I'm the cheating husband

[BeCandidPanda]

I have been with my wife for 14+ years and we have children together. Our life is setup well now, except for one area, sex. It's always been an area of mismatch between us. Now I'm thinking of ending the marriage for another woman. I'm entering mumsnet knowing you are going to judge me and hate me, and perhaps this is what I deserve. Please at least try to be polite in your attacks. This isn't easy for me even though I'm the one causing all the pain.

The story of our downfall starts with me. When we had children together, I did not step up as a father and house worker for the first 2 years and sex and even emotional connection essentially froze for us. In addition, I was absent, neglectful, a work-a-holic, bad at setting boundaries with work. What she got was the broken left overs after a pretty tough work week. What I got was her totally spent from being with the kids all the time, day and night. She was cruel to me, I was absent and detached.

At that point in the marriage, we were exhausted and fighting the whole time, she was hating how little support I gave her, and I was focused purely on bringing home money for our large mortgage. I could see we were heading for a divorce after some particularly bad fights, sometimes in front of family, and doubled down to save the marriage and chose to hold my tongue after every lashing. I've since spoken to her about this time, and she swears divorce was never on her mind, and she would have continued that existence forever, even if I hadn't of improved.

I changed jobs, made time for her and the house, learned a lot of how hard it is to raise kids and run a house and the exhaustion was more fairly spread, although my career took a hit from the job move. After 2 years of me working on the family, she started to open up, talk to me like an equal again, and we occasionally had sex. Perhaps once a month.

For reasons I don't know why, we were so foolish, we had our first chat about libidos and sex drives at this point in our marriage, a house and multiple kids in. My wife revealed her ideal amount is once a month if things are going well. And for her it was real work to have to do it more than that. Mine is multiple times a week. We settled on once every 2 weeks as the compromise. By this point, I'm a more skilled house worker, the kids are a bit older, we're sleeping more, the mortgage isn't cripplingly high and life is better.

In the back of my head however, I completely panicked. I had no idea she could go a month without sex. I honestly thought missing sex was due to me being a terrible husband and father which partly I worked on to save the marriage, but partly I fuelled my sex drive into the marriage and improving myself. Now in hindsight, the flags were there before we got married that her sex drive was low compared to mine. Early on, it was once a week, I didn't raise it however. The sex quality was easily the best I had ever experienced with anyone, so once a week didn't seem as big a deal. Of course now it's become essentially a chore for her and the frequency has dropped. Of course, all the exciting elements have been stripped back to the least possible while still allowing for orgasm for both. If I raised my concerns, we fought, and sex went away. If I didn't fight, sex was infrequent and there was peace in the house. For years I chose peace.

I don't know when exactly this started, but eventually I started looking for sex hookups online, and discovered a few things. I'm not as attractive to potential sexual partners as I used to be, I'm old and a weirdo online looking for sex. Humbling and slightly humiliating but fair enough. I also discovered many of the women online who want sex, at least where I was looking, have really serious issues and as I got more desperate for sexual attention, I found myself lowering my own standards to try and have sex. I was successful in convincing a few online women to meetup, but when it came down to it, the guilt and the obvious mismatch in the kind of sex we wanted made it impossible for me to go through with it. For example, one woman desired a married man and that turned her on. I played along initially, but I didn't enjoy the idea of cheating on my wife and she started to sense it. Another woman was young and liked me to be as old as possible, yes she was attractive, but I found the whole thing creepy. Another woman was extremely aggressive and wanted me to completely abuse her, I half played along to my shame, but we both figured out that I'm actually completely harmless and am just not a sadist. I enjoy when my sexual partner enjoys sex, so it really made no sense. Even in my frustrated horny state, I had the intuition that if I practised harming women to relieve my sexual tension, I would over years become someone really bad. So I continued to seek online for women who wanted sex, but continued to not follow through when I realised there was something really wrong.

