Fighting starting an affair

[wsido]

I know this is a stupid route to even consider but it is what it is and I’d rather take counsel, than ponder over it in my own mind.

I’m in my early 30s, female and married, and I’m being propositioned by a man in his 40s and also married. I’m his subordinate at work and we really are opposites on paper (including faith, ethnicity and social class). He’s never directly vocalised that he wants to start an affair but there have definitely been signs that he would be down for a sexual affair if I was down. Sadly, and I really do say this with extreme disappointment as I’d rather it not be this way, I’m very attracted to this man and it’s almost like if we were in a room together for long enough, something would happen as I don’t think our emotions are logical when we’re together.

I’ve been married for a few years now and of course my husband and I get into arguments, but they’re never deep enough to consider divorce or to involve anyone else. It’s just that when we do argue, my immediate thought goes back to the man at work and that I should just go through with the affair. Because of my strong attraction to him as well, I always think of him when I come across anything romantic or sexual. My own marriage didn’t start smoothly but I love my husband and wish to respect him, but it’s so fxing hard when this other man has qualities that my husband doesn’t have. I feel I can’t fully concentrate on my husband and on fixing any issues that we have (which I think are fixable), as my attention is elsewhere. Even when my husband and I have sex, I imagine the other man.

Has anyone has ever been in a similar position, and either fought off the affair successfully or not? I don’t have anyone to talk to about this (as you can imagine), so any advice would be appreciated.

Sometimes mumsnet feels like an alien planet to me. I’m not sure what about op’s story is shocking enough to warrant anyone questioning the legitimacy (and isn’t it against the rules?). People developing feelings for others is a very human thing….! Op is trying to work through a dilemma that people the world over are dealing with all the time- some successfully, some horribly. Yet the commenters here consistently act shocked that anyone would even imply they deal with such feelings. Comments abound about the post not being real (why? Nothing outlandish here?) or just for attention, just for an opportunity to talk about the crush, etc- boggles my mind!

On the other hand the responses seem so cruel I’m finding myself hurt just reading it. Op is in a difficult position and she’s trying to find her way out. Does abusing her, telling her essentially she’s a slut and just used by a man for his next cum dump helpful? Does this kind of mean, nasty attacking actually steer people away from the affair? I don’t understand it.

OP if I were you I would switch jobs. Hard as it is, I’d do it. There’s too much at risk here. I wouldn’t trust the emotional cauldron that this situation creates. I’d also find a more gentle supportive environment where I can be helped out of the situation without being shamed and flamed. Maybe for you this tough love works, for me it would just send me deeper into a shame spiral, which is not a good place from which to make the right decisions.

Certainly some of the language is coarse, but the underlying message, and I would say it to the poster immediately above you too, is do not go there.

Imagine that the future affair partner is someone as tormented as the man who posted just before you. He engaged in an emotional affair because he couldn’t or wouldn’t talk to his wife who has been giving him nothing emotionally.
How is that any different to “My wife doesn’t understand me”? Of course it feels ‘it’s not like that’ to him- but when it all comes out, it definitely will be like that to everyone forced to listen to it.

If a spouse is good enough to wash your dirty laundry, make Christmas dinner for your mother, do all the crappy jobs you don’t even see never mind do, then she deserves an open and honest conversation where the one who wants to stray really listens to the other side and takes a bit of responsibility.

There are loads of women here whose ex husbands labelled them as emotionally unforthcoming. Their side of the story is usually fascinating and reveals the wives know and understand the delusional husbands better than they know themselves.

I feel sick at the thought of everything in my, my husband and the other man’s family’s life going wrong because of my selfish actions.

Then don't do it! You're acting as if it's somehow predestined and you don't have a choice. It isn't and you have! It hasn't happened and it never needs to. You are in control, you have a choice.

Imagine you get found out. Imagine everyone at work and in your family finds out about it. Imagine you actually do become a cheat. And don't let it happen. This guy, whatever you have in your head, it's not real.

