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.

Desperate mostly

I think it's significant because married men with young children will have a wife who might still be recovering from childbirth (whether that's physically healing from being cut wide open or being treated for PND), feeling exhausted from nighttime feeds etc. Basically, they'll have a wife who might not be open for sex for reasons which are not expected to last forever.

By the time the children are older, anything temporary will have been resolved, and both parties should have a clearer idea of what's back on table, or off the table forever.

It's unfair to cheat on a partner who cannot have sex because they are recovering from illness. It's reasonable to leave a partner (note, leave, not cheat on!) for unilaterally deciding you'll be in a sexless relationship forever for reasons which aren't temporary.

Happy to accept the crumbs of another woman. Low self esteem another woman's man can't fill. Gross.

That is how it seems to me, and I see nothing wrong with that. The man who made promises is the one in the wrong.

It’s definitely the man in the relationship that’s in the wrong but any woman who decides to have an affair with a married man must accept the consequences.

Hell hath no fury

I’ve been having an affair for nearly five years with a married man, his DC are older though (19 and 23). Why do I do it?

• he stays here 3 or 4 nights during the week, so I get company and sex on the days I’m working, then the weekends to myself

• he’s sweet and very kind but not my responsibility.

Eventually I’ll pack him off back to his wife, if she’ll have him still. I don’t want him long term and certainly don’t want to marry him - what’s mine is mine and that’s how it’s staying. I’ll never be a wife again. I would never have done this with a man with young children as that would be stressful for both of us. This is very chill.

For a younger woman having an affair with a man, I imagine it’s something to do with not wanting to be a wife with all the responsibility that entails, but getting to shag a man who appreciates you yet can’t tie you down?

A woman tried to pursue my husband when our children were small. Thankfully he showed me the messages she sent him, distanced himself, didn’t do as she obviously wanted him to. She HATED me, though she’d never met me, was so horrible about me eg the pics of me she’d seen on his Facebook. She would comment on our children favorably though, as if she could insert herself as a new mother or something. I guess she thought she could get away with criticizing me but not the children.

she had major daddy issues, didn’t get along with her own mum, and while she was trying to slag me off to my husband she was also telling him about all the other married men she knew whose wives she hated, that she thought all fancied her.

I agree with a pp - it’s a psychopathology

Wow - you sound horrid.

I really hope you’re not a friend of mine

This! If you are a woman and you know someone who wants to be with you is married with kids then you aint scoring high marks for morality.

Women who have affairs with men whom they know to have an unwitting partner and young children are participating in dysfunctional, narcissistic behaviour. Yes, of course there may be reasons, like incompatibility and unhappiness, contributing towards the self-centredness, and we are all only human and can all behave selfishly, but to consider it irrelevant to you what the other party’s motives are, or who else might be affected by your behaviour, is a repugnant attitude. Even if, in the round, it turns out that you were better suited to the person with whom you embarked on an affair, and everyone, including the children, ended up happier in retrospect, it is pretty grotesque not to even care about the knock on effects your choices and actions may have on others.

Of course, it should never just be the woman who thinks about someone other than themselves, but to lower yourself to standards of behaviour considered repugnant in men is to behave in a repugnant manner yourself. You cannot claim to float above it, untainted.

Whether you claim it is actually only the man who is at fault, because you owe nothing to his wife or children, or claim he lied to you about the stability of his pre-existing relationship and you were honestly completely duped, is just two sides of the same coin. Just accept reality - you were an active participant in a shitshow.

Absolutely. Breathtakingly arrogant!

Perhaps you should have that morality conversation with your husband.

Biggest lie ever. You're glad to have sex and then get the weekends alone? I don't think so, you probably cry when the man you're emotionally invested in goes home to shag his wife.

And knowing you'll 'never be a wife' (because he prefers his wife to you, and you can't get anyone who doesn't just want causal sex) and will always be someone's shameful secret can't be good for mental health.

I always wonder if these types of posts are real or bots because how can you convince yourself of this🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

@Walkaround yes I agree. Last lien sums it up. I don't know why it's so hard for some to admit any wrongdoing? We've all done selfish things, some of which we recognise and regret🤷‍♀️

I’m really not horrid actually. Just old enough to know what I want and to take it after a lifetime of having my ‘niceness’ and ‘morality’ taken advantage of, mainly by men but often by women. I trust no-one and expect nothing from anyone but myself. I treat my family and friends really well because I choose to do so, not because some bankrupt moral code tells me I ‘should’.

No at the weekend and on holiday I have lots of fun with friends and family. I don’t want him here then, it would be awful, so banal and claustrophobic. And note I said I’ll never be a wife AGAIN: it really didn’t suit me though I stuck it out for 30 years. This arrangement does suit me. HTH.

@Stoopidi
I wouldn’t care how nice you were to me as a friend, if I knew the circumstances you certainly wouldn’t be one any longer.

You do realise a man is still using you don’t you?

We're using each other. How could I not realise that?

Gutted not to qualify as one of your potential friends though!

I'm actually laughing out loud at this!

You obviously have never experienced how liberating it is to have good sex when you want it, and not have to put up with the chores of life that come with a partner.

Your own bed to yourself. Your own choices over decorating your own house. Having what you want for dinner and at the time you want it. Going where you want, when you want, how you want. Not having to compromise as your partner wants something different when they want it. It is unbelievably freeing. I now wouldn't have it any other way.

One day you'll grow up and realise not everyone is like you. That some of us women love having sex but really don't need the man permanently in the life that comes with it, like some women seem to need. Some of us are very very happy being single. I imagine @Stoopidi is very comfortable and confident in her own skin. And that she could easily "get someone who doesn't just want causal sex". Some of us just don't need or want them.

cry when the man you're emotionally invested in goes home to shag his wife. 🤣🤣🤣🤣

As if! I make the bed, have a cuppa and turn on what I want to watch on the TV. Thanks for the giggles!

Why is it always the man using the woman?

Maybe in this case, the woman is using the man? And if that is the case, why’s it a bad thing? So what if she wants company and sex during the week and the weekends to herself?

I genuinely don’t understand the constant view on here that when it comes to affairs the man has the power and the participating woman is weak.

Yup, you two get it!

"after a lifetime of having my ‘niceness’ and ‘morality’ taken advantage of, mainly by men but often by women. I trust no-one and expect nothing from anyone but myself.". its a very jaded and bitter justification isn't it, someone hurt you so its your turn to give zero fucks. keep paying that turd forward eh.

I don’t feel ‘jaded’ or ‘bitter’, I’m the happiest I’ve ever been actually. Precisely because I give zero fucks.

I bet she’s saving a fortune on hotels for a start.

Saving ‘him’