“If a marriage breaks down and finances ( or lack of) and the possible part time nature of being a parent are inhibitive, that is not healthy either. I am merely saying some are in dead marriages with absolutely no escape route due to their financial position. They cannot be expected to remain in these marriages on a celibate basis. No one ever said on their death bed, i am glad i spent the last 40 yrs of my life in misery and never had sex with anyone in those 40 yrs, all because i was in a "marriage", albeit dead.”
Absolutely agree that being expected to stay in a loveless/ celibate marriage is unhealthy, but that wasn’t the part of what you seemed to be saying that I was replying to.
You seemed to be saying that cheating is an acceptable response to an unhappy/ sexless marriage and it most certainly is not. Ever. Nobody is so special or entitled or unhappy that they can give themselves permission to deceive and abuse another human being. Cheating is a form of abuse, it involves lying, deceiving, manipulating and gaslighting, plus maintaining a fake reality and doing everything you can to make the other person believe it.
Whilst in that fake reality, the person being gaslighted is denied living authentically, denied all choice in their lives, denied any agency in their situation. Their cheating spouse has all all the power in the relationship at this point and is in full control of what is happening around them and using them for cash and security at the same time. It is an appalling way to treat anyone.
There are no circumstances in which it is it ever ok to treat people like this. I doubt any counsellor ever advised their unhappy clients to abuse their partners in order to get their needs met and avoid financial hardship.
If finances/ part time childcare are inhibitive factors in ending the marriage, then a spouse decides to cheat to make up the missing parts, this means that one party in the marriage has decided that their rights and desires trump those of the other party. The other party has no rights.
They want the financial security of the marriage provided by their spouse, or their income plus that of their spouse, who is totally unaware that they are being used as an ATM by their partner who is sleeping with someone else, risking their sexual and mental health.
Both parties made vows when they got married, and yes, both parties are responsible for keeping them. The spouse who is distant and does not want sex is also responsible for that issue, absolutely. However, lack of sex/ unhappiness in the relationship should be addressed or the relationship should end, being unhappy still does not give anyone the right to find a relationship outside the marriage and lie to their spouse, unless their spouse has full knowledge of what they intend to do and agrees to it.
Both parties are responsible for the marriage. If lack of sex/ misery is intolerable, then choices need to be made. If you decide to stay in the marriage, with all the promises and boundaries that entails, just because you are going to be less well off than you were before, then that is a choice, nobody is forcing you, and you either tell your spouse that you are going to get other needs met elsewhere, or just accept the lack of sex and get on with it, or you take the financial hit and leave. Becoming an abuser should never be an option.
People stay in marriages for many reasons, and not all marriage boundaries are the same. It doesn’t matter what those accepted boundaries are, as long as both parties are fully aware and agree to them. The one providing the financial security is presumably only doing that because they believe their spouse to be an honest person who is keeping their vows to them. Whilst it isn’t fair for one partner to become unilaterally celibate without the agreement of their spouse, that isn’t something done in secret or a deliberate deception, both parties are aware of this and can accept it or leave.
I don’t see that it’s ever justified to continue to enjoy the financial security provided by someone else‘s hard work whilst gaslighting them into living a fake reality and risking their health in the process. If I am providing security and financial stability for someone else I would expect at the very least to be aware of the circumstances under which I was doing so.
Couples should work out their own boundaries/ tolerances and that’s nobody else’s business, one size never fits all, but both parties should be in full possession of the truth and in agreement, otherwise one spouse is being denied equal access to choice.
OP, her AP and his wife have had conversations with each other, the wife asked OP straight out what was going on, presumably because she had huge decisions to make reliant on the answers given, which also potentially affected her financial situation. Next time OP and her AP discuss finances it would be at least courteous to include his wife. Lovely of them to discuss their future financial situation and by default, hers, without her even knowing it was also her future being discussed.