Getting back into dating and I fell for a married woman wtf
Couple months ago I met a woman who works at a dispensary I visit about once a week. We hit it off really well. Despite trying to just keep it casual sex, and that only, I ended up developing some feelings for her. She confessed the same to me. I even introduced her to my teenaged daughter, for fucks sake.
I ran into her this evening at a gas station, with another guy, who turns out to be her husband. They’ve been married five years, and have two children together, ages 4 and 2. Finding out they have kids just made me feel disgusting.
So, I told him. He didnt believe me until I described a tattoo in a somewhat intimate place on her body. I had no fucking clue she was married. I think I ruined someone’s marriage. Or at least took part in ruining one.
I feel guilty. I am sorry for what I participated in. Am I a bad person?
You didn't do anything wrong and people here trying to scold you for that is bullshit. I've been cheated on before, more than once and it feels like shit. You have trust issues for years and it craters your self esteem.
There are no reasons to cheat on someone. And she has kids? C'mon now. I'm not trying to hear any excuses. If she had disclosed all of that and everyone was informed then it wouldn't have been a problem but obviously you didn't know, and blaming you for things you couldn't possibly know is also bullshit.
you should have confronted her personally first. you definitely got ahead of yourself and overstepped. you acted emotionally without considering the possible repercussions.
I think you're fine. What you did is always the risk you run when you're not open and honest with your partner. Making a point to never lie or hold back has made my relationships much better.
the chorus of he/hims in this thread positively relishing the idea of this woman getting punished by her husband for her actions and not even stopping to think about the possible violent repercussions of OPs actions is honestly disturbing. people cheat for all variety of reasons. many of them, especially for women, are justified. hate when this site shows its roots so plainly.
not even stopping to think about the possible violent repercussions of OPs actions
I did think about it, but the bottom line is that if your safety relies on someone else keeping a secret for you, you need to let them in on the secret. If I'm seeing someone and they tell me that they have an abusive partner and that they're technically cheating but that they're only still in the relationship because they don't know a way to get out of it, obviously I'm not saying anything to the partner (even given the possibility that it isn't true)
But you can't expect someone to cover for your lie when you've been lying to them
so she deserves whatever's coming to her basically because of that moral infraction/strategic error? real nice. top male minds of hexbear showing their whole fucking asses in this thread. you're fucking gross.
Honestly hadn't thought of it like that. And after reading some more of details OP provided in the replies, especially the fact that she was making a big deal about him approaching, makes it seem like there was some legitimate fear on her part of some sort of reprecussion.
I just hope others take your, and other women's, perspective on this and learn something. Admittedly I figure being honest about an affair with the person that is being cheated on seems like a good thing on the surface, but it also completely devalues the woman and the situation they may have been in prior to cheating.
Hot take, but there is no justification for cheating. You should just end the relationship or discuss the possibility of having an open relationship instead.
no justification? what about circumstances of abuse? cishet relationships are an uneven power dynamic. plenty of women out there with varying degrees of asshole husbands who they feel coerced into staying with for economic reasons or because of fear. that is how the dynamic manifests in many cases. you come across ignorant and thoughtless acting like ending a relationship is always such a simple act. this is Christian morality nonsense, non-dialectical thinking and basically doing a generalised form of victim blaming tbh. "just leave him" smh. expect a more thought out response from a woman.
Unsolicited relationship take: maybe it’s worth finding out her marriage situation first (e.g. abusive husband) before pulling the trigger? Maybe she already has plans to leave him, but couldn’t tell you in advance for certain reasons? The reasons could be a lot more complicated than your assumptions here.
Now if it indeed turns out to be an abusive husband, I fear for the woman’s life.
As someone else mentioned, it probably would have been worth giving her an opportunity to give her perspective before deciding if and how to tell the husband. Most likely the final result is just telling him, but there are more marginal possibilities that it is worth accounting for and taking an extra couple of days wouldn't have harmed you or him (yours was already a dead relationship by virtue of your understandable disapproval of her cheating, so it's not like you'd be enabling her to cheat for longer unless you think she's managing to juggle even more guys along with young children and a marriage).
