Did the wife find out about your affair with a married man?

[GenEx]

It seems to be affair confessional central here tonight.

If you were an unmarried woman having an affair with a married man did he get away with it or did his wife find out?

I have no skin in the game - just nosiness about the hidden volume of secrets out there. And obviously anyone could write any old rubbish.

Doesn't it eat away at your conscience at all?

I had an affair with my 43 year old boss when I was 21. He owned a company and an Audi TT. It was incredibly wrong but I loved it and thought I loved him. He then told me his wife was pregnant with twins through IVF. The affair continued for another 6 months. I then had another affair at the age of 26 with my then 33 year old boss. I was completely in love with him. He told me "nobody has ever turned my head let alone my heart" and I believed him, and still do! That went on for nearly two years. I was completely besotted and still think about him. He has two children and as the crow flies, only lives about 40 miles from where I settled! Crazy. I am now happily married with children myself. I don't regret those affairs but I will never have one myself.

The thread did ask for honesty

Me neither. Poorly expressed…

What were the other threads referred to in the original post? Where people confessed to affairs?

I'm not in a relationship/married. He is.

My former affair partner got away with it, they’re still married 10 years on and she doesn’t know. We were sleeping together whilst they were engaged and then for a while straight after they married until I met my now husband. We are still friends and he tries it on now and again but I’m married now and we both have children so I wouldn’t go there.

I was single. It lasted a couple of years on and off and his wife knew the whole time it turns out but didn’t confront until the end. He lied to both of us and I have no idea why I kept going back except I was clearly fucked up.
It was awful. I was suicidal because it was such an awful situation so I can’t even imagine how she felt.
I ended up occasionally having to be in meetings with her and was overwhelmed with how professional she was and still wonder why she stayed with him.
And yes I have had a LOT of therapy and this is not happening again

I have a friend who has been with a married guy for about 30 years she posts him like he’s her husband, they seem to meet a lot in hotels when he’s working around the country and local to their home. We’ve been in social situations where he’s had to leave at a certain time presumably to do stuff with his family/wife. His line for not leaving is that he doesn’t want to upset his daughters which are very much adults now. He’s quite charming thought I always feel sorry for both of them when in their company. I wonder if the wife knows as he’s quite well off so could just be an arrangement?

No, I don’t think so. If I thought there was a risk of him finding out, I wouldn’t do it.

Maybe. I don’t think it can go on much longer anyway given the age difference.

No. It doesn’t touch my conscience if I’m being honest. It did once, but it doesn’t now. It feels almost everyday now.

You must have a very different idea of what love is to the one I have.

He told his wife when we had been seeing each other for 3 months.

We have been together for 25 years, married for 20.

"the wife", not "my wife". Says it all, really. You talk about her the way you'd say "the car".

I hope, for her sake, that you use condoms.

It’s not an idea though. Love is an emotion.

And for what it’s what it’s worth, my partner has never told me he loves me.

Exactly this. People who cheat are sociopaths because they are putting their spouses at risk of contracting an STI without that spouse's consent.

I don't think I felt guilt as such during the three months we were seeing each other before he told his now ex wife. Definitely not in the first couple of months anyway. It is hard to explain. It was love at first sight for both of us (both of us going home and telling friends we had met someone special, just after meeting at a business lunch with many other people present) which I guess made it feel justified in our minds, but really I shouldn't have gone near now husband until he was a free agent.

We both felt immense guilt after husband left his ex wife, and that nearly broke us up at the time. We have been together for 25 years and married for 20 now, and I still do feel bad when I see her (she and dh have a son together) at family events.

Maybe it’s bc they marry young and then they change through life experience and so does their partner. Then they meet someone they have more in common with as an older adult and they then stay with them bc they don’t change any further and are happy. Or they marry bc of pressure and go along with it despite not being really in love with that person. Then they meet someone they feel more strongly about and connection with.

Some AP’s stay together bc they learn from their mistakes and put more effort into the newer relationship or are willing to tolerate more as they don’t want another breakup and all the upheaval that goes with it, or life alone. There are many reasons why they'd stay together I think.

There was a similar thread here a few months ago, which made me realise how many people I know who have had affairs. I was surprised at the number.

What I’ve come to suspect is that a lot of people are not happy in their marriages but think they they should stay and make the best of it, for many reasons, Then they meet someone, fall in love and after a while they think that they cannot continue in their marriage and that they have to leave to be with the AP, because they cannot face spending the rest of their life in their marriage. Most of the couples that I know in a second marriage seem to have been through a version of this. It’s not the sort of thing you ask people about to a great extent but that’s pretty much what I’ve seen.

People often suggest that if someone isn’t happy in their marriage, they should split first before starting another relationship but I’ve only known that happen when couples are quite young, haven’t been married long and don’t have children.

As for the person below asking if people don’t have any morals “these days”, I’ve read enough history and literature to know that this has always happened. I mean, I don’t regard the collection of documents that currently comprise the Old Testament as any form of contemporaneous evidence, but messy relationships are clearly as old as time,

Before there were central marriage records, it wasn’t unusual for a man to walk out of his marriage and start a new life hundreds of miles away. We’ve always assumed that we can trace our lineage through BMD records but DNA testing is showing us how mistaken that assumption really is.

Hopefully your husband will. It would be good if you find out he was shagging someone while you were pregnant.

MN has a reputation for hating cheating but actually there's a strong cohort that loves it in the right circumstances, which always seem to be a former OW and a man who cheats forever.

If you do not agree with monogomy and tell your partner this then no issue. You are being ethical and above board.

What is not right is saying you are monogamous while shagging about. It’s just seedy and a bit grim. It’s believing you deserve a second set of rules. It takes away consent and the ability to make an informed decision as to whether you want to risk a life changing/fertility destroying std.

If your marriage sucks why would you want to have to tell future partners that you cheated. Surely it limits the dating pool to people who are happy to date wo/men who cheated on their husband/wife? Or you just lie and say you didn’t cheat?

I think ‘my wife doesn’t understand me’ ‘we sleep in separate beds’ (often as the kids wake up and the husband want uninterrupted sleep for his work) or ‘housemates’ is bollocks. But if it’s not how can a man who says this shite be attractive? If you are unhappy go to counselling, read John Gottmans work, divorce respectfully. Discuss like a grown up with your spouse. I can’t imagine finding a man who cheats attractive. I’d just see him as a liar who doesn’t believe in his wife having informed consent.
I find men who don’t believe in women fully consenting really grim.

If people are unhappy why grub around in the shadows. How will that make your marriage better? Someone on here recommended reading The Secret Sexual Basement article by Minwalla - it was eye opening. These blokes want their cake. Unhappy yeh right, thinking they deserve more and not fulfilling the commitment they made more likely.

“Love is an emotion” is your idea of what love is.

I’m sorry to hear about your partner. This puts your affair in a much more understandable context.

I took it to be “the wife in question”: not “my wife” but “his wife”.