One for the men of Mumsnet

[MrsJellyby]

Ok, imagine this: you're a man. You've been married for 15 years, you have 3 children under the age of 15. You've been in love with another woman for 8 years. She's the love of your life. She loves you too, passionately. But she marries someone else because she's afraid you'll never leave your family. You stay friends because you can't bear to not have some contact with her. But her marriage doesn't work out, for other reasons. She gets divorced. You realise she's free again. It's like a freakish twist of fate. You want nothing more than to be with her. But you know that if you leave your DW to be with her then your children will hate you. What do you do?

Speak to him.
Dont issue an ultimatum but tell him you are feeling that now is a good time to think hard and make any decisions that you both might be thinking about. See how he is feeling.

If he is as unhappy in his marriage as he leads you to believe then his children will most likely be fine if he were to leave his wife.

My parents divorced as my Mum was with somebody else. My parents had been unhappy together for quite a while.
It was hard at the time, but I can honestly say that they both changed from the divorce onwards. They were lighter in mood, more fun to be around. Just happy.
I am still close to both of them. My Mums relationship didnt work out, but my Dad remarried and I hvae a lovely step Mum.

If he dithers about then that will be the time to think about yourself, your child and your future happiness and to draw a line under things to move on.

Good luck

would you really want to be with someone to whom you had given an ultimatum? i wouldn't want to be with someone who had to think twice.

You are not 'the love of his life', because if that were true, he would have left years ago. He cannot be that unhappy with his wife or he would have left years ago. truth is he is enjoying having a wife and family at home and an extra shag on the side when he fancies it. If you hav so little self respect that you would settle for that then carry on. If on the other hand, you feel you are entitled to a proper relationship where you are the top priority for your partner, rather than a very poor third ( at best) after his wife and children, then you need to call a halt to this.

And actually, having been another of 'those' children, I do beieve that any woman who can allow, even ask, a man to walk away from his family, is heartless.

MrsJellyby - first of all my heart goes out to you as you have genuinely given your heart taking risks along the way.

Everyman is different but speaking hypothetically, romance (and sex) would be trumped by my children. I am speaking hypothetically as I am not in that man's shoes but just guessing.

What is his relationship with his DW like? Is it a really unhappy relationship or just one that has been run down by the mundane pressures of bringing up children? Also, do you really want a fulltime husband? Most of us are high maintenance .

For your man's position to make sense, then it must be that he and his wife are having a reasonably calm but unhappy marriage? Otherwise, if they are fighting then the children would benefit from a peaceful separation.

Whatever happens, stay on the front foot and don't see yourself as a victim. Just savour whatever intensity, thrills and fun you have had with him. This is more than some people have in a lifetime of marriage.

I don't think that you need to set him an ultimatum. I think that you need to move on. If he doesn't follow then you have your answer; IYKWIM.

Most of all lots of hugs from us MNers as you must be feeling quite a lot of turmoil. Just don't let yourself slip into being a victim.

I think you should make as graceful an exit as you possibly can, and leave this family to sort themselves out in whatever way they choose without your shadow hanging over him.

And I definitely don't think you should issue ultimatums or play any other 'mind fuck' games with this man. You really don't know what the fallout of that would be on his children, wife, extended family etc.

I feel so sorry for his family.

on a lighter note...whilst i imagine being a an..the first thing i imagine doing is playing with my willy alot.

say it ain't so, men of Mumsnet...

Dont make an ultimatum, or you will feel guilty if he does leave his family.
Just emigrate to Australia or Canada.

TDiddy, good advice

My AllOK says he's stay with wife - get bitter and take it out on them - but probably shag other woman - not great for anyone,

I say, as a woman, if you both need to be together, then be together - as the situation that he's in sounds awful for his family but do with dignity and don't allow him to destroy his wife and kids in the process.

Thanks jasper Allok - I was just about to say that MNers asking their DHs what they would do is not should not be treated as an unbiased sample! "So sweetie" I would leave you and the DC and go off with this super attractive lady who is everything that you are not"

If was the man described in the OP, I would keep the wife on the back burner, the mistress on the front burner and perhaps try and rope in someone a bit younger as a backstop; one woman isn't enough and it is highly probable that two women won't be enough either.

Why would anyone want to be with a man like this?

Swedes - it was Jimmy Goldsmith (I think) who famously said when a man marries his mistress he creates a vacancy. But I feel that it is harsh for us to be too judgemental without knowing the man's situation. Also, we all have human weaknesses: love and sex are complicated things.