She had every opportunity to be honest from the outset of their relationship. Getting caught lying isn't some magic reset where now you get to tell your side.
Talking about this in terms of social contract theory is really sidestepping the morality of the issue. Would you say that her lying entitles OP to punch her in the face? Surely not, two wrongs don't make a right, punitive justice is bad, etc. What OP should do is investigate the issue with her not because she "gets to" tell her side or has a right to, but because he doesn't know what the consequences of telling the husband would be. For all he knows, the husband is abusive and would beat her for this transgression, transgression though it is. The most likely outcome is, of course, that the husband is not abusive, but the most likely outcome of a round of Russian roulette is that you go unharmed. In either case, there is a real risk that is severe enough that it's worth checking, even if it's substantially less likely.
there is a non-trivial chance that this woman now gets battered because of OP. he could have not acted emotionally and taken steps to ensure that wasn't a possibility.
You didn’t know and immediately did the right thing upon learning. You were lied to by omission, it’s not a normalized thing to ask “are you in an exclusive relationship?”. The cheater ruined the marriage, not you.
That conversation ranks up there with one of the more difficult ones I’ve ever had to approach a stranger for. Had she not made such a big deal about me not talking to him when I was first approaching, it probably wouldn’t have gotten his attention and I might not have followed thru with it.
Acting guilty instead of playing it cool definitely dug some of that hole. I can’t really imagine, but I certainly believe you in that it must have been incredibly difficult.
I mean she didn't tell you, I'm not sure what you could have done short of waiting longer to have sex on the off chance you might discover she was hiding something, or asking outright. Which is a pretty toxic way to approach relationships from my point of view.
No, you aren't a bad person. Honestly I'd be taken aback a bit that even after meeting your daughter she wouldn't have thought of her own kids and told you the truth right then and there.
Yeah, that sucks ass. Hope you can move on and all that. She probably should have clued in to things when seeing your daughter at least.
Gunna' use this thread to block the most annoying posters on here. These types and the people who try to bait reactionary language, either during debates or under a faux-naive guise, are the worst.
If you know your partner cheats on you you can start moving on and enjoy new relationships. Life is short, dating is increasingly hard as you grow up, so wasting time in an exclusive relationship being cheated on is horrible when you know you could've experienced love with other people if you simply knew
you could've also been cheating that entire time too. donny blame someone else's actions for your own decisions in life. you are responsible for yourself and your decisions when it comes to inter-personal relationships, full stop.
While there is potentially more nuance to this, and maybe it could have been handled with a smidge more tact,I don't see why a betrayal of trust like cheating shouldn't be reported to the people affected by it only because there is a power imbalance in patriarchal society
Obviously,you should make sure the person you're outing wouldn't be put in danger by this first,but it's definitely not something to be excused
IMO- something I learnt from others (as I used to be pissed if someone tried to lie to me)- not all lies are done with malice. Her lies hurt the husband, not OP.
They're not responsible for keeping the secrets, sure. But we also don't know her circumstances (clearly OP didn't either, if they only found out she was married now). You can feel vindicated that the "cheater/liar got punished," or whatever, but I imagine you'd feel different if OP posts in the future saying next time they see her she has a black eye (or it's in the news she was killed or something), now wouldn't you?
Personally I'd have confronted her about it and asked first. And personally- coming from a seriously fucked up family upbringing myself- not all marriages, "even with kids" (sometimes especially with kids) should exist, some are a curse on everyone involved. I'd have thought most people nowadays can understand that on some level, in such spaces in particular.
Assuming OP was right, I'd frame it more as his having an obligation to the husband as a human being making the choice correct rather than as a lack of obligation to the wife making the choice indifferent. We should be trying to make the world better, not carefully demarcating the bounds of social contracts so we can find out exactly where we're allowed to do as much harm as we feel like.
But I also think SadArtemis is right that OP, to put it charitably, got ahead of himself