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.

@Eaudesud "You fall, and MM falls, deeply in love and you both decide your futures lie together. Although you do not consumate the relationship at this stage, your decisions profoundly hurt someone else."

IMO in this scenario the mature thing to do would be to come clean and leave the primary relationship. No-one (IMO) wants to be with someone who no longer loves them.

I don't think 'right' and 'wrong' come into it - just being fair and honest with the primary partner.

Or is the pursuit of true love a justification to end a marriage and cause harm? @Eaudesud

Define true love.
I'd be interested to know your viewpoint.

@Eaudesud

And your age range.
I'm guessing 40's.

@Eaudesud a really good point. I’d say that you don’t fall in love instantly, and before any betrayal happens decide to leave your marriage and make a new life there and then. You see this person, have an emotional affair with them, no sex but still invest a lot of time/ energy into them and fall in love. It’s still a betrayal at the end of the day and for me emotional betrayal stuff is way worse than sex but that’s maybe me personally. But no, sometimes people end their marriages to be with somebody else and that’s their right. Hiding a romantic relationship m, or your true feelings for another person until you’re sure you want to
leave from your spouse, is still betrayal, however, yes. The lies and deception are the worst part of the betrayal. I’ve spoken to/ messaged/ read about a lot of betrayed wives and unilaterally found, that whilst the thought of their husband sleeping with someone else hurts, a lot, it’s always the lying and deception that they find harder to forgive.
I’ve also known OW who married MM to say that leaving their respective marriages whilst being together was the right decision , they regret how their relationship started as they didn’t like themselves much during the deception stage.
Far better for MM ot anyone else for that matter to see that their wives in these ‘loveless marriages’ will hurt far less if they end their marriage with nobody else involved, than feeling discarded and not worth honesty by being cheated on. Yes, it can take being attracted to somebody else to be the wake up call that their marriage is over, but you tell your spouse then, not act in a selfish and cowardly way and pursue an illicit emotional relationship with somebody else until you’re sure you’ve got both women where you’ve got them. Friend of a friend’s husband left her saying he was unhappy and the marriage was over and it was ‘me, not you’ etc and she believed him, she was devastated and sad but had to agree to it and said he couldn’t help how he felt etc. That devastation was nothing to when she found out he’d been living with his OW when in his company flat every time he came over here to work and actually had fallen in love with her. If you’re unhappy end your first relationship honestly and tell the person you’ve fallen for to wait until you’re single. Not perfect but honourable and no, life isn’t always that simple but it’s the right thing to do and if they love you that much they’ll wait.

And of course nobody should stay in a loveless marriage, but falling in love doesn’t make deception, lying and manipulating others to your advantage right, either. Don’t stay loveless,no, but don’t romanticise true love to the extent where it makes it ok to cheat on someone you presumably once said ‘I love you’ to. Falling in love gives you the right to leave, yes, but it doesn’t mean it gives you the right to treat people badly, ever.

I agree - clearly any marriage where someone is cheating isn’t a good marriage by very dint of the fact one party is cheating! Even if the other person thinks everything’s hunky dory, that doesn’t make it true, it just means they don’t know they’re being cheated on. I’d say being married to someone who cheats on you - whether you know about it or not - makes it an intrinsically bad marriage.

I’m also not sure what people want from this thread - there are a lot of people who are understandably invested having been cheated on themselves and are attempting to goad and force people who’ve been OWs into grovelling and apologising and flagellating themselves. But the fact is some people just don’t care and you can’t force them to.

Like I said earlier, I don’t feel in any way responsible or invested in the health or upkeep of someone’s marriage. I wouldn’t entertain a married man now because I’d find him sleazy and pathetic. But I don’t feel like I owe anything to his wife or care about her well-being. My feminism is about macro level societal policies and shifts that benefit women, but that doesn’t mean I have to like or care about every individual woman on the planet. I don’t think cheating is abuse either, it’s certainly shitty behaviour and may be accompanied by abusive acts like gaslighting etc but infidelity in itself isn’t abuse.

Or is the pursuit of true love a justification to end a marriage and cause harm?

The idea that falling in love with another just 'happens' is a bit daft. If I noticed myself getting feelings for someone else, I'd distance myself from them entirely, because I want to protect my relationship. Anyone who pursues that is asking for trouble!

"but infidelity in itself isn’t abuse"

Lets have a party then when it happens to your mother, your kids, grandchildren even.

Remember to tell em, it's not abuse.

Or is the pursuit of true love a justification to end a marriage and cause harm?

Some women do make a career out of the pursuit of love.

Lol it has happened to my mother. And me. It’s shitty and dishonest but no, it isn’t abuse. Not everything that’s nasty or wrong is automatically abusive.

