Now Ye're Talking - to someone who's had an affair

Joe prim

Was Nescafe Gold Blend involved at any stage in the initiation of these affairs-it's just that the ads seem to suggest that it's a powerful aphrodisiac?

johnpatrick81

How can you be sure your fwb is single or do you care either way? (Ignorance is bliss?)

You’ve a great writing style by the way, fascinating stuff, cheers!

Oh and if number 2 crosses paths with you and said he wanted to try and go steady with you cos he missed you so much and was now totally single, would you not be in any way tempted to give it a shot?

LushiousLips

Hey, thanks for doing this thread.

Were any of the two guys very good looking. Particularly the first guy considering he was 20 years older?

How is your weight loss going? Did you become happier as a person when you lost weight.
Was the sex good with the first guy, or were you very self conscious about your weight for you to let go and enjoy it?

What was the minority sport, I'm curious lol.

I've had an affair, AMA

Joe prim wrote: »

Was Nescafe Gold Blend involved at any stage in the initiation of these affairs-it's just that the ads seem to suggest that it's a powerful aphrodisiac?

Ehh, no!

Tell me how

What does the idea of true love mean to you?

I've had an affair, AMA

johnpatrick81 wrote: »

How can you be sure your fwb is single or do you care either way? (Ignorance is bliss?)

You’ve a great writing style by the way, fascinating stuff, cheers!

Oh and if number 2 crosses paths with you and said he wanted to try and go steady with you cos he missed you so much and was now totally single, would you not be in any way tempted to give it a shot?

1.How can anyone be sure their FWB is single? I’m as sure as I can be, as one of my friends is friendly with him.

2. Thank you! I’ve always found it easy express myself in writing, but strangely am not half as eloquent when I’m talking.

3. No. I’m not interested in a serious commitment at all. With anybody.
Hypothetically, if I was interested in that , and he came my way single and interested, I think I would say no. The reason being that I know he cheats on people he has supposedly committed to. So if I wanted commitment from him, I’d be taking a big risk. And yes, there’s no need to tell me that makes me massively hypocritical, I know it does.

blue5000

Thank you for doing this AMA. It still sounds like you might still have feelings for the second man, is it helping you emotionally to 'talk' about it here?

I've had an affair, AMA

LushiousLips wrote: »

Hey, thanks for doing this thread.

Were any of the two guys very good looking. Particularly the first guy considering he was 20 years older?

How is your weight loss going? Did you become happier as a person when you lost weight.
Was the sex good with the first guy, or were you very self conscious about your weight for you to let go and enjoy it?

What was the minority sport, I'm curious lol.

1. Neither were very good-looking, it’s fair to say! The first guy- definitely not. He actually looked older than his age and had not aged particularly well. When things started with him, I had no actual attraction to him as such, I was responding to attention from someone I knew as a friend. I did develop an attraction to him as time went on, but looking back now I really struggle to see what it was about him that I fancied. Love is blind, as they say!!

The second guy was better looking than the first, certainly had a lovely smile and laugh, but if you were to walk past him in the street you wouldn’t give him a second thought.

2. It’s going great. I lost more than 10 stone, a whole person really. After a few years I regained about 2 stone but lost that again and am now back at the 10 stone weight loss mark. Yes, I became much happier as a result of it. Life became an awful lot easier. I gained confidence and lost the awful self-loathing. It’s hard describe how awful it is to be that size to someone who hasn’t experienced it. Like, there were practical difficulties, such as getting clothes to fit, or being able to run, getting out of breath walking upstairs, not being able to tie the seat belt on a plane, coming home with a big bruise on my thigh from where the armrest in the theatre dig into it.
But there’s the psychological side too. The lack of self-worth. The feeling that everyone is judging you and repulsed by you. I used have a thought that would come into my head unbidden whenever I caught sight of myself in a mirror and it was “how could anyone fancy that ?” ... I used literally dehumanize myself and refer to me as “that”. And when you feel that 5hit about yourself, it’s hard to motivate yourself to make any changes. So you get bigger. And you hate yourself more.

