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 found it and I hope the original author doesn’t mind me reposting it:

Thewookiemustgo · 18/05/2025 wrote:
Also know that their messages etc whilst hurtful to you, were part and parcel of having an affair, not the greatest love story of all time.
As for no prior suspicion: This is the biggest part of the shock, I know from personal experience.
The out-of-character thing that blows our minds, is the thing that they’re actually getting off on: the brand-new exciting version of themselves that they project for some silly woman to dote on. It’s iall part of the fantasy they create for themselves. It’s grand-scale reinvention and delusion and a pretty laughable (if it wasn’t so painful) and grim one at that.
I am so sorry this has happened to you. Thankfully I never saw the messages, all deleted. To me they weren’t the ‘answer’ anyway. He’d had an affair. He’d answered my questions. The details wouldn’t change anything but they’d do more harm to me.
I know what goes on and I’m not daft so I stopped looking. It was no newsflash to me that people in affairs flirt, use innuendo, flatter each other physically and sexually, reassure one another that they can’t stop thinking about each other, or can’t stop thinking about last night/ yesterday afternoon or that hotel blah blah blah and get off on the anticipation of their next meeting like anyone chasing a dopamine hit does. It’s part and parcel of how affairs work and pretty much affair-speak #101.

The affair ‘script’.
If it wasn’t so horrendous I’d find it funny that all these ‘special’ affairs that are apparently so different and unique according to affair partners are pretty much the same scenario acted out, tale as old as time with the same jaded script.
It doesn’t mean that that person is more special or more sexy than anybody else, they’re just the person cast in the lead role of the escape from reality fantasy that’s been created.
My husband told me, “You don’t get it. It wasn’t about her, or even you, it was about me. She could have been anybody. She was somebody I found attractive who was willing to make herself available to me. She made it so easy, I couldn’t believe it. It was the secret/ risky situation and never-ending flattery I was getting off on, I’d never been that guy before. It was utter madness. I felt like James fucking Bond. I’ve been a selfish idiot and I’ve ruined my life. It was utter madness.”
Code words and nicknames add to the secrecy thrill and ‘us’ versus ‘them’ Romeo and Juliet-esque nonsense. It’s more cringe than high romance to me, OP’s husband is being forced to see the reality if it now that it’s no longer a secret. He’s probably quite rightly becoming ashamed of it now.
Once reality rips the lid off this twaddle it’s like seeing the inside of a nightclub in daylight. It’s exciting in the dark, behind a closed door with the music thumping and lights flashing, but daylight reveals that it’s no more than a drink-stained, stinky, shabby room, where it’s better to be a bit drunk to have a good time and you say and do stuff in the party mood that you shudder at yourself for the next morning.

The messages are just proof of the cheating, the content reveals what a cringeworthy twat he’s being in the affair, they are no value judgement of her versus you or anything else except his idiocy.

They have no real meaning, they’re just a means to an end.
OP they do it in the heat of the moment and because he knows what little importance it had, he doesn’t get why you can’t see that and it took your boundaries to make him see it.
Don’t let the guff they wrote haunt and hurt you, if he’s sincere and the penny has actually dropped and he’s stopped lying to himself now, he’ll see it for what it was and should be shuddering at himself.

I think this reinforces the fact that the OW isn't special, just available

I think there is too much emphasis on the ow tbh. She is not the issue - he is. Her unavailability should not be the reason a DH stays faithful. I truly believe that some OW actually don’t want the DH full time - some are quite happy with the odd night, sex, romance - whatever.

i don’t think it’s accurate to paint each OW as some sort of defective person with self esteem issues. Each person is an individual. whatever the reason she has ended up in this situation- the DH is ultimately responsible. Of course the DW will lash out at the OW as it’s easier to believe a stranger caused you hurt rather than the person you know and trust.

Most affairs end - some badly- some without any real repercussions - I know of 2 that lasted - marriage children and are now grandparents.

