If you're thinking of/open to having an affair, please read this (coming from someone who did)

[IfYouTakeOnePieceOfAdviceTakeThisOne]

I've seen a lot of posts lately that remind me of me in the early days before I made the worst decision I ever made. I just wanted to say these things in the hope that it stops someone from crossing the line when they're being charmed and chased and feel like they've met someone who makes them feel so happy and alive.

I didn't just fuck up by having an affair. I fucked up for FIVE WHOLE YEARS because I was so consumed by the affair fog and my inability to separate reality from fantasy. I never got caught so I'm saying this without having to deal with the ramifications of that on top. My relationship had become very stale, we had been together from teens to thirties, morphed into flatmate territory, this person engineered themselves into my life, chased me when I wasn't even interested at first and made themselves indispensable. I didn't go looking for it and didn't even realise what was happening until boundaries had already been crossed.

To any of you feeling similar and getting attention from that colleague at work, that old ex boyfriend, a mutual friend etc - run, do not walk, far in the opposite direction before you engage in a phase of fantasy and it consumes your life. Before, inevitably whether after months or years, it eventually comes undone. And when it does your life will feel 50x worse than it did before when you were a little bored and lapping up the attention.

After the fall out of mine, I had to see a therapist because I went from being perfectly stable to unable to focus on my day job, eat, or function day to day. I felt suicidal and couldn't talk to anyone about it because of the shame of what I had done. I felt addicted to a person, much like a hardcore drug addiction, and had to quit cold Turkey when neither of us wanted to. My heart felt blitzed into smithereens and I felt that I had nothing to live for. All this for someone that in the very beginning, I wasn't even attracted to!

Not to mention the guilt towards other people - living a secret double life and trying to justify or downplay it to yourself, neglecting your relationship even further and fully checking out when if you reframed your mind, you could either work through it or leave and be happy in a genuine relationship. Some of the things I did I never would have thought possible of me before, and looking back now that reality has set in I'm horrified at myself. We had sex in my house, my bed I share with my partner. His house, once while his young child was asleep upstairs. My mums house, his mums house, work events. The things you will do once you're in the thick of this are absolutely disgusting and shameful.

Not only that but we had close calls a few times, but we didn't stop. We were too addicted to each other. We just found new ways to stay in touch, became extra secretive (don't ever doubt someone's ability to continue cheating if they really want to, even if you are monitoring their phone - the level of determination and creativity is next level).

I've realised that I definitely have some trauma I needed to work through and most people who engage in this type of thing suffer from self esteem issues, anxiety or general self doubt which make them susceptible to getting involved without realising what a dumb decision it is. Our affair borderlined on obsession, we barely went an hour without contact, we called each other and kept frequently in touch when on long haul holidays, we messaged continually through the work day, we even 'worked from home' together a few times.

What seems at first like harmless flirting, something you can walk away from, little chats to make you feel good about yourself, that's just dipping your toe in before falling into the lake. It's not worth it. It will all be ripped away overnight and you will have become so dependent on this you won't be able to function.

NOTHING good will come of engaging in an affair. If you want to leave your relationship, leave, take some time to learn what you want, and then you can start looking for something healthy and sustainable. An exit affair won't help you. If you want to stay in your relationship, don't play with fire, you may find yourself suddenly getting the ick with your partner or finding them intolerable because you're so wrapped up in your fantasy.

If you want to work through your issues, you need to start talking. Communication shutting down or feeling difficult was the start of where it all went wrong for me. I seem to be seeing so many posts lately of me years ago and I want to warn people of what's to come if they go down this path. So hopefully this helps someone even if nobody responds to this post.

And yes, I am very well aware of what a total asshole I've been. How I've treated my partner, how me and my affair partner have both together manipulated his partner so we could keep things going between us. You will become the absolute worst version of yourself if you do this, and like a drug addict you will do things you never thought you were capable of to ensure you get to keep the addiction going.

I'm happy to answer anyone's questions if it helps to stop people ending up like me. If you feel in a rut at home, start a new hobby, make some new friends, enrich your life in other ways.. it won't be as intense a high, but is a far better option than human Heroin.

I haven't read all the updates from last night but for what it's worth, I don't think you'll tell your husband what you did as you have everything to lose.

You should tell him and allow him to make the decision on your relationship but you won't because you don't have to.

*My advice is to say nothing to your husband.

Confessing to your husband doesn't give him to option to be with someone who loves him, it just rips him apart.*

What planet are you on?

In my experience, men are more likely to leave a cheating spouse than vice versa.

And this guy was shopping around for an alternative to the op before she started her (5 year) affair - if I've got the timeline right - and without even experiencing any infidelity from her!!

I think he'd be gone.

Even if she told him the basics, I think he'd go either immediately, or sooner or later if he could find a prospective replacement.