There’s also the aspect of how you get treated by others. I was ridiculed by complete strangers who took time out of their days to mock the fat woman. Literally. I would be walking down the street and people would shout out of a passing car, things like hippo, hulk, fatso, elephant. Or a gang of lads would jeer, saying stuff like who’d ride her, she’d eat you, she’d squash you. Someone once came up behind me, put his hands on my hips, and then stood back, with his hands held my hip-width apart, saying to his friends “what do ye think lads, guess how big she is”. Ever heard of the game ‘pull a pig’? It’s basically when a nice-looking lad chats up the fattest girl in a group, flattering her and making her think she has a chance with him, and then humiliates her in front of others.

It’s hard to even like yourself, not to mind love yourself, when that’s what your life is like.

So, losing the weight opened up a whole new world for me. Life was pleasant, strangers didn’t bother me, I didn’t have to plan my route to minimize stairs, walking etc, I could go into shops and buy normal clothes, I didn’t feel like everyone judged me on my size without giving me a chance.

3. Probably the only positive thing I can say about the first guy is that he managed to make me feel desired in bed. I didn’t exactly cast off my inhibitions and behave with wild abandon, but I did believe that he was attracted to me. I was still insisting on low lighting and refused to do certain positions that would have left my body very exposed, but I did feel a bit desireable to him. In general he was a good lover.
[A bit off topic, but this turned into quite a fcuked up dynamic over time, in that he encouraged me to gain weight. He was always buying me chocolate or ordering Chinese/pizza etc and would say to me that he “loved to see a girl enjoying her food”. With hindsight, I believe he was doing this so that I would become even fatter and even less attractive to other men, in keeping with his possessiveness and jealousy.]

The sex with the second guy was really good- quite disinhibited, no doubt due to the quantities of alcohol typically involved! We would have done stuff I’d never done before and have never done since.

4. I really don’t want to say, on the off-chance one of my friends is reading this and thinks “I wonder...”. Sorry!

Gloomtastic!

Well done for doing this AMA.

Did either of them buy you nice things?

I've had an affair, AMA

Tell me how wrote: »

What does the idea of true love mean to you?

Hmmm. I don’t know. I look at people sometimes and wonder about their relationship. A number of years ago my father was diagnosed with cancer. My mother told me that the next morning they were talking and he said to her that he was going to install an oil fired stove in the house so that she wouldn’t have to be trekking out to the garage for coal for the fire when he was gone. To this day, thinking of that makes me cry as I think of how selfless he was being- there he was, less than 24 hours after a life-changing cancer diagnosis, all the uncertainty and stress and worry that brings, and his concern was for my mother, not himself. And I think that’s true love. But then on another day he will treat her like crap, belittle and undermine her, stop talking to her for no reason and I wonder how the hell anyone would do that to someone they loved.

I think of the men I had the affairs with. They both felt they loved someone enough to marry them, make a public commitment... I wonder did they mean it at the time, did they genuinely intend to remain faithful or were they just going through the motions?

I’ve seen people marry because it’s the script, marriage, house, babies, and they don’t put too much thought into not following the script. But somehow things turn out fine for them and they can end up having truly wonderful relationships.

A friend of mine once said that she thought that if she started treating her husband really badly, she still didn’t think he’d ever leave her. (The context for this statement was that we were talking about someone we knew who treated her husband abysmally and I said that I couldn’t figure out why he was sticking around, the kids were grown up, so I wondered why he had t slung his hook) I was taken aback by her comment- was she basing it on her belief that he truly loves her and would never leave, would tolerate anything... she spoke with a certainly I could not get my head around. (For clarity, she treats her husband really well, it was just a comment about hypothetically if she treated him badly!)

I do think most people are inherently selfish and therefore I don’t know if they are capable of all-encompassing selfless love. Most people probably have done selfless things for loved ones at times, and may repeatedly do so, but... oh I don’t know. I don’t think ‘true love’ has to be entirely self-sacrificing either.... aaaggghhh I don’t know, I’m rambling...

I’m going to leave this question for now, if I get any clarity in my head I’ll come back to it!

I've had an affair, AMA

blue5000 wrote: »

Thank you for doing this AMA. It still sounds like you might still have feelings for the second man, is it helping you emotionally to 'talk' about it here?

I never had feelings for the second guy. In between the nights together I mostly only gave him a passing thought when reminiscing on the sex! I wasn’t enotionally involved with him at all.

