If you had an affair with a married person

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I cheat because I don’t want to break up my marriage due to the kids. I love my DH, but I am not in love with him and I need intimacy and he refuses to provide that.

I give the married man I am with something that’s missing in his marriage. Neither one of us wants to get a divorce and we both wished that we would have met each other during different circumstances.

I totally 100% understand how you feel this way and many others will. The piece you are missing though is how you would feel if your husband discovered it.

And do you feel this is a healthy home environment for kids to learn from (cheating/lying mom, who is not in love with their father. Gets her intimacy needs met outside of the family. ) Don’t you think that is going to screw them up??? You are kidding yourself, big time.

The whole narrative of how a parent’s affair screws the kids up is ridiculous. My dad had an affair with my aunt (his sister in law), and they ended up marrying. My aunt is now my step mom now. Big whoop. You learn to live with it. My dad is so much happier than he was with my mom.

DP. Yeah you have to learn to live with crappy things but sheesh you really don’t know what you’re missing out on. Frankly I think people who undergo family upheaval and say it’s nbd have issues they don’t realize they have. How old are you? Have you been to therapy? I wouldn’t be surprised if eventually you will realize this whole thing wasn’t the minor blip you think it is now.

Yes. Let us see who they pick to marry. Whether they have trust issues or think infidelity is "no big whoop"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I cheat because I don’t want to break up my marriage due to the kids. I love my DH, but I am not in love with him and I need intimacy and he refuses to provide that.

I give the married man I am with something that’s missing in his marriage. Neither one of us wants to get a divorce and we both wished that we would have met each other during different circumstances.

I totally 100% understand how you feel this way and many others will. The piece you are missing though is how you would feel if your husband discovered it.

And do you feel this is a healthy home environment for kids to learn from (cheating/lying mom, who is not in love with their father. Gets her intimacy needs met outside of the family. ) Don’t you think that is going to screw them up??? You are kidding yourself, big time.

The whole narrative of how a parent’s affair screws the kids up is ridiculous. My dad had an affair with my aunt (his sister in law), and they ended up marrying. My aunt is now my step mom now. Big whoop. You learn to live with it. My dad is so much happier than he was with my mom.

DP. Yeah you have to learn to live with crappy things but sheesh you really don’t know what you’re missing out on. Frankly I think people who undergo family upheaval and say it’s nbd have issues they don’t realize they have. How old are you? Have you been to therapy? I wouldn’t be surprised if eventually you will realize this whole thing wasn’t the minor blip you think it is now.

It was obviously hard at the time when I was 18 onwards, but my mom was a classic narcissist, and I understood why my dad left.

I am 50. Of course I have done therapy, and my parents are in their 80s living their final years. Life is too short to hold grudges at this point. I also refuse to blame my parents on my issues. I own them.

okay so it was a big deal that was hard and probably screwed you up a bit and you needed to go to therapy to work on it.

Pp actually sounds like he has a very healthy outlook. All of our parents have done some screwed up things, we don’t have to let their messes determine the outcomes of our entire lives.

I know several children whose fathers cheated. It devastated them. One women is incredibly insecure. In college she would wake up before her boyfriend to go pick full make up on so she would look "perfect" when he first saw her each day. And she was naturally beautiful. So sad. But she feared that she would lose him otherwise.

Another saw her devoted mom alone, rejected and sad for the end of her life, while she HAD to watch her father have a new baby with his young secretary (both of whom had betrayed her mom) if she wanted any relationship with her dad at all. It was so painful for her.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I cheat because I don’t want to break up my marriage due to the kids. I love my DH, but I am not in love with him and I need intimacy and he refuses to provide that.

I give the married man I am with something that’s missing in his marriage. Neither one of us wants to get a divorce and we both wished that we would have met each other during different circumstances.

I totally 100% understand how you feel this way and many others will. The piece you are missing though is how you would feel if your husband discovered it.

