Why do women have affairs with men with young children

[Thegreenpotter]

As the title says. Why?

Do they have no concept of the toll that having young children can take on a relationship?

How can they feel ok playing a part in breaking up a family?

This is not to suggest the blame lies with the other women, far from. Just more a curiosity as to why and how they can do so from a moral perspective.

Yep, some married people want to have their cake and eat it. To benefit from the apparent 'stability' of a long term monogamous relationship, whilst also benefiting from the thrills of entering into new partnerships. Unless that's upfront and agreed, that's the dodgy morality, right there, in one partner to the marriage's duplicity for their own benefit.

Other women would appear free to hold their own views about what form desirable relationships take and behave accordingly?

(Please don't think I mean from my last post that all these men have not chosen to have children, many have. And still they leave).

It is blaming women.

Tip: women are never above blame. Both the man and women are bad people. The man to a greater extent, yes.

Defending OW who do wrong against any moral accountability is not a feminist issue

In fact, OW are the ones who have no care for their fellow women.

Nobody owes anyone anything. I can call you ugly. I don't owe you a compliment or basic respect. Still a shitty thing to do

This.

Why are you putting the blame on the woman? She is an external party and has no responsibility for his family/ children.

Sure, it's not a good thing to do on her part (if she even knows about his family of course...) but he's the one who bears the responsibility for looking after his family.

It may seem like women get more blame. That's because nobody is going to argue that a cheater (man) isn't at fault. So there's nothing more to say on the topic. We all agree

I think if women fall for the oldest lines in the book ' our marriage is dead/my wife doesn't understand me/she only cares about the kids/ we dont have sex anymore' etc especially when that man has young children and with no evidence whatsoever apart from the word of the man, they are choosing to believe lies when in reality they don't really care.

It's simple. They and the men involved are selfish and have no integrity.
Women with partners and young children themselves also do it. It's not about gender. It's about individuals who are emotionally needy and immature. Unfortunately society doesn't help. Infidelity, which is in reality a form of relational abuse is minimised in today's society and those subjected to it (faithful partners and children) are not considered. Relationships involving infidelity are not consensual. How can a person consent to anything in a relationship if they are being deceived and manipulated? It's fundamentally about one person controlling another and putting any children in the relationship in harms way.
There's increasing research evidence that the experience of infidelity causes people to experience symptoms of PTSD. There is also good evidence that the experience of an unfaithful parent causes children significant psychological harm.
Betrayal trauma is starting to be recognised by more progressive organisations in the US but is hardly heard of here. Sadly society's blindspot about infidelity means that people who engage in it don't see themselves as being abusive partners or being complicit in the faithful partner being abused, nor do they have to face the damage they cause the children involved. If society recognised that infidelity renders relationships non-consensual, perhaps people might be less inclined to engage in it. Like coercive control and domestic violence, it wouldn't stop altogether, but it'd be seen for what it is - relational abuse.

If that's true, why don't we get endless threads asking why he did it, with paragraphs on paragraphs of how disgusting and amoral he is?

The pretzels people tie themselves in to excuse away why we save almost all the vitriol and questioning for the OW are absolutely risible.

Ask men with young children why they have affairs?

When I was 18/19 a man who was late 50s asked me out I said no, you're married (because I was trying to be nice and not say I wouldn't date him anyway), he told me him and his wife had an agreement (🙄), they were together for the kids but had seperate rooms and were 'allowed' to see other people. I said great, have your wife call me and tell me its OK that we date and you can take me out to dinner on Saturday. He barely spoke to me again and his wife never called me (to the surprise of no one). There is a script that married men give their wives when they're cheating but there's also a script they give the mistress or potential mistress. I don't know where they all learn it but we should start telling all women and girls about both!

Because the mans wife and children are irrelevant to them, they’re not a consideration. They don’t know them, they don’t have any feelings of guilt because they have no relationship or commitment to them. And then there’s another type who enjoy having flings with married men because they should be ‘off limits’.

Sorry haven’t read the whole thread but I think men use dehumanising terms like ‘the wife and kids’ or ‘the girlfriend’ that, especially for younger women, make them seem like some burden that the man is carrying around and that everything would be great if they weren’t ‘in the way’.

Yes, all this. And the "I'm leaving her as soon as the children are old enough\leave home", or "once I can work out a way to tell the children."
Many friends have told me that they were told that they no longer have sex with their wives or partners.

