Genuine question - non goady, pls don't shoot me

[namechanger2436]

So,

Woman is married, starts an affair with married man (instigated by man if that makes a difference). Kids involved (primary school age) both sides. Both marriages 'unhappy' and both couples together largely for the sake of the kids (100% this is the case for the woman).

Woman truly and utterly believes that she could (and possibly will) one day be with the married man and be blissfully happy. Seriously, the connection is insane, sounds all bollocky and la la land but she honestly believes this. Woman is well educated and generally sits on the right side of being rational/real.

Does the 'fairytale' ever happen? Will he leave wife? Will they end up together? Does it ever work out?

I'm the woman, obvs. I can't imagine my future/rest of my life not involving this man. I'm a walking cliche but I believe he's 'the one' and I have never felt this about my dh.

I'm approaching 40, as is he.

Slowly going insane.

Bracing myself for an understandable onslaught of hate, but is there anyone out there who things worked out for?

Everything is possible, if only we could read in our future. But we can't, so we have to make decisions based on risks and likelihood. Sometimes it's the best decision we've ever made, sometimes it's one we live to regret forever.

Nobody, absolutely nobody can tell you what the outcome will be. That why not getting in the situation in the first place is often best because making the decision is the hardest thing to do.

One thing is sure, whatever decision you do end up making, you need to accept living with the consequences even if these hurt.

Woman should leave husband and deal with fall out.
Other Man should leave wife, deal with fall out.
Each should consider whether leaving spouse would make them happy, before deciding whether to carry on with other.

Then woman and man can make new life together - always wondering if the other could cheat on them as they did themselves...

I wopuld not be with a person if they cheated - unhappy relationship or not. End things with current partner before anything happens.

In my experience, married women who have affairs are desperately unhappy and quite emotionally vulnerable, and they are seeking out an emotional connection with another man.

On the other hand, married men who have affairs are generally looking for a shag on the side, and can easily compartmentalise this from the (often good) relationship they have with their wife. They are "players", and they will seek out married women for fun on the side, because they know that :

a) any married woman looking to have sex outside her marriage is already in a vulnerable state.

b) she cannot request any kind of commitment from him, because she herself is attached.

c) She will be far more discreet than a single woman, because she also has a secret to keep.

d) when he gets bored and dumps her to move on to the next target she can't make a fuss, because to do so, would mean also uncovering the affair to her husband.

He will make her think that there is indeed a deep and emotional connection, because this is the easiest route to get her to open her legs.

When married woman inevitably develops feelings, and suggests that he leaves his wife, the typical response will be ....

"It isn't the right time just now, because < insert reason here >"

Don't be a mug Op. Men like your affair partner can smell an unhappy woman a mile off.

What a load of sexist drivel.

instigated by man if that makes a difference

Nope, he would have only instigated if you were open to it and giving him the come on.

Another morally challenged OP does a runner when the replies don't match her narrative 🙄

The thing is, you already know that this other man is a liar and a cheat. If you end up with him, you know he’s capable of it and will always be wondering if/when he’ll do it to you.

Likewise, he now knows that you’re a liar and a cheat. Will either of you ever be able to fully trust one another when you both know it’s in your characters to be dishonest.

My mum cheated on my dad with a married man. She left when my dad found out and married the other man.
They were blissfully happy. They were meant to be together, you see. It wasn’t like other relationships, they were soul mates. That’s how they justified it anyway.
20 years later, I still bitterly resent my mum for it. His children stopped contact with him when they were old enough to do so as they couldn’t forgive him.
Oh and they’re divorced. Turns out they were just like any other couple after all.

Many, many years ago I was seeing a married man. I wasn’t married but was in a long term relationship. Things weren’t good between me and boyfriend and the affair was such a buzz. It felt like my relationship with him was my “true life” and that my boyfriend was just an inconvenience in the background. We never discussed our own relationships, we didn’t talk about my boyfriend or his wife and in my eyes it was so exciting and romantic and how things were “meant to be”.

About 9 months into the affair he told me that he was planning on telling his wife about me so that we could be together. When the reality of the seriousness of what we were doing was thrown at me like that I realised that it wasn’t what I wanted. The excitement and thrill was suddenly overcluded by the realisation of how much pain we were going to be causing to the people who loved us. Anyway I ended the affair and also ended things with my partner.

He still ended things with his wife though I imagine he didn’t tell her that he’d been having an affair. He has since now married someone else as his ex-wife.

On the flip side.....

A friend of mine was in a long term relationship and one night whilst out with her friends she met a man who was on his stag night and due to be married the next morning. She ended up going to a hotel with him and they embarked on an affair. He would tell her he was unhappy with his wife, he shouldn’t have married her, hr couldn’t see a future with her, they didn’t have sex etc but that he didn’t know how to leave her. My friend obviously lapped this up and for years and years she waited for him to leave his wife like he promised her he would.