But Swedes, we don't know what this man is like.
The OP does though, and thinks he is the bees ' knees

To everyone who has recognised the complexity of this situation: thank you. TDiddy: you in particular sum up the situation fairly squarely. Thanks for your views, they are good food for thought for me. Edgar: you made me laugh- that was good too.

Mrs Jellyby, don't take a Dad away from his children. Don't even wish for it. Just try to be content that there's more love in the world and in your heart than before you met. But don't try to build your happiness on the unhappiness of four other people. Because however complex you think it, this is what it comes down to.

I have a question.

How come it is the worst thing on the world to take a man away from his kids if it's an infidelity issue, and no problem at all if it's the wife who wants to break up?

I'm on relationships a lot and it seems to me that there is much hypocrisy on this issue. I don't know how many threads I've seen over the months that basically go 'I'm not happy with DH, we're totally incompatible, I wish I wasn't with him any more, the ralationship cannot be saved but I don't want to split because my kids would be heartbroken'.

Cue response pretty much of: you only live once, this isn't making you happy, kids pick up on that, they'll be fine if you handle it well, they can still see their dad, look at all the millions of kids coping fine when their dad moves out, my own kids went through it and are fine' etc etc.

But on threads where a man might leave his DW for OW, it's: You will fuck up your children, how can you leave your kids, how can you want a man to abandon his children, they will never get over it, etc etc.

Am I alone or has anybody else noticed this two way view of how children of split families cope?

Fwiw I'm from a split family and coped fine, now have four marvellous parents and the kids in our family have more grannies and grandads than they know what to do with - it's all good. My mum left my dad for his best friend so it wasn't easy at the time but kids are adaptable imo and it all depends on how the adults handle it.

Mr Orm isn't here but I can tell you he'd think what I tell him to think and that is that he should stay with his kids. Life with the OW isn't reality yet it's just fantasy - when it becomes reality it will grown all the normal warts and carbuncles that real life brings in it's wake.

Morris. I can only speak for myself here, but I don't see the double-standard quite like you do. I do see other double-standards on here though!

What I've noticed is that posters often advise women to leave in situations where the woman has not been unfaithful. Normally this is because the woman has tried everything to get her marriage to work, but it isn't any more and the kids are growing up in a house full of tension and resentment. Posters will also generally always advise leaving if there is abuse of any kind.

But posters are pretty scathing if a woman has been/is considering being unfaithful and her actions might result in her DH losing daily access to his kids when he has done nothing wrong. Infidelity will always skew the reactions of people, because it is basically selfish behaviour with often terrible consequences. Women who are unfaithful still also tend to remain the primary carer for the children, which means that the man suffers a double-loss.

I'm glad your experience is different, but many of us have noticed very different reactions in children when their parents break up because of infidelity. Kids can often rationalise break-ups if their parents are not getting on and are hurtful to eachother, but it's a different matter when it looks like a parent has chosen someone else over their Mum or Dad. Often children believe deep down that the parent has chosen OW or OM over them too - and that's horrible for children to have to deal with.

I've noticed that boys react really badly when it is their Mum who is unfaithful and worse still, if she leaves the family home. I don't know a single adult male who was "abandoned" by their mother, that is not severely damaged as a result. Daughters of unfaithful males also suffer problems and often end up being very needy in their own adult relationships - or destructive and hurting to other women. The perennial OW is often a behaviour choice for the latter female.

If a man walks out, the girls tend to be needy. If they saw their mother put up with repeated infidelities, they tend to be destructive. Of course, all of us can reject these patterns of behaviour and I'm sure there are loads of people on here that are the exception. Maybe they are the exception because of the care, transparency and openness of the parents concerned.

So you see, infidelity does put a different slant on a break-up, as far as children are concerned. I'd be really interested, if you have a brother, how he responded to your mother's infidelity?

I think you've got it spot on Morriszapp, i was thinking exactly the same thing.

I would probably plan to keep the status quo, if possible. If circumstances allowed, I might take a long term view of spending more time with the mistress and less time with the wife. If circumstances changed, such as the wife getting fed up with me/meeting someone else she wanted to be with/ then I obviously would consider leaving. However, I would be aware that the dynamics of the relationship would change completely, and not necessarily for the better. So I would probably stick with the current arrangement. Of course there is always a danger that the wife could find out and dump me and the mistress could fall in love with someone else and dump me and I could end up on my own. But that is a danger in any relationship and, to be honest, juggling two women must be quite hard work - some men find one more than enough.......!

Morriszapp, spot on.

A friend of mine had an affair with an unhappily married man , off and on for about 10 years.
He not leave because of his kids, did not want to split the family etc...