People like OP who are considering affairs because their spouse doesn't measure up to the possible or actual AP aren't committed to their spouse, they're committed to how the spouse or AP makes them feel. That requires therapy to fix and sometimes it's not fixable

Then have the honesty and decency to tell your wife. Of course the other woman was blowing smoke up your arse and treated you better than your wife, she was having an emotional affair with you.
Cheating is cheating, there are no degrees of an honourable cheat. Nice people cheat, not very nice people cheat, but whilst engaging in cheating they are very much the same: liars, deceivers, gaslighters, betrayers.
Just because you are not ‘the office sleaze” doesn’t excuse or mitigate what you did to your wife, however she treats you. You didn’t have to cheat in response to your wife’s behaviour, you chose to cheat, lie and deceive instead of being honest with her. Cheating because of “love” and emotional attachment isn’t a better class of cheating than lust, it doesn’t make you a nicer, more honourable and excusable cheat, cheating just makes you a cheat, just like the sleazy ones.
The amount of excuses you have told yourself, to give yourself permission and justifications for what you did to your wife come to quite a total. Unhappy, wife not treating you as nicely as the woman who wants an affair with you (well, no shit….) victim of a neglectful wife, feeling lonely for years…. wife bad/ AP good…..said every other cheating man on the planet. It’s like a script.
There is absolutely nothing unique or special about your office romance, or the justifications you give. The feelings in affairs are always heightened and more exciting than any marriage, you can’t compare the two, different dynamics are in place.
Do your wife a favour and end your marriage, give her a chance for happiness. Look at your own role in the unhappiness of your marriage, find some accountability for what you did and why you thought it was ok and justified to treat her like that (look within, stop blaming externals) and drop the entitlement.
People do understand how hard infatuation/ limerance/ obsession is to conquer. What people don’t understand is why unfaithful people think that anyone except themselves are to blame, or why marriage issues give you a free pass to pursue someone else.

That’s a very interesting point. I never thought of it that way.

To the OP, don’t do it. If it was some love story, he will still be waiting for you in a year or two once you have both ended your marriages and are single.
The urgency feeling surrounding this should ring alarm bells with you. You are about to make a very bad choice if you take this any further. Stop now while you still can.

If this man is willing to have an affair with someone beneath him I’m sure you aren’t the first and won’t be the last. Don’t be so stupid to ruin your husbands life, and this guys wife and kids lives. If you have any decency find a new job and focus on your marriage.

My husband could have written this in the midst of his affair- which also started as an emotional affair.
He would tell you himself now he'd been being a rubbish husband. He also thought he was a good man. He earned well and worked hard to provide for our family. But he didn't make any effort with us. Yes he watched the kids sometimes and picked up a hoover from time to time but everything else was left to me. He gave the best of himself at work and we got zero effort.
Your wife is clearly unhappy and rather than address that (I bet everything I have that she's explained to you why) you've taken the interest from someone with your low morals as proof that you're amazing and your wife is awful.
Its not real. Neither of you is in the real world with your affair. You show each other the best side of you and gladly hand the worst sides to your spouses who love you anyway.
I chose to stay with my husband and its been hard for him to face who he became. When I asked him to leave after discovery he realised what he stood to lose- as you might.
Your wife doesn't deserve what you have done / are doing to her.
By painting yourself as a martyr for your marriage, giving up your true love for you horrible wife you're avoiding addressing your part in your marriage.
Either listen to your wife and address the issues in your marriage or leave and give her the chance to be happy. I bet if you gave your wife the emotional effort youre putting into this other woman you'd turn your marriage around - but I guess that's more effort than just starting again with someone who hasn't yet discovered your downsides.

Remember that in your marriage, it's most likely that your spouse is doing a ton of the work. Your affair partner gives you great sex and ego flushes and you think this is 100% of the work, ignoring all the real life, mundane and crucial support you get from the old ball and chain.

There is nothing respectable, good or principled about someone who even considers cheating on their spouse. Let’s be clear here. If this man is genuinely propositioning you then he is a slimy toad. If you go ahead and have an affair then you are also a piece of pond slime. Either work on your marriage or leave your husband THEN you can pursue another man, though not a married one. Married equals off limits, end of discussion.

@Headspun cognitive dissonance is a funny thing. It helps us hold true to what we believe about ourselves. You believe you’re a good person, OP believes she is a good person but to involve yourselves in the abuse that is an affair it’s natural to create a false reality. The betrayed becomes cold, distant, unloving, not as thrilling whatever, the object of desire becomes wonderful, kind, sympathetic, empathic to your needs etc etc. It’s deeply flawed thinking.

FWIW I don’t think all these men are looking for the next victim. I don’t know if this man here is a decent man who actually is super attracted to OP OR a serial cheat but it’s irrelevant. What he, you and OP are doing is creating a false narrative to give yourself permission to abuse the person you made vows to protect.

I nearly lost my husband to a complete breakdown because he became caught in this thinking. He broke his family, he broke me and then when the chickens came home to roost it broke him. He would be having hard words with you if you were his mate.

