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.

It isn't true that women usually know. I participate in a group that has left cheaters. Some caught one affair and the cheater promised never to do it again, only to renege on that promise, so they left. So they stayed knowing he had cheated in the past, but did not know that he was currently cheating. Others left after the first affair.
There are some people that stay knowing they are currently being cheated on, but if it was most women I'm pretty sure the divorce rate would be lower.

@BeCandidPanda, you say that you made great efforts to restore your Wife’s trust after being AWOL, but then you turned around and abused her again, this time by pursuing hook-ups and investing in a full relationship with one of the OWs. How would you feel if W was sneaking around and building intimacy with an OM, debating having children with him, and declaring ‘we’re not quite in love yet.’

What a kicking you are giving her once again, and are somehow justifying it within yourself.

@ItsAllTooMuch4Lisa makes a valid point that W may already be suspicious and is planning accordingly. If not, that may be down to your ability to compartmentalize, show no ‘tells,’ and convincingly trick her that you are still honest and monogamous, and a good role model for your children.

You seem confident that word won’t get back to W, but when there are people out there who know you’re cheating, there’s a real risk. You are love bombing a 30 year old, unstable, enmeshed OW with low integrity who may eventually tell, as could her cuckolded partner after he discovers or she admits her affair. There are also the other women whose fetishes you were ‘going along with.’

You’re continuing to act recklessly. You pursued honey pots and jumped into a serious affair before considering the harmful ramifications for everyone involved, even the children. Now you’re engaging in counseling while continuing your infidelity. You can’t fully focus on introspection, establishing healthy coping strategies, and making the best decisions if you’re sabotaging the process with destructive behavior.

Jyst like @XChrome I disagree with this, that the wife surely knows.

This has two factors (that I am aware of, but maybe there are more):

1. Some cheaters are just really good at creating false impressions (lying) or leading two separate lives, which can leave the affir undiscovered for a while.
2. And I guess this is the more important factor: the way affairs are currently “defined” is tailored to a man’s world (it only focuses on whether or not there has been sex involved)

So if you have a shred of healy levels of trust in your relationship, you won’t be shouting “cheater” at the first suspicious thing.
In fact, you will be trying to find a plausible explanation for the behaviour.

So unless they tell you in your face right after the first time, you will be unaware, or guessing at the start.

And even if a suspicion cones up you will be trying to suppress it at first, as you may not want to be “overreacting”.
And once more red flags come up so that you can’t shush the voices in your head, trying to figure out whether these signs do mean that “this has reached an unacceptable point” ( meaning trying to figure out whether they slept together or not, whether it’s acceptable for you to be jealous of what you see/feel or not.

So this phase can buy the cheaters some time.

It takes quite some time to realise that it actually isn’t the real goal to determine whether they are sleeping together or not. That an emotional affair (with or without sex) is potentially far worse than a simple hookup.

If wives always knew straight away, that would be much easier and a lot less painful.

But the excruciating part is when you are forced to figure out whether you are going mad (unreasonably jealous) or if the man whom you are supposed to trust (and who vowed to be faithful to you) has actually turned in you.

3. There is actually a third one: in such a hard situation it can be a coping mechanism to blame-shift a bit towards the other woman.

But main point is:
you are giving away tokens of your companionship, attention and care for another woman while you are apparently leaving your wife drowning without it.

@BeCandidPanda you should understand that for her, this is just as painful as if you were watching her having actual sex with other men.

It takes a while to figure out that society is fixated on the male point of view to determine whether cheating is going on.

It doesn't matter because many males may not put words onto a page like this but this is how many of them behave and think.

There is a self entitlement, cockiness and bravado to these men who are unfaithful, the worst ones are those who lose themselves emotionally to another, they may deny an affair but when a wife knows she knows.

As the poster above pointed out, this process can take time if you are a logical person, you are weighing up the evidence and this does buy them time. By the time you are ready to have the initial conversation, the shame involved having to ask, feeling jealous, insecure and paranoid is just the culmination of the mini courtroom going off in your head, the pain would have been there long before, the detatchment and alowing your wife to drown is a good description of the loneliness and abandonment, by a headonsitic creature who you once trusted and once the denial starts, you might as well be in hell.

