Can an affair ever have a happy ending?

lostinrates

layton55 wrote: »

I have tried to. But because of the way it was left (see post 2964 I wrote) I am baffled as to where his head is at but have not questioned it - giving us both space to get on with our lives and worked under assumption he wants to save his marriage and wants to be with his wife. but i'm realising it's fairly pointless until i hear him utter those words himself. to hear it it is to believe it for me. i haven't set the amount of time for him, only myself. he said he hopes to make the decision very quickly but i told him he can't rush it and it will take as long as it needs to take if he wants to make it work.

and yes - i am totally with you. if he ends up leaving his wife and one day we end up together then that is the true test of the relationship. until that happens i am going to move on with my life too.

sometimes in life we have to make our own closure. What you describe may well be keeping his options open (not fair on either of the women) but given he is going through with measures designed to improve marriage might simply be trying to let you down gently or without antagonising you.

edit: as I hit send yet another inconsistancy (tbf I'm trying to avoide the use of the word hypocritical but it really might be clearer to be blunt) leapt out at me...

I have tried

against

hang on have to find it

against

my mother didn't walk away because she didn't have the strength and for all the reasons you say - kids, finance. how i wish she did though. she is stronger than she knows. she could have done it

I just don't get the delay thing...with either you or PTN...I wish one of you could explain in a way I could understand how it would make things better and easier.

layton55

lostinrates wrote: »

sometimes in life we have to make our own closure. What you describe may well be keeping his options open (not fair on either of the women) but given he is going through with measures designed to improve marriage might simply be trying to let you down gently or without antagonising you.

I have considered everything you mention here too and I know it's me that needs to make my own closure hence setting the deadline for me. i won't ask him if he's made the decision, just if he hasn't done it by that date then i will move on.

POPPYOSCAR

layton55 wrote: »

I have tried to. But because of the way it was left (see post 2964 I wrote) I am baffled as to where his head is at but have not questioned it - giving us both space to get on with our lives and worked under assumption he wants to save his marriage and wants to be with his wife. but i'm realising it's fairly pointless until i hear him utter those words himself. to hear it it is to believe it for me. i haven't set the amount of time for him, only myself. he said he hopes to make the decision very quickly but i told him he can't rush it and it will take as long as it needs to take if he wants to make it work.

and yes - i am totally with you. if he ends up leaving his wife and one day we end up together then that is the true test of the relationship. until that happens i am going to move on with my life too.

I know I could be very wrong about this but it sounds to me like he is keeping his options open.

Would you not feel like 2nd best if the marriage does not work out?Should it not be that he can not live without you?

balletshoes

layton55 wrote: »

clearly there's a quite a few of you here who don't like to hear the other side of the story. unfortunately they exist whether you want to believe it or not. whilst i can empathise what it might be like to be the cheated W and mother i cannot truly appreciate the pain as I haven't been through it. for those of you who have such a strong opinion about what and who the MM and OW are - it's the same really. you will never truly understand the things they go through unless you've been there yourself so before you jump down anyone's throats who are here to help the people who have posted on this thread looking for help, maybe think twice and don't bother posting if it riles you that much! i'm not as patient as PTN and not about to take this abuse from people who have only one view of the world, theirs.

delusional is the women who cling onto their marriage for dear life, refusing to admit it's over and putting up with disrespect, betrayal and pain they say they go through. and for what? the kids? or yourselves? are you too afraid to move on? to be alone? to depend on yourself? how much is it really for the kids? i think they're the questions you need to answer for yourselves, no need to share on here.

"In the meantime, that poor woman and his children are living in a veritable purgatory" - yes they are, as am I but as adults, me and the W have control of our own lives and decisions. she doesn't need to wait for him to decide whether he wants to be with her. she can decide what she wants anytime. but i'm a bit tired of all the sympathy the betrayed wives/mothers who know about the affair/s their husbands have had get to be honest. you have a choice to do the right thing by yourself and your children. no one is making you stay with a person whom you don't trust, has hurt you, betrayed you. makes you unhappy. so don't. leave.

