Was I a fool?

[Missinghim24]

I'm ashamed to say I had an affair with a colleague last year.
We have worked together a long time, though located in different countries (We are both the same nationality but he lives in the Uk), we saw each other at work events a few times a year.
Last year our work messages got more personal and we shared that we liked each other. He told me his stay at home wife is always annoyed with him, she doesn't get along with his family and hasn't learned his language - nor have their children so he felt very isolated. She didn't appreciate how hard he worked, but I understood what it takes to do the job.
After a few weeks he told her about us, and messaged me to say that he wants his family and has to end it. I accepted that.
But then we saw each other a few days later. He said he'd had to say that as she was threatening to move away with the children. He was very upset so we went back to his hotel room to talk. We ended up sleeping together. When he returned home he moved out and I thought we would be together. But he went back to his wife.
I understand what we did was wrong, but i though he was so unhappy and really cared for me.
Since then he has ignored me completely. His wife has contacted me, telling me I'm young and foolish and should have seen it would never work, that she and the children hate me and will always be part of his life whatever happens (I'm only 11 years younger, he is in his 40s I'm in my early 30s ). That I can't understand as I'm not a mother. I ignored her so she posted about me on social media, so my colleagues, family and friends all know now too. I asked him to stop her but he said it's between her and me.
Was I really stupid to think this was something, that he cared? I would not repeat this mistake but I thought I really meant something to him.

Yes it is. I don’t believe that anyone would expect that any mother would ever allow a situation where their husband’s latest bit on the side would have access to their children, let alone be in a position where they would be ‘ready to accept’ his children. I just don’t believe that anyone could truly be as totally stupid and delusioned as you.

But he knew he would see you at work events. Which are actually ideal for him to have sex while safely away from his family. You were/are looking at it from the point of view that he wanted to be with you so the different countries was a barrier when in reality he probably saw that as a bonus because for easy sex while away and no local mistrust to make it difficult when he’s home playing happy families

Yes it is.
When you participate in destroying a family with an affair theirs no chance that you're a suitable person to be a step parent.
You've said it yourself that you didn't think about his kids or their mum being in his and your lives forever, that you thought that you could just sit on the sidelines for a couple of months and then go official without anyone knowing or any consequences for yourselves or the children.
You don't even live in the same country as him so how were you going to help with his kids? We're you going to move to the UK, have him move to you and abandon his kids or just steal them away from the UK (their home country) and be a full-time stepmother to them and theyd be happy with this? Did you honestly think mum would be ok with any of this and just roll over and accept some strange woman with no morals, or brains stealing her kids, husband and life because some pos man said their breaking up anyway?
You really are an idiot if you think any of that was possible or that he wouldn't do it to you aswell

You were a bit of a fool but he’s a dick who used and manipulated you . Lucky escape. Move on

OP, I think you probably were naïve, like you said, and that while you were able to empathise strongly with him and his sense of loneliness and lack of fulfilment, it didn't naturally occur to you to put yourself in his wife's or children's shoes. You won't be the first person with this particular empathy blind spot. After all, other married women engage in relationships with married men. Mothers decide to 'explore connections' with attached fathers. Healers, therapists and counsellors -people in jobs which would indicate that they're attuned to and make an active living relieving the suffering of others- manage to talk themselves into feeling OK about pursuing affairs with partners whose spouses would much rather they didn't and who are likely to suffer because of it. But such is the protective mechanism of exceptionalism and denial -both of harm caused and of agency denied- which arises between affair partners.

The argument that it is not the unattached affair partner's responsibility to look out for the wellbeing of the betrayed partner, as they're not the one breaking vows, is disingenuous. Affair partners aren't responsible for a broken promise, but they are accountable for choosing to benefit from its violation. Affairs, by their very nature, require deception. That deception harms others. Not having meant to hurt anyone is meaningless when foreseeable harm is obvious and structurally necessarily for the relationship to exist.

For many, do no harm is a core value which is lived out in a variety of ways; one of those may be a deep conviction that engaging romantically in with a person still in a monogamous relationship structure is off the table, however tempting the spread.

