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 hope it doesn’t sound like I’m excusing it. I’m trying to make sense of it because I just don’t get how people to could do this to other people. And if I’m being brutally honest I’m trying to reassure myself that she must be a nasty piece of work in order to stop me torturing myself by comparing me to her.

(Secretly whispering to myself that it will never work out because true colours will be revealed)

This is the perspective that I think ‘my’ OW inhabits. They rationalise their thinking, and walk themselves into a role. Blithe, naive, indifferent, surprised 🤷🏼‍♀️

Definitely don’t do the comparison thing. It doesn’t matter what she looks like. He didn’t leave you for her looks. Or because she earns more. Or because she has scintillating conversational skills. Or because she spends more time in the hair dressers. He left you for her because of his own issues. She just happened to come along at the time he decided he wanted to look elsewhere. If it hadn’t have been her, it would have been someone else. She’s nothing special. Right place, right time; like a public toilet when you’re deciding whether or not you need the loo before a long walk.

To answer your question, I think OW are dreadful people. Morally bankrupt and not someone I would want to be in my life. I certainly wouldn’t be friends with one. If you fall for a man who tells you he’s married, then you tell him to sod right off and try again after he has ended his marriage and is free to start a relationship. You don’t have a taster session knowing you’re contributing to someone going through so much pain.

Having said that, I don’t think she’s responsible for him leaving. It was him who agreed to forsake all others and stick with you for better and worse. If he had been a good, honest, decent man, it wouldn’t have mattered what she said, what she did or how much she chased after him. You cannot force a person to cheat with you. You can’t steal their affections. So I would feel contempt for her character if I had to think about her at all, but she would be largely irrelevant to me. It would be him who would be responsible.

No, I’m not. There is no excuse for it; the morally correct thing to do is the hard thing, which is to split from your spouse, if the marriage is unbearably dysfunctional, before you move onto the next relationship.

But that doesn’t mean it’s not hard, or scary. It’s possible to understand the “why” of cheating in dysfunctional relationships without condoning it. It’s never anyone’s fault if they get cheated on, and two wrongs don’t make a right and all that, but… If you’re a good partner and you work really hard to make your relationship a fair and happy one, to communicate and make sure needs are met and all that… I think that reduces the likelihood you’ll be cheated on, at the very least. It’s worthwhile to think about.

I get it, truly. But the day my exH announced he was engaged, I felt a sense of relief that (a) the life changing upheaval for me and the children wasn’t for nothing and (b) he was happy, and he’d be magnanimous to poor old doleful ex wife left single. The OW is only thrilled to have got her man, exH feels vindicated in having found his (new) soul mate, and he leaves me the fuck alone because his anger (at having been slung out) has dissipated.

Your dh is the person who betrayed you.

The OW has been taken in, just as you were. Does she really imagine that he won't do the same to her in a year or two when someone new & shiny comes along?

At least you are rid of a time wasting, free loading creep.

It may work out and lots do. But what does that actually mean? They stay together.... its entirely possible.

But what a horrible stain on your relationship. People don't forget. It is the thing that's talked about behind your back.

Plenty of people smile to your face and talk the minute you move on. Then think about the amount of mental gymnastics that happens in the new relationship. The underlying stress. The wondering could he or she ever do to me what they did to them.

Yes some people will tell you "we worked out" then in the next breathe talk about guilt and shame.

I know it's a trotted out phrase and doesn't really help when your really in it but the best thing is to completely disengage from them. Him, her what they are doing, who they are doing it with. And focus solely on you and every single day effort on making you happier.

Both are scumbags imo.

Weak, lack self control, low self worth, selfish

overall need to improve for her own self wotht and respect

It actually doesn't reduce the risk at all.

Because affairs are caused by the dysfunction of the people engaging in them.

So absolutely nothing in your list has jack shit to do with how the internal mechanisms of another adult deals with their own dysfunction, ethnics and behaviours.

I’m not saying that meeting your partners needs and being good to them is a guarantee that they won’t cheat on you— there’s no guarantee. There will always be shitty, selfish people who cheat because they don’t respect you or care about your feelings or think they won’t get caught or or or.

But at least your partner won’t have “she’s abusive to me. She doesn’t care about me, about what I want or need, ever. We never have sex,” etc. as motivation to cheat. In that way, some of the risk is mitigated.

I can completely understand why she thinks it reduces the risk.

