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 ?

To have empathy isn't simply to look far into the future at all the possible bad things that could happen to them. Isn't that catastrophising? Empathy isn't only about bad things, either.

You are trying to suggest these situations are parallel to yours. They aren't.

OW always live in La la land. Stupidly thinking that they have been chosen due to a mutual attraction or their looks, brains or maybe sparkling personalities....but in reality, they just made it clear they were available and could have been any fanny/sperm receptacle used by an entitled cheating man. Of course to keep affair going they mirror the AP, listening carefully to his words, thoughts, becoming and providing everything the wife at home can't/doesn't.... secretly hoping one day, yes one day.. MM's actions match with his words and they can come out the closet as his dirty little secret. Often not realising if he's cheated on his wife, he's likely to do same to OW eventually.

But then of course there is always the OW who just loves and gets off on getting one over another woman (the wife). She loves the secrecy, thrill and power, usually confiding about the affair to a few female work mates as that garners them even more attention and power... particularly if MM is in a more senior position or viewed by other women as good looking etc. OW think they are champagne in a tall glass but really are just warm piss in a plastic tumbler.

I actually pity them, but pity the poor wives more as they are married to such low life men. At least the OW can get some self esteem and end it. A wife isn't given the choice if she's kept in the dark by a lying scum bag.

@MadeForFun - you may feel 'sympathy' for the wife but please don't insult everyone by claiming to have empathy. How can a person 50% to blame for another's heartbreak ( if the wife discovered the affair have empathy in any way?

Empathy has 3 core elements:
1.Cognitive: “Simply knowing how the other person feels and what they might be thinking. Sometimes called perspective-taking.”

2. Emotional: “When you feel physically along with the other person, as though their emotions were contagious.”

3. Compassionate: “With this kind of empathy we not only understand

• a person’s predicament and feel with them, but are spontaneously moved to help, if needed.”*

@Dicktimsabound

Great post and bang on accurate.

THIS made me LOL. 😆

OW think they are champagne in a tall glass but really are just warm piss in a plastic tumbler. 😂

You're right about how the OW gets off on being an affair partner who has been chosen by someone else's man too, and 'if YOU made him happy he wouldn't want meeeee.' In actual fact, as is commonly known, the vast majority of men will never leave their wife for the bit of fluff on the side. And whether people like it or not, the OW is almost always a downgrade from the wife, and means very very little to the man. She is just a bit of fun.

Annoys me too when these women say 'I'm not PROUD of what I've done, shagging another woman's husband...' LOL fuck right off, you ARE so proud of it. Some man picked YOU to shag, you feel like a special little Unicorn. In reality, as you said, she was just a hole to stick his dick in. She meant nothing. THAT is why men hardly ever leave their wives. If the OW meant anything, the man would move Heaven and earth to be with her.

And barely a word about the married men except to hold them up as the prizes who get to decide who's worthy.

I think this is honestly the most hateful thread I've ever seen on here.

@ReneBumsWombats i agree, horrific! @Dicktimsabound your post is a reflection of your character.... lol not the OW that you've never met 🤣 actually septic talk

You can spot a scorned wife at 50 paces

And whether people like it or not, the OW is almost always a downgrade from the wife, and means very very little to the man. She is just a bit of fun.

Dear god, not that old trope again. Something that's repeated time and time again to make people feel better but is rarely true.

That's never been true of any of the people I've known to have had affairs. Not saying they are a step up, but certainly not a downgrade. Who even categorises people like that? What even is a downgrade? Looks, personality?

"Not saying they are a step up". So you know what a "step up" is, but you can't possibly imagine what a "downgrade" is? Are they not meant as the opposite of one another?

The only misogynists I've seen on this thread are OW who feel it's fine to shag MM and to hell with the impact it has on an innocent party. It takes two to tango. Women expect equality and emancipation yet default
excuse and justification is to blame it all on the shitty men?

As for all those who claim@CornishGem1975
"You can spot a scorned wife at 50 paces" --not scorned at all, merely disgusted at both women and men who try to normalise adultery. If you have made a commitment to fidelity in marriage and you suddenly want to shag another person, decent people would end the marriage first. Those that don't are a 'trade down' as come without morals, integrity, empathy and decency. Incidently, all attributes that one usually seeks when looking for a suitable life long marriage partner.

