When is an affair the real thing?

[Mummywifey]

I ask because I have been lurking on here for a long time…looking for answers/similar stories to the situation I find myself in.

What I notice is that without exception (that I have seen so far) is that affairs are referred to “mistakes”, dismissed as fantasy, passed off as love bombing and always doomed to fail long term.

I know that in real life some people do meet new partners while married or in relationships and go on to have happy futures together.

So when is an affair not a mistake? Or in what situation may it be accepted as a happy ending?.

I’m not questioning the fact that affairs are morally wrong - the deception and lying are wrong and unkind. In some marriages I am sure one or both partners are unhappy and only gain the courage to leave when someone else gives them the hope. But is it a tiny proportion of affairs that end up being true love or…..?

Really only pondering the subject and don’t wish to be bashed for it…would just be interested to hear varying perspectives.

I started seeing someone a couple of months ago. We were both in relationships and we were both unhappy but neither of us had had the impetus to leave. We'd known each other for about 4 years.

We got a bit drunk and feelings were shared. We were both mortified it had happened afterwards and only had necessary contact (on one occasion when we pretty much avoided each other) for 2 weeks.

The next time we spoke, it transpired that we had both ended our respective relationships within about 24 hours of each other and we went on our first date the following day.

It's not a situation I'm proud of despite not actually being an affair.

This is really the only type of circumstance where I could see it being genuine.

I know a few men (married to one, daughter of another and friend to others) who only started a proper relationship with their affair partner when the wife found out and kicked them out. My exhusband said he felt he "had to make the best of a bad situation". Nice way to begin a relationship!

Long term affairs rarely turn into real relationships unless the above happens. If the person had genuinely fallen in love with someone else, they would want to be with them properly and no excuse would stand in their way.

My exhusband said he felt he "had to make the best of a bad situation". Nice way to begin a relationship!
Indeed!!!!!!

Statistically affairs are highly unlikely to survive. A quick Google and the stats are clear.

‘First of all, the probability of affairs ending in marriages is not very high — between three and five percent, and many join the 75 percent of second marriages that fail, a rate half again as high as first marriages. While fewer than 25 percent of cheaters leave a marriage for an affair partner, according to one source, most of those relationships are statistically extremely unlikely to endure.’

I found a really good article on why physiologists think this is at divorcesource (where the above stats came from). Check the article out.

You’ll get a lot of posters who have started as an affair and say it worked out but the reality is that they are in the minority. Most burn out, leaving devastation and broken families.

Psychologists…

The next time we spoke, it transpired that we had both ended our respective relationships within about 24 hours of each other and we went on our first date the following day

What a coincidence !

@Onthedunes

The next time we spoke, it transpired that we had both ended our respective relationships within about 24 hours of each other and we went on our first date the following day

What a coincidence !

It was. Not going to justify it. I'm not entirely comfortable with how it happened but I had no idea he was going to do it and he didn't know I was going to.

Its the truth but I know how it sounds!

I’ll confess

I had an emotional affair with my best friend. I had dated him before I married my XH, but we didn’t work out because of bad timing, not because we weren’t well matched. I just happened to be moving away soon after we originally got together. We stayed friends though. He even came to my wedding.

Some years later, I realized my marriage wasn’t going well and that more and more, I was confiding in my friend when I should have been talking to my husband. The friendship didn’t cause the demise of my marriage. The end of my marriage was inevitable. There came a point though, where I realized I could have my friend or I could have my husband and I picked my friend. We started dating pretty much immediately, got married days after my divorce was finalized, and have been married for 19 years.

So I think my emotional affair counts as “not a mistake,”

I wish I hadn’t let it get to that point. If I had the courage to leave my XH a couple of years earlier, it wouldn’t have been an emotional affair, it would have been a marriage ending and two friends reconnecting. Letting my marriage drag on, trying to save it, but just not having myself be fully committed to that mentally is what let it stray into emotional affair territory. Friend and I still would have gotten together quickly, but it would have been far less traumatic for XH I think if friend and I hadn’t already started letting long held boundaries fall before I left.

An affair is always a mistake. Not ending one relationship before you embark on a new one is always wrong.

@Onthedunes

The next time we spoke, it transpired that we had both ended our respective relationships within about 24 hours of each other and we went on our first date the following day

What a coincidence !

My mum pulled this one. Out of all the men on the entire planet, she ended up in a relationship with the one that my dad suspected her of having an affair with when they were together 🙄

My mum had an affair with my best mates dad when i was about 12. My parents stayed together, probably for the sake of us kids. My friends parents divorced. When I was 18 my parents also divorced and about a week later my friends dad moved in. They're still together 20yrs later. They're a much better match than my mum and dad. So I don't think it was a mistake for them. Shit for the other parties mind!

Dps ex had an affair with someone that was also married to someone else at the time.although she denied it and said they only got together afterwards. Anyway they're still together and married now. I don't know about him but I think for her hes her "one"

My marriage, born of an affair is ending after we have been together for coming up on 15 years. Why? We went from emotional affair to separate rooms in our marital homes to living together across less than a year. And for a long time it sort of worked. But we never got to know each other the right way, and were never in a situation to stop the relationship before it was too deep. The things that irritated us and should have Ben deal breakers were discovered after we had a home, not before.

Add to that the knowledge that we both were untrustworthy ate away at us. And the poor kids we had from our first marriages were thrust upon each other and us in this new home. And our ex partners hated us for many years. And who can blame them. It made for a lot of stress. Which we deflected by overspending and avoidance. Only now, kids grown (we never had any between us) and arguably 'stability' can we see how unstable it was. But living in perpetual crisis and trying to prove the doubters wrong is no way to live.

