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.

@Thewookiemustgo "It's to do with the cheat themselves, their issues, the impact of their conscience (or not) and what actual needs they think the cheating meets for them."

I agree 100%

My cheater exH told me. "It was just a distraction until things got better at home".

By that he meant, he wanted me to stop getting on his case. The reason he was getting GBH of the ear'ole on a regular basis was that I got sick of carrying the whole marriage, and wanted him to step up to the plate. I wanted him to address his issues and so we could have some decent sex.

So I stopped being a people-pleaser and he didn't like it. He found a listening ear in a girl at work who's relationship wasn't happy, played the victim and she responded by doing a "there, there, never mind, let me kiss it better" number on him.

He was (and probably still is - as these selfish types don't change) a lazy, entitled, spineless, a-hole who couldn't even wash a coffee cup to save his first marriage.

He eventually married OW, so no doubt is getting his needs met while she struggles with mental health issues.

I never gave the ow a moment’s thought until the appearance of this thread. All my beef was with the ex husband not her.

He stopped having sex with me because he was becoming more involved with her but he didn’t/wouldn’t leave because at the time I had a great career and lifestyle, which he wanted. I wonder now if the affair was a way of putting me down and asserting his masculinity over me because I was quickly becoming more successful than he was. I gather the ow was not a high achiever. I don’t know much about her but I think she was a young person seeking fun and sex like many on here have described. At the time I thought that in his eyes she was better than me, but looking back I am not convinced. Her looks and youth were of no consequence. I think she was just another weapon in his armoury of abuse.

I found out about the affair because I stumbled across a diary he was keeping. He may have wanted me to find it because it was on a shared laptop. In it he described me in the most disgusting terms. I have no idea if he described me to her in this way. It was vile. He was a very cruel person and the affair was part of a pattern of abuse, a way of undermining me, to say the least. By the end I was completely broken. It took a while to put myself back together.

I never thought of her as being in any way to blame for what happened to me. As I said I just didn’t see her as part of the equation but this thread does make me wonder how she would have felt if she knew some of the things that he did to me. Would she still have wanted him? My guess is that she didn’t know. He was a charmer. At first she would have considered herself to be having fun with a man whose wife was a bore. He probably love bombed her as he had me but he was single when I met him. I was his first wife.

The ow would not have known that she was with a dangerous man who had almost killed me, which means that her life would have been in danger too. I wonder if she found this out later.

After I got away from him I felt so guilty because the ow had in effect been my escape route and I wondered if I should have tried to get hold of her and warned her about exactly who she was dealing with, but someone told me that he might not have been violent towards her, though I sincerely doubt it. And I had no way of getting hold of her. They are no longer together.

I feel very sad writing all this. I realise that mine is an unusual story in some ways because so many on here describe affairs as casual and not harmful and that shit happens in relationships, but my story is darker than that of a man who fell out of love with his wife. In fact he never ever said that and maintained - even after the divorce - that he was deeply in love with me. Really fucked up.

Did I expect the ow to care about what I was going through? At that point no because I was so isolated, so used to dealing with the situation on my own - I was also very ashamed: I saw the affair as an indication of my worthlessness and was just trying to survive with as much of my life and my sanity as I could hold on to. Of course I came to learn that he was the one who felt worthless and that he was actually transferring his feelings of worthlessness onto me.

People on this thread have said that there must be something wrong with the marriage for the MM to cheat. I would expand on that and say that it is probably more likely that there is something wrong with the MM for him to cheat.

I thought op’s question was interesting and didn’t quite understand why others felt it implied a judgement. I don’t think I am any the wiser though. I suppose I was expecting to learn something more interesting than that people wanted nsa sex or the like but I am not quite sure why I expected any more than that.

@DameCurlyBassey

for you

This may interest you.

https://www.reddit.com/r/theotherwoman/comments/15urgft/he_loves_me/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=1

🤮

Poor thing that she needs this to validate her whole existence.

His wife will eventually pull herself up and move on. The redditor will be stuck with this loser until he finds the next victim.

Cant sleep so spent a bit of time on that sub and it is eye opening.

