I don’t understand how people claim the affair partner is blameless?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't condone sleeping with married people, or other affair behavior. I certainly don't engage in that behavior myself. And I can understand feeling anger and hatred towards someone who slept with my spouse.

But there are many people out there who talk about a married man having an affair as if they are blameless, and the OW is the problem. They'll use words like "homewrecker" that imply this. Or they'll imply that she's the one deserving of consequences. I've heard of people whose husband had an affair at work, who have sought to have the OW fired (but not the husband). Or they'll work on forgiveness towards him, and not towards her. They'll be polite to him in front of the children (for their sake) but then awful to her (which is also hard for the children).

In my mind, if my husband had an affair, then both people would be doing something wrong, but only one of them would be doing it to me, and that's the person who made vows to me and broke them. Being more angry at or less forgiving towards the OW, implying it's more her fault than his, or that her behavior is more personal to me than his doesn't make sense to me.

I haven't seen this. Can you point to any posts here that do so?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Both of them suck. I'm always amazed by the apologists.

I had a really, really crappy college boyfriend who cheated on me a ton (and told me it was on me to get over it! Nice!)

In my last year of college, I moved to DC for a semester internship - and kind of had a rebirth (dated guys who I wouldn't typically date, hung out with people outside my typical social circle, etc). For a brief one month period, I dated a guy with a girlfriend back home in Europe. I can tell you what was in my headspace: That someone had treated me so badly for 3 years that it was awesome to be the one with the power in the relationship and know I was helping f someone else over.

It's probably the least moral thing I've ever done, and just something I needed to get out of my system (and absolutely did make me feel better about my dating health). I met DH a few months later, and 25 years later we have (and have always had) an extremely healthy relationship.

But when I think about APs and being blameless... yeah, I just think back briefly to where my head was for that one month, and yeah it's clear that APs deserve almost as much blame as the cheater.

So hurt people hurt people?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They may not have known.

They know. Why can't they do to his house??? Why do they have to meet at odd times???

Most know.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Both of them suck. I'm always amazed by the apologists.

I had a really, really crappy college boyfriend who cheated on me a ton (and told me it was on me to get over it! Nice!)

In my last year of college, I moved to DC for a semester internship - and kind of had a rebirth (dated guys who I wouldn't typically date, hung out with people outside my typical social circle, etc). For a brief one month period, I dated a guy with a girlfriend back home in Europe. I can tell you what was in my headspace: That someone had treated me so badly for 3 years that it was awesome to be the one with the power in the relationship and know I was helping f someone else over.

It's probably the least moral thing I've ever done, and just something I needed to get out of my system (and absolutely did make me feel better about my dating health). I met DH a few months later, and 25 years later we have (and have always had) an extremely healthy relationship.

But when I think about APs and being blameless... yeah, I just think back briefly to where my head was for that one month, and yeah it's clear that APs deserve almost as much blame as the cheater.

So hurt people hurt people?

Yeah but hurt people don’t have to and misogyny played a role in the PPs choice to sleep with the committed guy.
She was buying into her boyfriends toxic masculinity that men have the power in a relationship. If you step outside that you can see that the guy was the jerk and broke his promise both her and himself when he slept around. That is his issue but culturally we try to make it the woman’s- just as her ex did.
If her core belief didn’t agree with the ex college boyfriend “that she was the problem and having power meant hurting people and breaking ties” she wouldn’t have found it necessary to sleep with committed guy.
She just needed to process that people should keep their word in a relationship and not doing so is wrong. And that keep your word is power. You don’t HAVE to seek revenge or hurt people to adopt that belief.

[Anonymous]

Well, the (unmarried, anyway) AP didn't take a vow to be faithful to the wronged spouse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They may not have known.

They know. Why can't they do to his house??? Why do they have to meet at odd times???

Most know.

You have no idea how deceptive people can be, especially those who have no qualms about cheating on their spouse. Many of them are repeaters and have developed a modus operandi that works for them. I've had friends (when I was younger) who honestly did not know what to look for as they'd never been in the situation before.

One in particular began dating a firefighter who worked odd hours and it was more "convenient" for him to go to her place due to its location, plus he lied about sharing a place with a brother who was a slob and so he didn't want to invite her over. And lots of other excuses that seemed plausible. After a few months the truth came out and she broke it off, but it was painful for her as she had fallen for a guy she thought was single.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Well, the (unmarried, anyway) AP didn't take a vow to be faithful to the wronged spouse.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Or, if you are capable, think about how your child would feel if their spouse cheated on them. Do you really want to be the catalyst for causing another person, another family, that kind of pain?

[Anonymous]

Their character really has nothing to do with blame.

Yes they are 100% blameless and it is entirely the fault of the cheating spouse. If they have to be the cheating spouse in their own marriage they they are to blame for their own marriage’s downfall, but not yours

[Anonymous]

You know how people posted these threads about controlling, contriving MILs (at least that was a continuing theme on this website before everybody decided to commit adultery) and the consensus was always “you don’t have a MIL problem; you have a DH problem?”

Same with APs. You don’t have an AP problem, you have a DH problem.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is something very primal that comes out when someone tries to directly come at your family in the way OW search social media about the wife and wish her ill will do they can win “the prize”. It’s a protection of children. Very mama bear.

Gross no. You primal “mama bear” instruct should be to leave your loser husband. The other woman is irrelevant

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, the (unmarried, anyway) AP didn't take a vow to be faithful to the wronged spouse.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Or, if you are capable, think about how your child would feel if their spouse cheated on them. Do you really want to be the catalyst for causing another person, another family, that kind of pain?

Cheaters/APs/OW/OM
are unempathetic, selfish, self-centered people.

Unwilling to take any blame in a gross situation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, the (unmarried, anyway) AP didn't take a vow to be faithful to the wronged spouse.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Or, if you are capable, think about how your child would feel if their spouse cheated on them. Do you really want to be the catalyst for causing another person, another family, that kind of pain?

Cheaters/APs/OW/OM
are unempathetic, selfish, self-centered people.

Unwilling to take any blame in a gross situation.

+1 in short: they don’t care. They don’t give any thought to the consequences of their actions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is something very primal that comes out when someone tries to directly come at your family in the way OW search social media about the wife and wish her ill will do they can win “the prize”. It’s a protection of children. Very mama bear.

Gross no. You primal “mama bear” instruct should be to leave your loser husband. The other woman is irrelevant

Gross is also cyberstalking the wife and her friends/family. These situations bring out the worst of all human behavior.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is something very primal that comes out when someone tries to directly come at your family in the way OW search social media about the wife and wish her ill will do they can win “the prize”. It’s a protection of children. Very mama bear.

Gross no. You primal “mama bear” instruct should be to leave your loser husband. The other woman is irrelevant

Gross is also cyberstalking the wife and her friends/family. These situations bring out the worst of all human behavior.

Can you explain this. People have posted a few times about cyberstalking, but if you have privacy settings enabled and block them, how do they stalking you in a public forum? I’m mostly asking because I have never done social media because I have a past relationship (it was NOT an affair) and I don’t want my ex seeing my life/work status so I never did anything with my real name.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is something very primal that comes out when someone tries to directly come at your family in the way OW search social media about the wife and wish her ill will do they can win “the prize”. It’s a protection of children. Very mama bear.

Gross no. You primal “mama bear” instruct should be to leave your loser husband. The other woman is irrelevant

Gross is also cyberstalking the wife and her friends/family. These situations bring out the worst of all human behavior.

Had your husband not slept with her or engaged with her- her cyber stalking or whatever be totally irrelevant and you wouldn’t even know