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.

@IamGusFring i would like to say no way would I ever.

But I would have said that before I met my now DH.

Really interesting comments and stories.

I had an experience of an emotional affair. I shudder now thinking back at how it distorted my thinking, at the decisions I nearly took in that adrenaline rush of excitement. I really believed I'd found my soul mate, and that my DW was history. How I droned on about how awful my DW was. Shameful, actually.

What a lucky escape I had. Finally, finally came to my senses and woke up before serious damage was done.

I'm obviously not saying this is true for everyone, but for me the sudden new excitement and possibility of romance was so intense that I became a different person for a while. I hear about the awful things some men say and do during a break-up and I would have been one of those. My DW would have been on here telling you all what a piece of work I was and you would have agreed. I'm not absolving myself of responsibility here, but the brain releases some powerful chemicals in the flush of new love, and it turned me into a heartless, lieing idiot.

So my advice is to be very careful what decisions you take when in these situations, you may not be thinking rationally and honestly.

Are you truly being honest with yourself about your reasons for doing what you're doing? Are you willing to speak to a close friend to get their perspective? And would you listen to them if you didn't like what you heard?

I very nearly ruined my life, and the lives of many people around me.

@ZaphodDent

Really interesting comments and stories.

I had an experience of an emotional affair. I shudder now thinking back at how it distorted my thinking, at the decisions I nearly took in that adrenaline rush of excitement. I really believed I'd found my soul mate, and that my DW was history. How I droned on about how awful my DW was. Shameful, actually.

What a lucky escape I had. Finally, finally came to my senses and woke up before serious damage was done.

I'm obviously not saying this is true for everyone, but for me the sudden new excitement and possibility of romance was so intense that I became a different person for a while. I hear about the awful things some men say and do during a break-up and I would have been one of those. My DW would have been on here telling you all what a piece of work I was and you would have agreed. I'm not absolving myself of responsibility here, but the brain releases some powerful chemicals in the flush of new love, and it turned me into a heartless, lieing idiot.

So my advice is to be very careful what decisions you take when in these situations, you may not be thinking rationally and honestly.

Are you truly being honest with yourself about your reasons for doing what you're doing? Are you willing to speak to a close friend to get their perspective? And would you listen to them if you didn't like what you heard?

I very nearly ruined my life, and the lives of many people around me.

What stopped you? Did your wife ever find out?

@ZaphodDent

Honest post.

Well, my husband treated me also like a piece of shit whilst he was busy undertaking an affair.
An affair which he wouldn't admit because he essentially wanted his cake and to eat it, don't think he had any intentions of divorcing and totally moving on mainly due to his greed of the financials.

So what do you do when someone has checked out, keeps leaving because they want 'space' (we all know what that means) and is blaming you for everthing instead of facing up to what they are doing.

Well this lasted a long time, saw from the beggining the infatuation, the defiance and the pity he gave himself when trying to forget her. All heartbreaking to watch.

Arrh.

Well I decided to befriend a man myself when my husband left, told him what my husband was doing the abuse that arose from being discarded. It wasn't sexual but he was a support that I confided in.
This man would have dated me, I didn't want that, I was in no place health wise to have a relationship.

Now after all the abuse, defiance and pity his affair petered out and wouldn't you know it, he wanted to pick up where we left off.

Now this is where I found my final decision after he had come to his senses, that is when I delivered my choice in the matter. He argued he'd never stopped loving me but I said real love does not do that, just drop off and pick back up.
Especially after 35 years.

You are lucky Zap, I'm assuming your wife never found out, but be careful women really arn't stupid, it could still backfire.

I on the other hand did know and made sure my husband knew that when he abscondered my male friend supported me, knew about the abuse and became my confidante.

My was he upset, it never occured to him that he could be hurt and that I would never love him again. He asked about the man and asked how often I spoke to him and saw him and I relplied I only ever spoke or saw him when you were with her. Reality bites.

And yes the man is still my friend and no we have never had sex, a bit too young for me

The ow continued to chase him but I think the whole episode had left him fed up after him losing control of the situation.
As far as I'm aware they are not in contact.

He then tried again with another woman and that too ended., I don't think he got the thrill with that one though as he was single when it started.

I suppose some get away with it and some don't Zap but do you really kow how much she knows or what she's up to.?

DP and I have been together 8 years, one DC, and were both with other people when we met. It started as a casual fling as we were both unhappy in our relationships and I did not expect it to last.

@Mummywifey I have no idea. It couldn’t all be true. What interested me was what they said about it depended on whether the affair led to a relationship or not, and those two groups they fell into all pretty much responded in the same way. Defensive and justifying all over the place if they were now in a relationship or shrugging and minimising it as ‘fun’ if they’d stayed with their partners after the affair.