And do you feel this is a healthy home environment for kids to learn from (cheating/lying mom, who is not in love with their father. Gets her intimacy needs met outside of the family. ) Don’t you think that is going to screw them up??? You are kidding yourself, big time.

The whole narrative of how a parent’s affair screws the kids up is ridiculous. My dad had an affair with my aunt (his sister in law), and they ended up marrying. My aunt is now my step mom now. Big whoop. You learn to live with it. My dad is so much happier than he was with my mom.

DP. Yeah you have to learn to live with crappy things but sheesh you really don’t know what you’re missing out on. Frankly I think people who undergo family upheaval and say it’s nbd have issues they don’t realize they have. How old are you? Have you been to therapy? I wouldn’t be surprised if eventually you will realize this whole thing wasn’t the minor blip you think it is now.

It was obviously hard at the time when I was 18 onwards, but my mom was a classic narcissist, and I understood why my dad left.

I am 50. Of course I have done therapy, and my parents are in their 80s living their final years. Life is too short to hold grudges at this point. I also refuse to blame my parents on my issues. I own them.

okay so it was a big deal that was hard and probably screwed you up a bit and you needed to go to therapy to work on it.

Pp actually sounds like he has a very healthy outlook. All of our parents have done some screwed up things, we don’t have to let their messes determine the outcomes of our entire lives.

I know several children whose fathers cheated. It devastated them. One women is incredibly insecure. In college she would wake up before her boyfriend to go pick full make up on so she would look "perfect" when he first saw her each day. And she was naturally beautiful. So sad. But she feared that she would lose him otherwise.

Another saw her devoted mom alone, rejected and sad for the end of her life, while she HAD to watch her father have a new baby with his young secretary (both of whom had betrayed her mom) if she wanted any relationship with her dad at all. It was so painful for her.

Ok. But the initial pp, whose father married her aunt (!) sounds like she did the work and went to therapy, and doesn’t let her dad’s actions continue to victimize her. This is called being healthy and empowered and it IS an option when our parents are screwups. My parents both have untreated mental illnesses and I would hate to think that the trauma they put me through gets to determine the outcome of my life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I cheat because I don’t want to break up my marriage due to the kids. I love my DH, but I am not in love with him and I need intimacy and he refuses to provide that.

I give the married man I am with something that’s missing in his marriage. Neither one of us wants to get a divorce and we both wished that we would have met each other during different circumstances.

I totally 100% understand how you feel this way and many others will. The piece you are missing though is how you would feel if your husband discovered it.

And do you feel this is a healthy home environment for kids to learn from (cheating/lying mom, who is not in love with their father. Gets her intimacy needs met outside of the family. ) Don’t you think that is going to screw them up??? You are kidding yourself, big time.

The whole narrative of how a parent’s affair screws the kids up is ridiculous. My dad had an affair with my aunt (his sister in law), and they ended up marrying. My aunt is now my step mom now. Big whoop. You learn to live with it. My dad is so much happier than he was with my mom.

DP. Yeah you have to learn to live with crappy things but sheesh you really don’t know what you’re missing out on. Frankly I think people who undergo family upheaval and say it’s nbd have issues they don’t realize they have. How old are you? Have you been to therapy? I wouldn’t be surprised if eventually you will realize this whole thing wasn’t the minor blip you think it is now.

It was obviously hard at the time when I was 18 onwards, but my mom was a classic narcissist, and I understood why my dad left.

I am 50. Of course I have done therapy, and my parents are in their 80s living their final years. Life is too short to hold grudges at this point. I also refuse to blame my parents on my issues. I own them.

okay so it was a big deal that was hard and probably screwed you up a bit and you needed to go to therapy to work on it.

Pp actually sounds like he has a very healthy outlook. All of our parents have done some screwed up things, we don’t have to let their messes determine the outcomes of our entire lives.

You can recognize that something was really messed up and that your parents made mistakes that negatively impacted you while not letting those things determine the outcome of your life. That's what most healthy people do. Downplaying bad things by saying things like "big whoop" doesn't help and could actually hurt because it might lead you down a path of denial.

