Are affairs common ?

[Livelifelaughter]

My bf told me very early on in our relationship that he had a dysfunctional marriage with no sex or emotional intimacy for 15 plus years. He had affairs and ended the marriage when his children left home. He is highly educated, successful and attractive. He has a group of male friends who he has know for over 25 years, he tells me that most have had affairs too and some simply because they wanted some novelty others because they had stayed in broken marriages for the sake of their children.

He also said that the women involved with him were married as well.

I find him completely trust worthy and he tells me if he's meeting a female friend etc. But my question is, how common are affairs? Maybe I live in a conservative bubble where this is just the stuff movies ?

It's the only argument you have and it's utter bollocks.

Face up to it ow are disliked wholeheartedly along with the cheating scum they attend bedtime with.

There is no discrimination,

Cheating man = horrible
Cheating woman=horrible

That includes single women/men who knowingly sleep with married people.

Last time.

Look I know you like to think of all us betrayed partners as bitter and twisted women haters but we are not, we are just realists.

You lot are just a bunch of whining women who want to shag other peoples's husbands and are mardy because others don't like it.
Grow up, this shit is stuff you should have got out of your systems when you were late teens, you are older now, tough shit if your marriages didn't work out, mine didn't but I woudn't drag someone else into my need to be appreciated again.

Find single people, it can't be that hard or be on your own don't help destroy a family unit because you feel lonely.

It's the only argument you have and it's utter bollocks.

Even if that were true, in your case it's all I need because it's all you have to say.

Jaw dropping.

Jaw dropping.

So utterly offended, yet not arsed about the abuse of innocent women.

The irony.

Have a good day, I hope I havn't offended your sensitivities too much.

Wives have a deeper respect for all women, we would not dream of harming a family unit just for sex

That is just silly.
Many wives cheat.
And also, what about married women who look dowsn on single/childree women?
Is that ’respecting’ women.

Honestly, it's incredible. I actually don't think I've ever read such intense woman-hating bile on here, ever, even on affairs threads by very heartbroken and traumatised people. Someone who literally can't conceptualise women except as virtuous wives or evil OW, with societal misogyny as a fitting punishment for those who step out of line and literally everything being women's fault.

I can't prove this, of course, but I'm even starting to get non-woman vibes here. It's just that kind, somehow. Like a man who doesn't want to take any responsibility for himself and there just can't be enough woman-blaming. Anyone else?

Think it says it all. And I am not trying to be entertaining.

Though must admit your posts are hilarious. So you do have the comedy factor sewn up... :)

I've only ever known of one affair in my whole family/friends and even friends of friends. It was my uncle that had the affair and they stayed together but the writing was on the wall and they split up eventually but many years later. I'm sure his wife wished she had got rid of him at the time.

I have known of a few married drunken idiot men that tried it on with folk at Xmas party or actually just snogged folk in the middle of the dance floor for all to see 🙈

I have worked behind sports/snooker type bars, with 95% male customers, and concluded that a good chunk of them would've been willing to cheat - if I had to put a number on it, maybe 7/10. I know because a whole lot propositioned me or my friends.

It's amazing what men will say when there are no wives/girlfriends around; as an anonymous member of staff you just kind of blend into the background and the mask comes off them I find.

But then this could be reflective of the 'type' of man that frequents such bars, rather than men as a whole. I do know that, since having this experience, id never trust someone 100%. I think most people are capable of it in the right circumstances. Perfect storm kinda thing

My dad had an affair. Before that my mum had an affair.
Both grandads had an affair and left their wives for AP.
Ex partner had multiple one night stands I'm assuming. No concrete proof but it was glaringly obvious.
My best fiends now ex-husband had multiple affairs.
One friend called her wedding off when she found out her fiancé was shagging about.
At work affairs are rife. I work in an office and honestly sometimes it feels as though everyone's at it.
Working from home didn't stop them either. On one zoom meeting a woman's affair partner (who also worked in the same office so we know him) walked past in the background. He was supposed to be working from home that day, clearly he was just working from her home!
Ex boss had multiple affairs, as in he went on every night out possible and shagged anything he could.
I don't know if DH has had any kind of affair. He's not really given me any reason to doubt him but I don't believe it isn't possible.

I believe so. I have a friend who frequents a gay sauna, he's gay. We had a conversation and he said 'I'm sure you must realise many of the men at the sauna are married to women'.

Wondering what your own position is with your aggressive "posters like you" response?

Not once have you commented on the question posed by the OP, merely attacked me for misogyny??

There isn't just one party responsible for conducting an affair, so naturally in one between opposite sexes, women make up 50%.

Bad marriages don't cause affairs. Two people can be in a bad marriage, but usually only one has an affair. That shows that a bad marriage is not the cause. Bad choices cause affairs and it takes two to tango unless of course you are just a closet misandrist?