Eventually I stumble on a woman who I really click with. It's a slow burn at first, and we just chit-chat about life. Chit chat over time becomes more emotional and flirty. Flirty becomes sexting, and sexting became nudes. I was floored when I saw her, she's beautiful, and apparently she fancies me as well. A couple of embarrassing points, she's 11 years younger than me, and she even has some similar features to my wife. I didn't plan for that, and it's not the reason I'm with her, but it's worth mentioning, so you can judge me even more.

We have recently made our emotional affair physical, which I see now was possible because we were both vulnerable with each other before we had sex. We have a lot in common, sexual desires, but also outlook in life, some overlap in our anxiety and neediness. We're not quite in love yet, but it's clear we have strong feelings for each other.

She however doesn't have children, and if she wasn't with me, I think she could find someone just like me, but younger and without a family already. She however seems still keen to have me, and honestly from my side, I'm keen to have her. There's only so much I will push her away.

We're still figuring each other out on big things and it's slower going because of the affair context. There's only so much time in the day to figure each other out, and maybe in this time we will discover a boundary of the other which is unacceptable and this will fizzle out. The biggest decision I will need to make is whether I'm willing to go through the whole creating children phase again in order to have her. Almost certainly if she doesn't desire children, then I will be all in. And even if she does desire children, I suspect for her, I could be convinced. This time round, I know how to be a supportive husband and father. I know to prioritise the family. I think because we had the sex drive chat early, even if sex dried up for years because she was looking after children, I feel confident I could raise it with her as a need and we could negotiate it back eventually. She's open to discussing sex as a need. I see now, discussion about sex with my wife is a such a fragile topic that we both leave more hurt than when we started.

Other things worth mentioning, we do both have some childhood issues which will likely mean we both suffer from low confidence issues. I think we have both struggled to state our needs in relationships clearly as needs. That eventually has resulted in us being unhappy in our separate relationships and ultimately cheating. I think we have to each accept the responsibility that we created a situation with our partners partly because of our weakness to negotiate for a need that we felt was important, it's really not the fault of my wife for example that I don't have a lot of sex. I could have left her years ago when the cost to her and me was lower, but I didn't. I think I'm now old enough and mature enough where I can do that with a partner and state my needs, and I'm really of the opinion I need to service my partners needs. I've never treated my affair partner as a young woman or patronised her, but one worry I do have is that she's still figuring herself out. We're both people who by definition didn't get their needs met within a primary relationship and now wish to convert the affair into a real relationship. We're going to face so many more hurdles than is necessary to be a couple, and yet, when I talk to her, it feels right. I should be less hopeful, but I think she's worth it.

I don't really know what to expect from MN. I've read a few threads on this topic of mostly women laughing at these stupid older men chasing after younger women. I can't believe I'm the guy at the end of this joke, I'm most annoyed at myself for having gotten myself into this situation. So there you have it, yet another sad story of a middle aged man doing middle aged man things.

I know I won't get sympathy here, but it is true I feel terrible. I don't exactly have the biggest circle of friends anyway, but for a topic as dangerous as this, I literally have nobody I can confide in.

Leave your wife if that’s what you want, but make sure you do it for the right reasons. Whatever you do, don’t leave her because of the sex you think you’ll have with your affair partner. Because I can guarantee that the amount of sex she wants will reduce too, especially if she has kids. Then you’ll be back where you started only this time you’ll have 2 ex wives and a load of abandoned kids.

😂😂😂. His wife should run a mile. She doesn’t need counselling.

I also think your wife has her head buried in the sand if she withholds sex, and has done for years

Please don’t conflate having a lower sex drive with withholding sex.

Withholding sex is done as a punishment and is an unhealthy strategy in a relationship.

One partner having a lower sex drive is completely normal and present to some degree in almost every relationship.

If one person wants sex four times a week and the other wants it once a week, it doesn’t mean that the second person is “withholding” sex three times a week.

There is no absolute “normal” for how much sex there “should” be in a relationship. Frankly it sounds like the wife has gone to the effort to have more sex than she actually wants to have in an effort to keep her husband happy.