I do'nt think that kids whose parents have affairs are guaranteed to have issues because of it; it's only if something spills over into their own lives that they will be impacted. And they can experience things much worse than an affair. But affairs don't often lead to *good* outcomes and we have to acknowledge that they can definitely have a negative impact on kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I cheat because I don’t want to break up my marriage due to the kids. I love my DH, but I am not in love with him and I need intimacy and he refuses to provide that.

I give the married man I am with something that’s missing in his marriage. Neither one of us wants to get a divorce and we both wished that we would have met each other during different circumstances.

I totally 100% understand how you feel this way and many others will. The piece you are missing though is how you would feel if your husband discovered it.

And do you feel this is a healthy home environment for kids to learn from (cheating/lying mom, who is not in love with their father. Gets her intimacy needs met outside of the family. ) Don’t you think that is going to screw them up??? You are kidding yourself, big time.

The whole narrative of how a parent’s affair screws the kids up is ridiculous. My dad had an affair with my aunt (his sister in law), and they ended up marrying. My aunt is now my step mom now. Big whoop. You learn to live with it. My dad is so much happier than he was with my mom.

DP. Yeah you have to learn to live with crappy things but sheesh you really don’t know what you’re missing out on. Frankly I think people who undergo family upheaval and say it’s nbd have issues they don’t realize they have. How old are you? Have you been to therapy? I wouldn’t be surprised if eventually you will realize this whole thing wasn’t the minor blip you think it is now.

It was obviously hard at the time when I was 18 onwards, but my mom was a classic narcissist, and I understood why my dad left.

I am 50. Of course I have done therapy, and my parents are in their 80s living their final years. Life is too short to hold grudges at this point. I also refuse to blame my parents on my issues. I own them.

okay so it was a big deal that was hard and probably screwed you up a bit and you needed to go to therapy to work on it.

Pp actually sounds like he has a very healthy outlook. All of our parents have done some screwed up things, we don’t have to let their messes determine the outcomes of our entire lives.

I know several children whose fathers cheated. It devastated them. One women is incredibly insecure. In college she would wake up before her boyfriend to go pick full make up on so she would look "perfect" when he first saw her each day. And she was naturally beautiful. So sad. But she feared that she would lose him otherwise.

Another saw her devoted mom alone, rejected and sad for the end of her life, while she HAD to watch her father have a new baby with his young secretary (both of whom had betrayed her mom) if she wanted any relationship with her dad at all. It was so painful for her.

Ok. But the initial pp, whose father married her aunt (!) sounds like she did the work and went to therapy, and doesn’t let her dad’s actions continue to victimize her. This is called being healthy and empowered and it IS an option when our parents are screwups. My parents both have untreated mental illnesses and I would hate to think that the trauma they put me through gets to determine the outcome of my life.

what does that have to do with saying "big whoop" about negative childhood experiences? Of course we need to take responsibility for our own lives and do the best we can with the hand we were dealt, but that doesn't mean that parents don't have an obligation to do the best they can to give their kids the best childhood they can. Which would probably mean not banging your SIL and making your kid's aunt their stepmom.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I cheat because I don’t want to break up my marriage due to the kids. I love my DH, but I am not in love with him and I need intimacy and he refuses to provide that.

I give the married man I am with something that’s missing in his marriage. Neither one of us wants to get a divorce and we both wished that we would have met each other during different circumstances.

I totally 100% understand how you feel this way and many others will. The piece you are missing though is how you would feel if your husband discovered it.

And do you feel this is a healthy home environment for kids to learn from (cheating/lying mom, who is not in love with their father. Gets her intimacy needs met outside of the family. ) Don’t you think that is going to screw them up??? You are kidding yourself, big time.

The whole narrative of how a parent’s affair screws the kids up is ridiculous. My dad had an affair with my aunt (his sister in law), and they ended up marrying. My aunt is now my step mom now. Big whoop. You learn to live with it. My dad is so much happier than he was with my mom.