How absolutely horrific. That poor woman. Did she have vulnerabilities regarding her mental health before that? And I assume her baby died, too? Utterly tragic, especially as I think I can say with confidence that her arse-wipe of a husband wasn't worth losing her life over! The shock and betrayal must have simply been too much for her. 😢

That is a horrific story. Sorry my post quoted the wrong post and will not let me amend it.

That poor woman.

@TheWild you write extremely empathetically and eloquently. Your style reminds me of another poster. Is this an alter ego username or are there multiple of you? Meant with love as the poster I am thinking of is someone i have huge amount of respect for.

You've fallen for the oldest trick in the book. His wife doesn't understand him - it's such a cliche. Spoiler - it doesn't end with 'and the all lived happily ever after'.

Honestly, I assumed he'd have as much of a say as she does. And he missed his home country (my country). So I got the impression he would be here and they would join him here whenever they could.
That didn't seem so far fetched to me.

It seems i really did.

What does hryc mean? I Googled it and no luck. I do wish people would stop using so many acronyms. I've had to Google a few on MN in the last few days and had no luck. It makes the threads hard to read.

HDTM. JFLNSI. GJ.

😆

But there are definitely scenarios where a man leaves his wife for the other woman, marries her, and the OW becomes stepmum to the kids, right? I'm not sure what the mechanism would be to stop that, as completely infuriating as it must be to the first wife. So I don't think OP is being delusional about that part.

More likely that the DW found out (I’m sure he’d have been quite happy to carry on having his cake and eating it otherwise) and he shat himself when he realised he’d be getting at the very best a very angry wife and at the very least losing at least half of everything, spending the foreseeable future in a premier inn and being outed to look like the total shit he is to all and sundry.

Men like this don’t usually like being exposed for the cheating shits they are and will go into serious damage-limitation mode: “she threw herself at me”, “she wouldn’t leave me alone”, “I feel so lonely as you prioritise the kids and don’t give me enough sex”, “what about meeeeee?!”

It really isn’t because they “realise they are about to lose what they really love”. That is incredibly naive. He’ll likely behave himself for a while and then be sniffing around for someone else to ensnare into his web of lies. After all, he now knows his wife will quite easily forgive him (maybe op isn’t even the first) and is happy to go along with his BS of the scarlet woman who seduced him, even going so far as to try and shame her to her family and colleagues at the risk of looking like an absolute nutter and a bit of a sad case herself..

@SoftBalletShoes

I hryc = I have read your comments.

I'm a bit shocked at some of the gendered insults on here like "airhead" and "no brains." I guess I thought we'd progressed beyond that.

It seems pretty clear to me that OP was naive and was taken for a ride. I think the worst shaming should be reserved for the man, whose own wife and children he's hurt. OP thought they had a real connection and that their marriage was in its death throes before she met him. Now she knows different. She's not the first young woman to be taken in like this and she won't be the last.

I really do not know why some men even get married.

Honestly, there are a lot of very bitter women on MN and more than a fair few who’ve forgiven their cheating spouses and have to live with their decision day in and day out. Or women who don’t trust their husbands and view OW as predators out to ensnare married men!!

Also some who are very naive in their own way and don’t believe they would ever be taken in by a conman (I used to be one of them!) or arrogantly believe they would always be able to sniff out someone who lies as easily as hot butter melting on toast (I thought I could!) I’m an intelligent, educated woman yet I fell for it - but it’s easy to understand why when all the components are put together. It’s really lazy to just say “oh, I would never do that and anyone who does is stupid”.

I would never blame the wife for her husbands cheating - and any woman who blames the OW or thinks she needs nailing to the cross is not someone I’d have time for as they tend to have a lot of internalised misogyny.

Until it happens to them, and I hope it never does, or someone they love and respect - they will never understand how these men operate - and how lucky they’ve been to escape it!

