I have had mixed feelings reading this thread. It's like reading what I would have written a year ago (from the "one strike and he's out" brigade) and what I would say now (from the "I understand why you did it" posters). I also feel that this thread has had gender/class stereotype undertones in some of the posts.
I have decided now that, like so many other things, until it happens to you personally, you cannot feel genuine empathy with the poster's position. I cannot condone violence, but my God I understand why you felt driven to it Amber. I also understand why other posters, who have never felt those feelings of utter hatred and contempt, find them incomprehensible. I was just like you a year ago, repeating the mantra that the anger should be exclusively directed at the DH, that the OW has no allegiance to you etc. and therefore cannot be blamed....
My truth (bitterly learned) is that things are FAR more complex. That the men in these situations are of course culpable for the hurt and the betrayal, but that the other party involved should also shoulder blame. It doesn't matter what gender you are, if you have made a commitment to a monogamous relationship, you should refuse any offers to depart from that commitment. Equally, if you know a person is attached, you shouldn't enter into a relationship with them. It's pretty simple, really.
What it actually comes down to, is the way we treat each other as human beings. Do we behave decently and with integrity, or destructively and competitively?
There are various OW and OM and I suspect all of them have different motivations and stories. What I do know is that affair partners who know that someone is married, has children and nevertheless enter into these arrangements, should not escape our approbation.
Some of them regard the whole escapade as a competition I'm afraid. It's the winning that counts and because they see it in these terms, when they "lose" in the end, they continue to behave destructively - hating their "opponent" (and even the opponent's children and family, amazingly) because it is not the loss of the relationship they mourn, but the fact that they have lost the competition. Yes, people like that are damaged and should ultimately be pitied - they are after all unlikely to have happy lives - but it is a step too far to expect the person whose lives they have helped wreck to feel anything but huge anger and contempt.
Some of the posters on here don't seem to understand passion and the primeval feelings many of us have had when someone "attacks and invades" our family. The language is old fashioned - and the feelings all this evokes are very old and will, I suspect, always be with us.
I understand why you feel this way, but honestly, you have no idea what you would do to protect your family from harm, until it happens to you.
And until we stop demonising married partners and absolving affair partners of their responsibilities to the human race, we will not reach understanding.