I’m finding this thread interesting and challenging. It’s cathartic in some ways because I’ve never articulated this stuff to anyone. I’ve mulled it over in my head, and reflected, but never put it out there for the perusal/commentary of anyone else, so yeah, it’s helpful and interesting.

I've had an affair, AMA

Gloomtastic! wrote: »

Well done for doing this AMA.

Did either of them buy you nice things?

Thanks!

With the first guy we exchanged birthday and Christmas presents. I genuinely can’t remember if he got me flowers on Valentine’s Day, I do remember he got me a card, so he probably didn’t get me flowers as I guess I’d remember it.
I brought him a present from a holiday I went on. He bought me a babydoll lingerie set in the early days, thinking it would help with my self-consciousness in bed. That was it, as far as I remember.

The second guy, all we ever bought each other was plenty drink!!

Tell me how

I've had an affair, AMA wrote:

I’m going to leave this question for now, if I get any clarity in my head I’ll come back to it!

It's a very deep topic isn't it. You gave answering it a good shot. Thank you.

Tell me how

I'll be honest, the married person cheating was primarily responsible but given that you knew they were married, had children and so on, I'm not sure if you bear no responsibility for potentially detrimental behavior to someone's family. If one of the children of the 2nd guy approached you now and said that they felt their dad was cheating when they were young but hadn't proof and yet it affected their childhood, how do you think you'd react?

Tell me how

Do you think if you were male, with the exact same experience of having had relationships with married mothers that the questions on this thread would have been of the same type?

Personally, I think the response would have been much more accusatory.

Conservatory

Tell me how wrote: »

Do you think if you were male, with the exact same experience of having had relationships with married mothers that the questions on this thread would have been of the same type?

Personally, I think the response would have been much more accusatory.

Yeah but she would have white male privelage and be able to lift a lot more heavy stuff.

Bridget Clarke

My command of the English language is insufficient to describe how I felt the day I discovered my husband was cheating on me. He had accidentally left his phone at home, it beeped & I assumed he was texting me from another phone, for me to bring it to him. It wasn't. It was 'the other woman'. Words cannot describe how sickened I was.
I took a note of the number, which was listed in his contacts as a male colleague. Then I went off & bought a burner phone and replaced 'her' number with the new number - effectively diverting his calls & texts to her to the new phone. I also blocked her number from his phone. I (as the other woman), told him I had laryngitis & unable to speak, so it was text only. I learned a lot about their relationship - where they went, their sexual peccadilloes etc. After a week - I began referencing their 'special places' in conversation & frightening the sh*te out of him by telling him that he had been sleep-talking about getting tied to the bed using rugby socks, and how he had said in his sleep that he enjoyed sex on a garden bench. I made him suffer agonies for a fortnight, before packing up his stuff & throwing him out. Hell hath no fury, eh?

Gloomtastic!

Bridget Clarke wrote: »

My command of the English language is insufficient to describe how I felt the day I discovered my husband was cheating on me. He had accidentally left his phone at home, it beeped & I assumed he was texting me from another phone, for me to bring it to him. It wasn't. It was 'the other woman'. Words cannot describe how sickened I was.
I took a note of the number, which was listed in his contacts as a male colleague. Then I went off & bought a burner phone and replaced 'her' number with the new number - effectively diverting his calls & texts to her to the new phone. I also blocked her number from his phone. I (as the other woman), told him I had laryngitis & unable to speak, so it was text only. I learned a lot about their relationship - where they went, their sexual peccadilloes etc. After a week - I began referencing their 'special places' in conversation & frightening the sh*te out of him by telling him that he had been sleep-talking about getting tied to the bed using rugby socks, and how he had said in his sleep that he enjoyed sex on a garden bench. I made him suffer agonies for a fortnight, before packing up his stuff & throwing him out. Hell hath no fury, eh?

Don’t understand how exactly you diverted his phone messages but well done on the messing with his head, it would have been hilarious if you weren’t going through hell at the time. Where did you learn to do that?

