A short while ago a thread on affairs came up. The gist of my reply was that these things don't always happen deliberately. Some where aghast at my attitude, well this is my side of things;

My 2nd husband was the complete opposite of of my 1st, loud, friendly, seemingly outward going, generous, funny and very much the family man... on the outside. We married a year after meeting and with me 5 months pregnant with a child we had both planned and very much wanted.

We moved in together 10 days after we married and almost immediately I began to discover that he wasn't so helpful or generous with his time. It was a difficult pregnancy, my hips had popped out of place and could barely stand at times yet still i did everything (2 girls from a previous marriage to take care of also)... infact, over the next year began to realise that he was a bit of a control freak.

By the 3rd year we had had another child making 4 in total and by then I was beginning to be afraid of him. No real reason. He'd never hit me and only the occasional veiled threats of what he'd have done if I'd been a guy talking to him in the way i did ie, sticking up for myself!

By the 2nd year I had 4 children (the 2 youngest still not sleeping through the night) , 2 jobs and trying to study from home for a degree, jobs to keep our heads above water because of his continual debt.

We sold our house in the 3rd year and moved somewhere cheaper to pay off the ever increasing debt making this my girls 4th school in almost as many years. Money matters continued to get worse.

At the beginning of our 4th year together I restarted my OU studies as the pressure of doing everything on my own (he was in the Navy) put a stop to it. OU is now very internet based and being remote learners you get support from fellow students on a course site. I began talking to 'X' within the first week. We had very similar senses of humour that didn't quite fit in with the others on there and soon began giving each other study support through pm'ing. It eventually turned to chatting about all manner of things til we became friends telling each other all sorts of things we'd not even discussed with our partners, realising eventually that we were getting closer and closer.

The upshot of this story is that 'X' and i met 4 times whilst we were still with our partners but neither of us felt it right to go further til we had sorted out our lives and relationships.

3 years on I still have the odd problem, mental scars cut by my ex's words. Whose to say what is right and wrong. Even affairs born purely out of a want for just love usually have a root in something. The trust is often lost, but if couples talk and work hard together to find out the root cause, it can sometimes be restored if both want it enough.

There is also the fact that before we cast a stone at people having affairs, do we really know all the details?

My experience with a guy cheating on me is not nearly as bad as any of your experiences but i think i may know what it's like to feel at least a small fraction of the pain you went through.
I met this guy just after my 17th birthday and he seemed really sweet and genuine( something you usually look out for growing up round soldiers) Things went fine until nearly a year later when we started going through a rough patch (i suspected he was cheating) He denied all of it. Any way back to the point, we went out with a group of friends for new years eve 2005 and everything was going fine until we left one of the clubs and had to walk to the next bar.
The guy i was with got really annoyed at me ( we had to walk coz i'd given the taxi to someone who needed it more than we did) and barely spoke to me the whole journey. We got near the bar and and i stepped on some broken glass which went right through my shoe he didnt care just gave me some abuse and started pulling at my arm. I thought what he's already said and done was the end of it until actually in the club he sat across the bar from me and started chatting up another girl who may i add three hours later he left with. From your experiences you can imagine i was pretty hurt and the one of the worst bits was he couldnt remember a thing the next day.
But i think of it this way now, if He could cheat on me while i was sat there he could definitely do it when i wasnt.

what an asshole!!!

i hope you wasted no time in kicking his sorry ass to the curb girl!!!