not that easy a decision huh? well, if you do decide to stay 'because of the children' and you wake up one day and they're grown and flown the nest and you're left in a loveless, unhappy, meaningless marriage, resenting your partner and them you - tell yourself then that you didn't make a 'mistake'. tell yourself then that you did the right thing by your kids. personally i think kids are just as much an excuse for the cheater as it is the betrayed. they're treated like a bargaining tool which is sad. growing up in a household where parents resent each other and surpress that resentment is not great. kids pick that up and i promise you your kids won't benefit from that unless you're pro-hollywood actors acting your asses off in front of them. but then what a lesson that is to teach your kids! put on brave face and don't be true to your feelings, pretend you're alright when you're not. i don't think any of you would want your kids to think that.

and please don't be so childish - saying 'my MM' is merely for grammar. don't read into it too much and if you believe that no one owns anyone then you shouldn't refer to them as 'my H' either.

finally, what about those of you who are encouraging women to stay strong and keep at marriage when you condemn the cheater so much?? you should be advising these women to gather their self-respect and move on. but instead you want so desperately to believe that the affairs meant nothing and i know in many cases they don't - it's just sex, but not all of them. i know many people whose relationships started off as affair and still going on strong. it's not ideal but the sad truth is it happens. accept it.

Layton I agree with a lot of what you say, but I do think your situation is a quite rare one, in that the wife knows you and her husband are having an affair, and somehow the wife and her husband still think that, while he's still seeing you as well, they can be helped to stay committed to each other through counselling. I admit to being baffled by that, and I don't know of many women who would go along with it for long.

However, the more usual scenario involving a woman, her husband and another woman he's having an affair with, is PTNs ie the wife hasn't been informed. She has no choice does she? She's in the dark, she can't make informed choices about her life and future, quite simply because she's not being informed.

layton55

POPPYOSCAR wrote: »

I know I could be very wrong about this but it sounds to me like he is keeping his options open.

Would you not feel like 2nd best if the marriage does not work out?Should it not be that he can not live without you?

Honestly...I think it's all about him and what he can live with himself with. I don't think he could live with himself knowing he didn't try everything possible to keep his family together. In know if it's not genuine then he's only keeping both me and his wife hanging on. It's showing sides of him to me that I never saw but I don't believe it comes from a bad place.

I wouldn't feel second best no because I perhaps more than him in many ways want him to give it all he's got before he decides to leave. I don't want him to jump into a relationship with me either if it ends. He needs to live with his own decision for a while first.

On your last question - the romantic in me says yes but the realist in me says there are too many factors like his kids in play to do it that way I guess. if we don't make it in this lifetime, maybe the next...

balletshoes

layton55 wrote: »

poppyoscar, don't we all open ourselves up to hurt in every relationship we enter though? that's the risk we take when we put trust in another isn't it?

absolutely we do - but when you know there is a wife and possibly children involved in the picture too, isn't that seriously weighting the scale against you before you even start with all the other baggage that could come along?

layton55

lostinrates wrote: »

sometimes in life we have to make our own closure. What you describe may well be keeping his options open (not fair on either of the women) but given he is going through with measures designed to improve marriage might simply be trying to let you down gently or without antagonising you.

edit: as I hit send yet another inconsistancy (tbf I'm trying to avoide the use of the word hypocritical but it really might be clearer to be blunt) leapt out at me...



against

hang on have to find it

against




I just don't get the delay thing...with either you or PTN...I wish one of you could explain in a way I could understand how it would make things better and easier.

lostinrates do you mean the deadline we've set? if so i'll try to explain it best i can. so i guess when we all set objectives in life, whether work or personal we need to have a date for when that goal should be achieved. for me it's just a certain date and timelength i am willing to give myself, not him. hope that helps your understanding somewhat?!

POPPYOSCAR

Just from a personal point of view. I could not continue to live and build my life with someone knowing they were in love with someone else.My relationship is based on love and mutual respect - I would rather live on my own than live like that.

layton55

balletshoes wrote: »

absolutely we do - but when you know there is a wife and possibly children involved in the picture too, isn't that seriously weighting the scale against you before you even start with all the other baggage that could come along?

definitely, the odds are against us! i can't help it, i'm a believer in true love and whether he stays or leaves and is with me, his wife or someone else then that's just how it was meant to be.

layton55

POPPYOSCAR wrote: »

Just from a personal point of view. I could not continue to live and build my life with someone knowing they were in love with someone else.My relationship is based on love and mutual respect - I would rather live on my own than live like that.

and me. that's why i feel for the women who don't believe they have the strength to walk away from someone who says they have feelings for someone else, that they're not sure they have ever been in love them in the case of the people involved in my affair.