You need to stop romanticising the seedy behaviour you’re engaged with and read up on affair psychology. It may stop this navel gazing you’re engaged with. This goes for OP as well.

It may not turn into a shit show for you but it certainly will for your husband and his wife and kids. Honestly, how dare you even consider such a thing when you know he has children?

It’s not a ‘difficult position’. OP is considering ruining multiple other people’s lives the sake of her own shallow desires. Difficult? No. Selfish and repugnant? Yes.

'out of sight out of mind' doesn't work no matter what the circumstances are. My AP was a former hook up I hadn't spoken to in years, I started talking to him via social media and couldn't stop, it becomes an addiction.

I think people have a threshold that they cross and once you have done it its very hard to go back. Now that is a possibility in your mind, I am afraid to say it probably will happen. Therefore, if you don't want to risk losing everything, I would actually recommend you seek out some therapy- put more work into your marriage and family life and try to change your mindset.I think I hated the person I had become in my marriage (as I said he was very abusive) and I was trying to escape that version of myself. Some people are just horrid and uncaring, and should never be in a relationship in the first place, but I don't think that is the case with you.

A lot of people have very black and white thinking on this topic, and think if you do this bad thing it makes you a bad person. I did too until I had been there myself and realised that it isn't that simple. Good luck OP, as I said I think therapy is the way to go.

I do actually have a nuanced view of affairs; they're very wrong, of course, but I do think they aren't all the same and there are some situations that are more forgivable and understandable than others.

That said, OP talking about this like it's a foregone conclusion does remind me of something that annoys me about many people who have affairs, which is that they talk about it like it's something that just happened to them and not something they orchestrated and maintained by a series of choices. So many people who have affairs then talk about being "sucked in", "reeled in" or "fell in", like they didn't actually choose to do it.

And this does require a choice, OP. It has not happened yet and nor does it need to. You have a choice.

I agree entirely

Morality notwithstanding, if you cheat with this man you will be the one who loses their job. Trust me.

I think the best thing to do would be to start looking for a new job.

Having an affair with this creep would be a real low.

Absolutely this. Same with my husband, it’s sadly never until reality hits and they see the real impact and seriousness of affairs, physical or emotional, that they realise all the lies they were telling themselves in order to preserve their self image as a good man.
I agree that not every guy who cheats is a cynical sleaze going from one woman to the next, but whilst cheating, there is no difference between the two, same lies, same deception, same abuse of their spouses.

I don’t think anyone was questioning the actual legitimacy of the OP’s post, but the motives behind it.
Having been given mountains of advice, some kinder than others, granted, from those who have been on the receiving end of this, or been brave enough to admit here that they had an affair themselves, or had thought about it, or stepped away from one, OP is still asking for more stories. Not asking specific questions, but asking people for details about what happened not offered in their first replies to OP’s post. One poster quite rightly refused to give OP further details, as is her right.
I fail to see why, after reading all the responses up to that point, OP still somehow couldn’t see or find enough to satisfy her in the overwhelming amount of advice to stop this madness.
When somebody has got the answer to their dilemma in a resounding majority, what purpose do further personal stories serve?
That’s what I meant when I said alarm bells rang for me.
Not alarm bells that OP is not genuine, but that she seemed to be developing a need for details in people’s personal lives in an unnecessarily mawkish way.
Yes, it’s extremely hard to undo a year’s worth of limerance and reducing your husband’s role in your life to an unsatisfactory bit-part, I have compassion for OP in that it’s bloody difficult, but I think posters are getting frustrated with OP’s seeming inability to understand what is already a huge amount of anecdotal honesty, added to a tidal wave of opinion, firmly against her being unfaithful.
I think it starts to look odd, considering the above, that more details are required, more stories. OP’s attitude seems to be ‘well…yes….obviously I know that…..oh hang on, no I don’t, I need the gory details of what the impact was on your life, despite everything I’ve been told so far….”
Either OP is in a mountain of denial, (to be fair, most unfaithful people have one the size of Everest protecting them from the truth) or she is trying to play out a dozen different scenarios to see which one she thinks she could put up with, should the shit hit the fan, or (least likely I think personally but not impossible) she is enjoying talking about her secret and projecting herself onto people’s stories to see which one fits.
I think the person on another planet is OP if she needs more and more highly personal information from people here about the damage infidelity does to marriage and families, after a thread this big and this detailed, already telling her exactly what she needs to hear.
Trouble is, humans are pretty deaf when it comes to hearing what we need to hear and have the hearing of a bat when it comes to what we want to hear.