Anyone else trying not to contact a guy 3

[SunsetSkylane]

Anyone still want to chat?

@pubertyalloveragain I think you posted last on thread 2, how you doing?

@namechangeforthis5 @Frith2013 @Thewookiemustgo another thread if you want it, or maybe you're all magically cured - or maybe Wookie is sick of our shit 😂😂

I'm truly hurt you've all ganged up and taken me out of the conversation to silence me, I wouldn't do that to anyone because that's bullying and surpressing freedom of speech.

Mate, you've literally bullied and criticised us off our thread. You've got freedom of speech. You're exercising it here.

We've got freedom to walk away from you.

If everyone is leaving this thread I want to wish you well, I hope you can all find peace from your situations in time.
I've recently finished reading the threads and they've helped me a lot so thank you for creating this safe space.
And thank you so much to Wookie for all of your intelligent insights - I can't express enough how much you have helped me understand what I'm going through (internally anyway, my crush barely knows I exist).

Happy to help anyone privately who struggles with limerance, OCD type obsessive thoughts and rumination.
Don’t want anyone to think I’ve forgiven what he did, I can’t take the praise for being that strong, I can’t forgive the unforgivable. Don’t think I ever will.
I was strong enough to accept what happened, understand that it was a one off and his appalling and utterly selfish coping mechanism for a load of shit (nothing to do with me or our marriage but it dented his self image and mental health) that he was going through. It wasn’t worth ripping up the 30 good years we’d had together at that point (it’s nearly 41 now) and devastating our teenage kids at a vital time in their lives. None of it excuses what he did, but I understand how good people go wrong.
I was strong enough to set red line boundaries, educate myself massively about the psychology of infidelity and the mechanisms of lying, get brutally honest with myself, him and my life as a whole.
I was strong enough to pick my smashed mental health up off the floor, I still suffer from PTSD now, five years later, but I won’t let it beat me.
Just hope everybody on this thread, whatever their opinions, can find or has found some peace in their minds and some joy in life.
Never lose sight that life has many wonderful gifts in it no matter how hard it sucks at times. None of them are given on a plate however. We have the responsibility and also the power, to find them for ourselves.

I'm also sad this supportive thread has been sabotaged.

Good luck to everyone who posted, brave enough to share their stories

Sounds like you deserved everything you got and surprised your husband lasted as long as he dod. Now go and crawl back under your stone 😉

And this is exactly how all of you think.

That wives of the men you want, are spoilt, undeserving, selfish, entitled bitches that had it coming.

Your true colours are just under the surface.
Tut Tut.

Do you honestly think your words could hurt me after what I have been through, believe me the betrayed come out stronger than that after battle.

Now do you want me to insult you or maybe tell you how I think things are going to pan out in your life.
You see I don't really think you deserve a support group, some do on here, those who stumble on and think it's just about unrequited love and then realise it's a side piece show.

I'd feel the same if someone set up a support group for Paula Venables and the PO workers who ruined innumerable lives. Get it.

I wouldn't mind but you're always so misguided with little to no remorse and some seriously fucked up reasoning skills.

I've probably made you unhappy.

Could I ask what what everyones affair has achieved ?

Do you know anything about your lover's wives, are they well, are they happy, is your lover treating his wife well or is he gaslighting her, lying day in day out, putting her sexual health at risk, making her look a mug.

Is he abusing her physically, do you know, because this is the time most abusive men are at their most abusive, they will shove, beat and humiliate women who dare to ask where they have been when suspicions arise, the arguments, screaming matches, the throwing of houshold objects at their partners, suffocating them into silence with anger which could terrify the biggest of opponents. Do any of your lovers tell you this, look arround any home of an abusing cheater and you will find discord, hatred and even worse.
Is he abusing her emotionally when she asks him questions about his suspicious behaviour, do you laugh when he tells you how you both were nearly caught, do you mock her stupidity for being oblivious that you are ripping one anothers clothes off without a hint of sympathy for your husbands, comparing penis sizes, their buttocks their muscles, their arms which envelop you, their sense of style, their vehicles, their lives, their personalities, their bank balances. Poor husbands, how pathetic they are, and you chose them, you may aswell invite your lover into to the home and have your h beaten to a pulp, what a sap he is.

The comparisons which only you have the advantage of, what a wonderful possition to be in, to be the one in the know whilst the idiots are kept in the background.
Arn't we stupid, the loyal true ones, arn't you winners who deserve everything.