DP. Yeah you have to learn to live with crappy things but sheesh you really don’t know what you’re missing out on. Frankly I think people who undergo family upheaval and say it’s nbd have issues they don’t realize they have. How old are you? Have you been to therapy? I wouldn’t be surprised if eventually you will realize this whole thing wasn’t the minor blip you think it is now.

It was obviously hard at the time when I was 18 onwards, but my mom was a classic narcissist, and I understood why my dad left.

I am 50. Of course I have done therapy, and my parents are in their 80s living their final years. Life is too short to hold grudges at this point. I also refuse to blame my parents on my issues. I own them.

okay so it was a big deal that was hard and probably screwed you up a bit and you needed to go to therapy to work on it.

Pp actually sounds like he has a very healthy outlook. All of our parents have done some screwed up things, we don’t have to let their messes determine the outcomes of our entire lives.

I know several children whose fathers cheated. It devastated them. One women is incredibly insecure. In college she would wake up before her boyfriend to go pick full make up on so she would look "perfect" when he first saw her each day. And she was naturally beautiful. So sad. But she feared that she would lose him otherwise.

Another saw her devoted mom alone, rejected and sad for the end of her life, while she HAD to watch her father have a new baby with his young secretary (both of whom had betrayed her mom) if she wanted any relationship with her dad at all. It was so painful for her.

Ok. But the initial pp, whose father married her aunt (!) sounds like she did the work and went to therapy, and doesn’t let her dad’s actions continue to victimize her. This is called being healthy and empowered and it IS an option when our parents are screwups. My parents both have untreated mental illnesses and I would hate to think that the trauma they put me through gets to determine the outcome of my life.

Basically this. Life is brutal. You can face it or keep your head in the sand.

[Anonymous]

I think affairs impact the kids much more than adults realize even if the family stays together. Kids sense so much and know if there is a problem or if one parent needs external validation and is unsatisfied.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I cheat because I don’t want to break up my marriage due to the kids. I love my DH, but I am not in love with him and I need intimacy and he refuses to provide that.

I give the married man I am with something that’s missing in his marriage. Neither one of us wants to get a divorce and we both wished that we would have met each other during different circumstances.

I totally 100% understand how you feel this way and many others will. The piece you are missing though is how you would feel if your husband discovered it.

And do you feel this is a healthy home environment for kids to learn from (cheating/lying mom, who is not in love with their father. Gets her intimacy needs met outside of the family. ) Don’t you think that is going to screw them up??? You are kidding yourself, big time.

The whole narrative of how a parent’s affair screws the kids up is ridiculous. My dad had an affair with my aunt (his sister in law), and they ended up marrying. My aunt is now my step mom now. Big whoop. You learn to live with it. My dad is so much happier than he was with my mom.

DP. Yeah you have to learn to live with crappy things but sheesh you really don’t know what you’re missing out on. Frankly I think people who undergo family upheaval and say it’s nbd have issues they don’t realize they have. How old are you? Have you been to therapy? I wouldn’t be surprised if eventually you will realize this whole thing wasn’t the minor blip you think it is now.

It was obviously hard at the time when I was 18 onwards, but my mom was a classic narcissist, and I understood why my dad left.

I am 50. Of course I have done therapy, and my parents are in their 80s living their final years. Life is too short to hold grudges at this point. I also refuse to blame my parents on my issues. I own them.

okay so it was a big deal that was hard and probably screwed you up a bit and you needed to go to therapy to work on it.

Pp actually sounds like he has a very healthy outlook. All of our parents have done some screwed up things, we don’t have to let their messes determine the outcomes of our entire lives.

I know several children whose fathers cheated. It devastated them. One women is incredibly insecure. In college she would wake up before her boyfriend to go pick full make up on so she would look "perfect" when he first saw her each day. And she was naturally beautiful. So sad. But she feared that she would lose him otherwise.

