This needs to be said here

[whichwayisup]

have thought about telling his wife but I am afraid of the repercussions. He has made it clear to me that he will never leave them...unless she leaves him first.

 

Do not tell her. It will backfire on you IF you plan on telling her in hopes she'll leave him and he'll come to you. The opposite will happen - He'll blame YOU and more than likely your affair/friendship/bestfriend situation will end forever and he'll do all that he can to make his life work with his wife.

 

The thing is, he loves his wife. He may 'feel' that love and intensity like he does with you, but what they share is real, long lasting and forever (weird and ironic seeing as he's cheating on her though). He's told you he isn't leaving her or his kids so now the choice is yours. Either stay and put up with the negative stuff of being the OW, accept things as they are - OR, end it and say goodbye forever - Be with a man who can give you everything, not stolen moments and table scraps of another woman's husband.

[RecordProducer]

Mr. Wright,

 

-Did you drag your OW for years?

-Did you tell your other woman that your marriage is just a piece of paper, but you can't leave until the kids grow up?

-Did you tell the OW all kinds of nasty things about your wife, presenting her a lazy bitch, a moron, and the devil itself?

-Did you stop contact with your OW when the wife found out?

-Did you ever tell your OW "OMG, my wife has suspected something, we better not see each other for a while"?

-Did you make a bunch of promises just to keep the fire burning, but never fulfilled any of them?

 

You said your marriage ended a few months after the affair started and it started as an emotional affair. So you don't qualify as the typical MM scumbag. As for calling the OW names, it's just because these women don't understand that it's the husband, not the OW who is unfaithful.

 

I agree with you that every story is a unique case and has two sides. I have lived in a marriage where there would be no one to cheat on. Cheating is sleeping with two people and I am not sleeping with my husband. I've lived in a loveless and sexless marriage and my husband deserves to cheated on. Yet, I don't cheat, because for one, I can't afford to get caught; and two, I don't want to complicate my life in an already complicated situation. I would rather get out of it with fresh hopes for meeting my true love than hook up with someone who doesn't mind to screw a married woman (i.e. a playboy) and get disappointed in men all over again and end up broken-hearted when I need my sanity most.

 

Technically speaking, it's a practical, conscious choice I am making. Intimately, I wouldn't feel like a cheater. But then again, he announced a divorce and hasn't withdrawn the idea. On the contrary, he keeps it on. Before, I didn't want to cheat, because I knew that if we managed to repair the marriage, I would feel horrible for cheating on him in the past. At this point, I have no hopes for this marriage so I could freely go out and find a new man. I just don't do it, because I like clean situations.

 

And I want him to be sorry some day... not to think how great it is that he got rid of me cuz I turned out to be a slut.

[Sparklyred]

I am a regular poster of this forum, but out of fear of retaliation and my good name being smeared here, I am posting on another name because, after seeing these posts lately in this section, which I rarely had ever visited, I feel I have the right to defend myself and others like me.

 

I am a married man,who has been married for many years. That's all I will say about my personal life because some of you know too much about me already and will put two and two together.

 

However, what most of you don't know is that I am married to my second wife-----who started out as my other woman.

 

I have been saddened, not to mention sometimes angered lately by the amount of posters who take it upon themselves to decide whose relationship is "real" and whose it not. You don't know really anything about anyone here, or their whole stories, and especially the party who is not here to explain their part, not they should have to explain themselves to a group of strangers whose sole purpose is meant to offer support.

 

Here's my story, it won't take too long. My first wife and I married. We stayed married for a few years and all was fine, and then she started to drift away from me, partying with her friends again like we were back in college, even when we were home together, we weren't really...together, if that makes sense. I was always left with the responsibility on my shoulders, everything that needed taken care of was left to me. Our sex life became non-existent, but that was the least of our troubles. I felt like I was living with a child. Now, she didn't treat me badly, she just treat me like anything, not a husband, not a friend, she was just there. I was good to her, because I still loved her and still cared.

 

So to cut it short, after quite some time of this, I did meet someone else. I knew it was different this time, and I was right. We were friends first, and it developed into close bond that did not become sexual until well after we met. I do consider most of my relationship with her an "emotional affair", because it did not become physical for a long time, and I ended my marriage only months after it did become physical.

 

Now I am married to her, been married for many years, and very happy. I do NOT cheat on her, I am not looking for another woman to fill the "void the OW left" when I married her. I have no void anymore. I had a void with my first wife, not the second.

 

I cannot stand seeing some of these posts calling all other women whores, trash, tramps, useless garbage, dogs. My wife is NOT any of these things. I never even considered her an "other woman" because at the time, my wife was barely my wife other than the past arrangement we made. I loved my "other woman" so much that I left my wife for her. I also left my wife for msyelf.

 

Was what I did right? Probably not, I did after all cheat on my first wife with the second, but my marriage had ended for both of us long before we signed divorce papers. My first wife may not have cheated on me, but the way she treated our relationship was no better than if she did.

 

I hope this serves as a reminder to you that everyone has a story, and everyone's story is different. To see people I respect here getting in on this gang-up of evil men who don't respect their marriages and move on is disheartening. I know that it is better to end one thing before starting another, but to be honest, our marriage was so non-existent that it was hard to feel I was doing anything wrong. I tried to save it and hang in but it didn't work, and I can tell with God's honest truth that I didn't hang in there for me, I did it for me, because I loved her and I didn't want to hurt or give up on us. The problem was she had already given up. Staying in a loveless marriage when you might as well just leave isn't any better or worse than cheating in my opinion. She didn't have to cheat on me to feel the marriage was over and treat me like I didn't exist.

 

So don't call me a bad person, and don't my second wife a whore. And next time you badmouth a man and his so-called "other woman", don't forget you might be helping to sabotage a person's chance at real happiness, making them feel guilty enough to let go of their happiness and stay in a loveless, miserable marriage.

 

We knew what we were doing was "wrong" because you're not supposed to cheat, etc, etc. It was everyone else's definition of wrong. But to us, it was right, and it's been right ever since. Not every man who leaves his wife is a jerk, sometimes his wife is the jerk---and he leaves for real love.

I appreciate your telling me that, I am still in a fog of confusion over what we had and what my friends opinions are- which tarnished the relationship in my eyes and brought it down to another level. However, he did end it with me, and despite his claim to the contrary, I don't understand the ability to love me and love his wife- and not see me because he doesn't want to hurt me. I think it's a cop out. How can he love me and not contact me? or return a text? I don't get how he's not hurting like I am. If he loved me. Loves me. Whatever. It's been a month since I last saw him intimately, and though I see him in my neighborhood regularly, it's very very very difficult for ME.