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.

This sounds awful. She has set the bar very low for herself.

And he is being so disrespectful. To both of them.

Even though he lives a little further away and it took a bit of time to find what you want at least you now have a set up that suits you. It sounds great to me. Lucky you.

@Crikeyalmighty I always enjoy reading your comments.
@Eaudesud life and choices and decisions are rarely black and white, but right and wrong always is, I find. We create the grey areas to wriggle our consciences in and out of doing what we always know deep down to be the right thing. The grey areas are usually our own constructs. I wouldn’t torture yourself with why he had the affair and don’t whatever you do make judgements about your worth because of his decisions. On rare occasions MM do love their OW and end their marriages and make a successful relationship together. I think why the affair happened (whilst still no excuse) in that case is obvious. The fuck buddy affair seems on the surface straightforward too.
But a huge amount of affairs fall somewhere in between the two and reasons are far harder to explain. Your MM might not even know the real reason why he cheated. If you believe that the state of your wife/ marriage are no reason to have an affair, other more honest options could have been taken, then you’re the only one left in the equation to blame, and it’s bloody hard to face yourself and ask yourself why you were such a shit. Easier to shrug and say “I don’t know” than face up to a part of you that allowed you to do something you thought you’d never do, be that person you thought you’d never be. The delusion and habitual lying to themselves can leave them totally at a loss to see why and how they got there. It can be a shock to the cheat themselves on discovery because they’ve stuffed the truth down and avoided seeing it for so long, stuck to so many bullshit excuses for so long, that being forced to face it is catastrophic. Your MM had his reasons and neither you nor his wife were to blame for his choice to do it.

That’s horrifying!

Of course I asked.

As I explained earlier in the thread, MM said he had a mismatched sex life to his wife. He said everything else was good for them but she wanted sex twice a year, he wanted sex twice a week plus. He said he'd been trying 10 years to resolve it and they couldn't find a compromise both were happy with. He didn't want to leave his family unit, as everything else worked for them, so he went on a hook up site without his wife's knowledge to find someone like me who wanted NSA sex.

Who knows if it was the truth? I challenged him on his behaviour several times in that it was her marriage too and that she had a right to know what solution he'd come up with for their problem. It took up hours of our time together. He understood it was her marriage too and she had a right to know about his solution to their problem, but he was too cowardly to tell her, as he had too much to lose. As it was NSA, I told him several times he was a coward, was selfish and was a liar.i had no skin in the game to hold back on telling him what I thought. He understood why I said it, and agreed with me. And still carried on being a coward, a liar and selfish anyway. His choice.

Having read so many mismatched sex life threads here on MN and from little comments that came out at times, I believed he was being truthful about his reason. Like I said earlier on up the thread, of course no one should feel forced to have sex. But then no one should make someone else stop having a sex life either. Here on MN we quickly tell people "of course you should say no if you don't want sex" but never offer a solution for the couple, leaving one person craving physical intimacy because the other, for whatever reason, is saying no.

He's not what I want though, as he's too far away. He's keeping things moving while I look for a closer man I connect with.

@Thewookiemustgo

I'm not sure why you would assume I have a married man?

My interest is as a child of a marriage that imploded when my Father fell in love with someone else. I am interested in the morality of happiness and love, from the standpoint of having witnessed both great love, and great pain and loss.

@eaudesud many apologies, I meant my reply to be for @WantingToEducate and clicked on the wrong person to reply to. 🙈I have firm for being this kind of a fat thumb klutz typing on my phone. 🙈😂

Form not firm. And there’s the proof! 😂

@Thewookiemustgo

Thank you for your post.

The crazy thing is that I felt so guilty when I ended things with him - I genuinely felt so awful. He was so upset.

I wish he’d told me much sooner into our relationship (for want of a much appropriate word) how he felt because then I would have put a stop to it much sooner. When he told me that he wanted to tell his wife and then be with me properly I was so shocked because I had absolutely no reason to think that’s what he had ever wanted and not was it something that I had ever planned for. I really thought we’d been on the same page the whole time. It felt like he thought I had deceived him or lied to him, which was ironic really considering he was the one having the affair, but I genuinely thought we were in it for the same reasons and I had no idea how strongly he felt. I felt so bad for how much I hurt and disappointed him. It was a very fucked up mess.

Bluebellsandharebells: Her reason for her affair was that my exH spun her a yarn about me being a horrible wife, always nagging him and always being on his case. She thought she could "love him properly." When she got him all to herself she realised she's got herself a lazy, moody, waste of space.

A lot of this resonates with what happened with my ex. He pitched her against me, she obviously believed all the crap he told her about me and she’s been playing wifey ever since.

He’s her problem now and shit’s about to get very real - she’s finally pregnant, poor woman.