All I can take from it in a positive sense is former affair partners trying to talk current ones down from the "we are so in love, is he really staying for the kids/only going on a romantic holiday so she agrees to divorce" etc bullshit. The Italy holiday was particularly bad.

They really do believe the lies dont they?! I genuinely didnt think that this many people could be this gullible......

What a shit lifestyle.
Would rather be single to the end of my days.

“The script” that married people use to justify affairs if often discussed on MN. What this thread makes clear is that there is also a script for OW/OM. Their script appears to include the “facts” that they didn’t make any promises to anyone and that the married persons marriage must be unhappy.
Personally, I think both scripts are utter bollocks. Affairs, for all parties involved, are selfish actions of insecure people. People desperate for validation and an ego boost, who cannot self sooth without attention from someone else and the feeling of “ winning”. It is literally all ME ME ME and no script can hide that fact.
Maybe I have missed it, but I haven’t seen any OW/OM or MM/MW state that they wouldn’t mind if someone they loved did the same to them? They literally have one rule for them and one rule for everyone else. THAT is their weakness and entitlement and has nothing to do with anyone else. I am utterly not religious but if everyone lived by the “do unto others” rule, the world would be a far better place!

@PyongyangKipperbang

Honestly.I couldn't believe her dancing fur joy under the circumstances.

A few people on the Adultery hate sub, pointed out that he hasn't actually said he's leaving his wife...

The delusion of the OW on the other woman forum on Reddit never ceases to amaze me.

@DameCurlyBassey "the ow had in effect been my escape route "

Snap!

It was a lot easier to divorce him for adultery (with her pushing him to sign the papers) than for "unreasonable behaviour" which is easier to contest.

That Reddit forum is horrendous

I think it shows that it is both people having the affair that have something wrong with them

@DameCurlyBassey in my case it was the opposite. She was the high achiever and earner. I had major beef with her when I discovered the affair but that wasn't helped by the fact that I found hundreds of messages between them slating me, and she was a very active participant in that. She called me a bad mother who was unable to cope and needed her baby taking away and just about every other name under the sun because I had expected him to step up a bit and take an active role in looking after our newborn. I can see now that was her doing the pick me dance but at the time, hearing another woman say those things and my ex agreeing with her completely shattered my already quite fragile mental state. I was in that hormonal, sleep deprived period post birth and was confronted with that. When he eventually moved to be with her, he threatened to take me to court for full custody because I've suffered from depression in the past and (not surprisingly thanks to the affair) was struggling at that point, and she was in the background calling out that as she was a junior dr she would testify and be taken seriously because she's a medical professional. I know now that was all complete bollocks and if it had got that far, that certainly isn't how things would have gone, but the woman seemed determined to keep going until she'd utterly broken me beyond repair.
She got her comeuppance in the end and the prize she'd fought so hard to win (who'd never really wanted her in the first place, just liked the NSA sex and that she lavished money on him) left her high and dry with a young baby just like he did to me. I've said on this thread previously that my hatred of her has waned over the years, to the point that I felt quite sorry for her at one point, as I'd been through what she was going through. I feel that I could sit and have a civil conversation with her now. Id still have questions about what they did, but I don't feel any animosity towards her at all now. And it would be nice to connect at some point in the future if for no other reason than we have DDs who are half sisters and have never met. But I still sincerely hope she's taken stock of the enormity of what she did over the years, and I can't pretend I didn't think to myself that karma had done its job when he did it to her. For his part, I don't know where he is now, but since all this he's descended back into drink, drugs and a hedonistic lifestyle and has spent at least 2 stints in prison, and we suspect that's where he is currently. So all told, nobody won really.

I do see the OW as having culpability at an individual level. He may have been unhappy in his marriage but he has affairs with the potential OW who make themselves available.

If a MM starts sniffing around a single woman what is the appeal to her? I have only seen affairs in a work context (I don't get out much). The affairs have mostly been between senior men and junior women. So I suppose some of the attraction may be reflected power or the potential for career advantage.

Maybe I have only seen the affairs which have blown up. Twice I have seen directors lose their jobs with their affairs as significant contributory factors. The OW haven't lost their jobs but have slid right back down the greasy pole with future career progression severely impeded.

