What do you think about Other Women

[Keptawake]

Just wondering what your thoughts are about the type of people that get involved with married/taken people with families?

I’m asking because DP left me 2 months ago for another woman. They’d been seeing each other for about 3 months before he left (an emotional affair which turned into secret dates although he was “respectful” enough to not get physical until the day he walked out). We have 2 kids. She knew he had a family.

It goes without saying that I hate him for this but I’ve also spent the last couple of months raging at the type of woman who could knowingly get involved with and break up a family.

Am I justified in thinking good people don’t do things like this? This might seem like an obvious answer but I’m just feeling a bit low.

If it works out I know at some point I may have to be civil with her as a potential stepmum to my kids but I can’t help thinking that there is no way I want someone like that as a role model in my kids life.

I think that these men lie and lie and lie and make out that they have cruel, neglectful, even abusive wives. The other women are naive in believing them, but usually they're also victims of the man's dishonesty.
OP, the OW has behaved badly but her punishment is already being served out- she is with a man who she knows full well is capable of deception. Must be a very insecure and anxious place to be.

I'm in your boat OP. I'm barely thinking about her though to be honest. Maybe they'll make it, maybe they won't. At best you have to hope it's just thoughtlessness. At worst they enjoy the power of 'taking' someone else's partner (I know people can't really be taken). He's a cheat though and I think he always will be, so she'll pay in the end.

But she didn't break up a family, your partner choose to do that, who knows what he told her.

Can only share my lived experience, but my exh’s other woman had very few friends, and was estranged from her family, and I truly believe that she had a neediness (and an absence of a ‘moral compass’ circle of close supporters) that she had nobody in her life to say WTF are you doing.

You don’t have to like her. People do shitty things but she had no loyalty to you and didn’t break up your family. He did that.

Any woman who knowingly participates in potentially breaking up a family is despicable but men who cheat do tend to lie to the OW about their marriages, as PP have said.

Any woman who knowingly participates in potentially breaking up a family is despicable but men who cheat do tend to lie to the OW about their marriages, as PP have said.

I think it's a really shitty thing to do. I don't agree with the old, "she has no loyalty to you", trope. It's having a decent moral compass. However saying that I think that it doesn't necessarily make someone bad through and through because we are all fallible and good people can do wrong and harm.
I also don't think it's always the case that the married person has spun tons of lies, sometimes they have but sometimes you get people who aren't put off by the truth of the situation.

I say, yes good people do this. I think it’s too black and white to say only bad people do this. I had a friend who was single and had many affairs with married men. I couldn’t understand why she went after them. They never lasted. I think it was the attention and excitement that she liked. I did say to her that karma may well get her back and she said she agreed. The OW will have to live with knowing that the man she’s ended up with has been unfaithful. She will have to live with not fully trusting him. I’d hate that. But that’s their karma.

I think that he was the one that made promises to you, not her. I think women that settle for someone else’s, lying, cheating husband must have really low self esteem. Most of us feel that we deserve an honest partner. I also firmly believe the old adage …”when man marries his mistress it creates a vacancy”

I’ve got no sympathy for the OW but she owes you no loyalty.

I’m fully aware that he chose to break up our family (he has not escaped my rage for this). But why would another person help facilitate that? I just don’t get it.

For what it was worth we were going through a rough spot following a few personal events. But he ran away from his problems. Even if I am sympathetic to that, as a single person I hope I would have the wisdom to see that I shouldn’t help him with that. He now thinks he’s better off and happy because he’s in a new and exciting honeymoon period. There is no coming back from this.

I feel sorry for them.

They either have such big egos that they think they're somehow special and couldn't possibly be cheated on, that their magic vaginas are capable of changing the scummiest of men.

Or they have such low self esteem that they have to fuel their egos and prove how desirable they are by going after married men. Well, any men really, but the married ones give that extra serotonin boost.

Or they're stupid and naïve enough to believe whatever bullshit lines the cheater comes out with to justify their behaviour. "My wife just doesn't get me like you do" "we're separated, just living together for the kids" "we haven't had sex for months" etc. etc...

Or, and these seem to be the rarest, they actually enjoy the feeling of participating in wrecking someone's life and family. They get a genuine kick out of it.

They're pretty pathetic and pitiable whichever way you slice it really. And I'm not saying this as the bitter ex of a cheater, I'm saying it as someone who has been an other woman in my younger and stupider days. I was category two and three, for anyone curious.

Thank you for being so candid!

Also I’m obviously been going through the torture of comparing myself to her. Although chatGPT has given me some choice words of affirmation to reset this line of thinking!

Again, sharing my own perspective, if he’s happy and in a honeymoon phase, LET HIM. Your life will be so much easier if he’s deliriously happy. If he thinks he’s found the love of his life, let him think that; it’s a better outcome than him angrily realising he’s made a terrible mistake. It draws a line in the sand, and allows you to get to the next stage of figuring out what your own life looks like in the future.