I can point to examples where men in your situation leave and form new relationships, only to find they have now a new family and kids to support and are back in the same situation, only this time wife 2 is less your ideal in other ways than wife 1. I know of 2 who have gone back to their first wife, and more whose first wife will not have them back. It is true that anyone can find more than one person in life who is "the one", so your next relationship might be better, but:
what about your children - you will be leaving them too!
why is your wife's drive so low? Is this an emotional, hormonal issue that might be fixable. Is she afraid of further childbirth, is her pill lowering her libido and needs changing? But it does seem as if life got in the way, and she accepted and settled for that, so you need to make her understand that you cannot
So would you be prepared for a vasectomy? Or have you already had one, and that has had a psychological effect that neither of you is aware of?
Or is it that YOU have failed to find what makes her respond? Your new lady might just be more responsive to your technique, but have you improve/changed that with your wife? I do see that you have tried the no1 foreplay - housework - well done! but how about courting her again, like you are with the other lady?

Suggesting the doctor, therapy and counselling is probably too late - but suggesting divorce without this seems a little unfair. Is she prepared to, more importantly are you prepared to try,

You do not sound like a monster, but sex drive differences are important to men, and she does need to acknowledge that.

Since I was able to stop taking the pill, my own has increased, and post-menopause, it has gone up much much more after the dip, and now I am ready to go, but he is less so😅 You do not say how old you both are, but if she is 45+, she may be in peri-menopause, and drugs can help.

or have you already emotionally withdrawn from you marriage?

The thing that stands out to me the most is how little you are considering anyone else in this. Take your affair partner, for example - you talk about having to potentially start another family so you can "have her". But you don't seem to have given any thought to what the reality of being with you will mean for her. How she will be viewed. She will be HATED. She will always be seen as the woman who broke up a family. Have you even considered what kind of relationship she and your children will have? What kind of stepmother she will make? If you've spent any time on MN you will see what awful relationships and families are formed when parents think only of themselves when they bring other people into their children's lives.

By all means, end your relationship if you are not happy. But leaving your family for another woman is the worst thing you can do.

It seems to me from your post and subsequent answers that you’re debating between telling your wife in order to leave or stopping the affair and hiding your actions in order to stay. You need to tell your wife what you have done. There is no way you can continue down either path without giving your wife, who has given you 14+ years of her life and birthed and raised your children, the facts so she can decide what SHE wants going forward. I am seeing in all of your posts lots of information about you and your needs and your decisions, nowhere do you even allude to your wife having a say in anything that happens going forward.

Staying ‘for the kids’ isn’t the favour you think you’re doing for her. Your wife deserves to be loved, cherished and respected by at least one partner in her life, and though it might be upsetting for a while when she knows the truth, she deserves the opportunity to make a decision on if she should waste any more of her time with you. 14 years is a long time to waste but the rest of her life wasted is atrocious - and the fact that you’d consider your family and friends reactions and the impact on yourself before you’re considering if she should have the opportunity to make this decision herself tells me it’ll definitely be a waste. Affairs aside, you’re doing her a massive disservice by even considering robbing her of any more time with a man who clearly does not love her.

“This time round, I know how to be a supportive husband and father. I know to prioritise the family. I think because we had the sex drive chat early, even if sex dried up for years because she was looking after children, I feel confident I could raise it with her as a need and we could negotiate it back eventually.”

LOL. No you won’t. Your selfish and self obsessed and pathetic, willing to destroy your children’s family over not getting as much sex as you want after being a crap husband and father for all that time. It’s pathetic and cowardly that men just want to run from one woman to another, not brave or independent enough to be alone for a while to work on you (obviously multiple) issues and improve yourself for your wife and children. This woman only seems appealing because she new and forbidden. When you get down to the every day boring life you’ll bail on her too. You’re just running from your responsibilities. Your children deserve better.

You should have been honest with your wife and spelt out HOW important sex was to you and how, unless you can enjoy sex with her once a week, you could be looking for sex online. You could have suggested sex counselling before thinking of the extramarital affair. Your wife should have had a choice of whether she wanted anything to do with a cheat.

You need to stop deceiving your wife by breaking up with either her or with your extra. You should fess up and try your best or fess up and divorce.

