Believe me I haven’t underestimated the cost of splitting assets etc and neither has he. However, in my case it genuinely wasn’t about that, no matter what others choose to believe about people they don’t know on the internet.
This isn’t stealth boasting but we’d both still be wealthy if we split up and our lifestyle wouldn’t need to change because of finances if we were apart, nor the lives of our children.
There is no material reason for us to stay together whatsoever. I know why he didn’t want to leave and I know why I him a second chance and I’m happy with that, whether others believe in love or not. It was no sunk costs fallacy either, even after 35 years together.
Was he loving to me during the affair? Not when he was with her, no. When he was with me he was as he always was. He never wanted to change that, genuinely thought he’d never, ever get caught, and never intended leaving me and the children. She eventually wanted him to leave us and did all she could to make that happen. It was never going to.
To say the whole thing was mentally fucked up, on both sides, in this case, is a huge understatement. Massive re-invention of himself, playing a part, enjoying being somebody else a couple of times a week where nobody knew him. Fantasy Island in the real world if you like.
He’d compartmentalised massively. It happened a 100 mile commute from our home and was all in a bubble centred around work. No risk to his life as it was at all, he thought. The train to work took him from one world to the other and it made it easier not to think about what he was actually doing, because he knew nobody in either world would ever bump into each other. Everything was kept totally separate for all involved until the stress cracks started to show to me and to her.
He had no practical reason to stop him leaving, plus the kids were teens at the time, they would be going to Uni in a few years, so not at home with us often, so he knew that in a couple of years it would just be me and him most of the time, but he didn’t want to lose them or me.
The affair wasn’t about us, or me, or lack of love, it was about him. Affairs are about the people participating in them, nobody else.
Some affairs transfer into the real world and become happy, long relationships, but far more don’t. Reality is the acid test for affairs re staying or leaving. In some cases when your shared life experiences involve no more than eating out in nice restaurants and sex in hotels, always seeing each other at your best, seeing only what the other person chooses to show you, unable to back up a barely a word anybody says about how their lives really are or how they feel about anything with real evidence, the decision to leave has only this as its base, with the added fun knowledge that both parties can cheat and lie. This is why the failure rate is so high (if statistics are to be believed) for affair relationships and affair partners who leave to be together. The ones for whom it was the right decision are in the minority.
I believe that one size never fits all with human beings, we have traits and tendencies but there are always those who buck the trend. I’m certain that not everyone who stays in their marriage stays for practical reasons. I know at least four post affair marriages who are still together, two of them decades later and happy, never regretted the decision.
Not all cheats are cynics totting up a bank balance or too lazy to upend their lives.
It’s tempting to lump all cheating MM into the cheating cynical man who only stays because he’d be materially worse off/ couldn’t be arsed to upset the cushy family apple cart bracket. It makes it easier to add to the list of ‘shit things about men’ and easier to shame/ further hurt the wives who give them a second chance.
Like it’s tempting to villify all OW or refuse to see flaws in those we love or say that everyone in the triangle must be riddled with self-esteem issues. Some, yes, absolutely true, but all? No. No man or woman is ever 100% anything. Life would be far simpler if there were certainties in human behaviour: eg All those who stay are doing it for the money/ easy life. All OW are evil. Cheating only happens in unhappy relationships. All affair relationships are doomed. Once a cheat always a cheat etc etc. X Y or Z will never happen to me. I know exactly how I/ he/ she would react in any given circumstances.
None of these statements are true, otherwise big decision making in life and predicting behaviour would be a cinch. The evidence that it isn’t is all over MN, hardly anyone would need to ask anything.
Some are cynically staying, probably unhappy and probably more likely to cheat again, but to some it’s a massive wake up call and re-assessment of their lives, of all they were taking for granted. Far too simple to say that for everyone it’s about money and assets and that they CBA to change their lives in every single case.
There are as many reasons to stay as there are to cheat as there are people on this planet. Uniqueness and individual complexity in the human condition is why reliance on generalisations is too easy and there’s always somebody to disprove it.