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Relationships

Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

How to end an affair.

71 replies

Unknowncreature · 03/08/2023 12:23

I am in a destructive affair, both to my mental health, marriage and children. The affair is now stripped down to just hooking up for sex really. The other man basically calls the shots, and no part of his character is attractive to me in the least at the moment as he gives me nothing. I constantly wait for him to text me and sneak off when I can . But typically I yearn for his contact and respond to him and obviously provide him with the ego boost that he wants.
I need to figure out why I am doing this and put a stop to my behaviour. I feel like I am in self-destruct mode. I need to find some respect for my marriage and myself. Please give it to me straight. I am particularly interested in those who have been through similar or who have been in limerence with someone and have managed to break away. I cannot afford counselling.

OP posts:
Alcemeg · 03/08/2023 19:10

I might be wide off the mark here, OP, but the way you describe this situation reminds me a bit of the first boyfriend I had at university. Obviously I was very young (and immature for my age), this was my first experience of living away from home, etc. I was rather in awe of this boy who was in his final year when I was finding my feet (badly).

The more things went wrong, the more distant and cool he got, the more desperate I was for him to appreciate me again. The slightest gesture from him could make or break me. Obviously, it all ended in tears. It took me quite a few years to get over the rejection and the overwhelming sense of failure/inadequacy.

There's a saying "No one can put you down without your consent," and I think when we feel crap about ourselves we can spiral into pinning all our self-esteem on the approval of another.

So many questions here, about why you pinned so much on him, what was missing from you and your life (and marriage!) etc to get into this pickle in the first place. Some deep self-reflection is needed. Did you marry very young? Does this guy represent a kind of maturity that you long for? (This is not meant to sound catty - growing up is not always easy, and some circumstances can arrest our development.)

Things can only get better, and it all starts with self-understanding. I don't know if this book is any use to you in your current circumstances, but it has helped me enormously and I hope it will help you come to terms with the fact that you will need to pull the plug not only on this, but probably also on your marriage. Read it and do the exercises in the back.

Good luck climbing out of this pit of despair! Flowers

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Coming-Apart-Uncoupling-Breaking-someone-ebook/dp/B09L15WWX7/ref=sr_1_2?crid=3VUEWSANYRN50&keywords=daphne+rose+kingma+coming+apart&qid=1691085950&sprefix=daphne+rose+kingma+coming+apart%2Caps%2C105&sr=8-2

Thisisworsethananticpated · 03/08/2023 19:15

With this one it’s easy
ghost !
stop replying

and then maybe get some therapy to help , it’s an unfulfilled need yada

but it’s going to fuck your mental health xx

Fishpieandchips · 03/08/2023 19:16

With kindness op, this will end badly
Ap isn't as lovely as you were once led to believe.
They pray on vulnerable people.
I've seen it a lot. I've been taken in by someone myself when I was vulnerable (although I didn't think I was vulnerable but looking back I was)

You won't be his first.
Please find the strength to call it a day.
Then think about your H. If its not working, try and sort that somehow. But not by using another person.

JokerAndTheQueen · 03/08/2023 20:15

Block him, go cold turkey and read the book "Not just friends"

Tara336 · 03/08/2023 21:11

I'm sorry for you and for your DH in all of this. You can be told over and over by us all on here to end it and all previous posters are right in what they have told you. Take back some control over your life, right now your AP is saying jump your asking how high? You are worth so much more than this, either go cold turkey orvwean yourself off the high this obviously gives you, do whichever you think offers you a permanent solution. Then if you want to fix your marriage, but you definitely need to fix yourself and look at what made you do this, but you will never be able to do that while your involved with this AP

K8ate · 03/08/2023 21:33

Mumsnet double standards in full swing……

situationalwashing · 03/08/2023 21:36

You need to separate from your husband and your affair partner and get a ton of therapy.

CarriePT · 03/08/2023 21:36

No contact is the only way. Block on everything. Don't save a number anywhere. 100% or nothing. I promise it will get better after it gets shit.

