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.

There’s definitely better and worse ways to handle it… my DH’s XW told their DDs that their dad “cares more about his dick than them” and that he was “fucking a child” (I was very much an adult.) That’s probably about the worst way you could go about it.

But no matter what… children’s parents splitting up is always going to be hard on them.

The thing is in an affair the upset is only visible to the man who is lying to everyone. I’d say if anyone is morally corrupt it’s him. But how many women stay after being cheated on and direct all hatred to the OW? I’d say more women choose to do that than choose to leave.

Being the OW is alienating and isolating. There is often an intense emotional connection, and that is often missing in threads like this that want to focus on what a slut she is.

People should face up to a relationship being over and not hurt everyone around them - and that includes the wife, children and OW

Men with families who leave for younger women with no children are utterly mental. Imagine, you've got through the baby / toddler intense days and then you're going to rewind and start over again with someone else except this time you'll have less money due to child support and you'll be constantly pulled in two in two directions when your other kids have need for you. Just imagine the look on her face in a few years op when she's sitting sleep deprived in the depths of early parenthood and he has to leave to watch a performance / sports event / check on an older child in a and e. When she can't get her holidays how she wants them, because his times divided. She's not won anything, and he'll be looking at you with grown kids and a new man enjoying your best life. The ow may not have owed you anything but there is such a thing as being a decent human being. It's quite alright to hate her for being a loathsome person.

Well, that’s unfortunate because being that we actually do live in a patriarchal society, women should be supporting each other since the odds are stacked in favour of men. Women not supporting women benefits men. If a woman came up to me in the street and told me she was being abused, I would help her. I wouldn’t need to know her. I would do what I could to protect that women. And just because we don’t know another woman, (in this case the wife) doesn’t mean we should cause harm in her life. The man is already doing that to her. Women shouldn’t be adding to that by conspiring in the harm caused.

Nope, it’s not holding women to higher standards. It’s about everyone, men and women, taking personal responsibility for their own actions. It is utterly cowardly for an AP, man or woman, to claim no responsibility for their own actions and the damage they know is being done to the deceived spouse. I don’t give a shit whether I knew the wife or not, I would absolutely not partake in something that I know is so destructive. “I’m alright jack” is not a mentality that works for me. Nor would I touch a man who would do that with a 10 foot pole. So actually, my standards are the same for both men and women.

The old trope of "OW must have low self esteem" etc etc gets rolled out and it's not always true. In fact, a lot of OW are also married themselves. They're not all single desperate women.

I think people who have affairs are beneath contempt
But kindly,try not to waste your time giving her any headspace

Well, some step parents actually enjoy having their DSC in their lives… it’s not too different to having multiple children and the parents having to split their time and attention between them.

IMO it’s the women who stay with the cheaters that have terrible self esteem. Can be true for OW of course but I’ve never understood why women stay with cheating men.

Sorry to hit a nerve ...

You haven’t. I’m just providing alternate perspectives as someone who was in that situation

Dh knows quite a few of those men as described. Absolute fools. Leave family number one devastating wife and teen kids as drooling starry eyed over a 30 something then a few years later - back to babies and toddlers! Then whining as your ex wife and friends are getting their lives back and having pleasant holidays with each other and delightful young adult kids and they are stuck at soft play. Too funny.

I don’t intend to get married. I’ve never wanted to. I don’t agree with the concept that you can commit to loving someone forever. My parents divorced when I was very young, so maybe that impacted my opinion, but personally, I think that remaining committed to a partner is a choice that you make every single day, it is not something that can be dictated by a piece of paper. The moment one partner makes the decision not to remain committed, that’s it. All that remains is the contractual agreement to share assets.

I mean, that's not just affair situations is it.

Nope and still mental! I loved raising my kids but wouldn't want to do it all over again.

I'm not saying her choices have power, but they definitely aren't moral and that's what I am saying.

It's a really shit thing to do to another person. Whether you can stop their spouse cheating or not, you're still choosing how to behave towards another person.

I think this goes both ways though. Research shows that when a woman cheats on her husband, men don’t blame ‘the other man’ anywhere near as much as women blame ‘the other woman’. Men will typically blame the women (i.e. their cheating partner), and women also blame the women (the evil temptress).

It comes from a deep rooted idea that women are responsible for the behaviour of men (the same sort of logic that says women deserve to raped if they wear a particular outfit). Human society has been blaming women ever since Eve ‘tempted’ Adam to eat the forbidden fruit.

Absolutely this

I think anyone who knowingly gets involved with a married person has the same shit morals, tbh.

OP I mean this kindly but she is incidental to it all. Unfortunately he checked out of your relationship- and the boundaries within it- emotionally and then physically. The only decent thing he has done is finally be honest about it.

I know some affairs don’t last - some go the distance but either way the important ones here are you and your children. The way to sting him is to get on without him. He sounds like a total dick!

I think it depends on how much personal responsibility each person feels. Some OW have the “I’m single so not my problem attitude”. Others might believe the stories they are told so ease any guilt that way. Some people meet through affairs and it lasts. Morality is individual.

The question was what do you think of the other woman.

That's what I think.

Hmmm… I wouldn’t say that this is good or helpful advice. It’s just throwing insults. You can say exactly the same things about women who are cheated on (How gullible and stupid do you have to be to marry a cheater, to believe his lies, to not notice that he’s having an affair? How desperate and deluded must you be if you decide to take him back? etc etc).

This sort of thinking isn’t helpful imo. It is the man who has, at best, screwed only his wife over, or at worst, screwed you both over, and played both of you with his lies and deception.

Yes i gathered. Im just putting an alternative to that opinion is all.

The alternative being it's not a shit thing to do to another person?