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 ?
.

he tells me he always loved me and wants only me

not enough eye-rolls for this!

Empty words, easily spoken.

people like your DH are delusional. They think by saying the words, then it makes it true. From his perspective, in his delusional, egocentric world, it possibly is true. What he fails to take into account is that he's in a relationship that relies on acceptance of his "truth" by you as his wife. Some would be taken in by his declaration, you haven't. He's probably shocked and was expecting you to run headlong into his arms with relief that he picked you.

more fool him. So sorry it's happened to you,

I have a gripe with the whole ‘he doesn’t love you; he didn’t respect you’ argument. I also hate the ‘he just wants someone to do his laundry’ et all comments when the cheat beg the betrayed to stay.

I absolutely don’t believe that most affairs have anything to do with the betrayed. They are entirely concerned with a character flaw in the cheat and about the cheat self soothing whatever shit is going on in their heads. Addictive and often self sabotaging they are destructive in nature. But it is a character fault that leads the cheat down that road not an unhappy marriage. I believe it was Ashley Madison site that polled their subscribers and over half described themselves as happily married or VERY happily married. .

When they’re found out they often do desperately want their faithful spouse. The faithful spouse provides them with far more than the affair partner and they recognise that. Love, commitment, sex, loyalty, empathy, support, the family unit, longevity, safety etc etc. And they do ‘love’ their spouse for all those things. They are very aware of the transactional gain from staying with them over leaving for the AP. Ironically the AP has already showed them a trait they don’t value ‘lack of integrity’.

Betrayed woman (as we’re on mumsnet) are more than just a set of duties they performed for the cheat. The cheat knows this. That’s why they believe they love their wife.

As I said whether that love is worth anything is another matter.

In the past, my partner 'micro cheated' online with other men. She chatted to them and then would swaps numbers etc. Some of it was sexual, some of it wasn't. She became infatuated with one guy.for a while. That caused a problem. Not sure if she shagged him. She said she didn't. We split up over that, she went to pieces but got back together eventually.

Anyway, got over that and she agreed to stop, but I became paranoid about what she did on her phone, which in turn caused more problems in our relationship. Not a good feeling. I didn't really want to split up with her again so I decided not to pry too much and trust the process, so to speak. It's a thrill-seeking addiction.

Two years on, we're OK. There's no evidence of her continuing to sext other men now as far as I'm aware. But what I took from this was that her idea of love was vastly different to mine. Loyalty, care and respect didn't form part of it for her, whereas they do for me.

I think it's to do with different people's definitions of 'love' and their capacity to love.

He isn't lying when he says he loves you. I'm sure of that.

But his ability/ capacity to love you is stunted.

He loves you in the way that he can love, but his capacity to love is broken and he doesn't love in the same way as you. He doesn't understand how someone can love someone else in the way you want him to love you.

After having experienced an affair, this is my takeaway understanding after several years of reflection.

I do think that the man involved genuinely meant it when he said he loved me. And it was the limit of the love he was able to give.

It's just that his ability to love was not the same as other people's and definitely not what I needed or wanted.

I think this is much more common than people think.

Really there is no cookie cutter answer. Every relationship is different. Many men and women marry someone and 20 years later that is not the person they would have chosen to be with, the attraction is gone, the sex is gone or boring, they can’t even stand to be in the same room as the person anymore, but they take for granted what the person does for them, and when faced with the loss of it, and the home they bought together, and the ease that comes with a two person income, pension, not having to pay for a divorce, and the kids thinking well of you, they are freaked out and would rather keep their old life. This does NOT equate to love, and is extremely common, especially for men, so while your rose tinted spectacles view is nice, and no doubt true for some men, I’d say for many, they are having an affair with someone they actually do love and in an ideal world would much prefer to be with, but they are just cowards and when things go wrong, they want the material stuff and easy life more. The end of a marriage is a huge deal and can have a gigantic fallout. When my husband told me he loved me and didn’t want me to leave, I knew he was a liar, I knew it wasn’t ME, I was attractive, successful, and loved him, and did everything for him. It wasn’t about it whether I was deficient, I wasn’t, but we grew apart, we wouldn’t likely have chosen each other at 40 like we did at 20. His affair partner he showed love to that he didn’t show to me, I read the messages. They had something, end of, I’d be lying if I said they didn’t. He was fond of me, I was his family, he imagined getting old with me (while not having much sex and shagging other women) there were financial rewards and seeing the grandchildren and kids and being in the dream home we had bought and tons of other reasons. That wasn’t love for ME, that was love for himself-if allowed he would have liked to have it all, including his lover, but he was materialistic at heart and his reputation meant more to him than anything or anyone else. I didn’t believe the pleas and lies and broke up. 6 months later he was engaged to the other woman. They are very happy, it’s clear, and I am now happy too

Yes, I've wondered how common it is considering everyone has access to the Internet at their fingertips. Because of that, I don't think it's worth splitting up over. We're not young people as such. I'm 54 and she's 62. I don't really want to be single.