If she told him she'd been fucking another guy in their bed etc ..... A million times more.

You don't seem to know men; most men don't put up with that shit. They're not like women.

The way the OP @IfYouTakeOnePieceOfAdviceTakeThisOne describes shagging in various places (his Mum's, her Mum's, his marital home, when a child was in the home) makes it sound really seedy and nothing like love at all.

Many women will convince themselves the sexual infidelity doesn't really matter if the "wayward spouse's" emotions & commitment are still with them/back with them. Most men are not like that about sexual infidelity. Until recently, in a million years of evolution, they only knew their kids were theirs through having faith in their partners fidelity (and resemblance I suppose).

This guy wasn't even fully committed and was looking elsewhere before op cheated on him, before he knew she was capable of long-term, brazen infidelity; he's not going to hang around when he feels he can't trust her an inch.

I suspect she'll be called all manner of choice names and he'll go sooner or later.

Maybe even the op suspects that; which is why she's taking her sweet time working out her issues in therapy and processing things and perhaps setting up an exit plan/been dumped plan; or not tell him at all and justify it with some BS.

Op has no right to keep her partner in the dark while she, alone, processes things and attends therapy and works things out and makes decisions ...... While he, the other half of this relationship, knows nothing and makes no decisions (until she deigns to tell him anything, if she ever does).

She displays such utter selfishness and entitlement towards him, this person sued been in a relationship with for decades, her life partner so far

Such an assumption, totally natural to her, that she had more rights than him and she's entitled to deny him his rights of knowledge, agency, consent etc. That he is lesser than her .
That is at the crux of the cheating and lying.

I like this post. That doesn't really occur to most people (it didn't occur to me). But now you've stated it, @VisaGeezer it's obvious.

Op, he doesn't 100% want you ... Or he would've have joined dating sites and been messaging women in them.

You don't 100% want him or you wouldn't have entered into a 5 year affair with the first man who really pursued you.

Youve been together since teens, I find people like that tend to be very codependent and in such a habit of being with someone that they stay in it because they can't be single. The only way you two will probably split is if you find someone else you're interested in, who wants you back. I think that's true for both of you. He wasn't prepared to leave you without a replacement. You haven't been prepared to leave him (would you have if the married man had given you the opportunity?) without another man in the picture.
Neither of you really have the balls to be single, until you meet another partner. You're probably both stuck in habit and history and sentiment too.

*Or he wouldn't have joined dating sites and been messaging women on them.

This thread is a hard read. I’ve been where you are - long marriage, long illicit affair that fucked my mental health, all the agonising and analysing of it afterwards. I recognise a lot of your feelings and thought processes.

But with the benefit of several years hindsight, I can say a couple of things to you, and they are going to be pretty blunt.

The crux of being able to genuinely move on to a better, healthier way of life for you and your DH (whether together or apart) is owning what you did. Your therapist is doing you a great disservice by pretending otherwise. This isn’t something that can be worked out between you and a therapist and approached when you feel ‘ready’. It has to be worked out between you and the people involved - chiefly your husband - and you’ll never feel ready or strong enough to deal with it, because it’s going to be fucking painful for both of you.

You cannot move past that pain if you don’t rip the plaster off and fully confront what has happened and your part in it, and that means not hiding away in therapy, continuing to lead a secret life where your husband and the people closest to you know nothing of what has happened, keeping this all in your head where only you and someone you’re paying get to pick it over and look at it up close. It’s not fair and it ultimately won’t help anyone.

The fact you’re husband is either oblivious or in deep to denial about your affair has to be rectified. You owe it to him, but you also owe it to yourself. You will not heal properly or learn any lasting lessons unless you face up to the actual, painful reality and the consequences - and that means getting it out in the open and dealing with the impact.

This has been my experience, and trust me, I fucked up even worse than you did. My affair was horrific and damaging to everyone involved directly and indirectly.

The best thing I ever did was be brave and tell my husband. He was not as oblivious as I had thought, and had been in deep denial, and obviously my revelations hurt him deeply. But he got to get the answers he needed, have the conversations he needed to have with me and people who loved and cared about him, he had the choice to get his own therapy if he chose to and he got to decide what he wanted to do next. That was the morally right bit of the piece, which fuck knows is important when your moral compass has been so badly trashed.

For me, I got to air it all out and see it from the perspective of him and other people who then found out / I told (my parents, our siblings etc). That was intensely painful, but it helped me really come to terms with what had happened and what I’d done. Without that brutal honesty and willingness to face up to the real life consequences, I think I probably would have had a complete breakdown and I don’t think, 10 years later, I would still be married (and very happily so for both of us).

I would also caution against some posters advice around contacting your affair partners wife. No contact, let him deal with his relationship and responsibilities.

And I’m not dissing therapy. It had its place in helping you get clarity and build better defences around being manipulated and falling into fantasy and escapism again. But it is not sufficient on its own.

