Help me understand OW's motivation

[wordleaddict]

A brief explanation, Sorry it is long. DP of 33 years, 2 teenage DC, is pushing 70. Looks a little younger than his age, but pretty jowly. Is an artist, musician, not very successful but comes across as bold, passionate, energetic. So about a year ago I linked him up with someone I had known for 2 years because she could help him with some printing up of artwork. She was then 27. After a few weeks, it turns out she tells him she has the hots for him. He tells me because he was so surprised. I think wtf but assume it is an aberration, the end of it. But I spy on his emails, because I am mistrustful and I see him online a lot. Yes, bad I know. They meet up a bit to play music, usually with others, so I start going along. They exchange a lot of pornographic drawings by email and he idealises her in poems and she writes saucy language about him opening her up in mind and body. Yuck. I eventually come clean about spying, go mad, tell others in the group what has been happening etc.Ban him from seeing her. He complies after a lot of arguing and him being nasty and talking about opening up our relationship and me saying no way. It has been a shitty year since with him drinking more and more and me getting paranoid and upset. I won't go into how crap I feel and how broken, because he said things to her about me that are wounding. I just want insight into her. Now 28, I suppose. Occasionally she has sent a letter, which on one occasion he showed me, because he couldn't work out who had sent it. It was all punning language about hearing him on radio and feeling held in his hands, blah blah. We saw her at an event last week. Today she sends an email saying she must see him and she will knock at door at 1pm. He tells her no and she stays away. What is this about? Is he really a catch for a young woman? Is she trying to destroy me, for fun, as she is well aware how shattered I have been through all this? Any insights?

Speaking as someone who had multiple relationships with much older blokes when 27 : 1. it’s major daddy issues. Never got much attention from my dad, my mum set her and I up in a competing relationship. It’s finally being able to “win” that dynamic. 2. Wanting the attention and benefit of someone (that I perceived as) sophisticated and with panache and experience than whatever the dregs I was exposed to in the dating pool at my age. And him “choosing” me represented the decades of “choice” he had already had, so was even more special. 3. I quite liked the jowly ones. It was never really about looks, it was about what experience they represented. 4. I felt safe around them. Listened to, doted on, nourished, infantilised in a way I could control as opposed to the original way I couldn’t (parental relationships)

obviously speculating that this is what she sees in your DH and obviously all of this is unhealthy (I’ve now grown out of it)

I'll place good money that in the past 33 years, your DP hasn't suddenly had a personality by-pass and had his head turned by someone young enough to be his child. You may have turned a blind eye to it, or decided not to challenge him, but he will have acted this way before.

Is an artist, musician, not very successful but comes across as bold, passionate, energetic

How tedious - maybe tell him he can shove his passion and energy where the sun doesn't shine because you're certainly not gaining the benefit of it, by the sounds of things.

He's the person you should be focusing your psychoanalysis on, not her. He's meant to be in a relationship .....

I’m guessing your DH is a typical “deep thinker.” By that I mean, “self-indulgent”. You’re running around organizing someone to sort his artwork out and this person feeds his ego, verbally and and visually. You have become purely functional now. She is his “Muse”… his “Raison d’etre”… and he is self-indulgent enough to continue to justify it for long enough to feed her competitive need to beat you (the mother figure - she hates you, btw…) and win him. (He’s almost irrelevant, but is the prize.) If you want her to fuck off, she needs to fixate on someone else.

Oh, and maybe you’d be better off finding passion and energy elsewhere also.

So if he's pushing 70 and you have teenagers, he was in his 50s when you had your babies?
What's the age gap between you out of interest?

Her problem wouldn't be yours if your husband kicked her into touch.
He hasn't,he is flattered.Hes the problem.

It’s a challenge for her.
nit sure what he gives you

Why haven’t you dumped him?

OP, why do you need to understand this woman?

She's not important, just low-hanging fruit.
You DP is even worse when it comes to lack of integrity.

You're in a really $hi££y situation and my best advice to you is to get out. You don't need to spend the rest of your life with this Dirty Old Man.

Get your ducks in a row and go. There's a better life out there so go and find it.

She has a crush. He is encouraging it. He is the problem.

Thing is that people will often go after what they want regardless of the collateral damage (in this case, you)- we are by nature largely self centred and selfish creatures. Her behaviour isn't the important thing here, your 'D'H should have nipped it in the bud a long time ago, and despite the fact men often paint women like this as crazy or whatever, not many set about on such a protracted mission if they're not getting something back. She probably genuinely fancies him, an age gap that big isn't for me but for some it is. Its nothing to do with her wanting to do x or y to you, I doubt she thinks of you at all which is the issue.

Does he have money by any chance?

My best friend had an affair with a much older married man when we were in our early twenties and he was in his early fifties. He was an aging rocker with a grey ponytail. His children were young teens.

I could not understand it at all. She had a completely ordinary family life and no daddy issues and was not in need of any financial benefits she may have gained either. Twenty years later they are still together and married with children.

She's a loser with daddy issues. The only way she relates to men is through sex. She only knows how to stand out by becoming this hypersexual nymphomaniac persona. She knows late twenties isnt young enough for the seasoned pervs in their 40s so she's gone even older. She wants to be his little muse, his little girl that he protects, cherishes and fucks. She thinks it's all cerebral and romantic, something deep, previous life connection lol.