Mine was the real thing

[quote Thewookiemustgo]@Mummywifey I have no idea. It couldn’t all be true. What interested me was what they said about it depended on whether the affair led to a relationship or not, and those two groups they fell into all pretty much responded in the same way. Defensive and justifying all over the place if they were now in a relationship or shrugging and minimising it as ‘fun’ if they’d stayed with their partners after the affair.[/quote]
Yep I see what you mean now.

A friend of mine had a short affair. She felt it was the real deal and was devastated when he ended it to stay with his wife, when he felt she was getting serious. I am not sure she would fit in to that second camp - she was heartbroken and doesn't now minimise it as a bit of fun. But she does now think differently of him as it is now clear he never had any intention of a proper relationship - he just wanted a shag because his wife wasn't giving him any. But yes, I can see that most people would probably react in the two ways you describe.

@WonderfulYou

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.

This is what happened with me (well, my soon to be exh). I discovered his affair and made him leave. He caused utter devastation to me, our kids and my family so all he had was her really and what was left of his pride. They had a relationship for about 2 years but he always looked miserable and then he ended it with her once the storm had died down a bit and conveniently was in a relationship with an acquaintance from his past within weeks.

So I'm not sure whether either of them would say it was worth it. I think once they were pushed into the realities of an actual relationship with kids involved and people not liking them as a couple, it wasn't quite so amazing as the thrill of the affair.

Attraction is a chemical reaction and not a conscious choice. It’s our biological urge to procreate. Love is the conscious choice of partner who has the qualities we require to raise a family with. Not everyone we are attracted to are suitable partners. We spend time “courting” in order to work out which is which.
Conducting a relationship in secret does not always allow us to see the real person. Only when we can have a full relationship can we see the real person.
My DSis first husband was a classic example, when things got tough (we lost our DM and they were struggling with ttc) he turned to the OW who wanted what my DSis had. When Exdbil told her he wanted to separate she realised his friendship with ow was more than friends (ow had been around for years carrying a torch). Exbil never went into a relationship with ow since she didn’t want the version of him she got when he separated from DSis.
DSis found out a few months later that OW had done the same with two other couples in their social group, she was a serial OW.
Exbil seriously regrets the whole thing, it changed his life and since DSis found out she was pregnant just after they separated they have become close friends while coparenting. He has admitted that he was a fool particularly after his second wife has had a couple of extramarital affairs. He has stayed with her for his children, but is not happy.

I think affairs have as much chance as any other relationship of being "the one" as it were - as in a partnership with the potential to be happy and last a long time.

They are just obviously bad in other ways.

Attraction is a chemical reaction and not a conscious choice.It’s our biological urge to procreate.
Yes - I agree with this. Assuming the person having the attraction isn't an amoral shagger (!) I think 1) strong attraction to someone outside marriage is a warning sign something is wrong inside the marriage as its your subconscious trying to find another mate as the one you have isn't right and 2) it's very hard to resist it as its a primal instinct.

I think all the judgment round destroying a marriage/ selfishness etc is unhelpful in this context as I think the attraction is a sign the marriage was flawed anyway.

Part if the reason I think this is having been in a marriage where I did have regular crushes of varying intensity (that I didn't act on and mostly dealt with by avoiding the people involved). That marriage ended, I've been with new partner for several years and never even considered anyone else - it's just not a thing in this relationship.

Previously I thought it was a problem with me, or that everyone gets crushes but now I think it was a sign I should have listened to about my marriage.

@itshappened

It's a long story. I battled with it internally for a long time. I knew it wasn't right. I had a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other.

What always shocked me was the power of the feelings I had towards the OW, and that even though I rationally and intellectually knew it was wrong and could never work and that I needed to disconnect, the emotional urge to see her and speak to her was overwhelming.

Actually, mumsnet was a massive help. Here I learned about limerence (which totally matched my behaviour) and I also read lots and lots of posts from women on the other end of my behaviour, as it were. I would read every night and it really helped me get a grip. It took me 2.5 years to rid myself of the nightmare. Maybe the brutal reality is that all I've done is ride the storm, without doing anything stupid, until the limerence petered out. I feel like my perspective on the whole thing changes each month, and I often have new realisations and understandings about it.

My advice is recognise the start of it and back away. It all started with a school reunion. I felt the pang of attraction and then foolishly attended another one, then another. Should have recognised the danger and backed away. Painful lesson learned.

There’s a great difficulty, it seems to me, in processing and understanding these relationships, because no-one wants to talk to you about them. You’re on your own, caught up in a mad spiral of self-justification with only a morally dubious

Person for company.

