Affair = Marriage and happiness?

My OH is on her second marriage (first and only for me!) - she divorced her husband after he had a short affair - and has made clear from day one that she has a zero tolerance attitude. Bizarrely, she has two brothers who are on their second and third marriages (one because he went over the side with the next door neighbour and the other because he seems to attract women who walk all over him) and they have left, to put it mildly, tortured family remnants all over the place - sons who don't speak to fathers, daughters whose weddings are ignored...nasty nasty nasty. I'm certainly not feeling smug but two things occur to me - 1. I am extremely fortunate and 2. adultery leads to broken relationships which lead to children having immensely more difficult lives than they should. Actions have consequences and there are some people who don't seem to realise that.

People are human, they can and do make mistakes. I think for some people the grass is always greener. Always wanting, chasing something they cant have. Some people might use it as a catalyst to get out of an unhappy relationship. I know people who have cheated during long term relationships (no marriage), people who have cheated on their hen nights and I mean sleeping with other people.

There are no easy answers, I dont know what they are but from the people I see in affairs, all I see is misery, not happiness.

I know of someone who is seeing someone who has a partner who is terminally ill. And I dont know the ins and outs of everything to do with the relationship, but I think sometimes people get blinded by what they think is love or love and then say, well it suits me anyway to be with someone I can only see once a week or twice a week.

I do think that when it comes down to it, theres always someone calling the shots and obviously thats the person who has a partner as they will be unavailable at certain times.

A friend of mine had an affair with her married boss, she was 17 at the time and he was 31, he had a kid and during the relationship, his wife got pregnant again but he brushed it off by saying it was a one off and she got pregnant. What they both were getting from that affair as far as I could see was sex and lots of it, she got money spent on her and taken away for overnights. I was honest and told her I thought it would only end in tears which Im sure it did in the end.

She also had a long term bf at another point during our friendship and again she was seeing someone else behind his back and the brown stuff hit the fan when her bf found out and the person she was having the fling with disappeared and wasnt seen for dust.

She was a long time later diagnosed with bipolar and Im not saying that everyone who is bipolar is prone to affairs, but some of the behaviour she displayed in her teens, it didnt surprise me that she had a mental health issue, because some of the stuff she did at the time was quite frankly bizarre, attention seeking, risky and unsafe for herself.

Its hard to sit back and watch when someone is pushing a self destruct button.

vodkachick68 wrote: »

. I don't class myself as having an affair,i only ever kissed him and nothing else.

I think this is interesting. To me a partner having feelings for another person is far more damaging than just having sex with them. I think I could forgive a 'bit on the side' but not a deep emotional bond whether it included sex or not.

To me a long term liason, lunches, texts, dinners emotional intimacy is far more damaging to the current relationship than a couple of nights of lust.

What's everyone calling an affair?

so the end justifies the means? if you have an affair and are still with that person 5, 10, 15...years later, it's OK? Sod the fact that at least one other person went to hell and back, was lied to, had to potentially suffer the loss of their home, their standard of living, their hopes, dreams, everything they had worked towards for much of their adult life to have been the last to know and suffer the humilliation of being alone and feeling totally unloveable, to have close friends invite your ex and the 'other person' to dinner but never pick up the phone when they call so they eventually stop calling and tick off the loss of yet another friendship, have to explain to their children what had happened and listen to them sob, ask why and blame themselves, have to deal with another 'significant other' adult in their children's lives and all the crap that goes with that, have to work incredibly hard at trusting anyone again and all the crap that goes with that, the loss of friendships and people who were once your family.....?

Then have to put up with people whispering about you 5, 10, 15 years later because yes, you do struggle with it all and it was life changing and never quite goes away no matter how hard you may have worked to 'move on', saying that you're 'bitter' and god forbid you shouldn't have found yourself a new spouse, you're labelled every ignorant, derogatory name under the sun, quietly talked about and looked at with that pitying smile, to hear that you turned your children against the ex without fail because obviously your children are not capable of making their own moral judgments or decisions on who they want to have a relationship with (or not), to be reduced to begging your ex for money to pay for school shoes and read stories on parenting forums about 'do you think she's not paying the children enough attention because she's a single mum?' and 'would the children be better off living with us 'cos we're a family now and she's just a single mum?'....

I suggest those of you who say that it's OK because obviously everyone's happier now tries it for themselves sometime and see how it works for them. And then return in 5 years time and let us know how they're getting on.

marisco wrote: »

Those who are willing to cheat on their partners are totally untrustworthy and have no morals or values at all. They aren't good relationship type people. If they were they would value, love and respect their current partners.

SNIP

So it is very doubtful to me that such a coming together between two people would ever lead to something worthwhile, long term or precious.

Plenty of people cheat on their current partner and they stay with them long term, as their partner never finds out. That seems to prove that cheaters can stay in a long term relationship: although whether they stay faithful is another matter

I'm sure their oblivious partner thinks their relationship is "worthwhile" and precious".