There is definitely a male point of view to cheating which benefits them in everyway, this harms women, but it's a policy that society (including women) adopts which is used to protect the males they know. So it becomes very isolating being betrayed, you are lied to by your partner and then society lies to you, confirming thoughts that you are acting unreasonably, it can send a betrayed party insane.

So anyone beliveing that an affair should be covered up for 'someone's good' is actually part of the abuse towards an isolated victim.

I would channel your frustrations into writing essays. Essay title no. 1: "Am I a bastard? Discuss." You could get your wife to mark it for you. Do her a favour.

TRUST is key to all relationships

you can’t ever get that back

even if you forgive somebody that niggle of doubt and suspicion will sit in your mind forever. It will drive you crazy. Things can never be the same again.

your marriage is finished

it just remains for you to do the one thing you should have done years ago

admit you’re a pathetic failure of a husband and father and take yourself off out of their lives.

they will ultimately be happier and better off without you !!

I think she/he ran away 😂
says it all really !!

Yes but this thread doesn’t need him. Pun intended.

I have to ask why do you stay you absolutely deserve better.your not giving yourself a chance to start fresh or a chance for a new life or meet someone good enough for your libido to return.

You're 100% right, but it takes a lot of hard work and courage to get to that stage I have realised, I recently did some research on Trauma Bonding and could relate with everything I read. I need to get the right kind of support to train my brain that under no circumstances is it acceptable to continue the relationship. But I need to teach myself to do that.

Yes it sounds like it get a good therapist to help you find the strength to move on d

So you take up the new woman and the exact same thing will happen again. Novelty wears off and resentment sets in.

Do you really expect us to respond to this ? Go away. Do the decent thing and tell your wife, let her chose her life too.

I think you show self knowledge, understanding of your situation, appreciating your own part in it and you show a certain amount of remorse. You, like all people, deserve compassion. I'm a wife. (Twice over) What I know is sex is a sign that you're connecting with your human, you're part of the universe. Getting off by yourself is not the same. Sex is an important part of romantic love and if it isn't going to be, then you would both have to agree that mutually. You say it can't be discussed without you both getting hurt. So I assume it would be useless to suggest a professional to help you re-connect? If this has been tried then at least you can feel you gave your best shot which it sounds like you're invested in doing. Divorce is always painful for the kids and always expensive so consider if you want a future of seeing them less, possibly being bad mouthed to them about your affair, and the chaos of trying to run two homes because if you have a new family you will still need to help financially, at least, with your first one.
If you follow your heart, prepare for it to hurt. If you follow your head, prepare for hard work and your heart may still break. It's a minefield my friend and I wish you strength.

Divorce isn’t always painful for the children. It really depends on the kind of marriage they were exposed to upfront.

Have you cheated yet @BeCandidPanda?

I agree with this one , I'm the younger woman in a relationship with a man ten years older , it was amazing and everything I thought I wanted, however the rose tinted glasses are now off and the age is now apparent in that we are at different points in our life . Can we work it out I don't know.
You will regret this if you don't try with your wife. The excitement will fade and you'll look back and wish you'd tried harder.

This is so weird. If you want more sex, put effort into turning your wife on. Be romantic, give her little touches throughout the day, work on becoming more physically attractive (have you let yourself go??), buy her a nice outfit, compliment her, take her for dinner, run her a candlelit bath and give her a night off from the kids, go for a spa day together, organise someone else to look after the kids for a date night at home. No woman doesn’t want sex for a month. She just doesn’t want sex with the type of man you’re being. Trust me, you’ll leave and she’ll be in bed regularly with another man who treats her well. What do you bring to the table that actually makes her want to have sex with you? Lame. Hope you left her so she can have a better life.

The OP was in July. I think it's narcissistic wankers' year!

I just think it’s best to separate if you feel like you are going to cheat. It’s not always easy but it’s better than the alternative of hurting someone. Good luck.

Also some marriages are dead in the water and no amount of candle lit baths can undo the hurt. Some couples almost hate each other and stay together because it is so very hard to break up.

That’s just my opinion though.

I think there are many couples who Just can't afford to break up and I think there are thousands in this situation . No where to go and no money to do it . It must feel like a trap and a prison. What a miserable way to live .