can't do it while I am with dh. OM is also in a 20yr relationship children grown but it has been a rocky one and he is leaving her . He has said that he will leave and be on his own to show his commitment to me.
If it wasnt for the kids I would give up everything I have and be with him tomorrow, but how on earth do I tell dh. Though I am not a very good wife and mother at the moment am in a different world am so scared of doing anything. The ds have a lovely house all they could want. How do I tell dh to leave when he has done nothing really wrong, so if i leave, how do I make the ds accept om and do you just move in together. Its just the logistics and the damage to the kids that is stopping me and the sadness of putting these 30 years behind me.
He is in the same situation as me, we are both in turmoil, both with our partners so young and it is like we have fond this new grown up love. I am having counselling, have lost a stone in weight and am in such a mess. Cannot see how I coud stay with dh after having such strong feelings for someone else.

amy64,
A year is a long time to feel the way you do about om.
This must be torture for you.
Does your dh suspect anything?

People can and do leave their okayish marriages for others.

I spent a weekend last month with just such a couple.
They had an affair for 9 years! She was single, he married for 25 years at the time of leaving.

His children were 18 , 19, and 21 when he left the first time. His older daughter told him if he did not come back to her mum she would disown him.His wife was distraught . He went back to his wife - for a week, before deciding finally he did not want to be without his lover.

They have been married for ten years and are blissfully happy and in love still.

One daughter did indeed disown him, for about 6 years which was a source of great heartache, but they are all now reunited and have a great relationship with his grown up children, and now grandchildren too. They both get on well with his ex wife too.

I hope others will come along to give you more advice in what is a heartbreaking situation for you all

"we will never leave frustrations or small disagreements to fester as we did in our marriages where we 'put up' with things (nothing huge but still points important to us) for years, just because we thought we could put them aside, because we told ourselves they weren't that important in the big scheme of things, 'nobody is perfect' etc.... Years go by, and you talk less and less about the things that are important, because you feel you are not getting anywhere with it, and at some point you realize you have grown into 2 completely different people with very little in common"

Ouch...

(((hugs))) Amy64
I have no idea what to say
But when you have worked it out
Let me know how ?

BUMP

thanks everybody, yes dh did suspect but i have manage to assure him all is ok but that is even worse. I still love him but not like I love om. Once om gets his own place we take it from there, thats all I can say. Its a horrible situation, the guilt eats away at you.

It sounds like you know what you want /have to do, but just don't know how to go about it.
I wish you lots of love and luck

Thanks, it makes me feel better when you say people leave their okayish marriages for others. I would just go for it, but I am so scared the kids would hate me, scared it would affect their school and I know dh wouldnt leave here, so I would have to uproot them from their family home, just because of me.
If I don't in a few years they will be leading their own lives, I will be stuck here thinking why didn't I do it. Ds1 one leaves school this May, ds 2 the year after. Am gutted I feel like this.

i was single, much younger, he was married. we met as he is a drummer and i am a singer and he joined my band......he was very unhappily married, had wanted to leave for years, didnt love his ex wife anymore, she was controlling, nasty to him, they never had sex, she put him down all the time etc etc etc i could go on, and yeah yeah i know it ALL sounds a total cliche....but its true.

HOWEVER we didnt get properly together until he had actually left her.

even this long afterwards, i regularly get hateful abuse from his ex and her family threatening him and calling me terrible names etc.
also his teenage DD with his ex hates him due to his ex poisoning her against him, hates me, refuses to see him (hasn't seen him for a year) and certainly doesn't meet her new half sister. all we can hope is that one day she comes round.

so it is NOT easy.

BUT we couldn't be happier. we have now been together 2 1/2 years, are engaged and have a beautiful baby daughter. we are head over heels in love, neither of us have felt like this about anyone before, he is my best friend and an amazing dad to our daughter and also my little boy from a previous relationship.

so it is WORTH all the shit we have been through for what we have. sounds cheesy i know but it is true.

I am glad, Mummee, that you feel your relationship is worth what you went through. I just wonder whether you feel it is worth the 'shit' as you put it, that your relationship has put your OHs family, particularly his DD, through?

Because whether you like it or not, you only have his word about what happened during his marriage and if it was so bad, I just wonder why he stayed as long as he did.

FWIW, my parents separated when I was about 11 and even after all these years, I still find it hard to deal with, because whatever you say, as a child, it does feel like its you who is the cause of your parents break up and it does hurt to lose your dad. Even though My dad and I managed to continue to have a good relationship right up to when he died, I can't help the fact that I d8 resent the things my half-sibling had that I didn't. Not material things, but time. I saw my dad a few times a a year. It wasn't my dad who came to see school productions> My dad wasn't there the day I opened my o level results. He wasn't there to share the 'dad/daughter' moments that so many of my friends had with their fathers. he wasn't even there to shout at me when I stayed out beyond curfew time. I never went on holiday with my Dad, never, after the age of 11, woke up with him their on Christmas morning. So many things and times when a daughter wants her dad there and he wasn't. so yes, I do resent my half -sibling because they had all those moments in their life. I don't blame them, it wasn't their doing, but I do resent the fact that what they regard as normal, I never had the chance to have.

