I need to hear the stories of it not working out with OW

[randommum82]

I'll keep a very messy situation as short as I can. Six months ago exBIL walked out on my sister and two very young children after an affair and very soon after moved in with the OW. He's done the whole script, rewriting history etc etc. The truth is even though they were struggling, to her face he was making all the right noises, going for marriage counselling but never actually planned to save the marriage at all because he was seeing the OW all that time.

I am boiling over with rage for my exBIL and the OW. They have disrupted the lives of four very young children (two in each marriage - she is getting divorced so they can live their grand love) just to get their ends off, not to mention the wider misery they have caused. We are a close family and it has broken everyone's hearts not only to see my sister suffer like this but also to realise someone we loved so much (exBIL) was a deceitful cheat and liar all this time. It's so very shocking.

exBIL went from who we thought was a gentle, calm soul to actually being a very immature and very toxic manchild. If anyone stands up for my sister in their wider circle, he takes it out on her and verbally tears her down. So we all hold our tongues.

Please make me feel better by sharing stories of how badly this went for the cheating dog and their OW. It will give me a lot of satisfaction. I've never wished anyone misery. But I do for my exBIL and his cheap tart.

The OP was right to call the OW a cheap tart. She is. If anything, it wasn't rude enough. The only reason to pull her up on that was for not initially mentioning that BIL is a cheap tart too. Both dirty, irresponsible tramps.

@AboutVattime

As much as you don't know anyone for whom it worked out . I know at least 11 couples over 25 years for whom a second marriage has been 'the one true love'
This thread isn't about second marriages. It's about people who have affairs and leave to be with the OW/OM

You seem strangely determined to talk about second marriages.

Who knows OP. Maybe they feel they have the perfect marriages and feel entitled to judge.
I‘m sorry that your sister and your family go through this. I know that it may not look like this right now but it’s a good thing that she is crying and is processing her emotions. One thing that helped me hugely and I strongly recommend to you is journaling. On your phone there is an application you can use to journal, write down your emotions and vent out. It’s private and you can lock it using a password.

I agree! It annoys me that whenever one woman vents about appalling behaviour from another, she gets put down for "misogyny"! We women are human beings, not angels, we do wrong sometimes and some women do more wrong than others! I can't be doing with this nonsense of not being ever allowed to crticise members of our won sex, no matter how badly they behave! It's also very unhelpful and maybe even damaging to the women and children that the really badly behaved women affect with their terrible behaviour, as in the case of OP's BIL's paramour! I could think of worse words for the likes of her than OP has written! Why not accuse the OW of misogyny instead, seeing as she is the one colluding in the abuse of OP's sister, and has been directly abusing her own H? Adultery is a form of abuse BTW to all of ye who felt the need to patronise OP or have a go at her for calling that vile OW a "cheap tart", so OW's even worse, she's an abuser! It comes across as covert adultery apologism to me anyway!

If you read her responses you will see that she was the other woman in a marriage and she is trying to convince herself that her OH left his wife because she was abusing him. And that theirs is a marriage that will last. Which may very well do, but I think she is triggered by this thread.

I agree. This is a harmless coping mechanism for the OP and it serves a purpose.

My ex asked to come back after about six weeks but I rejected that. I knew he and the OW couldn't last for a variety of reasons and she did me a massive favour in reality but at the time, I was really struggling. By the time he asked to come back, I had a spine of steel and skin like a fucking rhino. They lasted a year and he moved out. He moved on to another OW and that failed too.

I look back now and wish I had never met him.

This 100 per cent

I would imagine they do get called names, and viewed with contempt as well for being so weak and pathetic as well as ruled by their genitals as to be played by that horrible woman, who sounds a bit disordered to me seeing as it's a pattern of behaviour with her!
I know I now have a very, very low opinion of my X because he cheated, and of ALL cheats and adulterers now! "Filthy, dirty, devious, treacherous, back-stabbing pig" are just some of the things I would call X in my own mind when I was going through the emotional turmoil he inflicted on me! I've reached emotional indifference now, but still have a very low opinion of him and I doubt that'll change now!

Still pretty shit though isn't it - a father leaving his wife and a newborn baby? I can see why people reacted badly to that can't you?

So if he’s miserable and unhappy, when can he leave? When the baby is 2, 5, 10, 18?

Or do they have to just put up and shut up?

my friend’s dh left her very abruptly for an affair partner she knew nothing about. He moved in with ow (less than a mile away), treated her kids as his own, and saw little of his own three dc. His eldest child was particularly affected, and began to self harm and refuse school.

just as the divorce was getting particularly acrimonious, he dropped dead, not having changed his will or insurance policies

So karma of a sort, but one that came with its own challenges and sorrows. My friend is at least on a sound footing financially because of it.

she toyed with the idea, as her dh’s next of kin, of giving him a cheap, clandestine funeral without informing the ow, or members of his family / previously joint friends who had simply blanked her and her dc after the split - but
let it go .

I'm just pointing at that it's possible to see why people reacted badly to this situation - because a newborn baby was involved - rather than having an answer to it.

There isn't a good time to leave is there really? All depends on how the situation was handled subsequently.

