Christ this ended up a long post- feel free to ignore it all, sorry!
You’re welcome @namechangeforthis5. Nobody has the right to judge anyone who honestly owns their own behaviour and is trying to improve and put things right.
Just because my husband had an affair and I didn’t cheat on him, doesn’t mean I haven’t ever found anybody else attractive during our long marriage or had offers and opportunities. I get how it can happen.
Before I met my husband, when when I was 19 at Uni I had a horrible limerant situation with a total shit and I doggedly lied to myself to convince myself he wasn’t. I was bloody obsessed.
He reappeared out of the woodwork twenty years later when Friends Reunited started. Unbelievable! Told me all the crap about never having forgotten about me and remembering everything and being desperate to see me again. He had been married for years by then with two teenage kids. Pathetic. His poor wife. 🙄
But by God I couldn’t see it originally. I thought he was a poor trapped soul with the wrong girl and if I just hung on he’d see the light and dump his girlfriend for me. Pah. Didn’t think for a minute that him cheating with me said anything about his behaviour, he was a saint as far as I was concerned. I also selfishly never considered her. Didn’t think for a minute about my part in sneaking around and sleeping with him behind her back. He was her long term boyfriend but I knew what I was doing, I wasn’t blameless. I was a horrible person. He then said he had ended it with her (she was at another Uni) because I was threatening to end it, but I found out a few weeks later they’d actually got engaged! Twat. It took months and months to get past that and kill the obsession, even though he’d been a complete bastard to me and her.
Cheating is sadly pretty common if my friends and family are anything to go by. But then people tend to confide in me a lot so maybe I know a lot more than most.
It was hell working through the carnage after his affair and his lying and shame. We’re way better now, it was five years ago and we prioritise our relationship now way more than we did. Work, career, children and a hectic life meant we relied on the fact that we’d always loved each other very much, been happy and rock solid to be the glue for the marriage, whilst the marriage itself took a back seat compared to all of the above. There are no excuses for what he did, however, but whilst the fallout from the affair was being dealt with, it was all helped a lot by the way we stopped taking the marriage for granted and made time for each other again. It’s been a lot of fun doing that and everything is way better. Our kids are still prioritised but the marriage is valued way more highly than before.
Every relationship needs work and attention. We had a great marriage but didn’t see that it was only great because before the children came along we prioritised it and each other. We just thought it was strong in its own right so when we got busy we thought it would just always sit there being great, because it was great, right? It would still be great and ready to pick up again when the kids got older and work got less hectic and we had more time. Wrong! You need to make the time, actively seek each other out in the busy-ness, check in on each other. The love was still there, bigtime, but the time for each other was not. We both thought each other was fine. We both thought we were both satisfied.
The big draw of the affair was the attention, the flattery, new sex with a much younger woman on a plate, he felt young, (he wasn’t 😂) attractive, looked up to and it was exciting. He chose not to say no and he pursued it. The affair then became his infatuation and obsession. It gained so much momentum that when he woke up and wanted out his AP was hooked and thought he loved her and was going to leave me. She could have ended up like any one of those of you who are now scratching your heads at their apparently inexplicable turnaround and lack of contact.
The fact is that some affairs can be nothing more than a high, finding an exciting feeling again, chasing a feeling, become an obsession. More like a drug than a serious life choice. When the bubble bursts in the majority of cases people feel horrified at themselves, ashamed and foolish and wonder what the heck they were thinking so they end it, distance themselves and move on with far less trouble than the other person. They no longer want the relationship, it’s now a source of shame not excitement, but to the other person it was everything and now it’s gone. Nobody escapes the pain, no matter how much it is deserved or undeserved.
The other party believed they were loved, and it takes a while for the penny to drop that it was probably bollocks and they were the midlife crisis crutch for an older man who had no intention of leaving his wife or carrying on the affair indefinitely. They are relieved and move on, want their old life back, the AP is still hooked and trying not to obsess and keeps hoping they’ll get back in touch.
No excuses for any of this. He was an arsehole and an utter shit and he knows it and owned full reponsibility for it. He blames nothing and nobody except himself.
Very sad that it took nearly losing me and his kids to realise what he actually had, it did no end of damage and sadly still does occasionally, memories or triggers can crop up even now, which still hurt like hell.
It really doesn’t matter what anybody thinks about their relationship, or its quality, or how badly they are being treated. It doesn’t matter what anybody’s FOO or personal issues are. None of this causes cheating. Cheating happens when somebody chooses to do it, it’s that simple.
For thise for whom this is relevant, prioritise your marriage again, give the same time and energy you give your obsession to your primary relationship, it’s amazing how taking time for each other improves things exponentially.
Our relationship was 40 years old this year, we’re coming up to our 35th wedding anniversary. It’s not perfect, it’s very battle scarred, but it’s been well worth saving, whatever people say about LTB. I don’t regret it.