UNTIL he DID leave, when his kids were in their late teens.

He got divorced and married my friend

His children disowned him for about 8 years.

Nasty divorce.

Now reunited with his children, incredibly happily married to my friend, on good terms with his ex wife (as is my friend)

It can work.

Hi there- I have only had time to read the OP not other posters responses. My first response is to feel is is unfair for husbands wife to be deceived in this way. However, I would like to set the record straight in terms of children hating a parent that leaves. My father left my mum when I was 5, he had an affair with her best friend and went on to marry her, this marriage has also ended recently.....

Anyway, I am sorry that he hurt my mum but I do not hate my father at all. Of course there have been hard times but we are close and always have been. I feel he loves me unconditionally and that he did not need to stay with my mum to demonstrate this. My attitude may have something to do with my parents dealing with the situation in a mature way with no 'slagging off' of each other (after the initial messy stuff had passed).

I have a brother and a sister. The only one o us to 'suffer' was my sister, becuase she was still little at the time and she missed her dad. My brother and I coped well with it. Tbh, we didn't think of it then or now as our mother's infidelity. We just saw it as our parents splitting up, which had happened to lots of other kids we knew. They would have split up at some point anyway.

Bottom line is - whether you split up due to infidelity, abuse or because your loving DH or DW just doesn't get you, the result for the kids is exactly the same in practical terms ie usually dad moves out.

I don't know the latest stats but more then half of marriages now end in divorce I think. Splitting up, separating, divorce and step families are a way of life now in the UK. 'It is what it is' - most kids cope ok with it ime.

While I would never encourage or condone any woman having a relationship with a married father, it happens. And I don't think it is an act of evil or of moral repugnancy to 'take a father from his kids' because dads are still dads wherever they live, and adult men make their own decisions.

my heart goes out to you mrsjellyby.
i haven't read all the replies so i am sorry if this has already been said, but if a man is happily married he is not going to be unfaithful to his wife let alone carry on a long ongoing affair. i think your married man is taking the p*ss TBH, the affair started 8 yrs ago, if he loved you that much he should have left shortly after he realised he had feelings for you. it is not fair on you, his wife or kids that he has stayed so long in a loveless marriage.

i am speaking from experience, although i was not actually seeing him while he was married, my fiancee had been married for 11 years before we met. he had been very unhappy for several years, him and his ex just didn't get on on any level and she would constantly put him down and belittle him. so he had just been coasting along because he was afraid his wife would stop him seeing their DD if he left, plus they were up to their eyes in debt together and he felt a sense of duty to stay there to provide for them all.

we had been friends for months before getting together (we played in a band together) and he kept telling me and the other people in our band how unhappy he was. i was with someone else at the time. i split up from my ex and a few months later, one night he (my now DF) told me he couldn't stay any longer because he had feelings for someone else. that someone was me. i was shocked but very happy as i had secretly liked him for a while too (although NEVER told him or made it obvious). however, i told him that although i liked him, and was flattered, i would only think about starting seeing him when and if he split up with his wife. i did not in any way pressure him to leave, or expect him to, i left the ball totally in his court as i did not want to be responsible for breaking up a marriage. he assured me that i wasn't, that there had been no love in his marriage either way for years, but that having such strong feelings for someone else had been the final nail on the coffin to make him realise he had to stop wasting his life with someone he didn't love.

he started getting his affairs in order (pardon the pun) at home and left within a few weeks of telling me how he felt about me. and once he had left and moved into his own place we started seeing eachother.... against our better judgement we fell head over heels in love within weeks and now 2 1/2 years on we are engaged with a 4 month old baby DD.

sadly it has not quite turned out as much of a happy ending as we would have liked because his ex has totally poisoned their DD against us both and now his DD refuses to see him and he hasnt seen her for a year.

so i have to say that even if your man does leave his DW for you, it will absolutely not be an easy ride and in all likelihood his kids will hate you both. i am sorry to be harsh but that is normally what happens. it will also be very very hard for you to deal with the guilt that will ensue. i recently had to deal with receiving a message from his daughter saying "its YOUR fault my mum and dad split up!!" so you WILL be blamed and it will be bloody awful.

i wish i had some actual, practical advice for you but all i can say is that if you two are really and truly meant to be you will get through it all. but first he needs to grow a pair of balls and end his relationship with his wife. and then, and only then can you all start to try and sift through the mess and all move on with your lives.

i hope this has helped. feel free to CAT message me if you want to talk more.

((((hugs))))) xx