I did a bad, bad thing.....and I'm sort of thinking I'd like to do it again

[SlinkyMuminky]

OK, sorry if this is a bit long. Have only ever posted on MN a couple of times, tend to be a bit of a lurker. Know you ladies are very good at talking some sense into people, so would love you to do the same for me.

Have worked for my present boss for nearly 15 years. He's a charming alpha male, very successful in his career and we get on extremely well - he works out of our NY office, whilst I am London based. I am also quite senior in our company, and have made it this far - I believe - purely on my own merit .

So, Saturday evening he's in the UK for a Christmas function, we both get extremely drunk and he ends up staying in my hotel room. We did nothing but spend the night together, mainly talking and kissing a few times. No sex, not even close. I was in PJs in bed the whole night.

Now, I'll pause to mention that I believe I have a strong marriage. My husband's not the easiest of men to live with, but I love him and we've been together a long time. We have DTs aged 3 and this has put inevitable strain on our relationship. The last couple of years have been hard and any notions of romance feel long abandoned.

I am obviously feeling very guilty for what I've done....but I'm now imagining how great it would have been to go further and would love to do it again.

I know this is utterly stupid, and also know why I am doing it. Looking for some escapist, romantic nonsense, but unfortunately I live in a world with commitments and responsibilities and feel like I'm in the middle of a 'holiday romance'.

There is no positive outcome to even considering trying for round two. I have a beautiful family to consider, and my professional reputation would be severely damaged. People would assume I was only in the position I am because I'd slept with my boss.

So, come on ladies, please come tell me what a twat I'm being and shake some sense into me.

Thanks

"
Now, I'll pause to mention that I believe I have a strong marriage"

if this isn't a wind up your a twat and if you had any respect for your husband you'd tell him what had happened.

God no don't tell your husband.

You did a stupid thing - if you can move on and forget about it do, but don't feel things will improve if you tell your husband. They wont.

Oh give over, all those giving OP a hard time. She isn't a twat; she's just having a fantasy. Nothing wrong with that!

We all have fantasies in our silk and lace Agent Provocateurs.

Then we get in to bed in our winceyettes.

Ok, that's a joke - but only just. I too have kissed a colleague during a lull in a sales conference. And afterwards wondered 'what if ... ?'

But nothing ever came of it. And in the real world, I really didn't want anything to come of it anyway.

I suspect you know this too, OP (if you are a real person).

aww gwan, VCAU, you know you wanna !

I won't point and laugh, I promise

I'd like to know too VCAU.

My life is more like justabouts, and I am not pregnant!

"You did a stupid thing - if you can move on and forget about it do, but don't feel things will improve if you tell your husband. They wont."

things won't improve for her you're right and seeing as she is selfish enough to cheat on her husband i'd imagine that once more she will do the selfish thing and keep it from her husband.
they might improve for her husband though because i'd see knowing that my wife has cheated and being able to make decisions about my own life/relationship which i should be allowed to make as an improvement on my wife cheating on me and me not knowing and having the decision on to keep the relationship going being made without me and being taken for an absolute mug.

How sad. I mean, how sad that you are even considering going there again, when you have had the luckiest escape from what could have been a disastrous encounter.

You're feeling jaded, frustrated, no romance - so what? That's real life. It's up to you to do something positive about it, not something apocalyptically destructive to your family.

Wise up, grow up and stop even thinking about this man.

Leave work and pop to a lingerie shop, go home and seduce your DH. Apologise with effort, never tell him, just make it up to him by being more attentive.

You've had a lucky escape, I'm sure lots of women (me included) would be at risk of the same behaviour given the right circumstances...lucky for me and DH I have never been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It is lovely to window shop but really don't try anything else on.

I just feel that all this fairly aggressive "grow up" sort of comment is not conducive to solving the problem and it is a bit like when your parents tell you not to do something when you are young, it just winds you up to do it, or makes you feel bad about yourself..... and guess what seems to make you feel better?

The bottom line is that you really shouldn't do it because it is like the joy of too much chocolate, feels very good for a short time then you end up fat and ill - no scenario you can possible construct brings happiness.

i got flamed for ( amongst other things) comparing all the scenarios on a set of spread sheets - the financial bits an dpieces in great detail. There were 3 outcomes really - living on my own - not a good idea. Sorting our marriage (good idea) or living in poverty with a rather strange man and his two large hairy dogs in a dump, I sort of worked out that the promises of a 24/7 shagfest was not going to come to anything when he hadn't entirely delivered on that front in 4 months anyway. Fortunately for me he dumped me anyway.

Now I really want out of here before the "confess all" brigade arive to tell me what a dreadful woman I am again, and any happiness I have is quite illusory - which is very odd bcause one of them praised something I said to high heaven recently on another thread ( which was under my other name!)

vcau - are you the one whose OM sent you a pic of dogs shagging with your names on?

such is Mumsnet, VCAU

baronessbarabaraking - Indeed I believe the solution to a lot of life's problems can be found in Tolstoy!