Three years into the affair the wife fell pregnant which was odd considered they werent having sex The guy told my friend that it had happened just once when they were drunk.....

Anyway, the baby was a born and the affair continued. He then used the child as the reason why he couldn’t leave his wife.

To cut a long story short, when the child was 5 years old my friend told the wife that she’d been having an affair with her husband and obviously their marriage ended. The husband obviously moved in with my friend and she thought she was finally getting the happy ending she had always dreamed of.

However - within a year their relationship ended and unsurprisingly he was back with his wife.

He told her that he hadn’t realised how much his wife meant to him until she was no longer around and that he’d come to understand in hindsight that his relationship with my friend was excitement and infatuation and he had mistaken that for love.

So my friend wasted 9 years of her life with that man, she ended up broken and alone whilst he remained in the fold of his family.

Affairs rarely end like fairytale stories do.

You're in a marriage you don't want to be in 'because of the kids' - but then threaten their whole world to come tumbling down by cheating...

well educated and generally sits on the right side of being rational/real.

Do your kids a favour and apply some of this ^^ to the situation you've created.

*In my experience, married women who have affairs are desperately unhappy and quite emotionally vulnerable, and they are seeking out an emotional connection with another man.

On the other hand, married men who have affairs are generally looking for a shag on the side, and can easily compartmentalise this from the (often good) relationship they have with their wife. They are "players", and they will seek out married women for fun on the side, because they know that :

a) any married woman looking to have sex outside her marriage is already in a vulnerable state.

b) she cannot request any kind of commitment from him, because she herself is attached.

c) She will be far more discreet than a single woman, because she also has a secret to keep.

d) when he gets bored and dumps her to move on to the next target she can't make a fuss, because to do so, would mean also uncovering the affair to her husband.

He will make her think that there is indeed a deep and emotional connection, because this is the easiest route to get her to open her legs.

When married woman inevitably develops feelings, and suggests that he leaves his wife, the typical response will be ....

"It isn't the right time just now, because < insert reason here >"*

My big gold star today goes to huskylover.

It's not sexist drivel to say that men and women's sexuality are often different. Ime more men will cheat for variety than women. The mostly monogamous among us aside (of which there plenty men and women) when men chest it's often down to seed spreading wiring; when women chest it's often down to 'best seed getting' wiring; you'll very rarely see a women cheat with someone she considers lower on the totem pole than her partner there's usually a fundamental lack of respect for her partner.

• cheat!

That's why they think they're biding their time to get the affair partner and assume he feels the same way, but he often doesn't. He'll say he does but he'll throw her under a bus when the time comes. Only way she'll get him is if wife finds out and won't keep him.

I filed for divorce this morning.
My husband ripped my heart out and shat all over it because he didn't have the decency to end our marriage/14 year relationship before he moved on with someone else.
Leave your fucking marriage, spare his poor wife and kids the absolute world of pain my daughter and I are currently in.

My ex left me and our dcs for ow. I read their texts and it was all soulmate bollocks. They are now married and as far as I know, very happy together. BUT as far as I can see most other areas of his life are pretty crap.. He moved away so only sees his kids eow. Their relationship is OK in that they are young enough to just take him at face value but as they get older they are starting to see the impact his leaving has had on their lives and I suspect its going to bite him in the arse a way down the line. He's lost all financial security, homeownership and pays maintenance (though only CMS minimum). She works p/t so he supports her and her dc also. He looks like shit, grey, thin, and overall v v self centred. He also loathes me and turns every 'co-parenting' issue into a drama which genuinely happy people don't do. Whether or not you stay with om, it won't be a fairytale.

It's not sexist drivel to say that men and women's sexuality are often different.

It is sexist drivel to say "aw, the poor little woman was vulnerable and it's all the fault of the nasty cheating man" which is what that post boils down to. No, "all married women" who cheat ar not poor little vulnerable females who accidentally fell onto a penis. Lots just want sex and excitement and made a choice to do just that.

Women are not always the victim just because they have a vagina and men are not always the evil one just because they have a penis.

My ex h had an affair . He’d been telling his OW he was miserable so she must have been shocked when I fell pregnant with my DD . I was oblivious . There is no excuse for an affair . End your marriage and let your poor husband find happiness elsewhere . I lef ex h when I finally found it . It was the worst time of my life and by that point it had been going on three years . It took me a few years to get over the betrayal and the horrible lies he told about me . Also remember married men will always say they are unhappy or wife is a witch 🙄 if he’s so unhappy he should leave his wife . Cake and eat it springs to mind

Found out *

My mum cheated on my dad when he was in the army and away quite often-not long months on tour, but during the week.
He was apparently the love of her life, she shagged him on my dad's bed, we got taken for dinner parties at OM's wife's house and we were expected to play with his kids.
He wrote lovely little poems and they were loves young dream. Then they got found out and the shit hit the fan. They got together and had a child however a few years later, not many either, she caught him shagging someone else and had to put up with the open secret of him fucking anything that moved until she realised he was never gonna change and finally got rid.
That was about 20 years ago. I have no idea if she ever got her happy ending, I stopped speaking to her after destroying my childhood and turning me into a emotional fuckwit thats taken most of my adulthood to fix. I seek approval far too much and have an intense need to feel love and huge distrust in people that say they do.