@Buildingthefuture completely agree. There is definitely a script with the OW too, and in my experience, it was definitely all about her ego, she had to win him from me. And yes, do unto others etc should apply, but plenty seem to think it doesn't. Which concerns me a little for the generations growing up now. I try to teach my DDs that there are generally accepted standards of behaviour in society, and they should strive for those behaviours. And when they don't, because everyone gets it wrong sometimes, they need to face up to and take responsibility for what they have done, regardless of who else may have been involved and how much to blame they were, try to make things right if they can and apologise for the part they played in it.

Indeed, it's quite eye opening, as some responses on this thread have been

DD’s boyfriend’s dad cheated when he was small then left to bring up his new children with other woman many miles away.
It was all very damaging for him, unsurprisingly. That said, other woman appears to be a very nice and kind person who stepson gets on well with.

That Reddit forum is a rabbit hole. Gah.

I've never heard anyone, no matter how stable and loving their relationship, talk about their long term partner in the way some of those women talk about their affair partners. Clearly the distance and unavailability cranks the intensity level right up, plus it leaves a zillion blanks about what life with him would be like that they can joyously fill with whatever fantasy perfection takes their fancy. You can't reason people out of that headspace. Some of them sound like they're on drugs.

It's a support sub for tormented OW, though, so it's going to self select that demographic.

Pretty much what happened with me, she got pregnant and they played happy families for a while. In a way I was grateful it happened when DD was as young as she was. Although I'm sure it will have had an effect, she was less than 3 months old so had no awareness that her dad had left to start a new family

I wonder what percentage of the OW actually know the wife in real life too?

I do recall a previous poster talking about an affair that was going on within the family or friendship circle (can’t remember which) and it sounded awful.

I just wonder whether it’s quite common or not for the OW to know the wife, as in they have actually met her, and whether this is somehow part of their thrill?

And I also wonder what the OW’s background is in terms of what kind of relationship her parents had?

I.e if she’s from a home of separated parents and has no experience of what being married is all about, does that explain why she can so easily disregard it? Are women who grew up in a traditional 2.4 children happy home life less likely to be involved in an affair because they understand the sanctity of marriage?

I would love to read some research on this if any has been done - I find it fascinating from a sociology point of view.

I do know that you are statistically far more likely to have an affair if one or both of your parents had affairs (or maybe more likely to get caught out, just like your parents - who knows?!). Likewise re divorce. Obviously there is a link to emotional damage caused by trauma and to learning behaviour by example - maybe even to the extent you grow up to gravitate towards cheaters and liars, because that was the relationship model you were given, so you don’t consider it an aberration.

Can’t speak for anyone else obviously but my parents have been married nearly 40 years. I don’t however respect the institution of marriage or think it really means anything beyond a legal contract. Anyone can get married - it doesn’t mean they actually love or respect their spouse or that it’s a good or healthy relationship. The thing that defines a relationship and it’s strength is how the partners treat and support each other, not a wedding ceremony or a marriage register. In my parents’ case I wish they’d split up decades ago, it was a toxic and unequal relationship and I learned some really damaging behaviours and beliefs about love from it. So obviously I’m biased, but I don’t think marriage in and of itself is always worthy of respect, it depends on the people in it.

I genuinely didnt think that this many people could be this gullible......

A quick glance indicates most of those threads are from the US @PyongyangKipperbang . They were gullible enough to vote Trump in, and still support him to this day. Anything is possible.

I knew her. Absolutely couldn't stand her. She showed zero respect for me and openly flirted with my husband. When he left to live with her, the escalation of abuse was horrific. She wanted my child and if she couldn't have him, then my husband was instructed to give him up. Which he did. I don't know how I ever got through it. It was utter hell. I ended up with cancer following on from years of relentless stress. I will never get my head round the utter cruelty, the absolute disregard the pair of them showed me and my little boy. Her behaviour towards my child was so bad that the court put a prohibited steps order in place to prevent her having contact with him. She absolutely loved torturing me, revelled in it.