It’s natural for you, your sister, the whole family to be in place of deep anger towards your ex-BIL, and to some extent towards the OW, while it is all still so fresh.

But whether they end up living happily ever after (some affair partners do) or not (many don’t) cannot be the measure of your sisters happiness in the future. If you really want to support her, be the bigger person and help her to see that.

It didn’t work out with my ex h and the ow. I think their main thing with each other was purely sexual so when the excitement of that started to die off after a year they were left with not much in common and things began to fizzle out

Well, yes. Absolutely it’s shit, but I did ask on the thread when he was ‘allowed’ to leave. When would have been a good time, assuming it wasn’t possible to time-travel and not conceive the baby?

And it was really because, assuming the OP was telling the truth (in the sense that anyone on an anonymous internet forum is), the man in this scenario did exactly the thing that is trotted out as the honourable thing on here any time there’s a thread on affairs — he ended his marriage before pursuing a relationship with his colleague. Does the fact that his wife was pregnant at the time mean he needed to stay for a year, five, till the baby was old enough to vote? Forever? Meanwhile Mn would be counselling the’OW’ ‘he’ll never leave her — move on!’

Unfortunately sometimes it does work out. My ex and his affair partner are still together years on with children. It actually makes me feel better years on as he didn't throw it all away for a quick fling. We were having problems before he cheated tbh and it just highlights that we weren't right for each other. Taken me years to admit it though.

Of course some don't work out too.

The best revenge is to live well. Don't rely on karma or things going wrong. Take one day at a time

Are you trying to have an argument with me? About a different thread mentioned by another poster?
I said I don't have the answer to this because there isn't one.

Leaving at any point when you have kids with someone is shit & has consequences for the person left, the kids etc. No time is good, it's all about how it is handled at the time & afterwards.

Jesus, cut her some slack

Guess what, I'm sure OP is helping and supporting her sister whilst also venting on an online forum.

Holier than holy

This isn't about 2nd marriages, though. This is about people who cheated on their partners in their 1st marriage and left them for someone else.

Really hoping the people you know in successful 2nd marriages didn't get there by behaving terribly and cheating on their 1st spouses.

I think the OP must be the wife in the situation, there's no way a sister would be this invested.

I’m certainly not trying to start any kind of argument.

suppose I’m interested in how much outrage infidelity or someone ending a marriage arouses on Mn, when it’s so common. I absolutely get that it’s hard, messy, sad and really shit for children (for years I was head of first year in my university department and the one thing I would see students upset about every year was their parents splitting, having ‘waited for the kids to leave home’. But it happens an awful lot. I’m not sure there’s any point in demonising the people involved when it’s an awful lot of society.

I’m struggling with it too. She comes across as overly invested and really into the drama of it. It’s hard ro understand what’s happening here. Most sisters would be how do I help her. What can I do to support. The ops all about rhe salacious details and how she personally needs to hear about it not working out. And how this is her venting.

very unusual

I would want it to work out for them personally. Two worthless arseholes together and not out in the wider population to hurt other people any more than they already have.

The problem with wanting to hear stories about these relationships failing is that truthfully sometimes they don't, and that can cause bitterness in the other parties impacted (such as you and your family).

Sometimes people meet the OW/OM and of course it's awful the way they tear the lives apart of the person they're with but actually end up in a long term, and often permanent relationship with the OW/OM. I've seen first hand how the ex and her family can't let go of the fact it happened and are almost waiting for the relationship to fail. It hasn't. All that means is they're trapped in a never ending stage of bitterness and unhappiness. It can slip into other aspects of your life and you just end up unhappy in general.

I'm not saying he hasn't been an absolute shitbag, but you and your family need to be there to help your sister sort through the grief of the relationship ending and then help her get closure and release the anger. The absolute end goal is to think about that person and feel nothing at all, not feeling anger that him and the OW are still together which is entirely possible. He needs to eventually be thought of in the same way as any other person, with absolute ambivalence, especially if this new relationship doesn't end quickly. Don't let your sister end up being seen as the bitter ex that can't let go.

You must be talking about my next door neighbour. Well known for her lack of morals. One wife sat outside her house with full beam headlights trained on her window at 11.30 at night, it was also on our windows too. This harassment went on for a few weeks, then the wife and daughter beat her up on her front doorstep. We were away so missed the fun.

Just to add, we live in a fairly wealthy area and the wife was driving a brand new Range Rover at the time.

Unfortunately our NDN hasn’t learned her lesson and continues to pursue wealthy “misunderstood” husbands. She plays the constant damsel in distress. She has tried it on with DH, who loathes her for different reasons.

I sympathise with the op having been the bystander in my DSis first divorce. In that situation the OW also had a reputation for breaking up relationships. She rather naively assumed that exBILs wealth was down to him, he didn’t correct her. So when DSis found out and kicked him out, the OW wasn’t really interested. She wanted what DSis had but had no idea that DSis was the one who facilitated it.
BIL went on to meet and marry another woman, who looks just like my DSis. Unfortunately, she has had a number of affairs, exBIL has stuck with her, not sure whether it’s guilt or just that he is actually a devoted Dad.