This thread is going where many infidelity threads go on here sadly.
Men who cheat are not the devil incarnate. Women who sleep with married men are not Cruella De Ville.
They are usually ordinary people who for some reasons, usually at a low point in their lives, make bad choices and enter a dysfunctional fantasy relationship in an attempt to feel better. To keep the dysfunctional relationship going they become even more dysfunctional and lie, hide their behaviour and deceive others. Hurt people hurt people as they say and infidelity is a shining example of this. They rarely set out deliberately to hurt others but still do it and sustain it knowing it does, regardless.
Nobody wins, everyone gets hurt. Hurting others to serve yourself rarely pays off or feels good.
People who have affairs and people who knowingly sleep with others in committed relationships are making bad and self-serving choices which impact others negatively. There are consequences for this which they also know at the time.
They’re not evil, but they have done wrong and hurt others.
What is bad is their behaviour, and that’s what should be censured, not the person. That’s the part to discuss which could actually be useful to OP in helping her understand what she’s been a part of and why she feels so bereft now.
Feeling strongly against infidelity itself and giving reasons for that is not a personal attack on OP.
OP you did a bad thing, he did a bad thing and no doubt you are both hurt because of it. This could get worse if the ripples spread out far enough, be prepared for that. However all you can do now is acknowledge what you did, learn about yourself from this and move forward. During the affair he no doubt felt affection for you, but something has made him wake up and realise he doesn’t want to wreck his life as it is, no matter how unhappy he told you he was. Cheating men are rarely as unhappy as they maintain, but since nobody wants to sleep with a man who
says “Nah, life’s not too bad but sleeping with you is too good an opportunity to miss” you’ll never hear that. The affection evaporated the minute the affair threatened his status quo and the only way to save it was to ghost you. In the bubble he adored you, outside it you’re a fantasy he can discard. Men who love their OW or really think they do, at least, see a better life with them and will leave their marriages for you.
On a slightly different note:
There are many here who are saying they would never judge anyone, yet are happy in the next breath to judge men’s behaviour with no desire to understand or allow nuance all day long.
There are some who say OP is being treated harshly online, who then attack other posters on here and treat them unkindly.
Infidelity threads often end up with OW being championed, OW being vilified and those daring to say they think OW, as well as married men, indulge themselves in wrongdoing are called bitter, resentful, projecting….. the list goes on.
Men get judged, OW get judged, cheated on wives who explain how cheating affects them and others get judged and assumptions made about them. Just shows how toxic infidelity is. Sadly this extends to real life as well as here and exemplifies what happens to OW and wives within families and friendship groups when infidelity is exposed and people take sides depending on subsequent choices made.
Women get hurt by men’s infidelity and by the OW who join in and help them, and then can get patronised and sneered at by women for having the temerity to openly say that they have not enjoyed the experience or want to be very friendly to those who did it, and have actually been traumatised by it into the bargain.
It’s pretty head-scratching to realise on reading all this as objectively as I can, is that the person who comes off worst here, if they admit they have been cheated on, and admit they hated it, is usually the victim of the deception, who neither asked for it nor deserved it, which was perpetrated by two people, not just one.
Funny old world on Mumsnet sometimes.