I left my marriage for him - he didn’t return the favour

[Ladywit]

Two years ago, I met a married man whilst I was also married. It had been a long and unhappy marriage for me and this man offered everything I had been longing and hoping to find in life before it was too late.
Although I was very cautious when I met him and didn’t sleep with him until a year after meeting, he broke down my defences completely. Meeting him put my already troubled marriage on a downward spiral and, egged on by this man in whom I found both a lover and a friend, I filed for divorce last year. He also claimed to be stuck in a very unhappy marriage, made promises and constantly referred to our future together. Although I told myself that he’s merely played the role of a catalyst, deep down I know I left the marriage to make a legitimate place for him in my life.
With the breakdown of the marriage came many challenges, most of all financial as my ex managed to transfer everything to offshore accounts and I have been struggling with single motherhood and a full time job. But I was still relieved to have taken this step and it seemed to me that I had found true love in the process.
However, when I pressed for him to take similar measures and make it possible for us to embark on the future HE had spoken about since the beginning, he didn’t seem to be able to follow through. After seven months of penduluming, during which he asked his wife for a trial separation, went back, we broke up, came back and asked me to go away on a weekend with him, assuring me that he had decided he wanted to be with me, left me again and went on an anniversary holiday with her (which completely devastated me), so on and so forth until finally the painful cycle ended a couple of weeks ago.
I’m weeping as I write this and hurting so deeply. I had to deal with all this uncertainty and emotional trauma while having to deal with the aftermath of the divorce and everything else. It has left me broken and questioning everything. I’m also feeling an immense amount of rage and wondering how it could be that I was hoodwinked by someone I considered the love of my life.
While it is true that we were both married when we met, I didn’t sleep with him until I had decided I was going to leave my marriage, and had taken steps towards it. Perhaps I should have demanded the same of him? I just was so certain it was only a matter of time before he would do that as he was always the one talking about us getting married. I suppose I trusted him.
The penduluming has also confused me, I know he felt genuinely conflicted about breaking his family unit but I feel furious about how he went about with it and prolonged the pain and confusion for me. It feels like he was struggling and trying to wean himself off me. Even during our last conversation he implied he was going to extricate himself from his marriage and come find me, whilst also saying that he would not be able to live with himself if he didn’t give it one last shot because his wife was trying her best.
But you see, the thing is, that poor woman has no idea about me and the last two years.
In my moments of anger, I feel I ought to tell her so that she at least knows what she’s dealing with and bending over backwards for. I feel he’s gotten away scot-free after destroying my life and is enjoying being wooed back by his wife on top of it all. It feels massively unfair both to me and her and I feel certain he will repeat what he did to me with another woman.
In other words, I feel affronted and my sense of justice demands that he be punished in some way.
I’m aware that this is a very basic, primal feeling and I want to know if I should act on it. It just seems unfair that he’s able to saunter back into playing the role of a doting family man after deceiving both me and his wife.
The anger and hurt I feel have paralysed me and I’m struggling to get on with life. I’m 40, educated and attractive but I feel broken, my marriage to a narcissist had already harmed me and I feel cheated that the man I fell so in love with and thought was my redemption and the balm for my wounds chose to play with me and hurt me so profoundly. Did he ever love me at all? What did he gain from this? Why does a part of me still hope he’s going to come back? I know I can never trust him so should I tell the wife and get some closure?
Please respond from a kind place x

You are reaping what you have sown . Get some counselling and move on without destroying someone else’s life! You’ve tried your best to play victim. it’s all your own making and I don’t think it’s your place to tell this woman anything, I’m sure she will soon figure it out and you are certainly not coming from a kind place. Two is company, three is a crowd. Just leave in peace and build a new life for your self ( avoiding your past mistakes).

but I really believed he was trapped and she was selfish and cold etc.

Of course you did, believing him was convenient because it was the permission you gave yourself to start and continue your affair.

The lies we tell ourselves, they only serve to fool ourselves.

Some affairs are shallow and meaningless but many are not.

This one clearly was given he is still with his wife.

If arrives on your doorstep as a newly separated man in two, three, six months time, with no conditions attached and willing to accept the possibility that you might have moved on, it's because he's reached some conclusions by himself and he loves you.

Or because he wants a shag.

You are compelled to tell his wife what a scumbag he is, but were hoping for a happily ever after with him if only he chose you. You say you are educated. You do know that whoever he ends up with, he's the same actor, don't you?

Ladywit tell his wife. Because when she gets tired of wooing him again and the sex wears off he will be looking for his next new girlfriend. She deserves to know what kind of man she is ‘trying her best with’.

You couldn’t have been 100% happy in your current marriage to be swayed in to being in another relationship.

Everything happens for a reason and maybe your meant to be on your own for a while so you can meet someone your really meant to be with. He hasn’t beaten you. You now have a blank canvas - he’s with a woman who he shags about behind her back and lies to her face.

But yeah I’d 100% tell her. To let her know what a cunt he is and let him know he doesn’t get to have his cake and eat it.

Name changed to say this in case it outs me on my regular name.

My sister did this

Believed all the other mans lies and left her husband for him.

He is still with his wife and is comfortable with her.

My sister is still sleeping with OM and chasing him and it has been 5 years since the affair started.

You, like my sister, only have yourself to blame.

The wife may already know.

