Question for WS in exit affair, how did you get caught, and how did it feel?

[Got it]

I would agree. Exit affairs are when someone wants to get out of the marriage but lacks the courage to do it on his or her own and/or they feel the reason of not being happy is not enough of a reason. This guy could have left when his wife cheated, there was his reason with a capital R. But he stayed because he loves her. However he is mad/hurt/etc and so he has a revenge affair to punish his wife and show her how it feels.

 

I can tell you the ending. The husband allows the wife to find out (hence the point here), she suffers and the OW is dropped as she served their purpose. H and W begin to fix their marriage. OW is collateral damage.

 

Its classic, it was my life, and you will see it here a lot.

 

My advice is not to be a part of this triangle.

 

Not necessarily true. My MM/now husband's ex wife cheated on him. He happened to find out some time after it ended and was quite upset. He was told it was over so move on. So while he was devastated he also had younger kids that he didn't want to lose time with so he stayed. He says his love died then but staying was easier until the kids grew up as well as they had significant debt that needed to be taken care of and so divorcing at that time didn't make sense logically regardless of how he felt emotionally.

 

Years later we happened but it did not coordinate with his time line of the kids being grown and so he had to look at readjusting his timeline.

 

I know there was no major love loss between him and his ex wife. That was obvious in their communications during and after.

 

My mom cheated on my father (I found out as an adult) when I was a baby. They moved on but never reconciled from it. My father knew if he divorced, one we couldn't afford it and two he questioned how much he would see the kids. They stayed married until the youngest went to college and then divorced.

 

Not everyone stays after an affair because they love the person.

[Got it]

I had an exit A...didn't get "caught" I confessed one day. An exit A happens when someone truly wants something to change & no longer cares. Wether or not it's a revenge A or exit A, either one will be brought to the surface eventually bc the WS usually doesn't care in those two instances what happens like in a "regular" A...& that goes for what happens to the AP too.

 

 

I had an exit affair, I was working on leaving my marriage prior to it, I separated a few weeks after the affair started. My ex does not know about the affair. I continued the affair with my MM until he divorced and we are now married.

 

An exit affair can be just that, an affair that happens at the end of a marriage.

[cocorico]

Minimariah, short and sweet, but extremely insightful. Your statement actually speaks to a pattern I have noticed just by paying attention to the friends and acquaintances and even those in the media who have had affairs. There seems to be a high incidence of people who originally thought, probably in all sincerity, that they would do one thing and then end up doing the opposite. I have seen husbands who have purely sexual affairs and say first thing that they will never leave their wives, only to do so eventually. I have seen numerous people say they want to leave and then don't, at least not for years. And I have seen numerous people say they want to work things out and then do things that will obviously put an end to their relationship or marriage.

 

I wonder what the evolution of the mindset is in these cases. Does it start with denial of the outcome you subconsciously know will eventually play out? Is it a matter of thinking you know what you want, until you have had a chance to adjust to the way things have changed? When people cheat the initial shock is that we learn something we didn't know about the other person, but the interesting thing I think is the things we learn about ourselves and the things we didn't know we were capable of doing. Either way, there is a lot of soul searching involved.

 

I think in my H's case, the bolded was what happened. Before the A, and in the early stages, he was resigned to remaining in the M "for the kids". As the A progressed and he fell in love, his willingness to tolerate the M lessened; but also with the passage of time, he recognised that the kids had grown older since the previous, traumatic split, and that their views about the desirability of prolonging the nuclear family were undergoing a shift. So he spoke to them, and realised that, like his own, their views had changed, and that they were open to and supportive of another split. Suddenly the prospect of leaving didn't seem like wishful thinking, but entered the realms of real possibility. Some counselling for all (him & the kids), telling the BW and finding a place, and it was done.

[MJJean]

I'm sure that some people are able to lead a double life long term, but it has always been my understanding that most affairs will either be confessed to or found out, and in the case of the latter due to subconsciously leaving clues or getting careless with covering your tracks.

 

Allegedly, if you believe statistics, only about 7% of affairs are discovered one way or another.

 

I am a "mad hatter". I was a WW in my first marriage and I did have a true exit affair as I left that marriage for the man who is now my husband of nearly 14 years.

 

I basically had a FWB/casual sex partner I was sort of dating. He was seeing other people covertly and I began seeing other people overtly. During a period of time I was without another lover, I became ill and the treatment affected my birth control, I became accidentally pregnant, and we married to "do the right thing".

 

He had affairs, I had affairs. He lied and concealed, I didn't hide my activities. We weren't compatible on any level. He didn't have a hope in hell of meeting my physical, emotional, or intellectual needs and I had no interest in trying to meet his. Our relationship was once described by a friend as "frienemies", at best, and mutual loathing, at worst.

 

Most of my affairs were with men I was friends with that I was also physically attracted to. I didn't get involved with those men other than as friends and sex partners. I made it very clear that our arrangement was not anything personal, it was sex and friendship, that's all.

 

Then I met a man and fell in love at first sight. We became involved and within weeks I left my sham marriage to be with him. A few weeks after my divorce was final, we married.

 

I felt fear of the unknown as I had been with exH from age 16 to age 24. Mostly, I just felt relief.

 

Thing is, unless you and your AP are planning to leave your marriages and soon, you aren't in an exit affair. You're just in a garden variety affair which will end when it becomes inconvenient or a threat to status quo.

[Whoknew30]

I had an exit affair, I was working on leaving my marriage prior to it, I separated a few weeks after the affair started. My ex does not know about the affair. I continued the affair with my MM until he divorced and we are now married.

 

An exit affair can be just that, an affair that happens at the end of a marriage.

 

An exit affair is when one no longer cares about their marriage & wants out & or it wouldn't be considered a "exit" affair.

[Whoknew30]

Whoknew30, that is interesting. I'm sure that some people are able to lead a double life long term, but it has always been my understanding that most affairs will either be confessed to or found out, and in the case of the latter due to subconsciously leaving clues or getting careless with covering your tracks.

 

I agree, like you said, that revenge affairs and exit affairs do not tend to have a long shelf life because the motive behind them are the desires for drastic change in your life.

 

Part of my original question involved wanting to know what lead to the disclosure of the affair and the feelings surrounding it. Even though you confessed instead of waiting to get caught, which I am sure happens quite often in these cases, would you be willing to expand on the circumstances that lead you to confess, and how you felt after the reveal?

 

My marriage was awful, the guilt of the affair was awful, caring for the OM was awful...it all just sucked & one day i woke up knowing I didn't want to live like that anymore. I wanted out of my marriage & could have never just left (cultural reasons) so i gave a actual reason for a divorce. One night my H cam home from work & I blurted out "I had sex with someone else". It was a complex feeling...I didn't think my H was going to take it as hard as he did, which at first pissed me off. He hadn't been so great to me & now i was watching him cradled in the fetal position in the corner. The other part of me felt relief, relief that it was finally out & in wasn't living this big lie anymore.

 

I never thought in a million years my H would not only forgive me but our marriage would have the way it has...so it worked out but I had the affair to push some kind of change bc I felt just very stuck & alone for a long time.