Shutuptrevor · 03/08/2023 21:38
  1. Block his number right now.
  2. Get a new phone
  3. Transfer all numbers except his
  4. Come off any social media for 3-6 months. Tell your husband you need a digital detox and ask him to change your passwords and not let you know what he’s changed them to.
Cupcakekiller · 03/08/2023 21:48

What's wrong in your marriage? Do you secretly want to get caught because you're too scared to end things.

ImtheFlag · 03/08/2023 21:50

K8ate · 03/08/2023 21:33

Mumsnet double standards in full swing……

100%

C1N1C · 03/08/2023 21:56

Woo, double standards. A man cheats and he's scum. A woman cheats and it's 'end it, get counselling'.

A cheater is a cheater is a cheater.

Your husband deserves better. This was not a one-off, this was an ongoing betrayal. If you EVER loved your husband, you'd realise he deserves better and end it. If you were a man, the whole forum would be saying a lot worse.

situationalwashing · 03/08/2023 21:57

I would say exactly what i said to a man, the same as I did to the op who is female.

End both your relationship and the affair and get a load of therapy.

porridgeisbae · 03/08/2023 21:59

Woo, double standards. A man cheats and he's scum. A woman cheats and it's 'end it, get counselling'.

No one is saying what OP's doing is fine or anything.

K8ate · 03/08/2023 22:01

If the op had been a man, his testicles would now be on the Mumsnet space rocket on a one way journey to Mars.

hopsalong · 03/08/2023 22:03

@Alcemeg gives you some good advice, OP, but many of the replies (as always with infidelity on Mumsnet) are infantile and patronising and I would skip through them.

Would you say to an alcoholic 'just go cold turkey!'? In the long run, yes, it will be the case that you need to stop contact with this man, just as an alcoholic needs to completely give up drinking. But, equally obviously, this isn't easy to do. If it were, alcoholics would all have given up already and people in destructive relationships would all have walked out!

How is the sex? How does it compare to other sex you've had? Is it less vanilla? Is there a faint BDSM tinge? For some of us (and I too have had boyfriends, though not affairs, that fall into this pattern) there is a strangely masochistic pleasure in being in a bad relationship with a person who treats us like shit. I'm not sure that this is because we believe that we're fundamentally worthless, though perhaps that can't be entirely excluded. But there can also be a pleasure in the sheer simplicity of submission, not making decisions, asking 'how high?' etc. It's almost the perversion of a desire that we might have gratified in the past through religion, adoring where you don't always believe, submitting always to someone else's preference. Etc.

Because you know that, basically, this is a shitty and destructive relationship, and because you're ashamed of it (and presumably constantly locked into a stressful battle to conceal things) there's also a huge sunk-cost factor. Leaving the affair means admitting you should never have had it, that it was all a waste of time etc. This is a classic fallacy, of course!

Try to find some tranquil time for yourself. Swimming, a long walk, time alone with your own thoughts. Force yourself to use some of the time you spend daydreaming about your affair partner constructing realistic mental images of future possibilities. Not only what will happen when your husband finds out, then your kids etc, but also what will happen when your affair partner goes no contact suddenly, or breaks up with you, or turns out to be having a second affair with someone else. (In my experience, men who have affairs of this kind are not usually shagging around randomly, but they often have a string of affairs, one after the other.) And it's also very likely that if you end the affair now no one will ever know. It suits people with no sympathy to imagine that all affairs are discovered but this is very far from being the case.

readbooksdrinktea · 03/08/2023 22:06

Presumably, you're a grown woman and know how to use a block function. If you stay there, you're getting a payoff.

It's your family I have sympathy for.

pugsinblankets · 03/08/2023 22:06

I'm sorry OP, this sounds really tough. In a similar situation I found it helpful to reframe contact with the other person as a drug. It made me feel good at the time, but long term it was going to negatively affect my health. Helped me create a bit of distance from them, and also compassion towards myself for being 'addicted.' Hope you can achieve your goal x

AvidMerrian · 03/08/2023 22:14

Imagine coming home to the locks changed, and the absolute contempt of your children.