“Of course it's wrong, but in most cases, I really don't think it's as personal as some people think. I don't think most cheating MM are actively getting off on being shits to their wives either.”
@ReneBumsWombats absolutely agree with this. Deliberately hurting their partner is very rarely the primary motive, even though the unfaithful knows that it would. Hence they take comfort in “what they don’t know won’t hurt them. Nobody will ever find out so where’s the harm?…” Compartmentalisation helps the unfaithful avoid feeling bad. It de-personalises their actions. Compartmentalisation is a huge part of affairs and necessary to avoid looking at/ seeing what they are actually doing, which they know would force them to have a good look at themselves and they more than likely wouldn’t like the person they were being if they did. A common first question is “How could you do this to me?” Swiftly answered by “I didn’t set out to do this, it wasn’t on purpose, it just happened…” And “we couldn’t help ourselves….” They just don’t see it as a personal attack, because it usually wasn’t.
Some affairs happen in ‘bubbles’ and pretty much all affairs are only about how the APs make each other feel. Partners, spouses and children simply don’t enter into the bubble when the affair is in full swing. Its just them, their feelings, their little secret. It’s not personal, unless it’s a revenge affair, it’s all about them, not anybody else. Many affairs disintegrate after discovery because the reality of the situation forces itself into the bubble and effectively bursts it. The compartment is broken and gets flooded. Seeing the devastation makes people actually think about what their pursuit of illicit pleasure has done to their partners and see that they no longer smell of roses.
Sadly when APs are together in their bubble, they are very unlikely to be thinking about their partners and spouses, but when they are with partners and spouses they are very likely to be thinking about their AP. The ability to pause a moral compass and temporarily erase your partner and the value of your home life is almost a given to avoid that pesky thing called guilt which just ruins what they see as a good time. Few unfaithful partners get off on the betrayal of their partners, quite the opposite.
It’s rarely personal at all, rarely is it done purely to deliberately hurt, but it bloody well feels like it to be on the receiving end of it from someone who is supposed to love you and made a commitment to you, and that’s why when the shit hits the fan the unfaithful partner and their AP aren’t exactly flavour of the month. Because they chose to do it and you were the victim it feels personal. You were never a deliberate target, never the motive. How personally APs take it can influence the aftermath of the affair ends and their AP leaves them. I doubt that during the affair APs feel animosity towards their AP’s partner until jealousy starts when their AP cancels stuff because they’ve got to be with their family, or it looks like they’re not going to leave their husband/ wife after all, depending on what they have been promised. Sometimes they feel ‘special’ because they feel ‘chosen’ by their AP and if their AP looks like they are choosing their spouse over their AP, the cognitive dissonance can cause problems and jealousy. It starts to look like a personal slight rather than a practical necessity to keep the pretence of fidelity going. Conversely when the betrayed partner feels that their partner has ‘chosen’ someone else over them, it is very hard not to take this personally and feel jealous of/ hate the other person, whoever really is to blame, what actually wasn’t personal at all now feels very personal. More than likely it wasn’t. Hard concept to grapple with when it happens to you. What they did hurts like hell so how can it not be personal? Because it usually wasn’t. You didn’t even figure. It’s not so much “how could you do this to me?” as “how could you do something that you know would hurt me if I knew?” Unfaithful partners rarely cheat because they deliberately want to hurt their faithful partner, they cheat because they want to please themselves and find it easier to shelve or even justify the behaviour to depersonalise it and thus make it easier for them to stomach and keep out of their bubble. They are so blinkered that their home life isn’t the target of their bad behaviour at all, it’s just inconveniently in the way. They act in their own interests at all times, nobody else is a priority.
Affairs are all about the unfaithful partner, not the betrayed.

Affairs are common amoungst people who post on this forum. People obviously post on here when they are unhappy in their relationships. People who are happy are not as much represented.

What you might report from your own friendship group is just anecdotal. Some are saying it's a common situation and others say it's uncommon, which doesn't really tell us anything.

I'd be interested to hear the results of any rigorous research survey if there is one?

One in five in Britain, according to YouGov.

Lower than I was expecting, actually. But it seems people have different ideas about what constitutes an affair.

I directly answered OPs question in my first post on this thread.

‘Posters like you’ is a statement of fact. There are lots of threads on this topic and on it is a subset of posters who deride OW in the strongest terms, and when the misogyny of this is pointed out, reply ‘well I’d say the same about men’. But they didn’t. Because their real focus of attack is the OW.

If you read my other posts you’ll also see that I clearly state having an affair is a choice.

It's only one person's choice.

The only reason anyone would ever promise to be monogamous is because there are literally billions of other people in the world and most of us could find another sexual partner if we wanted to. What you're saying when you make that promise is that you know other people and other sexual opportunities exist, but you will safeguard your side of the marriage. You take responsibility. It's on you.

Why would you even want to marry someone who thought every other woman in the world had a duty not to be available to him?

Thinking about it, thousands of years of sexually repressing women and coming up with zillions of dirty slurs, moralistic ire and social consequences for them has never stopped men from playing away. Somehow, they've always found partners despite all the opprobrium heaped on to the women.

Holding married men absolutely 100% responsible for their own dicks, everyone else irrelevant, is really the only thing we've not tried. We should probably at least give it a go before we knock it.

Holding married men absolutely 100% responsible for their own dicks, everyone else irrelevant, is really the only thing we've not tried. We should probably at least give it a go before we knock it

I completely agree with this.

Completely agree with this too, and with @Thewookiemustgo

Wives have a deeper respect for all women, we would not dream of harming a family unit just for sex

Err, I was a wife when I had an affair. You know it's not just predatory single women?

Of course you do. It's somebody saying you don't have any moral responsibility to behave in a certain way, so go ahead and continue sleeping with your married man 👍

Were there no single men you could have had, I wonder.

Its clear from the comments which posters are the betrayed, the OW and the ones sharing their opinion and thats the reality of it, it isn't black and white. Everyone sees it differently. They happen for any number of reasons by all types of people. And i suppose your feelings on it depends on which end you are

Also clear are the people who seem to only care about themselves and seem to not have any kind of conscience.