Can a husband be in love with his wife and have long term affair?

[Summerdaysandnights]

I'm not taking him back but he keeps saying he always loved me and always will... If so why did he have an affair ? We had regular good sex ( before of course I found out he had a mistress) It's over now between them .I always thought if you loved your spouse/ partner you wouldn't even dream of cheating, am I wrong ?
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Oh and most cheating men use the cheater script on their ow.
There are sooooo few women who would entertain them without it.

The cheater script generally involves dismissing and denigrating your relationship.... All the lines that mean that while he's technically not single, he is actually sort of single and will be properly single in the nearish future.

So he's denigrating your relationship/marriage too

The only person not being lied to in an affair is the cheater.

(Even if the affair partner is married, she's unlikely to be using the cheater script in the same way. Men don't need those lines).

Who are you talking to and what are you talking about?

If the best he has to offer is loving you whilst screwing someone else (and no doubt telling them he loves you) then his love isn't worth having. He took your love and your relationship for granted. He loved having his cake and eating it. Don't waste time on trying to figure out if a proven liar is telling you the truth. It makes no difference to what he has done

I feel I was robbed of all my youthful years .I'm 53 now and have to make all these decisions now about my future...It's worse than any grief I've been through.. He led me to believe he was happy..
I adored him but now I'll never see him as the man I thought he was ..

Oh purlease. Don't fall for his bullshit. The trust is gone so it's now pointless. Plus he's re-written your history, so that is unfortunately now tainted.

This does seem fairly on the money.

I love you.
But not enough to stop me wooing and bedding other women even though I know you will be incredibly hurt by that and I risk losing you.
That kind of 'love' is pretty meaningless.

Love is a verb. Not a useful 'get out of jail' token.

Forgive him or not, but be under no illusions that he was very happy to risk losing you.

Fucking tough. Weak willed men who need their egos stroking don’t deserve good women.

Stay strong.

He can be comfortable with the status quo. Like his clothes being laundered and his meal cooked, children looked after.

I can count on one hand the number of decent, faithful, considerate family men who wouldn't cheat.

No. If you love someone you don't treat them so badly. It's rubbish when people say that.

I don't believe that any person who truly loves someone could bring themselves to show the utter disrespect and contempt that having an affair shows personally.

True love is honest, even when it's painful and says "I've met someone else I'm interested in." and then leaves before they cheat.

I was older than you when I had to start over. You will make a new and better life for yourself in time. Keep the faith.

I think it comes down to what you're prepared to accept. His idea of romantic/sexual love, it seems is transferable. Something that can be shared beyond his relationship. Most people don't think that way. Love is about partnership, care, support and appreciation and being there in their worst moments as well as their best. When he's with her, he won't be thinking of you. As I say, it depends what you're willing to play along with and whether it's worth it.

But loving one of your siblings doesn’t destroy and heartbreak the other… it’s not the same thing. If you truly love someone you don’t do something that you KNOW will turn their world upside down and cause utter devastation.

I believe he does love you in his way but his own selfishness is stronger than his love for you unfortunately.

its the same way people can love more than one person, it does not have to be only one person gets the full love,

because when having an affair usually the presumption is they can keep it covert and secret

I think there are some very limited scenarios were your question could be true. For example, wife is disabled or has health conditions which make a physical relationship impossible and the husband has a lover but remains completely devoted to his wife in every other way. Not that it’s right but I could sympathise possibly. But that is not the situation you are describing.

I don't think most people having affairs are intending to hurt their partner though. They think they're clever enough to hide it. If their partner never finds out, then they can get away with it and never hurt anyone.

They're idiots, because affairs almost always get found out. But that doesn't mean that they don't love their partner, just that they think they're far cleverer than they really are.

Certainly. People are able to feel love for more than one person. You did nothing to hurt him or change his feelings towards you, so why wouldn't he continue to love you? When people say he couldn't have, they are mixing up love as an emotion and love as an action. Obviously he didn't act out love for you when he betrayed you and lied to you, and its his actions that matter most.

Frankly, no. I don’t think someone who has a long-term affair loves their spouse.

I would go so far as to say they have no real idea what love is, and whatever feeling they have or had towards their spouses was a mix of enjoying their company, enjoying the benefits of being in a relationship and finding them sexually attractive. That’s not love, unfortunately.

It takes a shocking lack of concern for another person’s feelings to do something that you know would hurt them. I can’t imagine doing anything that I knew would deeply hurt one of my good friends, so if a person is prepared to do that to their spouse, I would say they don’t even have a true friendship, let alone love.

No, i don't believe you can have an affair/cheat on someone if you really love them.

He had only YOU and it wasn’t enough he wanted more than only YOU
He had his fun now he wants his stability .

Eh no

Uh…nobody’s mixing up love as an emotion and love as an action, true love means nothing would compare to the one you want with all your heart, you simply wouldn’t be interested in exploring anything with someone else, if you love your spouse like a sister, sure, but not if you love them romantically, not truly. Many people haven’t actually been in love, so when they cheat and say they still love their spouse, they are going by their definition of love, which is lacking, and it’s just sad that their spouse settled for them, and believed that the person they were marrying was deeper emotionally than they actually turned out to be

Has it occurred to that maybe you didn’t really love either ?

At least not as deeply as those who believe you can’t love two at once have loved.,

No. Love is more than a feeling. If you are married, it is also a choice, a vow and an active decision to live out that promise in your actions as well. To cherish someone else and effectively never be selfish again, to always factor them into uour decisions.
You can't love someone whilst simultaneously sh#tting all over that with infidelity.

But love goes further than not doing eg hurtful things to your partner, just because they will find out.

If you were capable of actual love, you wouldn't do that to them, even if they didn't/never find out.

Part of love is treating someone equally to yourself.
Making your partner continue to stick to eg monogamy/sexual exclusivity - while you don't - is not treating them equally.
Not informing your partner, with whom you've agreed monogamy, that you're sexually active with another partner (with all the emotional and physical implications of that for them) is taking away their agency , depriving then of their informed choice in deciding whether to continue the relationship or intimacy with you. Again, you're not treating them equally. You are giving them less rights than you in the relationship.

That's not love.