Foggy Jew

Bridget Clarke wrote: »

My command of the English language is insufficient to describe how I felt the day I discovered my husband was cheating on me. He had accidentally left his phone at home, it beeped & I assumed he was texting me from another phone, for me to bring it to him. It wasn't. It was 'the other woman'. Words cannot describe how sickened I was.
I took a note of the number, which was listed in his contacts as a male colleague. Then I went off & bought a burner phone and replaced 'her' number with the new number - effectively diverting his calls & texts to her to the new phone. I also blocked her number from his phone. I (as the other woman), told him I had laryngitis & unable to speak, so it was text only. I learned a lot about their relationship - where they went, their sexual peccadilloes etc. After a week - I began referencing their 'special places' in conversation & frightening the sh*te out of him by telling him that he had been sleep-talking about getting tied to the bed using rugby socks, and how he had said in his sleep that he enjoyed sex on a garden bench. I made him suffer agonies for a fortnight, before packing up his stuff & throwing him out. Hell hath no fury, eh?

EPIC!!!!

I've had an affair, AMA

Tell me how wrote: »

I'll be honest, the married person cheating was primarily responsible but given that you knew they were married, had children and so on, I'm not sure if you bear no responsibility for potentially detrimental behavior to someone's family. If one of the children of the 2nd guy approached you now and said that they felt their dad was cheating when they were young but hadn't proof and yet it affected their childhood, how do you think you'd react?

I don’t think that I bear no responsibility but I do think I bear less than the men who had actually made a commitment to someone else and who owed them fidelity.

That scenario couldn’t arise, they’d have no reason to suspect me and no way of finding me, but hypothetically speaking, I think I would tell them that that’s a conversation they need to be having with their father, not me. I think I’d be able to maintain a calm demeanor whilst 5hitting myself internally and feeling like dirt.

I've had an affair, AMA

Tell me how wrote: »

Do you think if you were male, with the exact same experience of having had relationships with married mothers that the questions on this thread would have been of the same type?

Personally, I think the response would have been much more accusatory.

I don’t know, tbh. Perhaps because a single man with a married woman is not the typical affair scenario and because mothers are generally seen as the primary caregivers, it might attract more criticism.

I’d be interested to see how an AMA with a married man who was cheating would go!

In fairness, the responses here haven’t been bad at all, apart from the one or two who made sure to make their outrage known before telling us they wouldn’t be reading the thread!

Bridget Clarke

Bridget Clarke wrote: »

- I began referencing their 'special places' in conversation & frightening the sh*te out of him by telling him that he had been sleep-talking about getting tied to the bed using rugby socks, and how he had said in his sleep that he enjoyed sex on a garden bench.

I think a nice light song is called for here :P

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oXymWz6i6I

professore

PopTarts wrote: »

So, you’ve never actually had an affair?

Some people believe it's only the person in the relationship is having an affair and the other party is completely innocent. I'm not one of those people.

professore

I've had an affair, AMA wrote: »

My parents are married more than half a century, my father would tell you it’s a happy marriage, my mother would say she has sacrificed a huge amount, been controlled and dominated by my father and trapped by the church and social convention.

In other words she moaned about something she could easily do something about since 1996 but chose not to. It's called codependence.

professore

Stoner wrote: »

I also think if posters want to ask about guilt then we have the incorrect half of the affair here!

This is a mentality I will never understand. I would be as guilty as hell if I had ever had an affair with a married woman when single myself. BOTH SIDES should feel guilty. And in fairness OP you do feel guilty and rightly so in my opinion. While I don't condone your actions I respect you for coming on here and opening yourself up to criticism and also how you at least have realised you've done something wrong. Many people never manage to get that level of empathy or self awareness.

professore

I've had an affair, AMA wrote: »

1. Neither were very good-looking, it’s fair to say! The first guy- definitely not. He actually looked older than his age and had not aged particularly well. When things started with him, I had no actual attraction to him as such, I was responding to attention from someone I knew as a friend. I did develop an attraction to him as time went on, but looking back now I really struggle to see what it was about him that I fancied. Love is blind, as they say!!

The second guy was better looking than the first, certainly had a lovely smile and laugh, but if you were to walk past him in the street you wouldn’t give him a second thought.

