Do you feel guilty for having an affair?

[fantalemom]

I'm pretty sure I'm going to hell for this one.

Around a year ago I met a man on fab swingers. I was only looking for a bit of fun and we seemed to get on well. He made it clear that he was married which I chose to ignore. It's not the first time he's had an affair. He cheated on his wife when they lived in London, she found out, forgave him and they moved back to my home town. They only live around the corner.

We ended up seeing each other for around 4 months. I liked him, but I wasn't in love with him. It was mostly sexual chemistry and the thrill I think. He became very clingy towards the end, constantly texting, double texting if I didn't reply quick enough. It felt like having a controlling boyfriend and I got the "ick". I realised how pathetic he was. I ended up blocking him with no explanation and haven't spoken to him since. I think about him sometimes and feel guilty. His wife deserves better, that goes without saying. It's not something I would entertain again and I'd be heartbroken if my partner/husband did betrayed me like that.

I can't punish myself forever though, can I? How did you make peace with it?

Women who have been cheated on quite often have to villainise the OW at all costs so they can stay with their cheating husbands. Just an observation. Think it’s hugely hypocritical.

not always, of course. But a lot.

I don't know... assisting a cheat in removing the right to informed sexual consent and personal agency from another person, so you can 'get some', is in my opinion a pretty shitty thing to do even if you didn't make 'vows' to the betrayed.

As we understand more and more about sexual consent hopefully people will start waking up to how nasty affairs actually are.

I think you are right because I’m struggling to understand what you mean by a person removing someone’s informed consent. Do you mean the wife is agreeing to something without having all the information?

Wife or a long term partner (whoever is being betrayed) is having their right to informed sexual consent and their personal agency removed, their right to make their own choices based on what they believe is the truth. It was one of the most horrific parts for me when I was the victim of an affair.

I really don't care if an AP didn't 'make vows'. Being party to that so you can get your needs met is wrong.

I understand what you mean now. I suppose I don’t feel like that because I would expect it. Thanks for explaining that as I never considered that side of it, and I hope you have recovered after it all.

Hmm, I think in that situation I'd consider a partner wanting to cheat to be as bad as them actually cheating. The line is crossed mentally. So a specific OW being willing to cheat with them doesn't have any responsibility, as the betrayal happened when the man in this case decided to create the online profile. For me, even if no women took the bait, the marriage would be over.

I still feel guilty. It will haunt me until I die.

But i was not a sociopath and nor was I looking for an affair. I was pursued relentlessly, each boundary he pushed over and then started on the next. It wasn't that I suddenly thought " oh let's have an affair and he's cute" ... it happened gradually over time. He was a serial cheater and I was just another one of his targets.
It blew up my.marriage not his. His wife knew what he was and forgave him.
Yes of course MN had a special place in hell for cheaters. But it's just not all as easy as saying you're a capable adult human. I was and I am but still I can't explain how it all crumbled.

Thanks for asking it was a long time ago, and a truly awful time in my life so I understand totally the feelings of so many on here.

I remember being physically sick when I thought of all the times they'd had sex that I didn't know about and the times I'd had sex with my husband. How I wouldn't have done that if I had been aware. At the time it was put down to jealousy/bitterness etc etc but it's not that, it wasn't that AT ALL. We just didn't have the vocabulary we do now.

As discussions around consent came more to the forefront I realised that was what it was. My human right to informed consent had been removed by TWO people. It doesn't matter to me that he made the vows. She CHOSE to engage because it met her needs (whatever they were). That is as selfish and entitled as his actions.

I actually agree that the affair partner could be anyone and I wouldn't use misogynistic language to describe OW BUT I think as we understand consent more hopefully people will realise what a shitty thing it is to do. Regardless of whether you 'know' that person or have any relationship with them.

Do you understand madness of what you are writing? OF COURSE she is equally responsible and I do not feel sorry for her at all. Both are responsible. And of course being the OW means that you approve affairs ie you are someone who could cheat on your partner in the future.
Obviously the wife should be concerned about her husband, however it takes two to tango. To me the OW/OM are just a piece of sh@t when they do that.
There are enough single people out there. Stick with them.

I think to sum it up, the OW is not equally culpable in the betrayal. You have to have a loyalty and relationship to someone to betray them.

she is perhaps equally culpable in depriving another woman of informed consent purely by the physical act. If the woman in question is unaware her relationship is in effect ‘open’, and the husband and wife are still sleeping together.

You didn't have the affair though, he did. You did put your needs at the time ahead of respect for other women in a general sense, hopefully the guilt will make you behave differently in future. Unfortunately, if not you, then it will be others, as he's on fab swingers, so you haven't caused him to do worse than he already was. You are not the only woman in the world with low standards. I hope he used protection.

You have literally absolved yourself of responsibility for your own actions here. You were “pursued relentlessly” you were “just another target”.
So what if someone pursues you? “Fuck off and think of your wife you sad bastard” is an extremely good deterrent in my experience.
The choice to have an affair with this sleezy man was yours and yours alone. Does it make you a terrible person? No, but you do need to own your choices or you run the risk of making the same choices again.

don’t try to make someone outside of your relationship take any responsibility for the people in it.

