Affair partners, what do you class as a predator

[Clairebearstares]

I’ve been seeing a lot recently the other woman in an affair often getting called a predator as in they have gone out of their way to snag a married man. Obviously the man has done the wrong thing to his partner regardless but I’m curious what traits do you see in a woman to class her as a predator. I never thought of the other woman as a predator but now that I’ve been seeing it pop up it really makes me wonder…..

pursued my husband, didn’t win at first but worked her way in over a couple of years by flattering him, waited on him, bagged out her husband to mine, tried to befriend me (had mutual friends) ect ect.

interested to hear others thoughts

Agree husband at fault here but f you meet someone and they are in a relationship surely that’s it? Why would anyone continue to develop a connection?

I don’t think developing a connection is within your control, but acting on it definitely is.

she would still be a slag for trying though

And your husband? What sexist derogatory slur do you use for him?

Arsehole seems fitting

she slowly chipped away at him

He wanted it. I’ve had plenty of interest from people I’m not interested in. Did they get anywhere? No, because I wasn’t interested. Does he have learning difficulties? Does he get chipped away at by other people? Or just the ones he fancies.

I still don’t think ‘predatory’ is the right word because the men are not in actual danger, I definitely know women who ‘target’ married men. Maybe they don’t want a full relationship and can call the shots with a married man and can walk away easily enough. It suits them.

There are definitely women that ‘target’ men and don’t care about anything else but what they want in that moment.

There are also men that target women, and there are definitely men that target their wife’s sister. That’s a calculated thing and it’s because they know the sister won’t tell. It’s the cruellest of all men that do this and it destroys entire families.

Then there are others that just fall in love with someone who is attached to someone else. There are all types of people and it’s good to acknowledge that they exist because they do.

I’d assume there are some women who target their husband’s brother, which seems equally cruel.

She chased him, he was more than happy to be chased.

They spent many years mastbating together on camera.
I spoke to her, she still wanted him.

What she didn't really seem to understand was my husband behaviour was the same as her 'bad' husband that she had spent years complaining about and weeping into my husband ear about.

People just seem to have a type...

I am sill with my husband, it will never be the same but it will be ok

What appalling sexist crap.

Just look at this. A full paragraph of ‘clear cut’ demonization of OW as monstrous caricatures.

Whereas all the married men who shag them are guilty of is a lack of boundaries, and even that is, apparently, not ‘clear cut’.

What is 100 percent clear is that only one person in the world can keep a married man faithful, and that is himself.

What is also 100 percent clear is that some women (and men) deliberately attempt to seduce partners whom they know to be in a relationship or married. These people should not do that. I don’t understand why this is controversial.

Why was he worth forgiving OP?

i think my post outlined very clearly what was controversial about the post I responded to.

People do want to blame the spouse 100% because they are the ones who owe you loyalty. I agree with that. But I think people also have the right to hate the AP as much as they want to.

I experienced it when I was younger, and there's a few things I came to understand over many years sitting with it.

The first is that if you love your partner and believe them to be a genuinely good person, it's so hard to make the leap overnight to hold them fully accountable.

The second is that it's not until you hold them fully accountable that they have even a hope of changing or you have even a hope of healing.

That's between the two of you.

On the flipside, APs who have - and actually aggressively persue - affairs, are generally complete c**ts who don't give a crap about who they hurt. It's okay to really hate them.

But that isn't going to heal anyone.

People who have affairs arn't worth having, male or female.

They lie and decieve on a daily basis to everyone.

Oh there truly are predatory women who will stop at nothing to get what they want (which happens to be a man already in a relationship/marriage). I've seen a couple of them in action over the years. They play a long game, very artistically done, and quite often the object of their obsession doesn't twig what she's really after for some time.

Thing is though - try saying this in a thread on MN about your DH having had an affair, and try to apportion any kind of blame on the OW - people will come down on the poor OP like a ton of bricks. It is solely the man's fault apparently, and nothing to do with the slut who served herself up to him on a plate despite knowing full well that he has a partner & kids. Nobody's allowed to blame her.

I've never understood that reasoning.