You knew he was married though. Leave him alone and stop sleeping with him. Perhaps counselling would help.

OP. I think a lot of people are angry with you because you aren't properly owning your shabby behaviour and the betrayal. I know it's painful to admit to yourself that you were selfish and behaved badly. But the truth is, whatever reasons you had, you were. I am not judgey and innocent myself. I have been flamed on MN. The difference is, that i took it on board and said. Yep. I was a selfish cunt there. I can't take it back but I am not going to lie to myself and play the victim. Own this shabby behaviour. Learn to live independently, without needing a man to validate you. And accept he picked his wife over you in the final act. He wasn't in love with you. He can live without you. Sorry, he changed his mind. He might just be weak and selfish, not a narc. So what. But I think you need to stop playing the victim. And learn the right lessons from this sorry episode. And be more self aware Good luck

If this had been a man writing this he'd have been utterly roasted.

So true. OP, catch yourself on and move on.

I feel sorry for your husband and his wife.

My children are and always have been my main priority

Really. So leaving them to go and sleep with an affair partner, breaking up with their father etc was making them priority? How exactly?

Oh well, that's karma.
If you were unhappy with your marriage you should have left.

How do you know she doesn’t know he’s been having an affair?

You can paint it however you want in your mind but it boils down to this: you have been someone’s “bit on the side” “ the other woman” for two years.

This is why it’s never a good idea to end any relationship - good /bad/ abusive / toxic - for another person. End it to begin your life afresh and then start to consider other people in it. To start an affair - and it was an affair - was not only madness but a terrible thing to do to another family.

I also think you have refused to see him as the chancer he is because you made him a beacon of hope that allowed you to see beyond your your failing marriage. Even now you that see that he has just been stringing you along, I feel you would be partly contacting his wife to try to win him back.

Focus on your life and not ruminating about how to wreck his or his wife’s. He will do that for the two of them, and you will not come out of it well, nor should you really. You are hardly an innocent party in this.

You're really not the wronged party here.

I am glad that you are saying that your children are your main priority as they only got a mention in your original post. I do sympathise with you in your distress but I hope that they are getting the care and support they need , as so much of your energy and attention seems to be taken up by your feelings about this relationship. I wonder how the children of the other family have been affected by your actions. They are the innocent parties, no matter what faults their parents have.

As a woman in a similar circumstance I understand your pain, although my OM has never given me the line that he will leave, due to his children.

Its hard, but like you the affair gave me the strength to leave.

I'd leave him behind. If he reappears then give him another chance, if not keep moving on.

I'm hoping for a future that may not happen, but I made the one big change I needed to

I hope you begin to understand and regret what you did here I met my ex while he was still married he left her and began a relationship with me yes his 1st ex wife is a nut but after marrying him and living with him I can see why I wish I had left him where I found him I'm divorcing him now and he is marrying someone else she is emotionally fragile like ex wife 1 so he goes for a type everytime

Really. So leaving them (the children) to go and sleep with an affair partner, breaking up with their father etc was making them priority? How exactly?

This is really offensive sexist shit. it's basically stating that if you are a mother you shouldn't go out and have a social life (because it is basically saying you should not go out) and you should stay in what is essentially an emotionally abusive relationship with a narcisstic man for 'the sake of the children'. Nah, they are probably much better of with less contact with such a man.

OP has lived most of her adult life in an emotionally destructive relationship with an utter arsehole. Yet this tosser, who is essentially breaking the law by moving his assets off shore so he doesn't have to give her, or his children, the money they are due in the divorce, is getting a free pass. He has clearly not been working on his marriage and has cheated his kids and wife out of the money they are due.
Yet OP is getting the hard time when he gets a free pass. Well I am not buying that narrative. Frankly its bloody unfair that he destroys the marriage, and OP's emotional health, through his behaviour and she gets the blame.

Good on you OP for getting out. Good luck in forging your new life.

I feel he’s gotten away scot-free after destroying my life

He didn’t destroyed your life. You did. And possible that of your husband and your children.
Learning your mother is a cheat who broke up your family so she could have guilt-free sex with another man leaves scars.

Absolutely, there’s no reason to stay in an unhappy marriage but stop excusing your behaviour. While married, you began a relationship with another man. That wasn’t for the purpose of fixing your marriage.

Please respond from a kind place x

Give me strength

Were you being kind when you cheated on your husband with a married man?

I hate liars.

Look, he’s made a fool of you. He’s likely done it before, he’ll do it again. He’s not your problem any more.

Also, no harm getting an STI check.

Affairs come with frisson of excitement and flattery, but the end of the day, it is an affair! If he can do it with you, he can do it with someone else. Some people just like the CATCHING bit.

@quitelikedancemusic what shit. Of course mothers can have a social life. What they shouldn't be having, or planning, is a sex kids with someone who isn't their husband and who is someone else's.

OP's husband might not be a saint here, but he's got absolutely nothing to do with what OP was willing to do to another's marriage.

*sex life

The good thing about this is that it helped you split from a narcissist man. The man you had an affair with isn't the man you thought he was. But now you're free and in a blood position to live your life and meet a man who is available because let's face it, most decent men will not approach a married woman.

I think his wife deserves to know, regardless of your motives. I wish my friend had told me when the father of my unborn child came on to her. It would have hurt at the time but I would have made different decisions about my life and finances.