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.

Well, yes, there may be a ‘script’ but only old women know this. It’s not something that’s taught in schools, it’s knowledge acquired with life experience.

It’s a bit like saying, we all know the consequences of smuggling drugs. Yet every year they’ll be a new naive 19 year old manipulated into acting as a drugs mule.

Well the reason we broke up is because he told me that he planned to tell his wife about the affair so we could be together. This was the exact opposite of what I wanted and so I ended it. Ultimately he told his wife about us anyway which led to their break up. He told me he wasn’t happy with her and that he wanted to make a real go of it with me.

I had made it clear to him all along that I didn’t want any kind of commitment from him and I thought we were both on the same page. It obviously got really messy.

We remained in touch occasionally and he did end up re-marrying about 6 years later. We aren’t in touch anymore seeing as it was about 15 years ago but I do still think of him and wonder how his life panned out.

What marriage means is open to debate. In a traditional sense, it’s a commitment before God, but how many married people go to church or even believe in God? In some sense, its lost its meaning. For the most part, it’s simply a legal contract to share assets when you split.

While your marriage may have other meanings for you, that’s a personal thing.

Im my opinion, women who get involved with another woman’s partner or husband, whether that net have children or not, are letting all women down. Where’s the female solidarity? And I don’t care if he told them a pack of lies about how miserable his wife is, etc. if he’s married or with someone else you say no. The only time I feel for the OW is if she genuinely did not know that he was involved with another woman. If they know, they’re morally bankrupt in my opinion. I know many will disagree with me but as a woman, I would never do that to another woman. We have a hard enough time of it as it is trying to get an equal footing in this life. We are meant to be acting in solidarity not running off with each others men. And what does it teach these types of men? That women are 10 a penny and they can use women however suits them, get away with it and then move right on to the next one? It’s bad for women in so many ways. Sorry this has happened to you OP but it’s better to be single than with a dishonest misogynist who uses women.

So your marriage means that your spouse is available to pursue relationships with other people behind your back?

It may be a personal thing but it is widely accepted that, unless specifically stated, marriage is a monogamous, exclusive relationship between the two of you, with an actual legal contract behind it.

It hasn't affected me (& I wasn't ever one) so I don't feel a need to have an opinion about OWs.

My mom & a friend were both obsessed with their unfaithful husbands and to lesser extent, the OWs. Obsessed for years & To the point of making themselves miserable. I do have the strong opinion that I never want to be that unhappy about an unfaithful man: he can't be worth it. As byproduct, I assume I should care even less about the OW.

I think it’s a weird take that the separation would somehow hurt less if they’d done the ‘decent thing’ and left the marriage first.

I’m in the process of divorcing my husband (we are separated, living under the same roof but different rooms) because I’ve fallen for someone at work (who I think suspects but certainly doesn’t know).

My husband is devastated. Several times I’ve thought it actually would have been better to cheat on him because at least then he could hate me which would help him move on.

I’m not sure that “I’d rather risk being on my own forever than to stay married to you” is a better feeling?

For clarity, I haven’t actually said that to my husband but it’s basically what I’m implying.

Would you really feel better if that’s how your husband felt?

I was just as judgmental as others on here previously but my situation has made me much less so…I can absolutely see how some good people end up having affairs at the end of a relationship.

I don’t think it makes either the husband or the OW a fundamentally bad person, just someone who made mistakes in a relationship that was already coming to an end.

If people need to believe that their husbands are bad people who were just waiting to walk off and shag anything that moves to help them move on, feel free.

But that isn’t the reality in many cases. I’ve been faithful for ten years and never looked at another man, my relationship has been coming to an end for years (even if husband decided not to take it seriously) and the guy at work is absolutely ‘special’ to me.

I havent cheated because I met him in a context where that wasn’t as likely to happen but if we’d been somewhere with alcohol I can’t absolutely guarantee I wouldn’t have.

Now I’m leaving my marriage and it’s frankly terrifying at times, I can see why many people (not just men) end up staying until meeting someone new is the final nudge they need to end things.

I totally agree with you. There seems to be no way of getting out of a marriage without someone getting hurt. An affair is a grenade,

You are by all accounts trying to do ‘the right thing’ as you have developed feelings for someone else so have realised this means your marriage must be over and are trying to untangle yourself by leaving your husband without having an affair.

But you would still be annihilated by a lot of people for ‘having your head turned’ ‘your poor husband’ etc. because falling out of love with someone is only allowed if there is nobody else involved. Sympathy is very limited towards the person ending the marriage.

People have really really strong opinions on affairs but I would not judge anyone as I have not lived their life and don’t know what they are going through.

the fancying of someone else gave you the urge to leave your marriage, and you have not acted on these feelings. You are doing your best and I just wanted to wish you well. I hope everything works out for you.

It might take a while but he will be jealous of your life eventually. He barely knows this woman. She might be young and exciting right now but soon she will have her own expectations of him.

Think about it. He’s in the honeymoon period now but assuming she wants a family of her own, soon she will start putting pressure on him to have a baby/marriage. Then his ‘new’ life will look a lot like his old one and, he’ll be poorer with two families he’s responsible for.