2. It’s going great. I lost more than 10 stone, a whole person really. After a few years I regained about 2 stone but lost that again and am now back at the 10 stone weight loss mark. Yes, I became much happier as a result of it. Life became an awful lot easier. I gained confidence and lost the awful self-loathing. It’s hard describe how awful it is to be that size to someone who hasn’t experienced it. Like, there were practical difficulties, such as getting clothes to fit, or being able to run, getting out of breath walking upstairs, not being able to tie the seat belt on a plane, coming home with a big bruise on my thigh from where the armrest in the theatre dig into it.
But there’s the psychological side too. The lack of self-worth. The feeling that everyone is judging you and repulsed by you. I used have a thought that would come into my head unbidden whenever I caught sight of myself in a mirror and it was “how could anyone fancy that ?” ... I used literally dehumanize myself and refer to me as “that”. And when you feel that 5hit about yourself, it’s hard to motivate yourself to make any changes. So you get bigger. And you hate yourself more.

There’s also the aspect of how you get treated by others. I was ridiculed by complete strangers who took time out of their days to mock the fat woman. Literally. I would be walking down the street and people would shout out of a passing car, things like hippo, hulk, fatso, elephant. Or a gang of lads would jeer, saying stuff like who’d ride her, she’d eat you, she’d squash you. Someone once came up behind me, put his hands on my hips, and then stood back, with his hands held my hip-width apart, saying to his friends “what do ye think lads, guess how big she is”. Ever heard of the game ‘pull a pig’? It’s basically when a nice-looking lad chats up the fattest girl in a group, flattering her and making her think she has a chance with him, and then humiliates her in front of others.

It’s hard to even like yourself, not to mind love yourself, when that’s what your life is like.

So, losing the weight opened up a whole new world for me. Life was pleasant, strangers didn’t bother me, I didn’t have to plan my route to minimize stairs, walking etc, I could go into shops and buy normal clothes, I didn’t feel like everyone judged me on my size without giving me a chance.

3. Probably the only positive thing I can say about the first guy is that he managed to make me feel desired in bed. I didn’t exactly cast off my inhibitions and behave with wild abandon, but I did believe that he was attracted to me. I was still insisting on low lighting and refused to do certain positions that would have left my body very exposed, but I did feel a bit desireable to him. In general he was a good lover.
[A bit off topic, but this turned into quite a fcuked up dynamic over time, in that he encouraged me to gain weight. He was always buying me chocolate or ordering Chinese/pizza etc and would say to me that he “loved to see a girl enjoying her food”. With hindsight, I believe he was doing this so that I would become even fatter and even less attractive to other men, in keeping with his possessiveness and jealousy.]

The sex with the second guy was really good- quite disinhibited, no doubt due to the quantities of alcohol typically involved! We would have done stuff I’d never done before and have never done since.

4. I really don’t want to say, on the off-chance one of my friends is reading this and thinks “I wonder...”. Sorry!

Some people are such pieces of **** human beings. I say people because women do this too to men.

I've had an affair, AMA

I've had an affair, AMA wrote: »

Yeah, kind of!

But yeah, eventually it becomes quite mundane cos all you are doing is staying in, there’s no going out for a stroll together, going to Tesco together etc.

That's what i was thinking- it's certainly one of the top 10 reasons not to have an affair. The first few weeks might be exciting for all sorts of reasons but what then- where does it end up?

As others have said, a very enlightening thread and I think you seem to be getting something worthwhile from it also. thanks.

1. I can't help but feel you're quite a serious/reflective individual overall- as opposed to someone who's "fun/spontaneous/carefree- would that be an accurate description of you? (just going by how you respond to thread Q's)

2. You mentioned that one of the men tried to control you somewhat, say with supplying food etc - however, I would have thought that you, as a woman, were much more in control of the relationship? what are your thoughts on that?

And now for some total and utter trivia (which if you are a more serious individual, then you'll probably hate answering)- it is AMA afterall:P

3. Average length of time you'd spend on any one liaison with your "partner"- i.e. a few hours, a day etc?

4. How often did you meet up?

5. What sort of things did you talk about? i.e. future together, how sick he was of his wife, the weather

6. When staying in hotels, did you mostly eat in the room?

7. Who pays for what? Was it about 50:50 or did he mostly pay the bills, meals, drinks etc

8. What's the most he spent on you in one evening?

9. Did you keep any presents you were given?




A few less trivia ones to finish:

10. What was it like ending the relationships?


11. What does the future hold for you in terms of relationships with men?

12. At the start of the affair, did you discuss what sort of relationship this would be (i.e. lay your cards on the table in terms of what you wanted/didn't want to happen) or did you just both ignore that side of things?