Anna Karenina is wonderful

It is brilliant. I'm reading it for book club and thought it would be hard going but I was hooked from the outset.

I never thought a bloke from the olden days in Russia would get people so much. IYSWIM.

DO NOT tell your husband. That is the most important thing. It would be self-indulgent and could well break up your marriage for absolutely no reason. The hotel thing was nothing, tbh. Loads of people have done it and it hasn't led to the breakdown of their marriage. But you can't do it again. Obviously you know that. Just forget about it. Your boss won't tell anyone, it would be worse for him professionally if it got out. As everyone else says, affairs never end well and office affairs end worse because you can't get away from them when it all goes tits up. Also, you will probably get more emotionally involved than him because you're a woman. It's not worth the stress and effort when you've got a lot to lose.

Try and make it so that you have more time with your DH. Wherever possible, pay people to do the boring domestic stuff, get babysitters at least once a month and go out alone. Can you go on holiday alone, maybe just a weekend city break, and leave the twins with grandparents? I think it reaches a point where you have to reclaim your life together from your children to a small extent.

mayorquimby get over yourself. This is real life not some adolescent fantasy of staring lovingly everafter into your DP's eyes with not so much as a glance at another: she kissed a bloke. It is unfortunate but it happens. Often.

I can think of at least 6 people (M & F) I know who are to all intense and purposes happily married. Each one of them at some point over the past 5 years has had a liasion similar to the one mentioned in the OP. Do I really think it would be better for their partners to know - hell no. Something happened it didn't happen again.

Best to move on and forget it ever happened.

yep it would be self-indulgent to tell your husband and treat him like an adult who deserves to and should know important details about his relationship like his wife cheating on him.
where as the selfless martyr like thing to do would be to keep it to yourself.shouldering the guilt for life will be your punishment and the right thing to do.

isn't that the normal self-serving delusional line that is trotted out by those who have affairs to put some moralistic slant onm their selfish acts. If you want to tell her not to tell him fair enough. but don't try and paint it as anything other than her not wanting to own up to what she did and selfishness. She's not doing it for anyone elses good but her own because she doesn't want to face the consequences of her own actions.

I completely agree with Nancy

This is unpleasant and rather bad but frankly I'd imagine there are very few relationships where no one kisses anyone else on a drunk night out

I mix with nice married ladies and frankly after half a cider half of them have their tongues down each other's throats

I have to agree with MayorQuimby,
solid relationships are based on complete honesty, anything else is a sham, a pretense of a "happy marriage".

Lying to your partner, lying to yourself, what a shitty way to live your life.

Look, shit happens. It was nothing. What's the point of breaking up a perfectly good marriage for no reason? Everyone has secrets. In OP's husband's position I would really rather not know.

OK maybe I can be in a third party?

Look for another job. Because if you did this again (don't be so ridiculous, could there be a quicker way to spread shit all over your life, where you have to walk for the rest of your days?) you would end up having to leave your job anyway. Your lovely husband would become either completely hating of you or completely indifferent to you. Neither is very nice.

In 30 years' time you will be looking at your twins making similar mistakes with their partners, seeing your nice daughters/sons in law that you really like in agony and facing loss of contact with your grandchildren, and wondering whether if you had sorted yourself out, got over the rather extreme early years with children and fallen in love with the man you married again, whether they would have better relationship skills.

I am not a great advocate for telling your dh straight away, but I would shake up your relationship and tell him you are struggling. Because he probably is too. And somewhere down the line you probably will have to tell him. Wouldn't you rather be able to tell him truthfully that it was just once, and you got a life straight away?

Yep, that's me. In some cormer of mumsnet I'll be remembered for that forever.

Don't tell DH no matter what, just as I feared the "honesty is the best policy" brigade have arrived on the thread and just as I feared I have no energy left to say NO NO NO with quotes and references to experts etc. etc. again. The decision is of course for you - but it won't do much good for your career if DH thumps him, move on silently - please.

Solid relationships are rarely built on complete honesty.

If you think that you are either lying to yourself, or someone else is lying to you.

The human condition is a complex one, and to get 2 people to make a life together for ever even more complex, and to pretend otherwise is a sham.

Just 'being honest with yourtself' would take most poeple about 90years of therapy, by which time there isn't much point in tyring to then explain it to your partner.

If only life and people were as straight forward as some like to believe.

Just 'being honest with yourtself' would take most poeple about 90years of therapy, by which time there isn't much point in tyring to then explain it to your partner.

Lol

soooooo true

The bit that made me convinced you are an idiot was the line "he works out of our NY office"

Wow, that's like, so transatlantic....

I'm neither lying to myself or being lied to, thanks all the same.

My own rock solid relationship is based on absolute honesty and I wouldn't want it any other way, we don't know how to live any other way in fact.
It doesn't make for an easier life, far from it, you sometimes really don't want to hear the truth - it does make for a better life though, that's for damn certain.