@Onthedunes

She had her suspicions, and like all those in the grip of this I told her not to be silly.

I have the great good fortune to have a wonderful, loyal DW who I'm sure I don't deserve, and has tolerated some pretty rubbish behaviour from me over the years, but through this I've learned just how great she is and what I very nearly lost. I feel quite emotional typing that.

As part of the treatment package I diagnosed for myself, I recognised I could not change the things I didn't like about her, but I could change myself. So I made it my mission in life to be the best DH I could be, and the impact it has had on our marriage is dramatic. I feel like I have a new DW after all, which is somewhat ironic.

Now I realise that it actually was me all along who was the cause of certain problems in our marriage. When I grew the hell up, and treated her right, she treated me right in return. It's not rocket science after all, fellas.

@AdamRyan finding someone else very attractive is a sign there’s something wrong with your relationship? Can’t agree with this. There’s a whole advertising industry based on finding other people attractive, not to mention movie/ tv/ pop stars who’ve made a career out if their talent and the fact that people like to fantasise or drool over them.
Affairs happen for a huge panoply of reasons and in a long term relationship you are pretty much guaranteed to meet people you are attracted to, even strongly, otherwise this suggests there really is only one person out there who you will/ should ever be attracted to and that’s just not true. It’s your moral compass/ level of selfishness and entitlement at that point which matters. People in happy relationships who never want to leave their partner can fail at fidelity for all sorts of reasons.
Unless it’s an exit affair, in which case their relationship really was an unhappy one and the affair was an excuse to get out and line up partner #2, in reality the vast majority of APs want to go back to their partner (if they’ll have them) on discovery and never wanted to lose the primary relationship in the first place. Not all of these people go home nobly to martyr themselves “for the kids” or to avoid financial losses, some might, and it suits the abandoned OM/OW to believe what they are told, but most go home because they don’t want to lose their partner. In any case, they go home because for some reason they just want to. They probably found out they weren’t as unhappy as they told themselves they were to justify what they did, and the grass wasn’t greener. Just different.

@ZaphodDent great post to read, crikey you’ve done some work on yourself and shown change can be achieved. It’s so sad that we sometimes only learn the value of what we have when we lose or stand to lose something or someone, but it’s human nature I guess and I’m glad you got the chance to make things right and be a better person. Brave post on here Zaphod and I truly wish you well.

Different perspective: I consider my ex's affair my own happy ending!

ExH left me for OW when she fell pregnant. I was, naturally, devastated and (speaking with the benefit of hindsight) utterly wrong in blaming OW rather than ex.

I owe everything to that OW! ExH and I married young, much too young, I was in a bad place at the time, emotionally, and though I was totally infatuated with him, he was a miserable choice. Arrogant, lazy, entitled, and insanely egocentric and immature, considering he was a good decade older than myself. I worked my back off to support us financially while he was prancing around playing at being "a leader" at everything except stuff he'd actually get paid for. I wrote his bloody thesis (in a subject that wasn't even related to my own academic background).

I never would have left the guy had it not been for OW. So, with this being 15 years behind me at this point: I'm so very happy he had that affair and left.

OW hasn't had such a great time, mind. Last I heard, she was a single mum, having had enough of ex's freeloading eventually (and, well, I frankly doubt he was faithful to her either ...). Naturally, he hasn't paid her a penny in child support. And she never did go on to become the professor she was aspiring to be.

I've no idea where she is now, but if I manage to dig her up, I'll buy her a present. It feels quite unfair that she's had to bear the brunt of the consequences of him being him for, essentially, liberating me ...

So: happy ending here, not so much for the affair partners but for the cheated party.

I don't think affairs are great - but coming from this perspective, I'm not quite down with an unqualified "so wrong for the spouse" view either.

AdamRyan
“ 1) strong attraction to someone outside marriage is a warning sign something is wrong inside the marriage as its your subconscious trying to find another mate as the one you have isn't right and 2) it's very hard to resist it as its a primal instinct.”
In my perimenopausal state I was overwhelmed by”attraction” to someone. A younger man, by many years, with absolutely nothing to offer but his body. My marriage was fine. I couldn’t understand why I was totally consumed by the whole thing.
So I disagree with attraction being anything to do with a failing marriage. That’s why it comes as such a surprise to many women/men when their partners stray sexually.
EA are a whole different genre since they are more likely to be a conscious attraction not necessarily associated with physical attraction, particularly when there is no physical contact.
Like many online forums many of us can say what we feel far more freely than in rl. The same can be said of virtual relationships, it doesn’t involve body language and pheromones. So much harder to have the same conversation in real life when you cannot hide your true feelings. Fantasy is a dangerous world but so easy to escape to.

angry, wookie Its just my opinion, based on my own experience! FWIW I didn't mean attraction as in "he is fit", I meant attraction as in chemistry, daydreams, a crush really. Obviously everyone finds people attractive. For me that's not quite the same as that chemical draw to someone. I guess the "love at first sight" feeling is the strongest version of this.

in reality the vast majority of APs want to go back to their partner (if they’ll have them) on discovery and never wanted to lose the primary relationship in the first place I don't think this is true at all. Have you got a reason you think this? In practice, I certainly don't know anyone who split over an affair and then reconciled later. I know several who worked through one partners infidelity and stayed together, and a couple where one partner left and then stayed with the AP.