I wonder if all these OW/OM shut up shop and told their MM/MW sex is now off the menu - how long the affairs would continue?

I wonder what all the ow are doing tonight, maybe at home with the husband or on their own with a bouteille de vin, anxiously awaiting the goodnight text which their ap will try to fit in while he pretends to have a late night shit.

Oh the romance. 😂

Get ready girls !

‘Reasons’ for a affair are a lot more complex than a so called loveless marriage.

from my experience the most common trigger is men not stepping up to being an actual parent as opposed to the carefree selfish man they were previously, albeit masked, leading to a knackered and resentful woman having her libido trashed. Then the poor poppet isn’t getting what he wants and so goes and seeks it elsewhere, having no respect for either woman. The other woman gets swept up in the lovebombing/chasing/newness/lust and thinks this is it, it’s addictive and intoxicating. The sad thing is, it’s so formulaic and predictable it’s all rather grubby, and not torridly exciting at all.

@MadeForFun I genuinely don’t think your intention was to rub people’s noses in it. It takes courage for an OW to come on here and you have answered honestly, I think.
However I am genuinely puzzled as to why your empathy would only kick in if they found out, and were actually hurt by what you and her husband and the kids’ father are doing.
So it’s ok to risk all this devastation to other human beings just for your sexual gratification as long as they don’t know? (And no, this isn’t mysogyny, if the husband was here posting this I’d ask exactly the same question) That’s like saying anything we do which impacts others negatively is ok as long as nobody finds out! Empathy means the ability to really put yourself in another person’s shoes, to think about how they might feel, to examine how your behaviour would make them feel. Just because his wife doesn’t feel it now is purely down to her ignorance of the situation you and her husband have connived to put her in without her knowledge or consent. Her ignorance doesn’t make what he and you are doing any less wrong. That you say you know how she would feel if she knew, that you claim you know how her children would feel if they knew, yet still think it’s ok to be a part of, staggers me. The reality is that you probably have absolutely no idea what it feels like to know you have been made a fool of and hurt by people who don’t give a flying one about how much damage they help to cause as long as they get their kicks. To know that somebody absolved themselves from any responsibility for helping to hurt you, and casually helped inflict so much pain, and helped to change yours and your children’s lives forever and yet thought it was OK to be a part of, is absolutely chilling. Most people who accidentally rear end a stranger’s car whilst parked feel responsibility even for something that was only accidentaI, and leave their details under the windscreen wiper because they have empathy for the owner of the stranger’s car they damaged. This for a total stranger they owe nothing to, but know what they did was wrong and want to put things right.
How then is it ever ok to knowingly deeply hurt or help someone to devastatingly hurt even a stranger? Easy to do I guess if you decide he’s the one who made the vows, not you. Nothing to do with you. Except it is.
I’m not exonerating him one tiny bit here, by the way, he is despicably betraying his wife and breaking his vows, but at a basic level OW know that they are an active and consensual part to all of this and you seem to be saying it doesn’t matter at all if it’s a secret. You can treat others like shit as long as they never know. I’m stumped here. There is no way you can describe that as empathy, it’s just a rudimentary understanding of how it might make someone feel to hurt them without feeling any kind of compassion or feeling bad for doing so. Can’t you see that doing so behind her back is even worse? If you’re going to do this at least have the decency to tell her and give her the luxury of the choice you have and are depriving her of. Don’t mistake knowing how someone might feel for empathy, you need to also give a shit about how your behaviour might impact other people to have empathy with their situation, and you just don’t appear to.

@MadeForFun

how would you feel if you discovered that you were not the only sexual alternative to your AP ‘s wife ? What if he had an equally thrilling no strings attached ‘relationship’ with another women, or indeed , another man? After all, if it is purely physical, the latter might be more likely, variety being the spice of life?

how do you think yourAP would feel and behave if he discovered ( or indeed she just told him) that his wife regularly met up with a younger bloke for sex without strings. Do you think he would be cool, or a bit…upset?

this isn’t a wind up , or a covert insult, just a sincere enquiry. You seem to be an intelligent and articulate person, someone who has the fairly unusual capacity to look at their life without blinkers, so you must have thought about these scenarios, maybe you have even discussed it with your partner?

