@EleanorRigby2U I agree, absolutely both parties are lied to, I was kind of referring to a lot of what I have seen here (and from two women I know who had affairs) where OW/ ex-OW are adamant that they weren’t being lied to, the whole thing was genuine, despite affairs happening in a bubble rather than running the course of ‘normal’ relationships, and still had their blinkers on with the “well, of course he lied to his wife, he doesn’t love her, but he loves me, so he would never lie to me.” That’s not everyone, of course.
Of course wives get lied to, truth minimised, etc etc. I was constantly checking that I had concrete proof before I believed anything my husband said. Lying to ourselves is dangerous territory. What we desperately want to believe we’ll try to make true. I only go on proof now and watching actions. People do what they really want to do in the end, but say whatever they think people want to hear to make themselves feel less guilty. “You’re the love of my life, I can’t get over you” said the man who is still choosing to stay right where he is, for whom it’s “too hard” to leave a wife and children. No shit it is, it makes Platoon look like Bambi, but people who want something else more and have integrity get a grip, get honest, get divorced and do this every day.
He’s not. His choice, he’s not glued to the kitchen floor, he knows where the door is and it’s no doubt very, very hard but absolutely not impossible. This is his real answer to you. OP’s husband is no doubt doing exactly this. Because he’s being allowed to and so is your AP.
I can absolutely believe that your affair partner still messages you, because you let him. Why would he stop? It still gives him the same high it gave him in the affair to have validation from two women.
If he’s still with his wife, hiding it well enough from her that she’s happy and thinks it’s all over, and you’re still out there messaging and keeping it going, you know she knows but he didn’t heave a sigh of relief and run to you, it didn’t bother you enough to tell him to get stuffed, so he’s got the life of Riley and everything and everyone exactly where he wants them. No doing this is OP’s husband too.
So he can’t get over it? But he’s doing nothing to work towards getting out and is still a cast iron liar to his wife and children? Lovely guy!
What, exactly, has he done about it? Actions?
Oh, I forgot: he “can’t because it’s too hard.” 🙄
From the outside with the information given, it looks like he lives with her, because that’s where the life he wants is, desperate to keep it a secret because he likes the high he gets from you, he loves his home life and doesn’t want to lose that either. Man alive, he probably can’t believe his luck that his wife didn’t leave him, you know she knows so he’s got absolutely no excuse to carry on lying and stay where he is, but you’re happy to keep contact, so he didn’t lose you, either.
Nothing will change for this man unless something happens to force change. He’s not going to. There will be no self-aware realisation of how low he is here. He’s normalised the affair so that seems far ‘less bad’ than leaving home would.
He won’t take a real step towards that future because reality will have started to intervene for him and he sees what would actually happen. What leaving her for you actually means. You might think it’s bloody obvious what that would mean, how could anybody not have thought it through? But thinking it through allows truth and reality in, makes you face your worst self perpetrating deception, abuse, dishonesty and demonstrating a woeful lack of integrity or moral accountability. Forces you to ask yourself to choose. That’s a fun-sucker for sure, makes the romance and excitement die in a heartbeat so better to stuff it down, don’t think about it. You can’t ever square that circle, it’s wrong, everybody knows it’s wrong but that means you shouldn’t do it but you just really want to do it so…. Rinse and repeat.
They push away all the uncomfortable stuff and convince themselves of their misery at home because logic says that if they’re not really unhappy at home, then they’re just cake-eating cheats and can’t justify to themselves the abuse they’re dishing out to their loved ones. Part of being able to do what they do involves lying to themselves too, that they really do want out and they’d be happier elsewhere.
Don’t want to derail the thread but there’s a real parallel here with your situation and OP’s husband. These aren’t “love of your life” “in love with two women” situations, both guys are common or garden cheats following the same pattern. It’s ’too hard’ for your AP to leave his wife, it’s ’too hard’ for OP’s husband to leave his job. For ‘too hard’ read ‘I don’t want to’. That’s the harsh truth. The women in these situations tend to live addicted to hopium and wait for these feckless idiots to get forced to act or finally back up words with actions, hence sometimes decade- long affairs. Ending an affair is hard, getting divorced and losing your wife and kids is hard: as I read the other day: they need to ‘choose their hard’.
At some point trying to keep both without choosing means they’ll lose one or both situations and more fool the women waiting to see who blinks first and which way they’ll jump.
I think your affair partner might still have feelings for you, absolutely, but he’s behaving like OP’s husband, to use a crude term he needs to ‘shit or get off the pot’ and prove he “can’t get over it” by making it his primary relationship. Prove that nothing is too hard if it means he can be with “the love of his life”. Until he does, the harsh reality is that just as he chose to have the affair, he’s choosing to stay married, nobody is forcing him, it’s his choice. “Too hard” but not impossible. He’s not exactly moving heaven and earth to leave her because he’s in hell without you.
My complete and utter guess, admittedly, is that he loves his family life and can’t be without it, you’re still prepared to give him the high of the affair so he’s got the best of both worlds. He might love you but “love of his life”? You think when the shit hit the fan he didn’t say exactly that to his wife between sobs to stop her throwing him out? What he’s really saying with “too hard to leave” is that currently you are not enough for him to upend his life for. Aren’t you worth more than that? Don’t stay for his second best treatment.
Don’t hang on to his “can’t get over it” words until he backs them up with actions, he’ll either worm his way back into the full blown affair, still with no intention of leaving his wife, or he’ll actually leave his wife for you. He hasn’t.
It’s never “too hard” to leave. Ever. It’s hard, painful and God-awful, but it’s not impossible and the morally right thing to do.
What he’s currently doing because it’s “too hard” is disgusting and surely you can see that? Playing happy families at home whilst keeping you dangling? Ugh. Please don’t be a part of this, his poor wife and children! His responsibility but you’re willingly helping him.
There are never reasons, just excuses. Your affair relationship has been weighed up with how hard it is to leave his wife and children and in the end the truth is that you and him together is currently not worth the hardship. Married life plus family is currently worth more to him than leaving to be with you.
It’s the dopamine talking, men who have affairs, whilst still in them, (messaging you is still infidelity and part of the affair) don’t tend to put nobility before self. He’s hanging on to you and her and rendering himself more of a lying, weak and disgusting excuse for a man by the day.
You are helping him abuse his wife, messaging him with no thought of the excruciating pain you will both cause her. Can you see your part in this? Is this really who you are and what you really want?
I suspect you won’t, but I’d ditch the whole thing and get some therapy as to why I ever thought for a second that this was a good idea, why letting him continue to moon over you whilst sleeping with somebody else is ok for you and why you think keeping and being a secret that harms others is ok for you.
Everybody gets lied to in affairs, it can’t function unless they do. The things that drive the affair machine are dishonesty, lies and selfishness. Take out any one of those three things and it’s impossible to have an affair. Try looking at what’s actually happening, what everybody is actually doing, not saying, and that’s where the uncomfortable truth lies.
The biggest lies are the ones we tell ourselves. Feelings are not only expressed in words and the only proof we’ll ever have of how someone feels about us and themselves is how they behave. What they choose to do, no matter what they say.
Don’t live on words, they’re not real without actions.
OP’s husband is doing this, all talk and no actions. I think his AP is driving past their house either because she’s ever so slightly unhinged or, far more likely, he’s no doubt told her some bullshit and she’s just desperately trying to prove it to herself.