Do you think about their children in the middle of these hell homes, why their fathers have changed beyond recognition becoming selfish bullies detatched from family life, if only they knew he was only thinking about some fresh pussy, if only he were honest at least they could pretend he was dead, and their mothers, diminished, suicidal and unhappy, where the fuck did our family home go ? Poor children you won't get that again, tough shit kid, there's a gal on here weeping about lack of contact she's the one with the needs.

And YOU want him to think of you more, you want your husbands to go away until needed again and you want to come on here because every second of your unimaginitive lives are not yielding mximum ego kibbles and are having a few doubts that someone could be hurting you, the hipocracy !

What I really want is for you not to harm others which many of you are doing right now, in real time.

I don't care how sorry you feel for yourselves, get over it you don't deserve sympathy. The poor people you know are the ones who need support but no doubt they are isolated, havn't a clue what's going on and if they do get to find out are going to be in so much pain, pain that none of you will understand and will inevitably only make things worse because you only ever see it from your own point of view.

Ask me again what I've achieved and then think about what you have achieved.

And what I've spoken about is just the tip of the iceburg.

Stop hurting others.

@jaimelesoleil I’m sorry but that was a terrible thing to say to a betrayed woman, however much her opinion rankles with you. It buys into the mysogynistic view that some women deserve abuse, because that’s what infidelity is, abuse.
If you’ve ever been cheated on I can tell you that you dread wondering if people think ‘she couldn’t keep her man/ she’s let herself go/ told you she’s not as nice as she seems/ she must be a right cow or he wouldn’t have done that etc etc.’ when infidelity is the fault of the cheat and nobody else. It’s what some OW want to cling to, to be able to believe the lies they are often told as the husband vilifies his wife to the OW to make him look like a victim in need of rescuing, not an offender. It’s a cheap easy shot at somebody who had no choices about what her husband chose to do.
This is Mumsnet, an open social media forum where people can air their opinions regardless of whether others agree. Whatever you may think of MainlyWater’s comments or her choice to comment here, using something terrible that happened to her, that she had no control over, was a victim of, was not her fault, as an insult is incredibly unkind and offensive.
I understand your feelings in that somebody is going against the grain of this thread and no doubt treading on some toes but it’s Mumsnet, not a closed therapy group, they can if they wish and they are at least being honest with their thoughts and feelings.
It doesn’t matter what people think of MainlyWater and her opinions, she’s entitled to them, whatever others think. To me disagreeing with and becoming cross with somebody never justifies telling victims of abuse that they deserved it just because you don’t like what their opinion of a thread or comment is. Let’s try and keep what’s left of this civil, no matter what we think of what has been written.

For the second and final time, I didn't know he had a wife. After a few days to recover myself, I left him, blocked him on everything and have had no contact since. It nearly destroyed me.

You ask what have I achieved? BA, MA, career in a ridiculously niche field, marriage, children, several other fairly long relationships.

Excellent relationships with my children, friends, many from 40 or more years ago.

Decent house and garden, lack of social life but many hobbies within the house.

What I haven't achieved is striding into a thread, belittling, insulting and generally being a massive bitch, for no reason at all.

You don't know anything about the women on here. Several are being harassed through appalling messages, coerced, domestic abuse style. I left mine after pretty much getting assaulted. (I had to fight him off).

I've taken just over 4 months to recover. What's your excuse for not moving on from your failure of a marriage?

You say you knew him for 2 years before you dated and didn't know he was married.

Now that's an achievement.

@MainlyWater i am nothing like you describe. I haven’t even met up with him and now we are just mates. How dare you generalise us and tar us all with the same brush. I’m sorry for what has been done to you but you can’t just start on us like this.
@Thewookiemustgo i want to thank you again for all of your kind and firm words that I’ve needed. You know I’ve hated myself and you’ve never judged me.

Certainly everyone is entitled to voice their opinions. But of course, doing so means accepting that others might not agree, might think you are wrong, and might not want to engage any further with you. And that's also fair. Thanks for your balanced views, @Thewookiemustgo. Adios!

@lovelymango you’re welcome.
I would never judge anyone who owns their own responsibilities and genuinely wants to be a better person. Nobody can do more than be honest with themselves when things go wrong or bad choices are made and work hard to turn it around. Good luck, am always around for a message if you need a chat. Lots of people do, there’s a load of stuff people want to talk about but daren’t voice it publicly on MN.
It’s nice for me if I can help anybody hurt by infidelity, either their own as an OW or their partner’s. It gives meaning to what I went through. One of the sad things is that it is very isolating, in that nobody ever wants to talk about it from either perspective for fear of blame and shame. The possible consequences of discovery get ignored or pushed down in affairs because nothing sucks the fun out of it faster than reality. When the shit hits the fan the impact is way bigger than anybody ever thought. If people could see the aftermath, less people might choose it. The devastation, pain, destruction and havoc it causes is always, but always, vastly underestimated. It’s hardly ever worth it.

