Affair partner - blowing hot & cold *please go easy on me*

[Namechangererer]

I fully imagine I will get flamed for this, hence the name change, but here goes.

I had an affair last year (I was married and affair partner was married) . We worked together, quiet closely and we fell in love. I was in a loveless marriage, ex h was an alcoholic, constantly putting me down and very controlling (I know this isn’t an excuse). So I started an affair with my colleague, fell madly in love and left my ex, AP left his wife. I thought I’d gotten my ever after but after a few months he started blowing hot and cold, seemed to be seeing his ex a lot more (they have young dc) and he eventually called it off with me after blowing hot and cold. He promised he wasn’t back with his ex but I just don’t understand what happened. It’s like he changed into a different person !

Don’t really know what I’m asking, just looking to hear from others in similar situations and whether there was a happy outcome?

Oh, and this, from the OP:

It’s like he changed into a different person !
... will sound familiar to most people who've been cheated on. The partner you've known for decades seems to have been taken away by fairies and replaced with a sullen-faced changeling.

I come at this from two different angles - I’ve been married to an alcoholic. If your H was abusive then it’s right that you left him. It is unfortunate, to say the least, for you, the AP’s wife & children that it took an affair for you to do it.

My H has cheated on me and left, so my situation is different. However, having read around the subject it appears that most men do not leave their families and, if they do, the relationship eventually fails. During the affair they denigrate their wives to justify what they’re doing. When the affair is exposed the full consequences become apparent and they gravitate back home. This is a generalisation but, because it’s so common, it means that the reason he’s gone back is not you. Also, it is better for the AP to reconcile with his wife because of their children.

One other point- you say that it feels like the AP has completely changed. This is how his wife probably felt when he left.

My ex left me for ow and said all the cliched crap like "never felt this way before" "I would end the relationship if it was affecting the kids" etc Years later he admits that he was thinking with his sick and fucked up his relationship with the kids. Some people (like you and your ex) shouldn't be together but in our case I think he was bored of life with little kids and wanted an escape. We had the fundamentals like shared life goals and cared for each other.

There's lots of reasons why he might have called things off like

1. He loves his kids more than you and your relationship would mean less time with the kids etc
2. (This is my ex) He got carried away with the excitement of a new relationship and getting more attention than at home.
3. Now that the honeymoon period is over he feels differently.
4. Guilt.
5. He's exaggerated how unhappy he was with his wife. You were exciting while it lasted but might not have shagged him if he was happily married.
6. He enjoys the thrill of the chase and the early days of an affair but doesn't want a new relationship.
7. He's good at telling people what they want to hear. Mirroring people is an easy way to suck them in.
8. The real reason that he was unhappy might have been tackled. For example if he had to share a bed with his kids rather than his wife but they did sleep training and got the bed back to themselves then that would help their sex life.

The fact that he was blowing hot and cold speaks volumes that he was detaching from you and not confident with his decision to have an affair and leave.

It sounds like you're much better off leaving but his situation wasn't nearly as bad.

I agree with Clueless' post.

My ex behaved exactly like The Script. Overnight he started making long lists of what was wrong with me to justify his affair but that was to cover his guilt and the long list of complaints that I should have had about him not keeping it in his pants.

I knew he was having affair long before I found the evidence. He wanted to keep the excitement going so ended up gaslighting our son who had worked it out too. The gaslighting (especially of our son) caused much more harm than him sticking his dick into someone else.

It sounds like you got a dose of karma. You were worried about him blowing hot and cold when he did the same to his wife because of you. Have you ever considered the lies and deceit involved in him making the time to see you? I had to take dc to A&E during his affair and he'd gone from a Dad who'd rush to A&E carrying his child to a person who didn't even come home at his normal time.

It's a fucking nightmare living with someone who's having an affair and won't admit it. I ended up admitted to hospital with the amount of weight I'd lost.

You need to be happy that your situation is better and let him go. AP was a massive mistake. There is happiness waiting for you but trying to find it with an attached person is a recipe for making other people unhappy so don't do it in future.

Thats good that he changed into a different person (possibly literally, found a new shag), being a complete scumbag isn’t sustainable.
You believed his cliches? 😄 Christ, how embarrassing.
Oh well, never mind.

@marshmallowfluffy

Totally agree, it's just another aspect that ow don't understand, the way some men can just cut off their emotions to children.

My partner just stopped answering the phone at one point to the children. A punishment for supporting me when he left.
He wanted it all ways.

Some women hook up with these selfish bastards and don't realise the damage it also does to the children.
Just everthing is a web of lies, to the point it gets boring.

I agree with other posters.

You had a terrible marriage, and you fell in love with him, so you assumed that both these facts were also true for him.

Whereas in fact he probably had a basically good marriage that was going through a tricky period (as often happens when the DC are young), and he probably thought he loved you but eventually realised that he still really loved his wife and kids and wanted to be at home with them.

At the end of the day, he's had his fun and that was all he wanted.
Men like to feel secure, so often return to the home set up they know well and was "easy".
He'll become bored of that as years go by and find something new and shiny all over again.