Don't lay all the blame for how your OPs DD feels about him at his EXWs door. Like it or not, your partner bears at least half the blame because he did leave his family, including his DD, to be with another woman. It doesn't matter how long you waited to 'get together', the fact that you were on the scene before he left is probably enough in her mind to regard you as at least part of the cause for his leaving.

i feel sorry for his daughter, of course its a horrible thing if your parents split up but i tell you what - i do not give A FLYING FUCK FIG about his wife - maybe if she hadn't treated him like shit for most of the time they were together he wouldn't have fallen out of love with her and left!!! and we would have never have got together!!!

he stayed as long as he did because he loves his daughter so much, she was the only good thing in his life and he was scared if he left he would lose her. And now he has, but it was either that or stay with someone he didn't love and have a miserable existence and miss out on the chance of real love just so as not to upset anyone??

i do believe what he tells me about how things were with her because if they were good or even bearable THEN HE WOULDN'T HAVE WANTED TO LEAVE WOULD HE!!!!!!!?????

marriages split up all them time (1 in 3 i believe??) unfortunately so i am sorry to hear about your experiences but you must know that if your dad was happy he would not have left???

and i tell you what else - it PISSES me off when people talk about people "leaving their kids" when a marriage / relationship breaks down - the person being "left" is the husband / wife!! Just because in most cases the wife gets to "keep" the kids, I am sure given the choice most decent men would take the kids, I know mine would have done anything to take his daughter when he left. but the way things are is that the kids generally stay with the mum.

havent read the whole thread - but just wanted to reply to mummee.

I am sure you do believe he was unhappy for years and only stayed for his daughter - the guilt would probably be unbearable if you thought anything else.

And as for the wife 'keeping' the dc - well surely better to be with a loving parent than one who lies to their mother (because i bet you he never told her he was not happy). And the reason? Because it would have meant an end to his 'easy' life - instead he would rather lead his wife on for his own selfish reasons. In these cases the wife should absolutley keep the children as far away as possible from such liars.

What i believe is more often the case is that when something 'different' comes along and is 'offered' it makes us question our relationship and sometimes that is a hard decision to make and so an affair starts - it 'usually' does not mean there have been years of unhappiness or that there is even at the time.

"I am sure you do believe he was unhappy for years and only stayed for his daughter - the guilt would probably be unbearable if you thought anything else.......the case is that when something 'different' comes along and is 'offered' it makes us question our relationship and sometimes that is a hard decision to make and so an affair starts - it 'usually' does not mean there have been years of unhappiness or that there is even at the time."

Happymum - i do agree that if he was unhappy for so long, he should have left before he did but when you are in a long term relationship, particularly with children and lots of financial commitments, it is a very big, scary thing to leave. especially if your a man and you know your partner will get to keep the kids.

but if someone is happy in a relationship and loves their partner - they don't leave!! end of!!! if brad pitt turned up at my door asking me out (lol) i would not be interested because i love my fiancee!! silly analogy i know but you know what i mean.

Yes i agree - he may not have been happy.

My h had an affair and i too have in the past got very close - so i do know it from both sides.

Having done a lot of research too i now truly do believe that men and woman do think very differently.

I did not have a sexual affair because for me that would have meant i would have to admit my marriage was not good - however it was ok and i did not want to take that step.
However i do believe many people (and i think more men think like this) can seperate the 2 relationships and especially if it is just sex.

I too like you would find it difficult to accept that a man could want me and his wife and the only way i could justify that would be to assume he thinks the same as me. iyswim.

I am not judging you and it sounds as if you you have found a happy relationship - but you seem to assume that people have affairs because their marriage is not perfect, and I just do not believe that is the case.

All the men i know who have had affairs have not wanted to leave their marriage (even thought they tell the ow they do). They have just wanted to have it all. In fact those that got 'caught' have nearly always regretted it.

my fiancee did not "get caught" he LEFT his wife. because HE wanted to, I never pressured him in any way, I left the ball in his court.

and my fiancee did not "want it all" - what he wanted was to leave his wife, be with me, and finally have a happy life. the "affair bit" (ie him seeing me behind her back) of our relationship lasted barely a month before he left her.

i understand that for people that have had their partners have affairs it may be hard and painful to accept that men have affairs / leave their wives because they are not happy and don't love their partners anymore. Sorry, while i am not suggesting that a couple cannot save their relationship after an affair, i am very sure that the majority of men who do are NOT happy, whether they leave for OW or stay with the wife. my parents have been together 30 years and although theyve had their problems neither has ever cheated or left the other. that to me is a happy marriage - one where no one strays or leaves.

oh and our relationship did not become physical until after he had left his wife. so it wasn't "just sex" for either of us, i wasnt giving him any LOL!!! it was far more than that; it was us falling in love like neither of us ever had before, pure and (not so) simple.

and for the record my fiancee told me and all our friends he was unhappily married a long time before anything happened between us.

i have now read this whole thread and i am glad a lot of posters who started their relationships through infidelity have gone on to have lasting, happy relationships. because quite honestly i am sick of hearing negative doom mongering about how these things never work from all the dumped, bitter ex wives.

You really dont need to justify anything to me - but i would also add that he did string his wife along while he was unhappy - and that is unfair. Affair or not he 'allowed' his wife to carry on and build a life that she thought she would have with him. And that is very unfair imo, worse than having sex with another woman in fact.

I expect they made lots of plans for what the future would be like for them and their family.

Like i said previously i do sometimes think that affairs can make people see that there life is not perfect. (but then whos is?).

But as i also said previously - i am glad you are happy and that is not from a bitter ex wife.

What i believe is more often the case is that when something 'different' comes along and is 'offered' it makes us question our relationship and sometimes that is a hard decision to make and so an affair starts - it 'usually' does not mean there have been years of unhappiness or that there is even at the time.
That Happywoman is me exactly. Thought I was ok quite happy and then om comes along and have never had feelings like it or he for me. What I do about it I do not yet know. I know what I would do if not for the ds. ifes too short but we will see.

mummee , you win the "responding to the original question " award

I wholeheartedly agree with the last paragraph of your last posting.