My wife (not husband - because we’re gay) left me for a friend of ours who, while we were all on holiday together (2 married couples each with their kids) made such an overt play for my wife that we spoke about it several times. I was gaslit, lied to and made to feel stupid. 3 days after we returned from the holiday my wife moved in with the OW. I don’t “blame” the OW. My wife made the choice she made. Yes she had a very strong indication that someone else was hot for her but if she had felt committed to our marriage, that wouldn’t have mattered. She wasn’t, so it did.

& my husband was too vain to realise he was the same as her husband.

I told him to go to her.
He did the crying, begging & has stepped up its lasted over 2 and a half years. Time will tell

Yeah, they never think they are as bad as other men.

Same as the ow, they believe their affair is special or different.

It sounds hard as all betrayals are.

The thing is, thousands, if not millions of women and men stay with their partners after affairs, the financial aspect is I would say the greatest reason, life is dam hard to survive without a financial partnership.

There is no way I could have ever had an affair, intruding into someone's marriage only to ultimately know it would end and then know that some woman would be left in purgatory in a marriage that could hurt everyday. Not a chance could I have ever done that.

But isn’t the whole delusion that it’s going to be a secret and just once and nobody will ever find out?

It certainly wasn't as exciting for them once I found out.

Fear, shame, potential of job loss, disrespect from their friendships, families, colleagues.

I'm embarrassed for them, I don't care who knows, its not my shame.

I have the screenshots, her chasing him & him just loving it, grim.

There are predators on both sides and she wanted a new man. He was equally disgusting loving the younger woman chasing him & encouraging it.

Once someone has crossed the line into having affairs, I don't believe there is any turning back, as most of their primary relationships are ruined.

I believe many will continue to have affairs, only lack of opportunity would maybe stop them or advancing age because most of them have nothing to loose, they know their spouses will never love them in the same way. I've known men be heartbroken after they had an affair and their wives no longer were nice to them, crazy, but many never concieve that loving wives will stop loving.

A secret affair and once may only apply to the first betrayal but sometimes the first affair involves them believing love has come around and it's special, with subsequent affairs the cheaters are usually based in a resigned reality.
By the time someone has had numerous affairs and aged their steam may run out, it is then they can look back on all they destroyed, homes, wives, children, grandchildren.

Affairs are the gift that keep on giving.

I do think guilt affects ow more than it does om, I've known some very defensive and then sad, discarded ow.
Many on here are in the defensive excuse stage.

Sorry but we do see you, just as you think you see the angry betrayed wives, blaming only ow, this isn't true and if you were in the homes of these betrayed women you would see the utter hell that women can unleash on those poor little menz that you so believed deserved extra marital love but at the end they apparently deserved all the blame too.

Ow get away with it lightly.

Funny you should ask, there is research which connects mate poaching to psychopathy/dark triad traits, particularly in women.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S019188691400628X

People with dark triad traits tend to be predatory, so yes, there is some truth to this. I do think there are some people who get a thrill from "stealing" other people's partners. It's a power rush.

It goes without saying that whether the AP could be classed as predatory or not, it doesn't absolve the cheater of responsibility for making that choice and the person cheated on should not give the cheater an out on that basis.

Any woman chasing after my partner would be considered a slag by me, whether she was successful or not. That’s not sexism, it’s a natural reaction.

It is faulty reasoning. The AP has to bear some responsibility, even though the overwhelming share goes to the cheater. If people weren't willing to sleep with married people affairs could not happen.

I think defending the OW is a bit if a knee-jerk response in many cases because some women will blame only the OW and not the man who cheated on them, which is clearly both sexist and delusional. So if you dare to say the OW bears any responsibility, then that foolish, but sadly still common notion is what the OW defenders are really responding to, not to what you said.
Some of them, OTOH, have been or are currently OW themselves. You can often tell who they are by how worked up they get.

So she brought him a plate at a BBQ and laughed at his shit jokes so 'hubby' had no choice but to have sex with her for a week?

You've made your choice OP you don't need to justify it because it's one others wouldn't make especially but at the expense of women. Do I think affair partners hold some responsibility, yes if they knew the person was not single, in the sense of just being a decent human, but the big responsibility lays with the man who said for better for worse until death do us part, then put his penis in another woman. He shouldn't have even batted an eye let alone had sex with her. He chose that and maybe he takes responsibility, maybe he knows what to say to maintain the status quo.