I suspect my AP is fooling around with someone else. 80% certain he is anyway. Not gonna lie, I did feel a bit put-out at first and think "why didn't he tell me??" but at the end of the day it's his life, his choice.

I genuinely don't know how he would feel if his wife was playing away. He never talks about his marriage.

@MadeForFun

Why do you choose to be involved with a married man? Did you know he was married with kids when you got involved with him?

I haven't read all the posts so someone else may have already asked this.

Yes, I knew he was married with kids. I'd known him for 7 years before we started sleeping together. I've even met his daughter (prior to the affair starting).

@MadeForFun

Having skimmed through I see you have already said you were in an unhappy relationship and knew he was (seemingly) happily married with children.

In this case you clearly have no morals, and as other's have stated, no empathy.

I was in what I believed to be a happy marriage. My exdh's affair came out and now our two children in effect no longer have a dad (they refuse to see or speak to him). His actions have destroyed our family and his extended family. My eldest daughter and myself needed months of counselling. My ex still maintains "he had no plans to leave", but he clearly hadn't thought about the consequences of if I found out.

Women like you enable men like my ex. His AP has been absolutely vile and it has become very apparent that she has a complete lack of empathy.

As for comments re men downgrading with the AP, in my case that is indisputably true. My DH got with a 40 year old alcoholic barmaid who lives in the cheapest rented flats in the area. She owns nothing, has very few friends and is a truly awful person. She also seems to be a complete doormat as despite now knowing exactly how much he lies etc she still wants him. I assume she's amazing in bed and puts up with crap I wouldn't.

@MadeForFun

How can you be ok with what you're doing, and why would you not rather just use a single guy for a FWB situation?

It is even more disgusting that you had met his children, and still see nothing wrong in what you're doing. My children now hate their dad for what he has done. They hate the AP even more as to them she is nothing, obviously their feelings towards him are conflicted as they also love and miss him.

How can you be a part of something that can cause so much hurt and damage?

I can't help but hear that last sentence as some kind of weird brag.

You missed the first question – "why do you choose to be involved with a married man?"

Women, stop blaming each other. If a married man has sex with someone other than his wife, the person at fault is him. Just him.

At the risk of bringing down more wrath from certain names on this thread...

I was thinking about this last night, why do I feel indifferent to the fact that I'm sleeping with a MM? I think the answer is because I don't look at him as a MM.

I don't look at him and think "Oh that's Steve, he's married to Kate and has two lovely children, Olivia and Jake". I look at him and think "Oh that's Steve, he's my friend and ex-colleague and we occasionally hook up for sex".

As weird as it might sound, I don't really think too much about his home life outside of our meet ups. We obviously do talk about various other things in his life - his job, hobbies, interests. I've even given him advice when he was helping his son through his UCAS application, and helped him choose his son's new car. But once he goes out my door, I don't really tend to think about it.

I guess I don't dwell too deeply on his wife or kids because they're not part of my arrangement with him. They're part of his life, not mine.

I know this might make me sound cold and uncaring, but I know that I'm not doing this with the intention of hurting anyone.

Definitely not a brag. I just wanted to make the point that yes I'm very aware that he has a wife and kids. I've gone into this with my eyes wide open.

We're not "blaming each other", but talking about things such as morals, conscience, responsibility, and behavior. These things apply to every single part of life, whether it is infidelity or careless driving, or dropping litter or whatever. We have opportunities to be a good person, but also we are free to do whatever the fuck we want to so long as we aren't risking others or setting them up to be hurt, so why do we do the wrong thing?

And worse – so much worse – why do we do the wrong thing and not just say "yeah, I know this is morally wrong but I actually don't care, and I don't care that I'm being a bad person". People don't want to own their behaviour and so often do their damnedest to insist "but everybody else is doing it", as though that should explain why they're doing it.

You're right, it does, added to the whole I don't actually know what empathy is thing.