When the problem was at it biggest, she had three dating site profiles she'd use to find men to chat to, then swap numbers and bring it onto WhatsApp. She only has one active one now which I haven't seen her on it in months. If it started up again, I'd probably turn a blind eye now and accept that it's just a part of our relationship. She seems to have the need for this in her life and as long as she didn't end up shagging anyone, I'd probably tolerate it. I'm not prepared to leave her and it is just chat afterall. We are actually good together. We're affectionate, we have a good sex life and we're off on holiday soon. All the things you'd imagine would happen in a healthy relationship. But she's just addicted, or at least has been, to this online cybersex thing. At the time, perhaps the thing which hurt me the most was the fact she made herself accessible to other men and she made herself available to them online.

No it’s not common with loyal people, don’t believe that you have to put up and shut up if she did that again, what she did WAS cheating, be clear on that. Set your own expectations and boundaries for a relationship and make sure you are with someone who has character. Of course it hurt that she made herself available and accessible to other men, you were in a committed relationship. You sound depressed, don’t sell yourself short, if you’ve always been faithful and above board with her, then you deserve better

My AP told me he loved his wife.

The country is chock full of nice women - who are usually only single because they've split from a shit of a man (of which there are many) utterly desperate to meet a decent man; and you're sticking with an 8 years older cheater.

You're like gold dust, what are you doing?

You can have sex and go on holiday and yada yada with any of them.
And they'll not have cheated on you and can be certain not to be trawling online for attention and sexting. Which is not fkg normal in any way.

He might be in his version of love. But that version would not be good enough for me. I could never do that to someone I love. So if he did it to me and claimed he still loved me quite frankly I'd be offended he would think that sort of "love" would be good enough for me.

Can you love two people at once? Sure, I think you can.

But can you call it love if you take actions that you know will cause one of them immense pain? No, that's not love to me. He cheated, despite knowing the pain that cheating would cause you. That's no kind of love at all, to me.

Any man that believed you can love two people at once, or could have sex with someone and say they love someone else, would not be someone I could commit to, because I would understand that they had never truly been in love with anyone

Love to me is more of a verb, and you can do love with multiple people. I know that many people who have affairs in monogamous relationships persuade themselves that nothing has changed in the way that they treat their partners. It must in some cases be true, but I think in an awful lot of cases they are fooling themselves and that the betrayed partner has a sense that something has changed. Their solid ground is undermined and they do not have the security they should.

OP I am going through similar at the moment and still can't believe my husband had an affair. I was pregnant when I found out and we are still living together so he can help with the baby.

Can I ask did you find it easy to leave?

I'm stuck in a place of my head wants to leave but my heart wants to stay and I don't know if I will ever be certain I've made the right decision?

But he didn’t respect you, value honesty and friendship, emotional love etc ? my respect would be gone on my side. I could not do it.

For me words are always words. My abusive parents told me they loved me - desperate to hear it and believe it but they don’t. It drove me absolutely bonkers. Words are not the same as actions. You can tell anyone anything you like eg I’m the Queen.

I don’t think OP is responding to questions

Understandably, I think the general consensus is to leave if something like this occurs. In my life though, I'm not sure how viable that is. I'm 54, spent 8 years single after my marriage ended in divorce and only got back on track after meeting my current partner. I could leave, dive back into the dating pool and go through that shitshow again and come out with someone equally complicated.

There are still trust issues from a couple of years ago and I'm still slightly twitchy regarding her phone activity but there's been nothing as far as I'm aware for a while. She has one Facebook dating profile she hasn't used in ages. This type of thing is an addiction. Cheap online thrills. But like any addiction it doesn't respect the people living around them.

There's another option though. You could leave and enjoy the freedom of the single life instead of trying to find another life partner. That's what I did. I didn't realize how much I'd prefer it. A man would have to be an absolute chunk of gold for me to even entertain the thought of giving it up. I left in my 50s.
I would dispute that such behaviour as you describe is genuinely an addiction, but even if it is, addicts of any kind are not good relationship material. A true addict will put the addiction first, not the partner. That's no way to live in my book.

I think that actions speak louder than words. My friend was seeing a man who had a long term partner of 15 years yet for four of those years he had also been with her (yes, I know, I couldn’t look at either the same way again when I found out). He gave the script of not loving his wife but caring for her as the mum of their two daughters, and he had two step daughters too who didn’t see their dad much. However, despite what he was saying, he was spending about 5:7 days with my friend, sometimes for 18 hours a day. And on weekends. And they went on holiday together. Even when they split he was still messaging her asking her to marry him. He was lying of course - still with his long term partner. I work with him and hear the happy family stories and feel awkward as I know what he’s like - none of his actions say ‘love’ to me: not to his wife or former AP. He’s had another few flings in the past few years and if I ever meet his partner I don’t know how I’ll stay silent.

I think if you don’t love someone move on, if you did love them you’d not seek others. It’s disrespectful.