@WantingToEducate it’s rare for anyone in affairs to get out of it unscathed, most are fucked up messes. Somebody is always more invested than the other person and will conceal feelings and/ or facts to make sure the affair continues. Maybe he knew this and decided initially not to show you how he really felt in case his wanting more frightened you away. Maybe he thought with time he could change your mind or presumed that you felt that way too. Once you ended it there was no point him hiding it and maybe hoped that as a last ditch attempt his declaration would make you change your mind. Who knows even if after that he’d go through with it? However he could have ended his marriage at any point if he really wanted to be with you yet still decided to try to keep you both until you ended it. The problem is that you were with a cheating liar, who the hell knows which bits that came out of his mouth were the truth? I’d give him no more of your headspace, you’ll never have an answer or even if you did you wouldn’t be able to trust the veracity of the answer. You were dealing with a seasoned liar. Lying to cheats is just a modus operandi, you can’t have an affair without doing it and doing it gets results. Guilt about lying dissolves at a very early stage and even faster with repetition. Until you probably fuck up and get found out. You know it was a fucked up mess and sensibly got out of it and never repeated it. Leave it in your past and enjoy your present and future. His issues are his to sort out.

How did this thread get so derailed that we are a chat session for greasing the thread that OW are so bloody ridiculously the victim???

So , bloody angry at Mumsnet this didn't get pulled earlier.

And also in response to all the reams of excuses I've read on here. No. Just . No you don't shag a man who has responsibilities without recourse. It doesn't work like that. You do have recourse. Whether you like it or not, whether you say it's his responsibility or not. YOU are culpable.

You ALWAYS have a choice.
If he has said his wife doesn't sleep with him.
You KNEW he had a wife.
If he says he's single.
Check him out.
If he says anything, bloody stop being a ridiculous, love sick pathetic female and do your own dilligace!!!
Men will always do what they do!
Its up to us to set the boundaries.

I should imagine it was a complete show, the tears he shed were for himself probably losing his sure fire bit on the side.
He tried to make you believe you were special so his arangement could continue, I should imagine he's still with the wife.

You really are too trusting of these men, if they lie and cheat, they lie and cheat in most areas of their lives.

Your sympathy was wasted on the wrong person, his wife should have been the recipiant of your pity.

Why should it be?

You can set yourself up as personally responsible for men being shits because you think they can't help i,t if you want. But you don't get to assign that responsibility on to other women.

Good luck with any relationships if you think it's your job to keep him in order.

This. With bells on

Actually he told me he wanted to leave his wife completely out the blue.

We were on a walk and he said he needed to talk to me, and then told he that he wanted to come clean to his wife so we could be together properly.

I was completely blindsided as it wasn’t something we had ever discussed or that I had ever wanted. Once I realised that we were no longer on the same page I ended things.

I have said in previous posts that he still told his wife about his affair and they broke up a few months later.

Sounds like such a mess.

Some people up thread have argued vehemently that an affair with a MM means carefree sex with no strings and your posts have demonstrated this is merely a fantasy.

Behind the simple words. “He told his wife and they broke up” is a world of pain - for the wife. Horrible.

@DameCurlyBassey

I've never known a man voluntarily admit an affair, even if they were heading for the door.

More probable that his wife found out about the affair, I mean @WantingToEducate only has his word that is how she knew about it.

Maybe he was in the midst of being chucked out when he proffessed his love.

That makes much more sense, although @WantingToEducate I'm sure would like to believe it's because of her irresistable charms that he lost his mind over her even after the fact she didn't want him and decided to detonate his home life and leave.

@WantingToEducate have you had any problems with this heartbroken man, such as him not leaving you alone or pestering you, or has he behaved gallantly and respected your wishes on ending the arrangement ?

I’m sure it was very painful when he told his wife but at least their break-up meant she could go on to find happiness with someone else.

I know MM should never have started an affair with me and instead he should have just told his wife he wasn’t happy in the marriage and they could have either decided to separate or work on their problems. But like in most areas of life there’s a big difference in what people should do and what they do, do.

And I agree with you about NSA sex - I used to believe it was a true phenomena but this experience taught me differently.

@canyoufeedthedog it's bonkers isn't it I've been told on here that my feelings of anger towards both ex and OW were wrong, that I'm not allowed to attach any blame to her whatsoever for her actions, despite the fact she knew exactly who he was and what she was doing and did it anyway! And now there's the pity party about how awful it was when it all went wrong for OW and MM. I honestly think they're still deluded and even in the aftermath still haven't really faced up to and accepted what they've done. If they tell themselves that the marriage must have already been damaged beyond repair so they didn't really damage anything and focus on poor MM and themselves as the real victims then they don't have to admit to themselves the utter devastation they've been complicit in.