A topic as a new thread, to avoid derailing the thread I Had Affair with Married Man where the OP is taking a bad kicking.
As an older male MN reader who has had a number of relationships including marriage, I have a question.
How many women, when they were young and single, say 18/20, had an affair with an older man who was either married or in a serious relationship and do you regret it in later years?
Quite a number of women in my past have told me they had done so. Their attitudes in later life have varied from zero empathy for the wife along the lines of “not my problem, he knew what he was doing” to extreme regret “I should not have done it, I was young and stupid, now as a wife I’d hate it done to me.”
I had one girlfriend (60 when we were together) who, in her early 20s when married herself, had an affair with an older married man which ended her marriage. Interestingly, the man later divorced his wife and remarried, and she came back for seconds and had another affair with him. She didn’t regret it at all. She said to me “but I was in love”.
I was in a long relationship with a woman and we were engaged to get married. She had had an affair with an older man when in her late teens and told me she regretted it bitterly. Ironically when with me she sought out a former boyfriend from decades back. He was married and she had an affair with him. That ended our relationship and his marriage. She didn’t stay with him, but moved on.
I don’t know if there’s a theme here but both women were medical (one a nurse, another in an allied field) and all the men were doctors. (My fiancee specialised in them -her husband was a doctor, her married affair partner was a doctor, the one after him was a doctor).
I’ve never come across the reverse situation of a young single man having an affair with an older, married woman.