I do find it a bit silly that women will believe their cheating husbands (who are proven liars) when they say all this though. Because it soothes their ego and they want and need to believe it.

I think that anyone who has an affair has very low moral awareness at best; morally bankrupt at worst.
However, there do seem to be background reasons which could make you think twice about despising the affair partner. I heard of one OW who had, as it turned out, a wayward father, who'd eventually left her mother.
Sometimes people do sadly repeat those abusive patterns they've observed in their caregivers.

You are a single and free person who can turn a blind eye to the fact that you are an accomplice in helping to cover up another person’s duplicity and lies by your own silence and actively helping them to do so by only calling or texting when they say it’s ok to do so, by allowing them to dictate what, where and when so that their cover and yours is not blown.
You are ok with his lies and will lie to your friends and family about him if he asks you to. You are a single and free person who thinks that gives you the right to do as you please without caring if your actions contribute to the extreme harm of another human being and their children.
You are a single and free person who condones cheating, lying, deception and the betrayal of others by your complicity in it.
Yet you think this is ok and nothing to do with your behaviour.
You are deceiving someone.
If you think you are not complicit in everything a cheating man does, if you think you are not even in part responsible for the extreme pain caused to his wife and family, if you think it is in any way ok to join in with this charade and actively help somebody betray and deceive, you are deceiving someone.
You are deceiving yourself.

I always wonder, for women that are APs what their views are on wider issues that impact women are.

Do they sit around and discuss the importance of being able to make informed sexual consent with their friends? Their daughters...

How about financial abuse, hidding of money in a relationship? Acceptable if it's the man they are fucking. Unacceptable if it was their own spouse.

For women in relationships who moan to their friends about the inequality in their relationships with the house, the kids. How unappreciated they are. Not Acceptable for them, but perfectly acceptable for another woman to be manipulated by their partner into similar circumstances, while their AP is lying and manipulating them to free up time for an affair.

All so hypocritical.

People who are capable off affairs have significant abilities to compartmentalise.

Nothing is a problem in what they are doing, but 99% of the time it 100% would be if they were on the receiving end of similar behaviours.

They are able to lie to not just themselves but people all around them in life. Spouses, friends, family, kids, work colleagues. The list is endless.

The ability it takes, 100% shows up in other areas of their life, which is why I have so little time for people who do.

I blame them both because they’re both in the wrong, morally speaking. It’s not because I’m apportioning blame because of a patriarchal structure. It’s because they are both acting immorally. Incidentally, my opinion would be the same with same sex couples, be they male or female. When someone commits a crime, I blame the criminal and their accomplices, not the victim.

I agree that the cheating, especially long term affairs, affects people and forces them into dishonesty with themselves- it is very damaging to the people having the affair, I think.

Of course having an affair is not a crime in a legal sense! But it is a crime in the way that it is a crime to do something ugly and destructive and selfish, however legal that thing might be.

Hope you are ok now. Great post, Got me thinking

I had all the proof I needed at the time and still do six years out.
Trust was gone, the worth of his words was gone, all had to be earned back and proven or out he went. I was made painfully aware at the time that he was a proven liar and I took nothing at face value.
There was nothing ‘a bit silly’ in the way I handled it and this is an assumption that wives and partners who choose to stay automatically believe every word they’re told.
The ones who do probably find out the hard way that nobody lies harder than a person caught cheating unexpectedly.
Even the OW became painfully aware she had been part of something fake, at one point she even asked him if she was just his midlife crisis. I know that for a fact. She suddenly stopped the nice patient ‘wait for you forever’ crap and pushed harder for him to leave when she started to see it l, but it backfired because it wasn’t about leaving me, it was about escaping responsibility and chasing a long lost youth.
It was an unmitigated shitshow and the last thing I was was naive or ‘a bit silly’.
There was absolutely nothing ‘a bit silly’ about any of it.

