Was Any one on here the OW?

[Mindovermatter247]

I always see a woman go nuts at the other women when obviously it takes 2 to tango and the men are defo not blameless, in fact sometime the Ow is a victim too, especially if they had no idea about man’s real or other life.
live always wanted to h3ar the experiences of the other woman…
did you know he was married/in a relationship? If so why did you continue affair?
how many didn’t know bloke had another life?
we always hear the males point of view, Hardly the point of view of the other person..

Funny thing is he always talked wonders about her, what a great professional and mother she was, how pretty and smart etc… I think he did respect her, problem is he was a Narcissist and thought he had the “right to have his cake and eat it too”. Maybe she knew and didn’t care? Or maybe not. I never knew her side of the story so I’ll never know.

did you know he was married/in a relationship? If so why did you continue affair?

Yes. He was a colleague and I thought one of the nicest people you could ever meet. He seemed like one of those absolutely lovely guys who could never possibly cheat, unless (like he claimed) his wife was abusive and awful to him. He wasn't sleeping with her anymore (allegedly). Except his wife had another baby since we started an affair. He tragically passed away very young and I met his wife at the funeral. She seemed very nice and very different to the way he described her.

It's odd isn't it how a person can have the perfect spouse yet still shag around.

Really, it's greed that is the root of this problem.

Honestly, does it make some APs feel better about their affairs if they think the cheat ‘loves’ the innocent party? It’s absolutely bizarre. I get the ‘they don’t love them, they love me, we’re soulmates but is only staying for x,y,x’ nonsense’ tale as old as time. But to happily declare that the cheat loves their partner is ludicrous.

They love the control they have, what two people are providing for them and the power. How on earth can you declare they love them when they are taking the innocent parties right to informed sexual consent and removing their personal agency. Can you imagine the number of small decisions that would have been made differently if the betrayed had known what was happening? Let alone the larger decisions around having children, how money should be spent, investment, inheritance, retirement decisions. Can you possibly imagine how these might look different if you knew your safe partner for life, your rock, was having sex with someone because they had a ‘connection’ or just weren’t having their needs met (poor sausages).

Love is an action, a verb, and they’re showing quite the opposite of what I’d describe love as.

Yeah look at all the famous actors with perfect wives and husbands and they still cheat, it's rarely a reflection on the one cheated on.

Yeah - it wasn't just women either that mine was shagging.

And yet like you say, he was charm personified and lovely to everyone else. People thought he adored me and the kids.

Healing but not all the way healed yet thanks.

@XelaM you actually had the audacity to go to the funeral of the man you were fucking and meet his widow and while she was pregnant?

Did the poor woman have any idea she was being offered condolences by a woman her husband had been screwing behind her back?

Infidelity is just a long list of toxic disgusting and disrespectful decisions made by selfish people honestly some of the stuff on this thread is vile.

I've wondered before if part of the motivation for some women to shag a married man is for an ego boost, especially if the wife has attributes that are either apparent (e.g. wife is beautiful) or if those attributes are made known to the OW through what the married man says (e.g. wife is 'a wonderful mother to our children').
I think their thinking is that if a man with such a wife still nevertheless chooses to shag them, then that somehow makes them feel themselves to be more beautiful or more desirable.
Isn't a OW essentially a woman with self-esteem issues?

@Prairemumm yep. Take a look into Intrasexual competition and Mate choice copying. Very interesting psychological theories when reading this thread.

@Sandra1984

Funny thing is he always talked wonders about her, what a great professional and mother she was, how pretty and smart etc… I think he did respect her, problem is he was a Narcissist and thought he had the “right to have his cake and eat it too”.

You think he respected her but I fundamentally don't think that if you genuinely respect someone, you make the choice to shag other people behind their back when married to them.

I appreciate you may think otherwise but I think for most people that's a pretty hard line definition wise when it comes to respect - not having sex with people without their knowledge.

Maybe admire is a better word. He admired her, thought she was a good and attractive person etc. But every time he shagged someone else he didn't respect her.

The fact he used to always talk about her to you (even if it was positive things) is again just further disrespect, he didn't even have the courtesy to not bring her into conversations with women he was shagging.

Again I appreciate its horses for courses and you think someone can respect their partner while also having sex with other people without their knowledge, especially in the way he did (not a deep emotional affair where he fell in love, but just shagging, and multiple people at that) but I definitely don't and find it hard to understand how you do.

A MM is not going to get me into bed by telling me how amazing he thinks his wife is, I mean WTF?

Issues galore going on here.

@XelaM

I can't believe you went to the funeral and met his wife. Christ. I hope she never, ever finds out what you did or her memory of an already awful day will be even more painful knowing you were there and had the brass neck to speak to her.

It gets more crazy on here by the second. Honestly the cognitive dissonance is eye opening. I just hope that anyone reading this and contemplating getting involved with a married individual or having an affair reads this and takes a VERY large breath!

Affairs just pass pain on.