I agree with the posters who say this thread is crazy.
The op asked a question. Plenty of people with experience have answered it. A good proportion stating that they did not care about the wife or the man’s dcs. They did what they did because it felt good, fulfilled their needs, mainly sexual desire and providing a thrill/company etc. Many stated they did not want a full on committed relationship and wanted a part time lived as it were. Yet endless posters trying to tell them they are wrong. That they did not feel what they felt. That they surely must all want to be married blah blah blah.
I have no skin in this game and if a man told me he was married I’d show his sorry arse the door, but for Pete’s sake can we stop believing this crap that women do not enjoy and want sex. That all we ever want is to get married and be forever shacked to a man.
I’ve seen men in the past primarily because they were good in bed. Ok great in bed. Did I want to marry them? Hell no. Did I want them to move in with me, no. They were good at sex, that was that.

Lover not lived.

Well said.

A question was asked and previous/current OW have answered that question but sadly the answers aren’t what other women want to hear.

There will be reasons why some posters cannot accept the answers given and refuse to believe them and argue against them, but we will never understand what those reasons are.

@Thewookiemustgo "The lies and deception are the worst part of the betrayal. I’ve spoken to/ messaged/ read about a lot of betrayed wives and unilaterally found, that whilst the thought of their husband sleeping with someone else hurts, a lot, it’s always the lying and deception that they find harder to forgive."

^ This is spot-on.

If my exH had come clean, told me he wanted out of the marriage it would have hurt. But it wouldn't have hurt as much as all the lies, gaslighting and nastiness I got off him while the affair was still hidden. Some lies only came to light after he had left.

*A question was asked and previous/current OW have answered that question
but sadly the answers aren’t what other women want to hear.

There will be reasons why some posters cannot accept the answers given
and refuse to believe them and argue against them, but we will never
understand what those reasons are.*

We understand your reasons fully, great sex, a wonderful body, company to stave off loneliness, an ego boost, handyman help, making you feel loved and worthwhile, emotional support all the reasons if any woman wanted sex or a relationship of any kind but we tend to go for the single sort so as not to tread on anyones toes.

In other words we believe the reasons but not the justification of those wants at any cost.

The women who use their childhood, lack of confidence, low self esteem as the reason for having an affair with a married man are disgusting.

That is no excuse for making another woman feel like shit.

I still can’t get my head round the idea that all the men who are good at sex are married.

But I am old and perhaps things have changed when I was younger and all the single men have lost the skills of love making and find them again when they are married. Things have also change drastically since I was younger as there seems to be a paucity of single men who want no strings attached sex. When I was younger there were loads of them.

We understand your reasons fully, great sex, a wonderful body, company to stave off loneliness, an ego boost, handyman help, making you feel loved and worthwhile, emotional support…

I don’t recall anyone saying they got involved with a MM because they were staving off loneliness, or they needed an ego boost, or they needed to feel loved and worthwhile…

You just proved the point I was making.

Those are the reasons that you want to believe women get involved with MM for.

Like I said earlier, I don’t feel in any way responsible or invested in the health or upkeep of someone’s marriage.

Ok, let's try this.

I don't feel the need to be responsible or or invested in anyone's mental health. If I insult your weight and appearance and that ruins your self esteem, then you must have been insecure to begin with.

See how this is a repugnant attitude? You wouldn't like it if someone did it to you, even if they're not responsible for you.

Oh ok. Only the reasons that make your little relationship look perfect are accurate. Hmmm, is anyone buying this?

Of course there's an ego boost. That's why lots of people enjoy casual sex. You feel attractive and desired by someone, big part of sex in general or no? Being attractive, and being attracted to someone else?

No point denying it. I think the reasons above are a fair and balanced summary tbh

You don't need to get your head around the idea that all the men good at sex are married. No one has said that.

As has been previously explained, the majority of single men on hook up websites are mostly dodgy... There's a reason they're on there. The hook up sites are around 90% men in relationships. Some say they're open relationships, but who knows what the truth is?

The single men on traditional dating websites mostly state they want romance and dating and LTRs on their profile. If you're looking for casual sex, this is not what you want.

A pool of reasonable single men wanting NSA sex is very hard to locate. It took me two years to find my current (single) fuckbuddy, and even then he lives much further away than I'd like him to. If you happen to know where to find these men locally to me, I'm all ears.

But someone is allowed to think or even call me fat ugly and horrible. I can’t control people’s negative opinions of me or their desires to be nasty for the sake of it. If someone really thought that about me then why would they be invested in my mental health or wellbeing? There are people I think are nasty fuckers and ugly to boot and I’m certainly not bothered how they’d feel should they find out I felt that way. What I (and they) can control is my reaction. So going back to cheating. I can’t control whether someone will cheat on me or not, or whether there are people out there who’d happily sleep with my partner. What I can control is whether I want to remain in a relationship with someone who cheated.

His cheating makes it a bad marriage. Is that what you mean? That makes sense.

Lol it has happened to my mother. And me. It’s shitty and dishonest but no, it isn’t abuse. Not everything that’s nasty or wrong is automatically abusive.

It's abusive. The way partners are treated whilst the affair happens is what makes it especially true. Pretty sure emotional manipulation and gaslighting are abuse for example but hey-ho.

Putting someone's health at risk and having sex without them knowing is also not true consent as far as I'm concerned. Not a crime, but pretty nasty.

Me and the MM were not in a relationship.

At the time I had a great life and he was just one aspect of it.