If anyone wants to find out about the fallout that cheaters cause I can recommend "Cheating in a Nutshell - what infidelity does to the victim" by Wayne & Tamara Mitchell.

IMO cheaters should read it, but I doubt any will, as they haven't the level of empathy required to relate to it.

Couldn't agree with this more. We don't believe anything without evidence for a long time. I'm lot less 'silly' in my marriage now than I was before his affair.

I do think staying in a marriage with a cheater because you have believe the ‘it was nothing, it was an ego boost, she could have been anyone’ script is ill-advised, and that to remain in a relationship with a cheater requires vast amounts of denial and believing what the liar says about the nature of the relationship with the OW is part of that. But it suits people to believe it. Sometimes it may be the case, but not always. And I don’t even see how it helps - she meant ‘nothing’… but certainly even less than the primary partner!

so Cheater gets forgiven and OW is villainised. I just don’t get that at all.

I was cheated on by mx exH and couldn’t have cared less about who it was with, I was gone.

I'm glad you did what's right for you.

It's a shame after going through all that you still choose to judge other women's choices though

Judging women’s choices is literally what the whole thread is about 😂 only certain opinions are allowed?

the cheating men and the lies they tell during and after the affair are the issue. But if the lies they tell afterwards are ones that women want to believe, they will. I don’t think that’s wise and I’m sorry if that upsets people. I don’t see how a whole thread bitching about the OW is helpful to anyone except cheating men.

I think it makes it worse if you know the OW. The one that my ex husband cheated with would chat to me and be friendly, she was our cleaner.

I don’t think it’s “bitching” about OW; it’s mostly a discussion of the morality of abetting a cheater for your own pleasure. Even the ones who are like “OW are vile creatures” are coming from a place of “they hurt people.”

Some people can move past cheating, some people can’t. So many times on this site, people’s fundamental differences are seen as wrong and worthy of judgement/criticism. It’s really unfortunate.

I thought the OP’s thread was actually specifically about judging this: the choices of an OW, not judging who chooses what in the aftermath?

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

That’s OP’s question.

Sorry I didn’t realise other opinions on the general topic were forbidden.

@Pickle991 I’m presuming your apology is somewhat tongue in cheek so I’ll ignore the sarcasm and get to the point:
That’s pretty obviously not what I’m saying, many other things always get brought into threads like this. It of course doesn’t mean other things can’t/ won’t be discussed, but it is actually off-topic content.
You used a laughing face emoji to mock another poster by saying that judging women’s choices was “literally” what the whole thread is about”.

It literally isn’t.

Good post

I prefer ow who admit they are nasty.
At least they don't mind being disliked.

Some ow will argue vigourously on how they are justified and are lovely women.
They are opposed to anyone taking a dislike to them based on their behaviour.

Social class has a great deal of bearing on this.
One aspect is they believe their own intellegence makes it easier for them to be understood and their lesson is, I have no reason to feel guilt, I am not responsible and how dare you dislike or hate me, I am an intellegent, logical woman.
Yet their intellegence flies out of the window when they fall for an adonis, especially if he's useful or got a bit of cash, just greed.

It's all very basic really and usually ends up being very boring, we've heard it all before, we just want niceness, cleanliness, morality, integrity and those kinds of lives which are filled with people who don't lie, people who enjoy other things which don't include secretive sex and intimacy.
There are pleasures in life which come from kind behaviour, kind lives, caring thoughtful actions, protecting others from harm, appreciating others and being open to the world and your entire families together.

One of the worst things about being betrayed is being pulled into some skanky pair's world, yes we're not the perpitraitors but we have to view it, to hear it, to uncover it and to recover from it.
From beggining to end it stinks, it makes you feel dirty and digusting, every fucking aspect of it feels unwholesome and grubby.

Please stay away from decent people, decent people have had enough of you, male and females.

Social class has a great deal of bearing on this.

People of all social classes have affairs, including the current King and Queen.

I know that, I'm pointing out the excuses take on a different form.