I was labelled the OW. DH and his ex had married and separated on their honeymoon. They lived separately completely for 18 months and the divorce was underway. Dh moved abroad to work and we met.

I am a great deal younger and his former wife made a big meal out of the narrative that he ahd run of with a younger woman. The fact was that she had been on a dirty weekend with her boss the week before they got married and she then moved in with said boss (although they never got married).

This was about 23 years ago and DH and I have been married coming up to 20 years. The ex has been married (to aomeone else) longer than we have been married. But people still sneer at me as the much younger gold digger who bagged a married rich man.

It's fucking tedious and a good way to weed out the hard of thinking. But I am still very annoyed and angry about the old trope of man runs off with younger woman. DH's only crime was to be silent and gentlemanly on the subject of his ex cheating on him and running off.

I know! So glib and matter of fact.

Ha ha, what is it with OW who insist they are 'soulmates' with MM?

Why are they so desperate in the first place to shag a MM and then so deluded, despite what he may tell them to think they mean anything more?

Look ladies, most MM never leave the wife and if they do, the way you get them is the way you will lose them. They had/have no respect for the sanctity of marriage or their vows and certainly not for you.

@monsteramunch Again I appreciate its horses for courses and you think someone can respect their partner while also having sex with other people without their knowledge, especially in the way he did (not a deep emotional affair where he fell in love, but just shagging, and multiple people at that) but I definitely don't and find it hard to understand how you do.

I believe narcissists don't have respect for any one, they only respect those who can do something for them, this applies to friends, work colleagues etc... (not only his wife), basically this man had a "Mr nice" mask on but he was cheating on everyone. I believe he liked the idea of being in a stable family while having his cake and eating it too. Again, narcs respect no one. He respected his wife because she made him "look good" in the eyes of others as she is beautiful, professionally competent, good mother and great socialite. Some women have a "ignorance is bliss" motto, I don't know if this was her case or not.

Ever looked at yourself @Sandra1984 ?

I have, have you?

This thread isn't about narcissists. This is about women who shag other women's husbands.
I'd say maybe calm down on the arm chair diagnosing of him. You sound a bit detached about your part.

Shaggin a married man was something that happened many years ago and could be included on the list of "stupid and regrettable things I did when I was young". You live and you learn from your mistakes. On the other hand I have been cheated too in the past, it was not a nice experience but I entirely blamed it all on my BF at the time, he's the one I had a commitment with, this woman didn't know me from Adam, she owed me nothing. It never crossed my mind to make her accountable for it. It's our partners who should be held accountable for cheating, they are the ones in a relationship with us, not some random stranger who owns us nothing. You may disagree or not but that's my stance in the subject.

My first job when I left school was working in an office. I was honestly gobsmacked that so many staff were in relationships with each other even though most of them were married to someone else. To begin with I thought Susan and Trevor (not their real names) were a couple. Always fawning over each other and arranging their weekend plans. They weren’t the only ones. It was much later on I learnt the people I believed were a couple were married to other people. I only found out during the office Christmas party when everyone turned up with their wife/husband.

To cut a long story short one day a handwritten note appeared on the note board in the dining area. It read something like, “To whom it may concern. I don’t appreciate late night telephone calls falsely accusing my husband of cheating on me. We have been very happily married over 10 years and are as happy today as we were on the day we married. Keep your despicable thoughts to yourself and stay away from my husband. We are in love, we have always been in love and we will always be in love. You sound very jealous and are obviously out to cause trouble between us. My man loves me and only me. There’s no room for anyone else in his life. Go get a life of your own and leave my husband out of it. He’s not interested. What part of that don’t you understand?”

Apparently it was written by Trevor’s wife. Everyone read the note with an open mouth as everyone was aware that Trevor had been “with” Susan for years! It became apparent that the holidays together, they spoke openly about, were actually Trevor and his wife’s holidays. Susan was invited along because she was a good friend to the wife and was handy to babysit the kids for Trevor and his wife to have evenings out!

It all came to a head when wife caught Trevor and Susan DTD. Trevor is still with his wife and Susan went on to marry Trevor’s friend (once they had both divorced their spouses). My mind still boggles about all of that.

Another two married couples (married to other people) in the office married each other and are still married 20 years later.

Other spouses have no idea that their partners were cheating on them - for years!

I have no idea what I’m trying to say except I think extra marital affairs are more common than most people believe.

Well, I didn't want to go but I HAD to go as the whole office went (we were as small team) and I was made to feel terrible for not wanting to go. He was constantly telling me (and other mutual friends) how horrible and mean his wife was to him, so we all had a terrible impression of her. Of course, no one knew what went on behind closed doors, but she seemed very different to his depiction of her.

See my post above. I had to go because we were a very small team and the whole team went. I don't know if she knew her cheated on her. I suspect not, as he appeared to be a really unlikely candidate to have an affair (very family-orientated "nice" guy). Obviously, I didn't tell her.

she knew he cheated on her*