(edit- sorry, I see you've explained this earlier in the thread)- so was this your way of controlling what ultimately would happen? If So, how did you think it would end? Also, obviously the first one ended badly- him being "controlling" etc- the other one, you seemed to really like him a lot- what happened with that one?)

Thanks again for participating in the AMA.

professore

I've had an affair, AMA wrote: »

Hmmm. I don’t know. I look at people sometimes and wonder about their relationship. A number of years ago my father was diagnosed with cancer. My mother told me that the next morning they were talking and he said to her that he was going to install an oil fired stove in the house so that she wouldn’t have to be trekking out to the garage for coal for the fire when he was gone. To this day, thinking of that makes me cry as I think of how selfless he was being- there he was, less than 24 hours after a life-changing cancer diagnosis, all the uncertainty and stress and worry that brings, and his concern was for my mother, not himself. And I think that’s true love. But then on another day he will treat her like crap, belittle and undermine her, stop talking to her for no reason and I wonder how the hell anyone would do that to someone they loved.

One thing I've learned from listening to my parents is that I would have said the same thing about them, my mum the eternal victim and my dad some kind of evil uncaring monster. As I've gotten older and now my dad has passed away I see another side to the story. My dad literally was harassed from one end of the day to the other about not being good enough etc etc and actually had the patience of a saint. So when you say he treated her like crap, belittle and undermine her etc you may not be seeing the full picture. I could be completely off base here but just something to consider.

I think of the men I had the affairs with. They both felt they loved someone enough to marry them, make a public commitment... I wonder did they mean it at the time, did they genuinely intend to remain faithful or were they just going through the motions?

By the sounds of what you said about them, both had no intention of being faithful.

I’ve seen people marry because it’s the script, marriage, house, babies, and they don’t put too much thought into not following the script. But somehow things turn out fine for them and they can end up having truly wonderful relationships.

A friend of mine once said that she thought that if she started treating her husband really badly, she still didn’t think he’d ever leave her. (The context for this statement was that we were talking about someone we knew who treated her husband abysmally and I said that I couldn’t figure out why he was sticking around, the kids were grown up, so I wondered why he had t slung his hook) I was taken aback by her comment- was she basing it on her belief that he truly loves her and would never leave, would tolerate anything... she spoke with a certainly I could not get my head around. (For clarity, she treats her husband really well, it was just a comment about hypothetically if she treated him badly!)

Your friend might be surprised ... I've seen other women think that too. And men for that matter.

I do think most people are inherently selfish and therefore I don’t know if they are capable of all-encompassing selfless love. Most people probably have done selfless things for loved ones at times, and may repeatedly do so, but... oh I don’t know. I don’t think ‘true love’ has to be entirely self-sacrificing either.... aaaggghhh I don’t know, I’m rambling...

I think you are overly pessimistic.

The Princess Bride

Fair play to you for losing all the weight, OP, sounds like you were morbidly obese rather than obese, so that can't have been an easy task losing so much.

Best of luck and well done on deciding to do this AMA.

Purple Mountain

Bridget Clarke wrote: »

My command of the English language is insufficient to describe how I felt the day I discovered my husband was cheating on me. He had accidentally left his phone at home, it beeped & I assumed he was texting me from another phone, for me to bring it to him. It wasn't. It was 'the other woman'. Words cannot describe how sickened I was.
I took a note of the number, which was listed in his contacts as a male colleague. Then I went off & bought a burner phone and replaced 'her' number with the new number - effectively diverting his calls & texts to her to the new phone. I also blocked her number from his phone. I (as the other woman), told him I had laryngitis & unable to speak, so it was text only. I learned a lot about their relationship - where they went, their sexual peccadilloes etc. After a week - I began referencing their 'special places' in conversation & frightening the sh*te out of him by telling him that he had been sleep-talking about getting tied to the bed using rugby socks, and how he had said in his sleep that he enjoyed sex on a garden bench. I made him suffer agonies for a fortnight, before packing up his stuff & throwing him out. Hell hath no fury, eh?

Wow!!!!
You are either bat sh*t crazy or a genius but either way I like you!!
Do you mind me asking you if they are still together as far as you know?
Did he try crawl back to you?