Yes in an ideal world all marriages would be as sacrosanct as some on here seem to think they should be and no one would ever cheat or put a foot wrong, and all women would require an independent depth conversation face to face with the man’s wife before embarking in a tryst with him but life really isn’t as black and white as that. Often there is animal attraction involved and yes, people want to have sex with someone who isn’t their spouse. Some men will fight that feeling, others will feel it is their right and go about getting it in whatever way they can. The women are usually the collateral damage and we should at the very least be united against the lying man!

I personally felt nothing but sympathy and upset for the wife and wanted to out him fully to her so she knew exactly what she was married to - but ultimately I knew she probably wouldn’t want to hear it as she’s been married to him for years and has likely turned a blind eye to it - or is so far under his spell that she wouldn’t believe it.

More than anything after it all came out I hoped she was ok and would leave him as I know she deserves better. I’d be so happy if I heard she’d gone on to meet someone else who wasn’t a lying piece of shit.

The OP is still trying to make sense of it all - I did too, it’s natural when you’ve felt a strong connection to someone and then had the rug pulled from under you and realised it was a lie - in time she’ll realise that almost everything he said was a lie. When you look at it with these newly cynical eyes only then can you make sense of it all and realise it was a game to him. The OP isn’t quite there yet.

Its the most ridiculous thing you've said no he doesn't have the right to kidnap his kids and take them to live in a foreign country where they don't even speak the language nor would they want to leave their mum to go live full-time with some stranger who helped destroy their family.
I don't think that you have a clue about child custody in the uk or the international treatise around child abduction. Removing children from their home country without the permission of the other parent or a court order (which he hasn't got a snowballs chance in hell of getting) is child abduction and an international arrest warrant would be issued for him and he and the children would be returned to the UK, kids to mum and him to jail. He would be stripped of all parental rights and IF he was ever allowed to see them again before they turned 18 it would be supervised by social services. Oh and if you helped him to abduct them in anyway would be facing charges of aiding and abetting at the minimum.
You really are a complete fantasist who was living in a delusion of your own making and are embarrassing yourself here.
Grow up and stay away from married men

Have Read Your Comments I would assume

Didn't she mean that the children would join him there when they could for visits? Not join permanently? That's how I read it.

Well she said she was ready to take the kids on and be a family with them in earlier posts, and couldn't seem to understand that they would likely hate her or be harmed in anyway by their family being broken up because of what she and their dad chose to do.
I mean its pretty delusional to think that mum would be fine with her husband cheating on her and running off to another country and let the ow parent her kids and that mum would just disappear but the op has admitted to believing all of that, all off the back of the cheaters script and 1 night in the sack with him 🤯
The op is nuts I'm sorry but she is especially thinking that his children would want anything to do with their waste of space dad who couldn't keep it in his trousers and then moved country abandoning them for his bit on the side let alone her

I suppose the fact that she thought the marriage was over explains why she thought that about the wife, but yeah, clearly the kids would have HATED her. That much seems obvious.

I always wondered if that ever occurred to Rebecca Loos. She said that she adored him, so I guess she wanted him full-time. But can you imagine not considering that there'd be FOUR kids who'd hate you???? I thought about that at the time, and wondered why it hadn't put her off.

Another one with no accountability.

That's the favourite shield of cheaters, the childen....

Think of the children, absolutely laughable.

There is no way to cover up a hurricane and the devastation that causes.

@Redscrunchie makes some very good points in her post - not about the OP but about the situation in general. The man is ultimately the person who should shoulder the majority blame in this situation. He is the one who committed. He knew what he was doing.
There are many affairs which have gone on to create long lasting relationships. There are wives who have chosen to stay with cheating husbands for various reasons financial and otherwise. There are many men who want the rush they get from an affair. There are many women who think they are " the one" and he means it. It's not black and white. You get the posters who say threaten the man with talk of them having to have the children 50%. Is this really how you would want to keep a man? By threat? Marriages break up and ultimately it is how it is done. That's the issue - it's often ugly and disrespectful and ultimately the fault of the person who embarks on the affair.