Talking about it on here definitely made me feel less alone. When I felt alone I felt sort of sunken into it so this thread really has helped.

@MainlyWater I’m not a regular on this thread. I just stumbled across it. But a lot of what posters say hits a nerve. I’ve parted company with a partner and have found it difficult to stop thinking about him so I understand that hurt. Neither of us was cheating and there were perfectly sensible reasons to split up but there’s still a sense of loss.

The fact that you’ve turned the whole thread into a tirade about affairs shows how incredibly damaged you are by your own experience. Unsurprising really. I agree with you entirely that cheating is abhorrent. I also agree that people should try to move on and fill their lives with other, meaningful pursuits. But I also recognise that many people struggle to do that.

You berating posters and effectively telling them to “get a life” helps nobody. I don’t know what you’re trying to achieve other than venting your spleen and upsetting people who aren’t hurting you at all,

I do hope the women on here find peace away from these dreadful men who lie and decieve.

Liars will drag you down to their level and leave you in pain.

It's their fun and their game.

I think you need to focus on finding peace after the man you loved lied and deceived you. Getting cross with strangers on an internet forum makes you seem unhinged and probably hasn't helped you 🤷‍♀️

I think a lot of other posters got upset and triggered in return by what MainlyWater said, and some of the come back was less than pleasant.
She is also a stranger, with whom posters got cross on this internet forum. Did their getting cross help them or mean therefore that because they got cross with a stranger on the internet they are also coming across as unhinged? Or as a betrayed woman must MainlyWater not only have deserved her abuse from her husband as one poster said in their anger, but also be the crazy ex wife too?
We’ve come a long way in terms of understanding mental health issues and not everyone who gets cross is ‘unhinged’, they’re just cross.

You know what, it's perfectly ok not to forgive, although Wookie has made it her life's work after being betrayed, personally I can't see how it helps to be amoungst predatory women who lie about their motives.
And Pinot, I know you practice non monogamy but even you know that it's not cool to insert yourself into unsuspecting family units whilst at the same time are deceiving your partners.
It's not a thread for couples parting company, it's a thread for helping women not feel guilty for harrasing married men, for accepting breadcrumbing and feeling distraught because they have not managed to 'win' their prize, it's disengenuous.

And yes I stumbled across this post, wish I hadn't, it's horrible, with horrible values and women that cry wolf when confronted with their poor and selfish morals.

So no I won't apologise for watching abuse take place and being called unhinged won't deter me from knowing right from wrong.
If these ladies were truly trying to change I could understand but the majority are just here because no one will hear them out in real life when they are jubilant when a mm returns their calls and they compare their dull but dutiful husbands to the object of their unobtainable desires.

I also have every right to be hurt by betrayal and these are the types of women that cause it along with abusive men.
And to call me unhinged is denying someone their feelings and a well known form of abuse. I also have peace, I'm not frantically looking a my phone hoping for the next bootie call to be used, or some morsel of affection from a lying cheating git and because someone voices their opionions which are different to yours does not make them deranged, if you can't hack the consequenses don't do it.
There are many that think as I do, we don't believe in advocating abuse.

I'll leave it at that.
Do better, find single partners and don't decieve your husbands, it's grim.

I think the thing is that every other poster on this site has about 100 threads a day to join and share their own pain about their situation: we just wanted to do the same in the ONE place we could do so and didn't get judged.

I guess we had a better run than I ever expected.