My ex definitely finds that the hardest- knowing that his children see him as pure skank that they find embarrassing to be seen with.

Your children will not understand, so you are throwing away your relationship with them.

HoneyIShrunkThePizza · 03/08/2023 22:15

Can I recommend a book called Three Women? It might help pull you out of this fog.

Beurla · 03/08/2023 22:19

You just need to stop it. You know that. You just need to stop it.
Then you need to work out what is wrong inside you that you are doing this, and I do mean wrong inside you, not your marriage (although there may well be stuff wrong with your marriage, that's still not the point), because it is that there is something amiss with yourself, spiritually or whatever, that you would be doing this.

I mean that in the nicest possible way.

porridgeisbae · 03/08/2023 22:19

@Unknowncreature I was in a FWB situation once with a married man who turned out to be a user and a creep (who'd a thunk it?)

For me, having a thread here helped as it helped me realize how awful he was, that he was not my friend etc. My initial thread was about him trying to be sexually manipulative. Women on the thread gave me a lot of help to see what he was really like, and loads of encouragement to leave.

So it may help you make that break permanently if you write down (here or somewhere else) more detail of stuff he's done that you weren't happy with, ways he's upset and insulted you etc.

BecuaseIWantItThatWay · 03/08/2023 22:21

Affairs are typically rooted in the 'lack' of something, and the high/lust/pain/thrill of the affair temporarily fills that void. I'd say the majority of affairs have very little to do with having the affair itself.

What is missing from your life that your affair was the quick fix for?

If you can remove this man from your life then do. Immediately. Replace the habits that kept you hanging on - those early morning texts, those sneaky reasons to be out of the house, the endorphine highs - with healthy habits at the same time of day and similar fixes, that replicate the pleasure/happiness/purpose in another area of your life. That could be early morning gym sessions, a new hobby/interest, volunteering your time.

Ultimately, you need to work on you. Build your self-esteem, your resilience and your health until the idea of being someone's bit-on-the-side and deceiving your husband and thoughts you could not act on.

It's a hard road, but worth it.

No therapist? Watch Ester Perel and Alain de Bonton on YouTube.

Only you can fix this, and yourself. Good luck.

PurpleBananaSmoothie · 03/08/2023 22:37

Telling your husband only ends the affair if he decides to work on the marriage. If he decides to stay and work on the marriage, your affair ends and you lose all your privacy. You go cold turkey because your husband is checking your phone. You slowly come back to your husband and hope he can learn to trust you again.

If you tell your husband and he decides to divorce you, you might well throw yourself into this ‘relationship’ to prove it was worth your marriage. Not telling your husband means you’ll just keep slipping back into bad habits. I’ve been there, although he wasn’t in a relationship (or told me he wasn’t) but it’s hard to break that spell. Even though you’re telling yourself that he’s using you and he’s a dick.

There’s a forum called surviving infidelity. It’s for betrayed spouses as well as cheating spouses. There are resources there that will help you understand this addiction to the affair partner. Although everyone there will recommend you get therapy and tell your husband. So realistically if you want to end this affair then you need to face up to do both of the things you don’t want to do.

DaisyThistle · 03/08/2023 22:41

You need to look carefully and thoroughly at why you began and why you are continuing the affair.

I have a theory that people start affairs because they are too lazy to apply themselves to create true excitement in their own lives. To make the effort to change. Instead, the distraction and immediate emotional energy lift from the affair makes life feel exciting. But it isn't exciting. It's sordid and shameful if you are lying to your spouse, family, friends, your children etc.

Take yourself off for a long walk and a coffee with a notebook and pen. Think hard about what you really want from life. What you want to achieve, how you want to contribute and how you could do this. Write down the things that excite and scare you. Stuff you've put off because you think you are not good enough or brave enough and yet you long to do it or admire and envy others who do. Then stop the affair, kill all lines of contact and simultaneously embark on at least three of the things that could bring genuine excitement and reward into your life.