But you go ahead and carry on your 'fairytale'....

He looks like shit, grey, thin, and overall v v self centred. He also loathes me and turns every 'co-parenting' issue into a drama which genuinely happy people don't do

This is what has happened to my friends Ex, who went off with OW, it was the real deal, a "love story" they said.
Both are utterly miserable now and he is just how you described your Ex. People who have affairs are escaping something and after a while they realise the OW/OM is NOT the fix. They idealise the affair partner and given that no one is perfect the disappointment of real life kicks in but by now money is reduced, you see your kids less, you are without them at Christmas and friends no longer support you.
It goes from fairytale to nightmare, pretty quickly.

The affair is a symptom of something within you. Maybe you should be separated but your affair is not the solution, it is a sticking plaster on a gaping wound.

My parents lived in different countries when I was growing up. Me and my brother lived here with my mum, dad lived 3000 miles away for work. We'd go over on school holidays, and see him here when he was over on business.

When I was doing my a levels, he had a brief affair with a high school girlfriend that he met at a reunion (I know, what a cliche). It went on for about four or five months I think, before he fessed up to my mum. She was duly heartbroken at the time, but...

Everyone is better off now. My parents had drifted for a long time - that distance doesn't help a relationship or intimacy at all - and they are very different people. I know from talking to my mum that they had tried to sort their problems, but she is not good at that kind of conversation, and I suspect meeting the 'other woman' really brought things home for my dad. Could he have tried to work things out for 'the sake of the children'? Possibly - but with 20-odd years hindsight, I don't think it would have really helped. Everyone would have just stayed miserable.

He's now married to the other woman and has been for almost as long as he was married to my mum. They are a much better fit. Do I wish he'd done it differently so my mum has been less hurt? Yes. But it is what it is. As kids, I don't know that the reasons for breaking up make a difference. As I think I've said elsewhere, the thing that hurt me was that he moved back to the UK for her. I was upset he couldn't do that for me and my brother.

As a result of all of this, I've tried to pay heed to the need for communication with a partner. Maybe too much. And I have a partner who is much more like my mum than my dad, and in many ways we have a lot of the same problems as a result. But I also understand that people fall out of love, and that realising that in isolation is sometimes really difficult. Even my mum agrees on that. She laughs a bit about my dad, who tries to justify his affair as being 'different' because it was love, but doesn't think that the actual affair itself is unusual. It hurt, but also shit happens.

So...yes, a successful outcome for everyone in the end, I guess, but it was painful for a time.

Do unhappy couples really still stay together "for the sake of the children"? I thought that had been discredited years ago. What child benefits from growing up with 2 people who don't get on?

My parents stayed together for the sake of the children and it was fucking awful for us.

Nope
It'll all come out
You'll be dropped as he heads back to his wife to grovel

Nah.

The primary age kids on both sides put a stop to it. As do ex spouses, family and everyone knowing what kind of person you both are.

Leave if you're not happy but don't blame an insane connection.

If I leave Dh I don't know how/if he will cope. There's a chance he will move away which will be rubbish for the kids.

And yet, OP, you'd do it in a heartbeat, if you thought your OM would leave his wife for you.

At least be honest - however highly educated and sensible you think you are, you'd simply rather remain in a soul-destroying relationship than risk being in no relationship at all.

DH and I began as an affair. I’m very ashamed of it and it’s the first and only time I’ve ever cheated.

I understand where you’re coming from. We were both in awful relationships - mine was sexually and mentally abusive, his was emotionally abusive (down to faked suicide attempts every time he tried to leave in the several years before he finally broke up with her). Neither of us were married or had children fortunately, we were in rented flats, nothing overly complicated except the difficulty of extricating ourselves from very manipulative partners.

DH and I have two children and have been together nearly 15 years, married for 10. We have a fantastic relationship. I’ve never cheated on him, I fully believe he’s never cheated on me and I absolutely trust him. I guess maybe the difference is that we were young and unmarried and in difficult situations that we weren’t mature enough to handle appropriately. We were very close friends who fell in love when we were both in relationships that we didn’t know how to end. Eventually we did, and we’ve been together ever since.

People think of cheating as very black and white and it isn’t. Of course for every story like mine there are many with awful endings. I knew the situation DH was in first hand as I had known him for years before we were involved. I heard the threats first hand.

What do you really know about his marriage?

You say you couldn’t leave because of DH’s mental health - that would be the same if you left for the MM though? So if you can leave for someone else you can leave anyway.