He's an old fool. If he is rich, he is a catch at any age, warts, jowls and all!
Whatever you do, just make sure that you and your children don't lose out financially. To quote Dame Shirley Bassey, Diamonds Are Forever.

WA, OW’s behavior indicates that she couldn’t care less about your feelings and boundaries. Her wants are front and center. After you introduced her to H, she decided to pursue a non-platonic connection and alignment with what she perceives to be his artistic gravitas, so she made her move.

I suspect she has a need to feel worshipped, and flatters men to elicit that—hence announcing her attraction, validating H with her seductive talk of ‘his opening her’ and ‘being held in his hands,’ and entertaining his slagging you. Her recent attempts to hoover him further suggest that she lacks empathy for your pain.

As for H, he trashed his fidelity and humiliated you by weakening his boundaries to lap up OW’s gratification and pour his adoration into her. Not only did he choose this emotional/sexual affair, he twisted the knife by criticizing you to OW, and later pushed to officially change the parameters of your relationship to
non-monogamy.

WA, your pain and distress are palpable. It sounds like you’ve been in a false reconciliation. After your discovery, H was unremorseful, nasty and argumentative. He wanted to keep OW and have an open marriage. I doubt that he has since shown true remorse. What work has he done to become a safe partner and to help you heal? Has he invested in individual counseling, readings on infidelity, etc.? Certainly his drinking escalation is destructive to your marriage and family, as well as to his health.

The toxic home dynamic is harmful to your teens. I would need to see seriously proactive efforts by H to rebuild trust, to examine his deep selfishness and sense of entitlement, and to stop drinking before I’d consider staying in the marriage.

Have you considered seeking IC for support?
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We Work in entertainment and I've seen an awful lot of starfuckers in my time. Doesn't matter if that 'artist' was particularly successful, some women(of all ages) are more than happy with the merest brush with a history they perceive as a bit glamorous/arty. She probably sees him as interesting , educated, and he no doubt is enormously flattered at an age where young women falling at your feet is usually long past. What a stupid old git! As someone else said above this will be a rather damaged , self obsessed young woman- my own view is you have to get the gumption to tell him to cut it out or piss off - and mean it - and I have kind of been there OP.

I agree with the PP that your focus needs to be on him not on her. You don't know her, she has no responsibility towards you and the chances are she is an insecure young woman looking for validation and support. It's your husband that owes you loyalty and respect and he's completely letting you down.

Even though it sounds like she's got a crush on him, he should be able to resist this and either just be supportive and friendly to this woman (not take advantage of her neediness) or keep her at arms length. It would be him I'd want to give both barrels to not her.

Apologies, you do know her but it doesn't sound like you're close.

So much misogyny on this thread. The woman is discussed in the most vile, sexualised and demeaning language and the actual cheater is a 'silly old goat'.

Nothing changes does it. Men can trash their family lives, lie to the faces of the people who they are supposed to love the most, and get society's eyerolls. Women (presumably unattached themselves, I don't think the OP said) who are the focus of these cheaters get psychoanalysed, ripped apart and referred to in the most degrading terms available.

None of us know why she's done this but the 'occams razor' approach would suggest that she fancies your charismatic husband and doesn't consider you anything to do with her.

The answer to it all is living in your house.

bloody hell he sounds horrific - your job here is to get rid of him surely? You may have scared this woman off, but how many others will you have to police? Your issue is not her, it is him.

I’m with the PPs who think that she’s trying to be a muse. A pound shop muse, naturally, rather than Lizzie Siddal or Dora Maar.

That’s it. She wants to feel special and for other people to think, oooh, she’s X’s muse, she must be really gorgeous and talented and insightful! And bohemian and blah blah blah. It’s the sort of behaviour I associate with people who aren’t good at very much but desperately wish that they were, and can’t settle for being average.

Imagine being like that. Needy and fixated on what other people think. You’d need a black hole for a soul. More fool your DH for being sucked in.

This with bells on .
OP I’m sorry for your distress but you’re way off target .
He is the problem not her and you should be giving it to him both barrels and making plans to leave .
This wasn’t a one night mistake, he took time to invest in that relationship and encouraged her .
You deserve so much more .

I agree, she has a major crush/limerence/starstruck groupie and he has had his ego stroked big time and has been leading her on. You don’t factor into her thinking and he thought he’d get away with it.

cant believe he tried to suggest an open relationship. Have you ever considered dumping him? How much younger are you?

Thanks everyone. Am digesting your thoughts, which are painful, realistic, challenging. Just to answer on one thing. I am 8 years younger, was over 40 when I had DC, after 10 years with DP. I know that he is the problem and things got close to me throwing him out. I am actually the one who has the proper job and he has been more if the homemaker. I suppose the purpose of post was just to try to understand her, but it is true, I can't, you can't help me. Sone if the things said are plausible though deep thinker, creativity, deeper than men in her peer group, desire to be a muse. She said in one of her emails to him that she had never felt able to say all sorts of internal and erotic things to anyone before him. Whether she is damaged I wonder. Vulnerable? She's a middle class hippie with her own little community arts business, and a live in partner. I don't know.

She’s not really the problem here; she’s a symptom but not the underlying cause- your dp is the problem for flirting with and entertaining this idea with this much younger woman. If it wasn’t her then someone else could come along, could still come along at any time now and he’s probably going to do the exact same thing. He’s the problem