Another saw her devoted mom alone, rejected and sad for the end of her life, while she HAD to watch her father have a new baby with his young secretary (both of whom had betrayed her mom) if she wanted any relationship with her dad at all. It was so painful for her.

Ok. But the initial pp, whose father married her aunt (!) sounds like she did the work and went to therapy, and doesn’t let her dad’s actions continue to victimize her. This is called being healthy and empowered and it IS an option when our parents are screwups. My parents both have untreated mental illnesses and I would hate to think that the trauma they put me through gets to determine the outcome of my life.

what does that have to do with saying "big whoop" about negative childhood experiences? Of course we need to take responsibility for our own lives and do the best we can with the hand we were dealt, but that doesn't mean that parents don't have an obligation to do the best they can to give their kids the best childhood they can. Which would probably mean not banging your SIL and making your kid's aunt their stepmom.

I didn’t really interpret the post as that dismissive.

Based on her subsequent posts, it sounds like pp actually has empathy for her father and understands that her mother’s behavior contributed to the dissolution of the marriage. That’s part of actual healing, unlike the pp who stalked the OW’s social media for a decade.

Acknowledging why this may have happened is part of the kind of nuanced understanding of what may lead to infidelity that does not play well on this board, where we are expected to understand that every single person who cheats is a monster.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I cheat because I don’t want to break up my marriage due to the kids. I love my DH, but I am not in love with him and I need intimacy and he refuses to provide that.

I give the married man I am with something that’s missing in his marriage. Neither one of us wants to get a divorce and we both wished that we would have met each other during different circumstances.

I totally 100% understand how you feel this way and many others will. The piece you are missing though is how you would feel if your husband discovered it.

And do you feel this is a healthy home environment for kids to learn from (cheating/lying mom, who is not in love with their father. Gets her intimacy needs met outside of the family. ) Don’t you think that is going to screw them up??? You are kidding yourself, big time.

The whole narrative of how a parent’s affair screws the kids up is ridiculous. My dad had an affair with my aunt (his sister in law), and they ended up marrying. My aunt is now my step mom now. Big whoop. You learn to live with it. My dad is so much happier than he was with my mom.

DP. Yeah you have to learn to live with crappy things but sheesh you really don’t know what you’re missing out on. Frankly I think people who undergo family upheaval and say it’s nbd have issues they don’t realize they have. How old are you? Have you been to therapy? I wouldn’t be surprised if eventually you will realize this whole thing wasn’t the minor blip you think it is now.

It was obviously hard at the time when I was 18 onwards, but my mom was a classic narcissist, and I understood why my dad left.

I am 50. Of course I have done therapy, and my parents are in their 80s living their final years. Life is too short to hold grudges at this point. I also refuse to blame my parents on my issues. I own them.

okay so it was a big deal that was hard and probably screwed you up a bit and you needed to go to therapy to work on it.

Pp actually sounds like he has a very healthy outlook. All of our parents have done some screwed up things, we don’t have to let their messes determine the outcomes of our entire lives.

I know several children whose fathers cheated. It devastated them. One women is incredibly insecure. In college she would wake up before her boyfriend to go pick full make up on so she would look "perfect" when he first saw her each day. And she was naturally beautiful. So sad. But she feared that she would lose him otherwise.

Another saw her devoted mom alone, rejected and sad for the end of her life, while she HAD to watch her father have a new baby with his young secretary (both of whom had betrayed her mom) if she wanted any relationship with her dad at all. It was so painful for her.

Ok. But the initial pp, whose father married her aunt (!) sounds like she did the work and went to therapy, and doesn’t let her dad’s actions continue to victimize her. This is called being healthy and empowered and it IS an option when our parents are screwups. My parents both have untreated mental illnesses and I would hate to think that the trauma they put me through gets to determine the outcome of my life.

what does that have to do with saying "big whoop" about negative childhood experiences? Of course we need to take responsibility for our own lives and do the best we can with the hand we were dealt, but that doesn't mean that parents don't have an obligation to do the best they can to give their kids the best childhood they can. Which would probably mean not banging your SIL and making your kid's aunt their stepmom.