My DD was once involved with a man who was genuinely divorced but used his three children to avoid getting into a permanent relationship with anyone new.

Omg. I said upthread that when I was young I had a policy of staying away from men who were in relationships but you just reminded me that isn’t altogether true.

I met a guy who was visiting the uk on business. I was so attracted to him and we really hit it off. I went on a few dates with him and then we ended up in bed. Bliss. We kept in touch when he went back to the US. A short while later Some of his friends were visiting the uk and I met up with them and they revealed that he was in a long term relationship. He had been with this woman for a lifetime (no kids) and I had no idea of that when I slept with him. So he had lied by omission and tricked me into bed.

I remember feeling really upset at having been lied to and the fact that I was starting to fantasise that we were in a long distance relationship. If he had left his long term partner I would have been happy because at that point I didn’t care about her as I had caught feelings and was therefore only focused on my own hurt. Also, that he was able to do what he did with me, made me automatically think that their relationship was over anyway.

I feel a bit yuck remembering that. I was so naive in those days.

Some people are perfectly happy in their marriages and still have affairs.

Completely true @BlastedPimples

The MM I saw was very happy in his marriage, bar the amount of sex he and his wife were having. Hence me finding him on a hook up site.

I lost count of how many times we spoke about it. I couldn't get my head around how he could be so in love with his wife, but couldn't see my perspective that he was showing her no love by seeing me. How he was risking his happiness by seeing me.

He said he'd had 10 years trying to find a solution with her about the mismatch in their sex life. He didn't want to leave, didn't want to break up the family, saw himself as a good husband and dad (I often laughed in his face at this ridiculousness, as he truly believed it, whilst lying naked next to me) He saw his solution as the only way to keep his marriage going. He had nothing to say when I reminded him it wasn't his marriage, but their marriage, and that she had as much say in things too.

But he was truly convinced he was happy in his marriage. In his head, there was just a little blip, which he resolved by seeing me.

I think a lot of men lie and basically don’t care about their partners and children enough. I hold my DH to his marriage vows not women who have nothing to do with me. If he had an affair I know exactly who I would blame, definitely him.

When you project your hate onto the OW, you're doing the exact same thing to her that she did to you. She isn't "real" to you, not the way your P/H is, where you understand his strengths and his emotions and his complexity, so you can tell yourself she's simply uncomplicatedly evil. And you aren't "real" to her compared to the man, in exactly the same way.

Someone I knew did this a lot. It was all about the chase. The more the man appeared off limits the more the thrill of achieving the ‘prize’.
I do have to say the blame for me always lies with the one you are in a relationship with. There are always people who want to pull down your happiness and they will only succeed if your DP lets them.
I have to say twice people have tried in front of me to work on DH, he’s feckless in so many situations but he handles these with such poise and grace, I don’t feel any green eye at all. I actually enjoy them trying and his polite rebuttals and respect acts towards me. If he was this perfect in every other aspect I would have my fairytale prince 😂

That’s another thread. I am interested in this one.

I was the other woman when I was 23. I'm autistic and was very very naive. I'd been badly bullied when younger and struggled making friends and I always felt like I wasn't good enough. I'd only had one boyfriend before then who cheated on me and left me for her.
He approached me and at first I had no idea he was married with 2 young children. I think he told me after a few dates. But obviously everything he told me about it was complete rubbish. He said he was separated, and lived mainly at his parents house. Only staying at "his wife's house" when he was seeing the kids. But apparently even before that they were sleeping in separate rooms for the year before. He told me his second child was an "accident" and they'd only had sex once that year and that was when he was conceived. He used to text me all evening/ night so I had no reason to not believe he didn't live at home. (Now I think he either slept in a different room claiming he needed to sleep and not be woken by young kids or maybe his wife was so knackered she was fast asleep early). He flattered me so much. Told me everything young me wanted to hear. As a 40+ year old, I can now see what rubbish it all was. And I can hardly believe I fell for it. But all I can say is I truly truly believed him at the time. I really thought he was separated, I thought he loved me and we would be together. I know it sounds ridiculous to believe that anyone could believe it but I did.
When I found out it was all lies I was absolutely devastated. Firstly because I'd lost what I thought was the love of my life, and secondly because my feelings of worthlessness came back with a vengeance. Also as with experience i can see now that him telling me "no one else will ever love you like I do" wasn't actually the romantic thing I thought it was. It was actually coercive to keep me thinking I needed to stay with him as no one else would love me as much. It was actually keeping my self esteem down.
It took me years to recover.
I'm very glad it ended now. And from what I've heard he's now divorced. And I'm happy for his wife that she's away from him and from what I've heard she got to keep the house and I really hope she got the maximum she deserved.
So do I regret it? Of course. But I was young and wanted to be loved. I never thought I was hurting the wife or kids as I believed him when he said it was over anyway.