In my current separation we are amicable. I'm in the spare room but we can try to disentangle this as painlessly as possible. New partners may come but we are agreed, no dating whilst we share a roof. Been there, done it (if meeting in secret during the affair and then in semi secret once it broke is a date) and it was shitty behaviour because it hurt our exes badly.

I'm not saying affairs can't mean happy ever afters but my example is probably text book for why the second marriage/LTR fails.

A lot of the time their partners find out and break up with them so they are forced together.
I think there’s also a lot of feeling like they have to stay together as people would judge them even more.

I know some affairs do work out but very often they don’t because 1. the affair isn’t real life and once they start a proper relationship they realise they’re not the person they thought they were and 2. they can never fully trust each other as they know they are cheaters.

My sister was recently having an affair with a man who wasn’t very nice, who had no job and was a complete waste of space and she was ready to end her marriage over him but luckily he broke up with her first.
I would say why are you going to through everything away and she just said she wants to do what makes her happy.
I guess you become blinded in a way.

@HereComesTheSpiderman

I started seeing someone a couple of months ago. We were both in relationships and we were both unhappy but neither of us had had the impetus to leave. We'd known each other for about 4 years.

We got a bit drunk and feelings were shared. We were both mortified it had happened afterwards and only had necessary contact (on one occasion when we pretty much avoided each other) for 2 weeks.

The next time we spoke, it transpired that we had both ended our respective relationships within about 24 hours of each other and we went on our first date the following day.

It's not a situation I'm proud of despite not actually being an affair.

This is really the only type of circumstance where I could see it being genuine.

I know a few men (married to one, daughter of another and friend to others) who only started a proper relationship with their affair partner when the wife found out and kicked them out. My exhusband said he felt he "had to make the best of a bad situation". Nice way to begin a relationship!

Long term affairs rarely turn into real relationships unless the above happens. If the person had genuinely fallen in love with someone else, they would want to be with them properly and no excuse would stand in their way.

How long were you with your partners before you each broke up with them within 24 hours?

‘In some marriages I am sure one or both partners are unhappy and only gain the courage to leave when someone else gives them the hope‘

I think this, too op. It’s incredibly difficult to decide to leave a marriage when there are children involved, a house, shared finances and friends. It quite easy to carry on while in limbo and I imagine it is a danger zone for one partner to have an exit affair.

The happiness thing is imho a red herring, happiness and love are a great attempt to justify cheating, because we value these things and they’re ‘good’.

Trouble with ‘it makes me happy and I’ve been so unhappy, that I’m having an affair’ is all you’re actually doing as a human is passing the pain on.

You pass it to the betrayed partners, you pass it to the children, you pass it onto the family units destroyed, you pass it to the extended family who are left devastated. Affairs pass personal pain on. I’d argue that it amplifies that pain as well.

When the dust settles it’d take a cold fish to look at the devastation behind them and not feel anything. And one if the unfaithful partners has always sacrificed more, which must lead to terrific resentment.

It’s also important to recognise that many many MANY affairs happen in marriages where the cheat classes themselves as happy, just a quick read through the affair threads here and you’ll see the number of cheats who suddenly became ‘unhappy’ when someone new appears at the office. And many unhappy marriages do not involve betrayal.

‘In some marriages I am sure one or both partners are unhappy and only gain the courage to leave when someone else gives them the hope‘

This was my experience, and while we didn't end up together romantically, he was and is a good friend to me, and he made me realise my marriage needed to end.

I had settled for someone that wasn't perfect for me.
I had an emotional affair with my best friend, he kissed me a couple of weeks later, I ended it with my partner the next day, we are blissfully happy.

I 100% made the right decision
All of our mutual friends know how we got together and are really happy for us because they know how right we are together

A phrase that is used a lot is "life is not black and white" that's true.

My affair made me miserable. It wasn't exciting, I didn't enjoy the secrecy etc, I hated the deception and felt stuck between a rock and a hard place. DH didn't deserve to be treated like that and I should have been honest, but also he would have been devastated to find out, so it felt kinder (to my warped mind at the time) to keep it secret.

AP was I think, probably, my soul mate. I genuinely believe we are both good people who did some terrible things. I'm now single (for reasons unrealted to the affair) and I haven't been "with" AP for years, in the end we decided the deceit couldn't go on and ended it. I miss him, but I know we'd be a disaster if we were together properly, we know too many bad things about each other.

In another time we could have been brilliant together, but not after an affair, I don't think.

An affair can't ever be the real thing because an affair involves lying.

Thankyou all for your input. I agree with everyone. What I find interesting is the concept that you can meet someone whilst single and all the feelings that you have falling in love are validated and deemed authentic. There is the possibility of a future. But that same experience when one or both of you are already in a relationship is then a mistake, or fantasy, love bombing or unreal.

There is no doubt that affairs hurt people and lying is wrong. And start for varying reasons and with varying motives. But how do we understand when it’s the real deal?

My experience is this

Dad left Wife 1 (my Mum) for OW
OW became Wife 2
Wife 2 was left OW 2
OW 2 is now Wife 3

Me and my siblings have bets on how long it’ll last,

@BitcherOfBlakiven

My experience is this

Dad left Wife 1 (my Mum) for OW
OW became Wife 2
Wife 2 was left OW 2
OW 2 is now Wife 3

Me and my siblings have bets on how long it’ll last,

I have a very similar experience!

Met my fiancé while in a 25 year relationship. My ex was a controlling abusive prick and deserved everything that happened , I hated him , his kids hated him and even the dogs . 5 years on I’m so happy my kids love my fiancé and they are young adults so not easily won over but he’s just a kind and lovely man and the dogs are also happy . This man gave me the courage to leave

It seems to have worked out OK for Lauren Silverman with Simon Cowell...

To be fair, I'm not being entirely sarcastic. They seem happy.