I didn’t really interpret the post as that dismissive.

Based on her subsequent posts, it sounds like pp actually has empathy for her father and understands that her mother’s behavior contributed to the dissolution of the marriage. That’s part of actual healing, unlike the pp who stalked the OW’s social media for a decade.

Acknowledging why this may have happened is part of the kind of nuanced understanding of what may lead to infidelity that does not play well on this board, where we are expected to understand that every single person who cheats is a monster.

I don't understand how saying "big whoop" about a family drama so extreme it could be on Jerry Springer isn't dismissive of how difficult that might be for a child. Yes she has empathy for her parents and yes that is part of healing for sure but it's definitely downplaying the struggle a child might face.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^+100

From someone who was stalked by OW and had our friends stalked by her too…long before I knew she existed. I am a private person so this was really hard to wrap my head around. Some freak obsessing about me and wishing me ill when I had no idea.

Thankfully, I also had a private insta account and don’t do any other social media. We had ourselves wiped clean from the Internet after.

It’s only been a few years for me and I get the feeling for the need of vigilance by the pp, to see where this person is, etc. It’s such trauma. I had so much anger too.

I know that the best revenge is happiness and living well, so I’d work with a therapist to get over the need to check up on her.

+1. Right after you are thinking/-/who the h@ll is this person??? And you need info on them. Hell- they already know all about you and have been stalking u on the internet and gaining insight from the spouse so now we are going to blame the VICTIM for trying to catch up and gleam info on all of the lies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^+100

From someone who was stalked by OW and had our friends stalked by her too…long before I knew she existed. I am a private person so this was really hard to wrap my head around. Some freak obsessing about me and wishing me ill when I had no idea.

Thankfully, I also had a private insta account and don’t do any other social media. We had ourselves wiped clean from the Internet after.

It’s only been a few years for me and I get the feeling for the need of vigilance by the pp, to see where this person is, etc. It’s such trauma. I had so much anger too.

I know that the best revenge is happiness and living well, so I’d work with a therapist to get over the need to check up on her.

+1. Right after you are thinking/-/who the h@ll is this person??? And you need info on them. Hell- they already know all about you and have been stalking u on the internet and gaining insight from the spouse so now we are going to blame the VICTIM for trying to catch up and gleam info on all of the lies.

But… for TEN YEARS? If you’re not secure and have moved on after at least… a year or two, you really need help. And it’s fair, because you are traumatized.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:I have a question for the PPs who talk of karma eventually taking care of the OW.

You wouldn't like my former AP's now ex-wife. She's a racist, nasty, Trump voting, unintelligent person. I don't believe in karma, but since you do, isn't it possible that her husband cheating on her and leaving her is karma for her choices?

/shower thoughts

I don't believe in karma per se, but definitely that poor choices often have a cost. As for this person, it sounds like her lack of intelligence makes her susceptible to a comforting "us vs them" ideology. Certainly that may drive people away from you, but that's a separate issue than your AP choosing to cheat rather than leave. He made his own poor choices that certainly cost him something as well. Her being unpleasant didn't suddenly absolve him of treating her with the basic decency owed to someone you once chose to marry.

My husband had an affair a decade ago. I've followed the OW's life from afar since then. There were the self-pitying wilderness years following the affair. Then her finding an older widower and getting married. Now she's 42 and posting about how she still hopes to become a mother some day. I can understand why a ready-made family seemed like a workable option to her at the time. That didn't work out for her, of course. I never wanted bad things to happen to her, but at the same time I understood that the same frailties that made the affair seem attractive were also going to shoot her in the foot in other ways as well, and maybe I didn't always feel too terrible about that.

(And yes, dear reader, obviously I ponder the same frailties and consequences for my husband, but that's a separate post. He certainly made out a lot better than the OW, and the cost paid was disproportionately paid by me, the innocent party. Guilt is only as punishing as a person's capacity for it. Though on balance, I'm satisfied with how we resolved things.)