[quote ZaphodDent]@itshappened

It's a long story. I battled with it internally for a long time. I knew it wasn't right. I had a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other.

What always shocked me was the power of the feelings I had towards the OW, and that even though I rationally and intellectually knew it was wrong and could never work and that I needed to disconnect, the emotional urge to see her and speak to her was overwhelming.

Actually, mumsnet was a massive help. Here I learned about limerence (which totally matched my behaviour) and I also read lots and lots of posts from women on the other end of my behaviour, as it were. I would read every night and it really helped me get a grip. It took me 2.5 years to rid myself of the nightmare. Maybe the brutal reality is that all I've done is ride the storm, without doing anything stupid, until the limerence petered out. I feel like my perspective on the whole thing changes each month, and I often have new realisations and understandings about it.

My advice is recognise the start of it and back away. It all started with a school reunion. I felt the pang of attraction and then foolishly attended another one, then another. Should have recognised the danger and backed away. Painful lesson learned.[/quote]
I feel that limerence is an excuse that people make for really bad behaviour and choices . Somehow they seem to think it makes it all more palatable . It really doesn't .

It depends on how long the relationship is. For someone who is in single figures it’s much easier to start from scratch. For those 20 yrs plus the relationship is far more embedded so I can understand why they might want to return to a matured relationship rather than trying to fast track to that position in a new relationship. Really depends whether their old relationship was truly over and the affair was fuelled by boredom or lack of efffort. Perhaps identifying that an old relationship is not broken but just stagnant maybe be more helpful.

It is so easy to walk away, I’ve never been that keen on therapy but maybe a lot of couple would benefit from it at certain points to look at why they are drifting apart before it’s too late to fix. DH and I learnt very early on that arguments can be very healthy because despite knowing each other inside out, apathy leads to resentment. We may not always agree but at least we don’t keep quiet about it.

@AdamRyan I know more couples who are still together after infidelity than whose partner left. Just my personal experience though, to be fair, and probably a small sample. I’ve also had happily long term married girlfriends talk about private crushes on other people (real life, not celebrity) and they didn’t act on it because they saw them for what they were, crushes and romantic daydreams. Some were pretty darned obsessive too. They wouldn’t have dreamed of playing with fire but the fire out of love and respect for their partner, but the fire was there for sure.
Totally respect your opinion and your experience validates it. I didn’t just mean sexual attraction, I get you mean about emotional attachment, but it’s also perfectly possible to have romantic daydreams and a crush on someone when you’re in a happy relationship. Happiness/ unhappiness doesn’t matter, it doesn’t predict whether you’ll get a heavy crush on someone or not, you can still start to fall for someone else sexually and emotionally even if you love your partner and would never dream of hurting them. It honestly doesn’t mean you’re immune to developing a crush on someone else or that if you do, it automatically means you must have committed to the wrong person. In my experience I’ve seen it genuinely happen in happy relationships as well as unhappy ones. What’s clear is that one size never fits all in fidelity, this thread alone has a huge amount of different experiences in it. Totally get where you’re coming from though.

@BetsyBrush

I wrote a really good reply, and then lost it. Doh.

I don’t mean to make excuses. It's on me. I'm at fault.

The only thing I will add, by way of comment rather than excuse, for those lucky enough never to have experienced severe limerence (or a huge crush, call it what you will) is that some of the symptoms can be awful. I experienced incessant intrusive thoughts about the OW, multiple times a minute, all day long, for many months, to the point where I broke down on my own one morning in the shower and cried and screamed in frustration.

I've been hesitant to call it a MH issue, because that really does sound like a cop-out, but I've never experienced anything like it. I don't know if I'm an outlier, or if others can relate to that, but the way your mind can obsess about an OW or OM is horrific. And that's not a choice to think like that, I would have scrubbed my brain out with bleach if I had thought it would stop the obsessive thinking. Getting a WhatsApp from her would give me a shot of relief. Ridiculous to say it now.

My big mistake was letting it start in the first place, avoiding the warning signs, being flattered, enjoying the sensations. Once it starts it's flipping hard to stop it.