If she doesn’t want kids then guess what…she gets yours to look after at least every other weekend. That is a big sacrifice if she’s not keen on having a family herself and the resentment will likely build.

Meanwhile once you are healed you can look for a nice divorced man with older kids, who you can swan off on weekends away while your ex looks after your kids (and any new ones he has).

You’re not wrong lol. Not cheating as a result of electing not to is much different than not cheating as a result of trying to and failing. I would not consider the latter faithful.

People can't be stolen unless they're kidnapped. He chose to cheat. Doesn't matter what sort of person she is, those people will always exist and it's foolish to expect a stranger to care more about you than your partner does. If he's faithful only for lack of opportunity then it's meaningless. If your relationship rests more on every woman in the world than on the one man who made you a promise, it's dead in the water.

The OW is irrelevant. She's not your partner. He is. He made the promise, he took your trust, he chose to betray it.

@Mrspinknails “Low likelihood” doesn’t mean “never happen.” Some cheaters are genuinely regretful that they hurt their family members

But yes, I would expect someone who was divorced twice to be significantly more likely to divorce in a third marriage. They’ve demonstrated they most likely don’t have the skills to pick out compatible partners, be good partners themselves, or resolve marital conflicts.

She's irrelevant in that essentially, she could be anyone.

It doesn't make her choice to become involved with a married man better though. She still made a poor decision and did so knowing she would be part of something that seriously hurt someone else.

I don’t get the idea of ‘female solidarity’. Are we supposed to support women purely because we are the same sex?

I support people that I know and like. Nothing more than that.

I think the point about it being “foolish to expect a stranger to care about you more than your partner does” is a good one. It’s easy to hate the OW and tell yourself she’s evil/morally corrupt. Surprisingly seems a lot easier for women to do that and still stay with the man who cheated on them. Women see each other as rivals and that’s why these things play out the way they do. How many posts are there about men hating on the OM and asking if he’s evil/morally corrupt? Not many, I wouldn’t imagine.

They're pretty pathetic and pitiable whichever way you slice it really.

This is how I feel. That anyone knowingly getting involved with someone that is already in a relationship is pathetic. I find it sad really, they clearly don't value themselves or have a decent moral compass. People that say "your DH is the one that made the vows" are correct...he did and cheating is contemptible but I don't view it as a get out of jail free card to do whatever you like and not give a damn. I just think the world is a better place when people don't purposefully do things that will cause harm to others. Obviously not everyone thinks the same way.

But her choice is irrelevant. It makes nothing happen. It's only when he decides to break his promise that he cheats. She isn't committed, he is. You can say he can't cheat if nobody's willing to cheat with him but that's absolutely worthless fidelity, a guy who's faithful only because no woman will have him. Either he chooses to honour your trust or he chooses to betray it.

The whole reason for the promise is because most of us could find an AP if we wanted to. That's the rest of the world, that's why we commit, to promise to exclude and reject it. It's on him. She doesn't matter. Her choices have no power.

The difference is the level of honesty.

You aren't going to save your husband from pain, but you aren't intending to spend months lying to him about your whereabouts, or pretending that you have a future together.

Okay, but imagine you’re walking through a park. You pass by a mum and a child on a bicycle, and decide to push the child off the bike and steal it. You don’t know the mum or the kid, but your actions are still obviously morally wrong, right?

It’a the same when getting involved with married men. If you know you’re enabling cheating, you know you’re enabling the man to hurt his wife, and you know it’ll probably break up a family and cause trauma to the children too. You don’t know the wife and kids, and you have no promise of loyalty or obligations to care for them, but your actions still have harmful consequences, so they’re morally wrong.

It’s not really a matter of how much you care about a particular woman or child, but a matter of principle: you ought to have decency and avoid hurting others for your own gain.

Sure, if you think an act of violence against a child is the same as having a consensual relationship with another adult. You still seem to be working on the assumption that the hapless man was stolen away. He chose to pursue another woman because he doesn’t care, love or respect his wife enough. The OW, who doesn’t know you or your children, can hardly be held to higher standards than the man in question. Yet somehow she always is.

Honestly I think most children would be less traumatized from a single instance of being pushed off their bike by a stranger than their parents divorcing because of infidelity (which a stranger willingly participated in.)

I’m not excusing the cheater in the situation in any way. Both the OW and the cheater are behaving immorally.

In fact, for your scenario to make any sense whatsoever, I guess it would be: you’re walking through a park and a woman, man and child are passing. The man stops and says “here, take my child’s bike. It’s no longer working properly and I’d really like you to have it” The woman takes the bike and the man’s wife spends the rest of her life telling the world that the woman ruined their lives by stealing the child’s bike.

Whether or not the child is traumatised depends on how the adults in the situation behave. Did I tell my kids their dad was with god knows whoever? No. Their relationship with their dad has nothing to do with his relationship with me. I wish more people would get that right before they F up their kids

Okay, good analogy. Would you take the child’s bike if the child is visibly upset by the dad giving it away? I wouldn’t.

The mum should be upset at the dad for giving it away and the stranger for accepting it.