@SunsetSkylane for Mumsnet, sadly I think you did to be honest, given the topics discussed here. If infidelity is ongoing it can obviously never, ever be condoned, it is abuse, therefore it needs to stop sooner rather than later and work needs to be done to make that happen, I have always taken that as read, everyone here is an adult and knows what they are doing. I believe the majority of those on this thread want freedom from it and to know how to stop, which can never be a bad thing, hence no judgement from me.
The only infidelity threads (and I know not everybody here is in an affair/ ex affair situation) that remain pretty much supportive are those where somebody has been abandoned by their partner for an OW or who threw an unfaithful partner out, and even then if they deviate from thinking he is evil personified for a second, they are told to get a spine and ‘find their anger’ which usually kicks it all off. It never takes long. This one did last longer.
As for me, it’s not my ‘life’s work’ to forgive my husband, I’m not sure I ever will. My life’s work consists of many, many things which are too outing to write here, but working on forgiving him isn’t one of them, living up to deserving forgiveness is his job, not mine. My life’s work is probably based around maintaining my own personal standards of my behaviour and the way I treat people.
It never crosses my mind whether threads I read or comment on ‘help’ me. It started out that way when I was a mess, five years back, but I started to get people messaging me and wanting to talk privately and it wasn’t long before I felt like I was doing something worthwhile. I get to know pretty quickly if threads affect me adversely and if I get triggered or start to feel emotional overwhelm I step back for a while.
I stayed on this thread because there are women here suffering limerance, OCD type thinking, rumination, and they are unhappy and wish it would stop. Some are in risky situations which could cost them more than they realise (we only truly know what something is worth to us when we lose it or are about to) and it would benefit them to be able to stand back and regain control over their lives. I hate to see misery and suffering.
I wanted to help, because I know a great deal about psychology and mental health conditions and how our thinking can undermine us. I know and have learned about the psychology of affairs from all three sides. The things they are obsessing over are on the whole cheating men, liars, game players who will never treat them well, plus it might completely blow their lives up one day and for what? A dopamine high which causes a deeper low. For nothing. It’s the obsessive craving driven behaviour of addicts and adverse judgment never stopped that. I lost a beloved sibling through addiction, neither negative or positive reinforcement helped, it was too late by the time the extent was known and they died. Addictions ruin lives. It doesn’t just have to be a substance, it can be a person.
Of course I don’t condone those who are cheating, I never have, but I don’t want or need to judge them, they judge themselves right here. They are aware of what they are doing. Some can’t see the wood for the trees yet but I hope that maybe listening and helping them figure it out might stop it, might save them feeling more pain and shame, might save families and adults the dreadful pain and destruction this causes. If the penny drops for one person and they free themselves and they and their families stay unharmed, it’s worth it.
And talking of judging…. Everybody judges, it’s how we choose our friends, our partners, even our clothes and what’s for tea. We make choices based on what lines up with our beliefs and preferences, to make a choice of any kind you need judgement.
Judging in the sense of condemning people as irredeemable is unproductive however. Name calling on MN (or anywhere else) is cruel and unkind and says more about the name caller than whoever they are labelling. Positions get entrenched and what was being discussed conceptually becomes personal and hurtful.
It’s divisive, unkind and stifles debate, sides are taken and the point of the thread gets lost. The MN eternal problem, I guess.
I wish everybody well.

What upsets me is @MainlyWater is tarring everyone with the same brush and making general judgements without knowing us. You @Thewookiemustgo have never done that and actually she’s talking down to you as well.

@lovelymango don’t get upset, it’s a stranger on an internet forum, who knows nothing about you really, not a best friend or relative whose opinion might mean something to you. It’s MainlyWater’s prerogative to write what she feels as it is ours, no MN rules have been broken.
I’ve answered the points made about me honestly, I’m not going to get into a row with anyone, it’s not worth it. I’ve never apologised for my choices and I’m very used to getting spoken down to on MN for them as a result, the trick is to not stoop low enough yourself to hear it, they don’t know me at all which is very apparent from what they have said.
I get what everyone is angry about but it’s a stranger on the internet saying their piece as they have a right to. What they are saying is coming from their opinion based on their circumstances and beliefs, just like all of us are. I don’t pretend to know what those are for every stranger on here. I can guess, but I can’t know.
Agree or disagree, it’s everybody’s right to. But MN is a bunch of strangers who know bugger all about each other outside of what they choose to write, sometimes saying stuff themselves or reacting to what’s said as if they do.
They don’t. So to me losing my blob about some random’s opinion of me or my choices is not worth it, it really isn’t.
Maybe now I’m getting on a bit I’ve learned to pick my battles and MN is never the most balanced and fair place for a fight.

But not everyone wants a fight. Some people are looking for support. This thread was for people in many different circumstances who were trying not to contact someone they still care about. That's a hard thing, and it was good to have others to talk to to help keep each other strong. It turned into an affair bashing derailment- but not everyone's having an affair. The threads about no contact. I don't think people are upset at an alternative view, more that the attacks are missing the point/irrelevant. So having a right to say your piece, as ever, needs to be balanced against people's reactions to your piece. Not everyone's going to like it or choose to engage with you after you do that. And polite and reasonable discussion has to happen on both sides of any debate- I have been hurt previously but it doesn't mean I post with no compassion for others.