Your wife gets to choose how and if she proceeds with you.

Men like this never say how they really feel/what they really want out loud because they know full well that as the words left their mouths they would be laid bare as small, shallow, self-centered and heartless, and they couldn’t bear to see their real selves reflected in their wives’ expressions of hurt and disgust.

I have re-written this to better reflect reality, but shortened it so nobody has to waste two hours of their one precious life reading it.

"Muh dick has been with muh wife's hooha for 14+ years and we have some children together, I think. It's hard to remember because muh dick is the one doing the thinking. Muh dick's life is setup well now, except for one area, dick pleasure. It's always been an area of mismatch between dick and hooha. Now muh dick is thinking of ending the marriage for another, newer, shinier hooha. Muh dick is entering mumsnet knowing hoohas are going to judge muh dick and hate muh dick, and perhaps this is what muh dick deserves. Just kidding! Muh dick actually deserves constant praise, which is where the new hooha comes in. Please at least try to be polite in your attacks on muh dick, as he is sensitive. This isn't easy for muh dick as muh dick is the one in all the pain.

Muh dick made some mistakes but muh dick really is a nice guy and has changed. However, muh dick absolutely must ejaculate into a hooha several times a week. Otherwise muh dick will shrivel up and blow away. The hooha muh dick promised to cherish forever is only available once a month. What to do? It's not like hands are a thing.

Muh dick panicked. He had no idea a hooha could go a month without sex, because isn't every hooha just like muh dick? Wtf! Early on, it was once a week, muh dick didn't raise it however. Wasn't that considerate of muh dick not to demand daily hooha? See? Muh dick is a great guy.
The sex quality was easily the best muh dick had ever experienced with any hooha, so once a week didn't seem as big a deal. Naturally, that means the quality was equally good for hooha. How could it not be? Muh dick is a superb lover. Of course now it's become essentially a chore for hooha and the frequency has dropped. That never happens when you've been together 14+ years! Dicks and hoohas go at it like rabbits their whole lives. What alternate universe am I in where hoohas could ever get bored with being my sperm dumpster? Of course, all the exciting elements have been stripped back to the least possible while still allowing for orgasm for muh dick and a fake one for her hooha. If muh dick raised his concerns, hooha wouldn't give in and the sperm dumpster went away.

Muh dick doesn't know when exactly this started, but eventually he started looking for sex hookups online, and discovered a few things. No, scratch that. Actually, muh dick knows he was thinking of cheating from day one, because of the horror of only once a week of hooha use. Muh dick is old and a weirdo online looking for sex. Maybe muh dick can find it on Mumsnet! Who's for it hoohas? One (tragically) only slightly used dick is yours for the taking. DM me. 😘

Yap yap yap bla blah blah, kinky sex, younger women, yada yada. Cheating, lying, and exposing my wife's hooha to STDs aside, muh dick is a nice guy. So nice. Not at all one of those toxic guys who feel entitled to betray a hooha for the sake of more frequent dumpster use, plus ego kibbles, if muh dick is being honest. All muh dick was asking for was once a week after only 14 years of hooha use, for goodness sake. What kind of world is this where muh dick has to find other hoohas to use? Oh, the humanity.

So you hoohas can see how painful this is for muh dick. Would you like me to message you a photo of him? That would brighten his day.🙏"

Once a month is not no sex, or even little. It's common with people who have been together a long time.
Is she supposed to read his mind in addition to having sex she doesn't want just to keep him from nagging her about it?

He should have ended the marriage if he couldn't deal with it. He admits he knew once a month was all she would give him. It was his responsibility to end it ethically, not cheat.

I have encountered some decent seeming men on MN, but not many. Most seem to be full of themselves and are long winded, self-centered bores.

Yep. “Bore” is exactly the right word for this waste of oxygen. This post is enough to cure me of men forever. Tedious, self-obsessed, insects.
maybe his wife will be ecstatic to be rid of him.

You weren't there for her at her most vulnerable and important time of her life - the first few years your children were born. You failed to step up as a man and a husband and consequently she no longer finds you attractive. Leave her. It's the best thing for both of you.