Incidentally op, he was doing a "lite" version of what you've done/are doing when he joined up to dating sites, and communicated with other women (incidentally I absolutely hate attached men who go on dating sites and communicate with single women, most of whom are looking for a relationship and waste their time, deceive them etc. Whether they're looking for an ego boast, or seeing what's out there, or looking to actually cheat; it's a very poor reflection on their character).

Since he never fessed up (?) and you had to catch him, he also treated you like your rights were lesser, and took your informed consent in your relationship from you. However, if he truly only messaged; you've taken that to a stratospheric level with your 5 year affair.

My whole point was not to sugarcoat. It wasn't some fairytale, but in the moment it feels like a pathetic love story.

For clarification on that, it wasn't a frequent thing - but it happened on one occasion. That's not me making excuses, it's still fucking disgusting and I know my mum would be ashamed if she found out. I'm generally a shy person so to know I was capable of that type of stuff is grim.

Another poster also said I'm saying it's almost worth it because I didn't get caught. That's not it at all, I'm saying it wasn't worth it at all AND I didn't even get caught, if I had it would have been even worse from the offset. None of this was worth it, the thrills and fantasy scenario are fake and not worth the ramifications to yourself, your AP and the respective partners. This is a 100% do not recommend - and like the other posters who have been in similar situations, it's only really then that you can relate to a lot of this stuff, my likening to a drug addiction etc.

And the reason I won't tell his partner is because I don't want to cause any hurt to her beyond what I've already done. I'm out of his life now. Hopefully they have a chance to fix their relationship. He may have told me it was beyond fixing but I'm not naive enough to believe I always got the full truth from him. If they can work through this and be happy then I'd not be bitter or jealous, I'd be fucking glad that their lives didn't get ruined. From what he told me she refused any kind of sex for years and years, so if they're able to use this hot mess as a springboard for some kind of open communication about the state of their relationship and both start putting the effort in and make it work between them then this is the best outcome. I don't want him for myself and never did, I was just wrapped up in an illusion.

He didn't end it because he had enough, if he had it would have been calmer for everyone. He ended it because he was given an ultimatum and I would never have wanted him to pick me over his partner and made that very clear. That's why I am concerned he may try to get back in my life at some point - but I won't be letting any of this pick back up again. I don't need to convince strangers on the internet of that.

I've not got time to reply to some other comments but I will at some point.

The only way you two will probably split is if you find someone else you're interested in, who wants you back. I think that's true for both of you.

I should amend that to - if he knew the ins and outs, no pun intended, if your affair - the gory details - I think he'd be gone. Probably without someone else set up. But definitely sooner or later, with a prospective replacement set up.

He did introduce infidelity (of a sort) first but I don't think "you sipped out of the cider barrel, so I smashed every cider barrel to pieces and burned the orchard to the ground" is really going to save you here.

Incidentally; do you really think he stopped the messaging and dud nothing else? Youve been very distracted for the larg 5 years.

This is such an honest account and displays alot of self awareness. Thanks for sharing OP. I hope you can find peace moving forward.

*last 5 years

They had no sex for years and years and yet she gave him an ultimatum and he dumped you like a hot brick? Yup, that rings true, not.

The more I think about this thread, the more I think his infidelity/potential infidelity was a foot note in the story; but shouldn't have been.

If I'm right, this was before your affair started.

You caught him, he didn't confess.

That, from a man you'd been partners with since teens, and married (any kids?), must've had quite an impact on your psyche.

Ateotd, you (and none of us) knew how far he was going to take that. Was he going to escalate to an affair?.Was he going to escalate to leaving you for someone he met? He would have naturally claimed he wouldn't but we don't know that and you, whatever you told yourself, didn't know that.

It should have been a sign you should possibly split.
How much talking did you do about it? You probably should have had couples therapy. Was it somewhat swept under the carpet?

Maybe I'm wrong but I think that lack of trust, that inevitable feeling like you weren't enough for him, or he was looking for a replacement, and natural resentment; may all have been a factor in you getting caught up in the pursuit by Mr "13 yrs older, my wife won't shag me, you're wonderful, sexy etc".

The right thing to do back then was possibly split, not stay and enter into an affair.

The right thing to do now is still possibly to split.

If he knew about this, the true details, I doubt he'd stay anyway.

Bless you OP - you’re still trying to tell yourself that it was you ultimately who ended it and he would have picked you if you’d wanted it but you’re so moral that you wouldn’t do that

he was very probably still sleeping with his wife this whole time

he picked her not you. He ended it with you and dumped you.

everytike you’ve interacted with your husband today you’ve lied to him

youre not accepting that you’ve been awful - because your whole point is how great you are that you are admitting how horrible you’ve been. Can you see how that is different?