If you have an affair with someone else’s husband, you know they are married and it is not an agreed arrangement with both parties to the marriage, then of course you bear some blame for any harm done. You will have entered (or continued) your relationship in full knowledge of the dishonesty involved. It’s sociopathic to argue only he bears any blame for the harm done to his family, because only he has a contract. Sensitivity to the potential effect of your actions on others is governed by empathy, not contract law. It’s about how narcissistic you are when you analyse situations. It is deeply narcissistic to shrug your shoulders and say it’s all his fault, because you owe nothing to his wife and kids.

My exh suddenly became a catch in the eyes of other women the moment we got married. He had never been so popular and took full advantage of it - behind my back of course.

There's no single answer.

Could be that she's in an awful marriage, thinks she'll never want sex again after being constantly coerced, discovers she does and can have something just for herself for the first time in what feels like forever, realises she can leave her marriage, does so eventually and goes on to meet a lovely man. Nobody finds out about the brief affair (as far as she's aware).

Meanwhile, he stays married and starts trying to reconnect with her a decade later, she ignores him.

I know of an instance of this in the family and it is only one perspective.

A male relative was married with kids. He was in the forces and was posted every couple of years. The wife did not want to work as her mother didn't work and was a sahm (both kids in school at this point), so it was setup that he would send her his salary every month and keep a couple of hundred pounds for himself. She refused to move with him when he was posted and wanted a house near her parents, which they brought. We thought this was understandable as she wanted stability and support but it did backfire spectacularly.

Despite meeting him when he was serving, she wouldn't support him at all in his career. Wasn't happy when he was away but when he came home he was pretty much frozen out. It was clear to us he really wasn't welcome or wanted. Inlaws ruled the house, dictated what would happen and he was pretty much ignored. The justifications were because he was away they had to take over. I think resentment built up because he didn't feel included at home, kids didn't know him, wife refused to work and he was living on a very small amount paying for a home he didn't feel welcome in. Recipe for disaster really.

So he stayed away more and more. Wife wasn't happy, not really sure why because that's what she seemed to want. She sent a letter threatening divorce if he didn't give up his career whilst he was away on operational duty. He was very angry as he was risking his life and said he didn't need that whilst he was doing everything they asked of him (bought the house, sent the money, didn't rock the boat with inlaws). I think a switch flicked at that point from what he said.

Anyway long story short, he ended up meeting someone and within 3 weeks of meeting the new woman, he had left his wife and agreed to the wife's divorce threat. Ex wife went ballistic as he regained financial control of his money, started divorce proceedings and a judge ordered her to work. Inlaws poured poison into the kids ears about their dad. A lot of anger. Thankfully, kids didn't listen to negativity and insisted on seeing their dad. They started to have a better relationship from that point onwards, just him and them spending time together consistently. He never missed a CM payment and gave her the house.

25 years later, he's still with the woman he met, happily married with kids. His relationship with his children from the first marriage actually became stronger and is really good now. All the kids get on and the younger kids love their older siblings.The older ones spoil the younger ones, it's lovely to see! Ex wife remarried and its all settled down. They still bad mouth him, especially his ex MIL as he's an easy punchbag, but never acknowledge anything they did wrong.

I like the woman he met, she's much more balanced, stands on her own two feet professionally and actually supports him which is nice to see (he went on to do a degree which we never thought he would). Ex wife said to us he shouldn't do a degree because it was selfish. Looking back I actually think she was financially abusing him. Would threaten suicide to get her way and MIL was the same, pretty toxic.

I suppose his affair would be classed as an exit affair but they're still together and happy. I think what happened actually saved his relationship with his kids and got him out of a very toxic situation.

This may not be the scenario the OP was thinking about, but just wanted to say it's not all black and white. Some marriages are just toxic, even with kids involved, and people are better off apart. How they end can be messy and traumatic, but people are human.

And you used your agency to say no.
There are a lot of women out there that don't care and would just say yes.
As for those with poor self esteem and the other excuses thrown about, they could still have said no.
None of this excuses the men that do this, but we shouldn't be excusing the decisions of the women either.