Exactly what I was thinking!

Also, mate, if one thing is for sure, it’s that you will have a nasty surprise coming when it comes to your new paramour.

Beautiful women in their late 20s or 30s simply do not get involved with married men a decade their senior who already have children unless they are fucked in the head in some way. Only women who are desperate, needy and/or utterly self-absorbed do that. So even if you haven’t seen her dark side (much) yet, it’s coming.

And you’re kidding yourself if you think things will be different with her. Just listen to yourself:

This time round, I know how to be a supportive husband and father. I know to prioritise the family.

This is so blatantly untrue that it’s laughable. You ALREADY HAVE a wife and children. How exactly are you prioritizing the family you currently have?!

This with bells on !

"What a bunch of self serving twaddle."
I completely agree. What a load of tosh. You make me feel sick. Self-obsessed narcissist. What a load of drivel.

This said by @CheekyHobson is absolutely spot on!

This time round, I know how to be a supportive husband and father. I know to prioritise the family

This is so blatantly untrue that it’s laughable. You ALREADY HAVE a wife and children. How exactly are you prioritizing the family you currently have?!

OP I might have written something like you did up to maybe a decade ago. Probably as long and as self -serving with reference to a bad childhood. Basically a load of poor me bullshit. That's because I spent most of my life behaving like a prize cunt. And that was because I was a prize cunt and likely still am. So are you.

What I got from my emotional affair was a new marriage to AP in which I and my wife have been horrible to each other for twenty years. Fair enough, we deserved that. Her ex husband and my ex wife did not deserve to be hurt and traumatised and neither did our children. Fortunately AP and I did not have kids of our own as if we had I think the damage to all the children would have been worse than it was.

My world now is: little money, no sex at all, constant tension and low grade misery with some very unhappy moments. Neither of us trust the other not to behave horribly. My daughter has severe physical health problems made worse by her severe anxiety. The former not my fault. The latter, almost certainly mine. She nearly completed suicide and has self harm scars across much of her body. They are the tattoos of my behaviour.

I think you need to tell your wife so she can be checked for STDs and leave her with the house and the money. Tell AP to get to fuck and spend time being as good a dad as you can as a single man. Need sex? have a wank.

Why not just leave your unhappy marriage, and stay single? Then you can put your sick where you like without hurting anyone in the process.

The OW may be married with a high sex drive now, she doesn't have any kids, it's secretive and exciting, you're deluded if you think that will continue if you actually start a relationship, have kids and a real life together.

For gods sake don't bring more kids into this, you don't seem very involved with the ones you already have.

Dick, obviously. Not sick!

Meanwhile the wife is loving life and realises she does have a sex drive after all, she just didn't want to sleep with the cheating mid life crisis dude

I know someone said they reported this thread as AI. I wonder how come MNHQ is keeping it up.

If I go I want to know how much damage I do.

@BeCandidPanda, you have already perpetrated a huge amount of damage to your Wife and children, as you have humiliated and made an absolute mockery of them.

I can picture you at home, having family time and smiling at W and the kids. They have no idea that behind your smile is a boatload of deception and deviousness. While you are pretending to be the Committed, Loving and Supportive Husband & Family Man, you are actually hunting for new sex. Your hunt leads to participation in a wife-cuckolding fetish and sadism before you finally choose a young adulteress who is willing to put you on a pedestal and help you harm your family. It’s a match made in moral bankruptcy heaven.

It’s rich for you to boast of ‘knowing how to be a supportive husband and father’ when you are actively stealing W’s agency, choices and consent, and are risking her mental and physical health. It’s appalling that you make such a claim when you are destabilizing your children’s security and jeopardizing their well-being, which will have far-reaching ramifications.

It’s clear to me that you are going to leave. You’re so enthralled with this heady adventure and it’s reflection of your younger self. I hope you will conjure up some honesty and loyalty for your Wife and inform her of your infidelity. After 14 years, children, and the abundance of love and devotion she has given, doesn’t she deserve to know the truth of what’s been happening in her marriage and life?