My friend has a now ex friend who was a serial OW. She didn't want a relationship as such but missed aspects of it.

She loved the fact it was exciting & because it was new, the idiots She got involved with were in the honeymoon period. The sex was great they'd go out for nice dinners, overnight stays in nice hotels then as she put it She went back to her peace and quiet and he and his dirty washing went home to his wife

She had no desire to actually settle down with anyone and would break it off as soon as she got bored - usually when the man was getting into a routine or talking of leaving

My friend cut ties with her after her 3rd or 4th affair because she hated the person she'd become.

Don't compare yourself. Affairs are so rarely about the wounded party - it's almost always about him. Something about him, his ego, his pride, his ridiculous midlife crisis.

Think about some of the beautiful, brilliant, successful women who have been cheated on - Beyoncé, Dita Von Teese, Shania Twain, Jennifer Garner, Eva Longoria, Halle Berry, Sienna Miller, Emma Thompson, Princess Diana for goodness sake... Fabulous, gorgeous, wonderful women, who've all felt what you're feeling and probably sat comparing themselves to these OW. Imagine being fecking Beyoncé and comparing yourself like that, wondering what this woman has that you don't... the answer is nothing really because It's not about you or anything you bring to the table, and she's not "better" than you in any way because he picked her. If anything she's far worse off for being picked by a cheater.

I'm so sorry he's put you through this.

Some women are so desperate to be with a man, any man, they’re not over-fussy. I think they’re pathetic.

I was an other woman. I didn’t realize when I was younger that it’s wrong to get with married/partnered men; I rationalized it that the men had obligations to their DP/DWs, not me, that if I didn’t abet their cheating someone else would, and that obviously the men wouldn’t be cheating if the relationship was meant to last anyway… How conceited I was!

Anyway, I’m now a stepmum to DH’s DC, and I have yet to interact with his XW, who I assume probably still hates me for getting involved with him before they separated. I wouldn’t want my own DD to have someone who did what I did as a stepmum either, so I get it.

I think they have very poor morals and are nasty selfish people.

Irrespective of the lies they may be told by the man, and how badly the man is behaving, affairs wouldn't happen if women refused to get involved with married men.

I cut a friend out of my life when she had an affair and I would do the same again. It's monstrous behaviour and I don't want to be friends with people who do it

It goes without saying I would think the same of a man doing this.

I don't align to the they don't owe you anything mindset.

People in life owe a basic level of human behaviour not to internationally cause someone else harm. If you can internationally make choices that do, your a pretty fcked up person. I see affairs as a form of abuse against the betrayed person. They very very very rarely come without some for of it occurring.

People who have them, and are APs are selfish, untrustworthy, manipulative and liars. What about any of that are good qualities to have? They lack boundaries.

I wouldn't be friends with someone who is willingly an AP. I have people in my wider life who have had them and I have kept relationships with not necessarily out of choice and I certainly don't respect them.

I'm also one of those that knows 100% if my DH had an affair we would be done. I find the whole thing so disgusting never mind trust I wouldn't be able to get over that alone.

Some of them lie… some of them are being truthful, and there’s opportunity to see the wives treat the men horribly. Sometimes the men are lonely and feel stuck, because they don’t want to break up their family or suffer the consequences of divorce, but they’ve put up with maltreatment and/or deadbedrooms for years and years… not that that excuses the cheating, but.

This feels like what might be happening here. The woman in question is 33 and has no kids of her own, so feels like she might be in the stage of her life when she’s ready to start a family. To be honest I’m not sure I would have fully grasped how monumentally destructive and traumatic affairs can be on families before I had kids of my own.

It’s just so fucked up that she might not realise this until my family has been irreparably destroyed and she has one of her own (which includes my DP and kids).

No one stays new and shiny forever and, in my view, a cheat will always be wanting the thrill of the chase so will do it again and again. It took a while but I came to be grateful to the woman who my ex left me for - I was far better off in the long run. They had kids together and, surprise surprise, he then cheated on her and it all got very nasty but she can’t even totally break her link with him because of the kids. Anyone who meets in these circumstances must always be looking over their shoulder which is no way to live.

If it doesn't excuse it then what's your point?

Sounds like that's exactly what your doing. Excusing it.

APs who defend their poor lonely misunderstood partners who lie, gaslight their partners, sneak around passing of parental duties, remove informed sexual consent, spend family finances, gaslight and manipulate their partners to have give them the time, money and space to actually have an affair make happen make me laugh.

It's a perfect example of the level of emotional disconnect that has to occur to make it acceptable for them.

Does it matter if she realises?

The damage is done now, and believe me affairs and blended families are their own type of hell. No matter when it comes out and I have never seen it not come out be it years later. Kids grow up and make their own judgments on their parents and step parents.