From what he told me she refused any kind of sex for years and years

That's the oldest line in the book. You didn't believe that, surely?

You sound like a betrayed spouse. Most BS's contributions (not all but most) are not v helpful on these threads because their triumph that their skeezy, cheating man chose to stay with them rules out all rational discussion.

Sometimes it's true.

That's what happens in a proportion of long term relationships and marriages.

Scientists have even studied the phenomenon.

I've experienced it myself ..... Handsome man, good provider; couldn't have fucked him if I was paid to.

Believe it or not, there are other reasons you'd want to keep your relationship together. I too don't have a sexual relationship with my partner but would have done the same thing, as do most people in this situation.

Children, pets, housing, finances, lifestyle, comfort, sunk costs fallacy, lack of self esteem, fear, friendships, family, work.. there are so many reasons above sex that you'd choose to stay with someone.

And you're missing the point as you seem to think I wanted him to pick me. I didn't. This isn't a contest to win. Most people don't actually want a real life warts and all relationship with an AP. Initially he did want that, but with her knowing who I am that would make his life difficult. But I never wanted that anyway so it would never have happened. I don't want to be with someone 14 years older than me, become a stepmother to his two children, and move forward with everyone against the relationship and probably an inability to trust each other.

You won't get it unless you've been there but that was never my end goal. Maybe for single women it is, and certain scenarios. Mine was fantasy and I know that. I didn't really love him, it was limerence. He also didn't really love me because I was a younger girl fantasy to him. I wasn't his safety and security. Despite him telling me otherwise I can see through everything for what it was now. I've no idea how he sees it and it's irrelevant. I can only hope his partner forgives him and he never does it again. If he does it again then he deserves the consequences. I can only say for sure I won't do this again. I wasn't looking for it in the first place and that's no excuse but I've learned my lesson to either fix or quit my relationship, not get a bit on the side.

And yes, my partner and my situation is difficult. I asked for an open relationship once and he basically said if that would make me happy. I was sleeping in a separate bedroom. He definitely got vibes about my phone - never tried to go through it. And I've never been able to touch his. So at some points it's felt a bit like a 'don't ask don't tell' situation. I know my fuck up based on what I know about both sides is worse, and as a PP said I cant retaliate to his fuck up with a monumental one 10x worse on my own. All I can say is relationships aren't black and white. But equally I was probably naive in trusting AP about his relationship - I took it at face value that he was in constant contact with me even when she was monitoring him, they were never together and I didn't question it.

I do believe they were also in a dead bedroom (we were having unprotected sex as we weren't sleeping with anyone else and he is a piece of shit if he lied about that) but that's not to say I'm 100% right there. It's irrelevant now because it's over - if they're having sex again I couldn't care less but feel sick that he would do that without admitting he had slept with someone else.

We had sex in my house, my bed I share with my partner. His house, once while his young child was asleep upstairs

The immaculate conception.

Also people who cheat are generally quite selfish, which means they'll be selfish in other aspects of their relationship, which means their partners will often reset them; which means they won't be happily bouncing up and down on their dicks.

Wait hang on - he ended it after his wife basically found out and gave him an ultimatum? Missed that somehow. Then again you didn’t exactly advertise that in your first post - or make it clear this is not something that happened some time ago but only a few weeks ago so is very fresh. Your first post makes it sound like this has been over for a good long while and you’ve done loads of therapy. Very disingenuous of you.

This is clearly not you coming to your senses and choosing to do the right thing at all! This is you a few weeks later after he’s still not contacted you, obsessing about it under the guise of your healing journey because you got dumped in the end for the wife and he chose her. Without that you’d still be banging him.

That and definitely reinforced my sense that you are in for a world of pain once you actually get some perspective. You’re still in ‘been dumped after five years mode.’ 😬

All the best of luck to you.

Yes this was before I got involved. And on several occasions across several years. I know it's not an excuse but like you say it played a part in my decisions.

He lied to me, gaslit me.. travelled for work and was downloading tinder and hook up apps that are location based while he was away... he didn't want anyone to know about it, hated the idea of me telling friends/family.. he cares more about what others think of him/us than anyone else. I think that's a big part of why we are still together. Despite what you think, I think a previous post hit it on the head in that neither of us will go anywhere unless we have a strong reason to. Right now at least. But I want to keep moving on with the therapy to work out what I actually want and then will decide if I share with him. But yes, he did things for years and didn't share anything with me. Even when caught denied things and pretended he had been hacked, blamed a work colleague etc. I wouldn't have left for AP either, I made that clear to him often.

there's no point me going into the story as I'll only be accused of trying to garner sympathy, and I'm not, I know I've been the absolute worst version of me and have hurt people directly and indirectly. Our relationship was dysfunctional and a mess before this, it's not an excuse no, but all the self reflection is making me aware of a lot of things that lead me to do what I did.