The push/pull

[Amethyst68]

Nope, I've never been a BS, I've just gotten to a stage in life where, as I've gotten older, I've no use for the way people fake their way through life.

 

If you're unhappy in a relationship then end it and move on, the fact you choose to have a relationship with that could negatively impact a 3rd party does show a lack of integrity. If you were the injured one I'm sure you'd agree, or if it were one of your children being cheated on.

[carhill]

If all cheaters and liars and unfaithful (no cheating or lying with those) are bad, we've got billions of bad people in the world. Push a button, erase them and repopulate the planet with good people? Unfortunately, we'll need a new species to do that IMO. The rest is simply politics and social power games.

 

Gamesmanship or sincerity? Both can have play in the push/pull of some affairs. I've run into a few whom I believe were sincere in their vacillations but that was a belief, not anything I could prove beyond a reasonable doubt. They seemed like fair minded and loving people, in general. Others, especially the serial affair people, more like gamesmanship. They presented a very deliberate style of interaction. Their lives presented as calculated. Not saying they weren't really good at what they did, and really convincing, but the tone always played somewhere in the back of my mind.

 

That's the tough thing about the breeding milieu. Nature provides a powerful impetus to perpetuate the species and humans submit to it, often in ways which impact the social dynamics of the human family as a whole. Perhaps it is the variety and complexity that ensures our survival as a species, IDK. Sure seems like this has been with us forever.

[Lotus_Luna]

People are complex

 

You can’t go along splitting them as good/bad based on infidelity in long-term relationships. Not only was it considered socially exceptable a few hundred years ago, but today’s modern view point doesn’t allow couples to heal and move forward if they choose to after the affair. Typically people are feeling hurt and the affair is acting out. They can’t communicate to their partner or their expressions have been ignored.

 

Which is why is some cases the couple can move forward, both parties recognize they need to make changes

Or

There is too much damage, unwillingness to change and the relationship is dead

 

You can argue all you want, but this is the science.

[TheRainbow]

I'd leave your marriage before getting any more involved with this man especially if he is a good man.

 

When I was nineteen, I was working as a stripper, and living with an emotionally and physically abusive ex-boyfriend. He would constantly demean me, made me feel so small, and manipulated me into becoming a stripper. I had so much baggage.

 

I met my husband, and only after he wanted to be my boyfriend, did I leave my ex-boyfriend. But I brought all my baggage with me. I almost made my now husband an "other man", and that would have made him someone he just isn't. It was bad enough, I didn't deal with my own ****, and in return cheated over and over again.

 

Be honest with him, leave your husband and start a new relationship on a good standing. I so wish I could go back and do things differently in my own love life.