If you’ve got together with your husband at a time when he was married to someone else and that he was the sort of man who would walk out on his children, how do you sleep at night unless you create some fantasy of how your marriage is so very different from the marriage he left and how you’re such a better wife than the one he left. He wouldn’t do the same to her and her children because she communicates with him and meets his needs, unlike his first wife.

If she accepted that a lying, disloyal cheater is a lying, disloyal cheater, she’d never have a moments peace.

Is it inconceivable that sometimes a cheater’s second marriage is way different and a lot healthier than their first? That they might see the harm they did to their first wife and set of kids, and regret it enough not to do the same thing twice?

Generally I try to be the none judgemental and live and let live type, but that doesn’t extend to OW. I cut my sister off because she was going with a married man who worked for our brother. Not only was she going to split up a family but she wanted to potentially ruin his business as well… great judgment. We’re good now but it’s not really the same. I definitely like her less as a person. I also cut off a friend who started sleeping with a married guy we used to work with, it’s just gross. Also I don’t think it’s a good idea to keep women like that close to you, you never think it will be you until it is. Also I know if I did get cheated on I would definitely snap… I’m all peace and love these days but I don’t think I could keep up the inner peace thing if I got cheated on.

No. It’s possible. I’ll give you that. I’m sure there are cheaters who come home from an evening with the OW, kiss their children goodnight and feel horrific guilt. Not enough to stop doing it, obviously. But enough that the next lot of children will be enough to stop him looking elsewhere.

Time will tell, I suppose. Let’s hope nothing crops up for you that means you’re anything less than exactly what he needs to keep him faithful.

Thanks. I really do think he’s such a patient and understanding man. I feel like I’d have to really, really mess up to lose him

(That is strictly speaking on my relationship only; it is in no way meant to cast shade on anyone else !)

Stop comparing yourself right now. You are you in all your beautifully real, gloriously complex, messy imperfection. Her appeal lies in the fact that she isn’t real life. She’s an escape from it. She doesn’t come with the baggage of marriage and shared history and someone who isn’t just there as an ego boost.

This man has run away from his problems to someone he barely knows, someone who’s telling him everything he wants to hear. She’s not his solution — she’s a distraction. A diversion from facing whatever went wrong in his own life.

I suspect there’s something missing in her too — maybe low self-esteem, delusion about who he really is, misplaced competitiveness, a lack of empathy or sheer ignorance about what she’s done. Just as he’s running from reality, I suspect she’s equally caught up in a romantic fantasy that she’ll soon realise is built on sand.

I think there’s a kind of cognitive distancing some women do in these situations — the same kind of mental trick you’re playing on yourself by comparing and finding yourself lacking. I’m sure she’s comparing herself to you too, but in her case, she’s trying to win. She needs him to choose her over you to validate herself. But all she’s really proven is that he’s untrustworthy — and that has nothing to do with your worth or hers.

The cheater is 100% to blame but the idea that women are victims because thry can't stop shagging a man is laughable and all justification is ridiculous

But the gullibility means who ever falls for 'but he said they don't have sex, sleep in different rooms, she doesn't understand him, the marriage was over for years, she does it too' makes me think the women who do it need to own it, you sleep with a married man how do you know he won't to do it to you

And the above works the for women cheating and the man

Justify it how you want but again own it and don't seek sympathy because you use the vulnerable card

I don’t think anything tbh. Unless it’s my marriage and my partner then it’s not my place to judge. Marriages break down for all sorts of reasons and blaming the third party is ridiculous imo. If it hadn’t been her then it would have been someone else. He decided that he didn’t want to remain committed. That is the real issue here. Unless she’s a friend, she owes you nothing.

I don’t think I agree with this. I fully blame DP but as PPs have mentioned, there should be a certain level of human decency to not get involved. You never know what is happening in other peoples relationships. Even if she owes me nothing she’s still potentially fucking over 2 innocent kids.

You are making an assumption here that if this particular woman didn’t exist, then everything would have been ok in the marriage. In most cases, this is highly unlikely to be the case. An affair is usually a symptom of a marriage that has gone wrong, not the cause.

He is doing that not her

I don’t think she’s making that assumption at all.

A married couple could be having all the problems in the world, but if every other woman in the world refused to sleep with the married man (or refused to enable his cheating in any way) until he leaves the marriage, there’s no way he can cheat. (Same if the genders are reversed.)

Therefore, all cheating is at least partially the fault of other women/men

Never experienced hate until i had Another Woman in my life.

I would never do that to another woman.

Homewreckers . i wish her nothing but misery.