The bold is the only thing that matters here.

For a decade, you have given the OW a spot in your mental real estate, a place in your thoughts and apparently at the tips of your fingers as you follow her on social media. You possibly think it's no big deal, you only check up on her rarely etc. But over an entire decade? And with what end goal? To see if karma bites her and if it does, if it's biting hard enough?

I really can understand the huge satisfaction in that--initially. But I can't fathom giving this person one instant of your own precious time all these years later. It would keep the anger and the wounds fresh, like picking at a scab all the time and keeping yourself reminded of her existence. I'm just boggling at the waste of time and mental space on knowing so many details of an OW's life for years on end, if you actually believe you are "satisfied with how [you and DH] resolved things." Ten years of interest in the OW sounds pretty unresolved, somehow.

The weird thing is that the AP is probably looking at OP’s social media as well. At a certain point it really is no longer about the man, but some odd blend of competition and morbid curiosity. It is difficult to give up the drama- in the end, he’s just a man.

"It's weird to be invested in the life outcome of someone who was once an important player in your life," said the stranger invested in the outcome of someone who was never an important player in their life, lol.

DP. Cute, but you know perfectly well that that's what DCUM is -- posting about strangers' lives. The dismissiveness makes me wonder if you're the PP who's so invested in the details of her DH's ex-AP's life.

It's not weird, it's unhealthy, to be invested in the life outcome of someone who wrecked your life, if you are tracking them in never-ending hope of seeing them crash and burn until they or you die. That's what the PP who's following the former OW for 10 years is doing.

The internet age, for better and for worst, allows us to keep tabs on all the players in our life. I keep tabs on so many people, as we all do . . . the youth group leader who molested a bunch of boys, my high school boyfriend, the crazy coworker who terrorized the office before retiring, etc. It's natural to be curious about other people, hence my prior point. There's no shame in that. Assuming a spouse's affair partner wouldn't make that list is laughable, but shaming women who've been cheated on is a favorite pastime here, so I'm not surprised at the attempts to pretend that looking at someone's public social media from time to time = stalking.

I keep my social media locked down. You can't even look at my prior profile pictures on my Facebook page if you're not my friend. It's my responsibility, and no one else's, to maintain my privacy to my level of comfort. Pretending there are rules about whose public stuff you can and can't look at . . . I mean, come on, are these serious arguments?

Never said there were "rules." Where did you get that? Look up anyone you want.

Yes, you're right here: It's natural to be curious, and it's not shameful. But when the person is your spouse's former AP, can't the "curiosity" and searches also be unhealthy? Keeping wounds open, or at least the memory alive--and sore. The betrayal cant' be forgotten, but why keep thoughts of the AP fresh by making regular check-ins on the AP's life now?

It may not be stalking, but it's still allowing the OW one is tracking, even if you're only Googling her twice a year, to take up headspace. Apparently for the rest of your life, in that one PP's case. Only we can control who and what gets our attention and time, even if it's only a few clicks a year. Some people seem to choose to let those who damaged them in the past to -- as the saying goes -- live rent-free in their heads by keeping up with their current lives. It's not shameful, but it's certainly not productive or positive or a movement forward.

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Anonymous wrote:I cheat because I don’t want to break up my marriage due to the kids. I love my DH, but I am not in love with him and I need intimacy and he refuses to provide that.

I give the married man I am with something that’s missing in his marriage. Neither one of us wants to get a divorce and we both wished that we would have met each other during different circumstances.

I totally 100% understand how you feel this way and many others will. The piece you are missing though is how you would feel if your husband discovered it.

And do you feel this is a healthy home environment for kids to learn from (cheating/lying mom, who is not in love with their father. Gets her intimacy needs met outside of the family. ) Don’t you think that is going to screw them up??? You are kidding yourself, big time.

The whole narrative of how a parent’s affair screws the kids up is ridiculous. My dad had an affair with my aunt (his sister in law), and they ended up marrying. My aunt is now my step mom now. Big whoop. You learn to live with it. My dad is so much happier than he was with my mom.