No one is doing that. The cheat is obviously responsible for their actions but the willing partner is absolutely equally responsible for theirs. It’s not about taking responsibility for the cheat, it’s personal accountability and each person in the affair is responsible and should be held accountable for their choices.

Absolutely agree. There are probably very few of us who haven’t had the opportunity to sleep with an attached men but our moral compass tells us correctly to say no despite whatever script he puts forward.

I’ve been pursued by married men on numerous occasions and every time no was a complete sentence. And the ones who did try and push it further, I did tell them I’d let the wife know if they didn’t back off. Its really not difficult to not knowingly sleep with someone who is attached

You know nothing about me or the situation

He was a sex addict I discovered later. He did pursue me relentlessly etc. My point was he was just notching up another target because that was what he wanted. He felt no guilt. I still feel guilty and rege3t what I did. I own my actions

Did I say no? Nope.
Do I forgive myself and MY action? Nope
Do I wish I'd said fuck off? Yep
Have I been to years of therapy to sort out my issues so it doesn't happen again? Yup
Did I lose my home and my marriage and pay for my errors? Yup

Kindly, I don’t give a crap what uou think. I’m allowed an opinion and mine is that people who cheat on their partners or people who knowingly cheat with married people, men or women, are absolutely morally bankrupt and I will not defend them or sugar coat my opinions on them to make them feel better. They should feel bad because they’ve done a terrible thing. Incidentally, I think all forms of cheating are out of order. That’s because I live my life with integrity. And I do help other women. It’s a major focus in my life where I have helped many, many women who are dealing with, fleeing from and healing from domestic abuse. Many of these women have been repeatedly cheated on, some only finding out when they have contracted diseases and infections. So, I’ve seen the serious damage this behaviour can do. Perhaps that’s why I feel so strongly about it. Act like a horror, prepare to be put in your place.

Never been cheated on and if my husband did cheat on me, I’d leave him. No second chances. So that’s not my position. I just think these men and women are both vile and I’m allowed my own opinion on that. I’ve seen the damage their morally bankrupt behaviour can have on the person being cheated on, many times and the damage it causes to families too.

This happened in the PAST.
OP has learnt the lesson, she understands she made a bad choice and she's a different person now, she wouldn't do that again.
She can't change the past.
We are all human. We make bad decisions, we grow, learn and mature.

I really don't think the nasty criticism towards OP as a person is useful or productive in any way. Maybe it would have been if she was having an affair now. She doesn't.

I agree getting involved with attached person is absolutely wrong but I feel that often the anger and viciousness towards OW is somehow misplaced. More often then not the husband is forgiven and given a chance to "change" while the OW is an eternal villan even years later.

So are you trying to tell me you wouldn't feel pissed off towards the OW at all ,if you found out you were cheated on? 🤔🤔

A key and major element of sociopathy, psychopathy or narcissistic personality disorder is a lack of empathy- read it up

Also, most normal people have a moral compass which stops them from doing certain things. But with narcissistic personality disorder and others they lack a moral compass, and are more likely to evade accountability for what they've done or deny they played a part in something.....

Cheating on your partner shows a lack of empathy and callous disregard for your partner ...

Knowing a man is married and still going for him shows a lack of empathy and ruthless selfishness ...

Knowing a man is married and going for him to get an ego boost from 'getting' a taken man or to get a sense of oneupmanship over other women shows a lack of empathy and is fucking narcissistic

HRTFT but the off-chance there's any validity to your post...I'd be really very worried if I was you. Your thought processes are seriously twisted. Narcissistic personality disorder would be the top of my diagnostic tests to take, if right, this post is also wasted on you too.

Regardless of anything else, I can’t understand being attracted to a morally bankrupt liar which is what the cheating partner is imo. I can’t think of a less attractive trait than dishonesty.

Yes for me too. But the point I was making is that both the OM/OW and the partner are doing something wrong. Of course if they want to cheat the marriage is over no doubt about that / what I don’t accept is that the other person doesn’t have any responsibility either. If they are not coerced they are responsible for their action and did a horrible thing.

The term 'narcissist' is often banded about online. It's all very pop psychology. I'm not qualified to use such terms but when an affair happened to me, I realised that my partner had a somewhat different set of morals to me.

She didn't think that chatting to men online was in itself, wrong. She just thought it was a bit of fun. The only thing she admitted was wrong was actually meeting up with one of them and embarking on a sexual relationship, which lasted the best part of a year.

I appreciate that there was an element of deflection there and measured denial of guilt but ot was one of the weirdest conversations I've ever had with her.

I found out the father of my children was sleeping with women at his office by looking down at my vagina and finding warts.

I then had to go to the STD clinic and tell them the person at the reception that I had warts. Then I had to explain to a different person that I had warts. Then I had to be taken into a room, undressed from the bottom down and asked to go on all fours on a table and spread my legs. I was sprayed in my personal areas with liquid nitrogen whilst feeling like an animal and sobbing my heart out.

One of the woman who slept with the father of my children had passed it through him to me. He had no symptoms but I had disgusting ones. God knows how many others in the office got infected and knew or didn’t.

So there’s that.