DP. Yeah you have to learn to live with crappy things but sheesh you really don’t know what you’re missing out on. Frankly I think people who undergo family upheaval and say it’s nbd have issues they don’t realize they have. How old are you? Have you been to therapy? I wouldn’t be surprised if eventually you will realize this whole thing wasn’t the minor blip you think it is now.

It was obviously hard at the time when I was 18 onwards, but my mom was a classic narcissist, and I understood why my dad left.

I am 50. Of course I have done therapy, and my parents are in their 80s living their final years. Life is too short to hold grudges at this point. I also refuse to blame my parents on my issues. I own them.

okay so it was a big deal that was hard and probably screwed you up a bit and you needed to go to therapy to work on it.

Pp actually sounds like he has a very healthy outlook. All of our parents have done some screwed up things, we don’t have to let their messes determine the outcomes of our entire lives.

I know several children whose fathers cheated. It devastated them. One women is incredibly insecure. In college she would wake up before her boyfriend to go pick full make up on so she would look "perfect" when he first saw her each day. And she was naturally beautiful. So sad. But she feared that she would lose him otherwise.

Another saw her devoted mom alone, rejected and sad for the end of her life, while she HAD to watch her father have a new baby with his young secretary (both of whom had betrayed her mom) if she wanted any relationship with her dad at all. It was so painful for her.

Ok. But the initial pp, whose father married her aunt (!) sounds like she did the work and went to therapy, and doesn’t let her dad’s actions continue to victimize her. This is called being healthy and empowered and it IS an option when our parents are screwups. My parents both have untreated mental illnesses and I would hate to think that the trauma they put me through gets to determine the outcome of my life.

what does that have to do with saying "big whoop" about negative childhood experiences? Of course we need to take responsibility for our own lives and do the best we can with the hand we were dealt, but that doesn't mean that parents don't have an obligation to do the best they can to give their kids the best childhood they can. Which would probably mean not banging your SIL and making your kid's aunt their stepmom.

I didn’t really interpret the post as that dismissive.

Based on her subsequent posts, it sounds like pp actually has empathy for her father and understands that her mother’s behavior contributed to the dissolution of the marriage. That’s part of actual healing, unlike the pp who stalked the OW’s social media for a decade.

Acknowledging why this may have happened is part of the kind of nuanced understanding of what may lead to infidelity that does not play well on this board, where we are expected to understand that every single person who cheats is a monster.

I don't understand how saying "big whoop" about a family drama so extreme it could be on Jerry Springer isn't dismissive of how difficult that might be for a child. Yes she has empathy for her parents and yes that is part of healing for sure but it's definitely downplaying the struggle a child might face.

You’re reading way too much into a figure of speech.

[Anonymous]

My husband recently had an affair. About an 8 month thing. We have two kids and married 21 years. We are trying to work it out and stay together, in counseling etc. the AP was 18 years younger than him and had never been married or had kids. She was definitely thinking we’d divorce, which he lead her to believe and she would step in. She bugs the s#%^ out of me as she’s supposedly a feminist, meditation, new age, karma, type of person. The hypocrisy is astounding.

[Anonymous]

I know several children whose fathers cheated. It devastated them. One women is incredibly insecure. In college she would wake up before her boyfriend to go pick full make up on so she would look "perfect" when he first saw her each day. And she was naturally beautiful. So sad. But she feared that she would lose him otherwise. Another saw her devoted mom alone, rejected and sad for the end of her life, while she HAD to watch her father have a new baby with his young secretary (both of whom had betrayed her mom) if she wanted any relationship with her dad at all. It was so painful for her.

Any stories where the mother cheated? I have some.

I know of two families where the mom had a child from an affair, and each mom pretended the baby belonged to her husband. This happens often enough that DNA testing should be a normal part of a newborn's hospital stay.

I know of another where the mom had an affair with their pastor and tried to blame getting an STD on the dad.

Let's get a little balance here.