My perspective is from that of the OW who became the new wife. I hope this helps someone.

You will get to be responsible for destroying the life of another woman. You will get to be responsible for destroying the lives of all children involved. No, children are not resilient. They are sponges and take in everything around them whether they are capable of processing it or not. And when they are not able to process their world being shattered and all the conflicting messages about right and wrong, you will get to deal with all their issues and mistakes and anger as they grow up. You will have to know all the while that whatever is happening is a direct result of your selfishness. If the child fails at school, can�t control their anger, becomes promiscuous, falls into addictions, can�t maintain good relationships of their own you get to know in the back of your mind and deep in your soul that you are responsible for what molded that child. Whether you admit it or not, you WILL know. You will not be able to fix this; it will not work out, smooth over, or ever be okay. Even if you look like the Cleavers on the surface it is under there bubbling and will come out. Don�t think you are special and you will escape this result.

Maybe right now you are in a place where you are in deep denial about the children and you don�t give a crap about the BW. Let me appeal to your sense of selfishness then and tell you what you personally are going to suffer in the years to come�

You are marrying a cheater. Someone who didn�t like what they had at home so they went looking for something better. Or maybe you offered him something better? It doesn�t really matter who started it, who lied more, it doesn�t even really matter if you were tricked into a relationship not knowing he was married at first. Your consequences will be the same. You now have a spouse who gave up one family and chose you and yours. Feels great right? Think again. How long do you think it will take before you stop feeling like a prize?

The minute things go wrong, and face it, in all marriages there are these times, he is going to be looking at you and wondering if you were worth it. And you will feel it. Even if he doesn�t say it right out. He is going to realize that this marriage requires just as much work as the old one did and you are not nearly as perfect in real life as he thought you were and he is going to be angry for what he has sacrificed for you. Now you get to be insecure and feel like you are always fighting to be worth it to him.

You are going to be labeled as the whore for the entire rest of your life. No matter what changes or personal revelations you come to, you will be the whore that wrecked a home and stole a husband. There will be innumerable family conflicts over this. You are likely to have his kids hating your guts forever. This means that every holiday, school concert, soccer game, big family event like graduations and weddings, and grandkids (yes, it will last that far and long) will be sources of conflict instead of happy times.

You will probably not be invited to a lot of things that your spouse should be attending with his children. You may show up anyway, asserting your position as the new wife. But it will be a conflict. You spouse will have to over and over choose between you and his original family. He is going to resent you for this. You are going to get so tired of constantly being the center of conflict and so tired of all the hate directed at you and no one is going to sympathize with you. When you do impose yourself where the BW and her children and extended family and friends are you will feel the scarlet letter that you wear burning in your chest no matter how high you try to hold your head. I promise you, you will. You and your stolen spouse will fight over this more than you can imagine in the years to come.

And guess what?! When he starts to pull away from you and works late more, or isn�t insatiable in bed with you anymore, or cuts his hair a new way you are going to be terrified. You are going to be terrified because you know exactly what he might be doing next. You are going to be suspicious probably before he actually even does anything because you already know he is untrustworthy.

Chances are he is going to cheat again too. Except this time on you. Now, you get to feel the pain of being a BW doubled by the pain of realizing exactly what you did to someone else. The guilt and shame on top of your already devastating pain from being cheated on will be unbearable. Now listen to this closely NO ONE IS GOING TO CARE!! You are going to hear and know that you should have known better and have the old adages about cheaters thrown in your face over and over. You will not be able to come somewhere like these boards for support because they are going to crucify you! You will be all alone with your pain and your heartache with no one to blame but yourself.

Do not think you are special. DO NOT THINK IT WON�THAPPEN TO YOU!!!!!!!!!! The stats are overwhelmingly high. No one gets married thinking that their spouse will cheat. No one. I promise you are not different or better somehow.

Occasionally an affair partner will grow a conscience and want to be a good person and here is what happens�

Now, let�s say that you make changes in your heart and your life. Let say you find God or in whatever way it comes to you, you realize that you have done something horrendous. Okay, now you actually do care about those kids and that BW. Well too bad. You can�t fix it. Yes, God will forgive you if you repent. Not many others will. And you will have one heck of a time trying to forgive yourself. You will feel sick and ashamed all the time. You will cry many bitter tears.

You will not be able to look at your spouse and feel the same way you once did. All of your memories of when you first met, your first kiss, the early days of your relationship will be tainted. All of those memories that are supposed to be sweet will be sour. You will not be able to enjoy them because you know that whole time it was wrong, wrong, wrong! What are you left with? Not much.

You are going to try to offer apologies, you are going to try to figure out what you can possibly do to make amends and there are going to be no easy answers. You will be told by many that you can�t repent and stay married. You will be told by just as many that if God has forgiven you that another divorce would be just another sin. You will make yourself crazy over this because you want to do the right thing for once in your life and you have put yourself in a situation where it is impossible to know what that it.

Also, if you are one of the few who have this attack of conscience at some point down the road, you are still going to be dealing with all the same stuff above that the unremorseful affair partner is dealing with except it�s probably going to hurt you even more because you now genuinely care. Too bad no one will think you are sincere or trust your words. Why should they, remember what you did?? Of course you do, now go cry some more as if it will help.

There are no time machines people!! You are making a mess bigger than you can ever clean up!!

There is really a lot more I could say about how this is going to play out but this is already getting very long.

Like I said, this is from my perspective but just change the pronouns and it is the same for anyone entering into an adulterous relationship. Man or woman, whether you are the WW, WH, AP, it�s going to end in ruin.

You have been warned.

And if anyone out there is currently involved in waywardness and wants to ask me something, fire away! I will answer any and everything asked if it will get you to stop what you are doing and reconcile your family before it is too late.

Unfortunately if you are already married to your AP don�t bother asking me. I can�t help you because I cannot help myself. I live in the ruins of my own creation. You like me should have seen the light sooner. Sorry.

To the BS out there who may read this, I can only hope that knowing that your spouse is not going to be happy and their AP is not going to be happy helps you feel a little bit vindicated. I promise you that even if they look like the picture of happiness on the outside they are not. They have a cancer eating their souls. You can have a better life. They won�t.

NewCreation2011

I admire your courage for posting here. It's a cautionary tale where everyone loses in the end.

Fantastic post. Fantastic warning. Fantastically stated.

Good job, I pray that this reaches someone before it's too late.

Every BS should copy this and send it to their WS if not in plan B

Wow NewCreation I am glad you posted this ... I can feel your emotions in there and the pain that torments you. VERY powerful message. I pray for everyone that reads this, that they take something away with them regardless if it be gratitude and thankfulness for what they have, remorse and repentance for what they have done or taken to heart when faced with similar decisions and learn from it.

Thank You New Creation ... It took alot out of you to post this I bet and maybe god will use you as a vessel to give this message to others to prevent this from ruining more lives in the future as you clearly paint the TRUE picture of the long term outcome of an affair when lives are blindly destroyed by the Fog of fantasy happiness from spur of the moment choices.

Her story sums up what we all come to realize about A's: it is the devil's cancer hidden by a coating of chocolate.

Thank you for posting this, NewCreation.

Waywards don't get much quarter on this site, and rightly so. We have occasionally seen a wayward come strolling in here from other sites, bound and determined to show us the error of our ways for damning their adultery. They are unremorseful. They are arrogant. They flaunt their destruction of a family like a badge of honor. They believe they are owed respect and shriek like banshees when they don't get it here.

I will never demean any wayward who is so obviously remorseful and sick from sin as you. I hope your post is seen by other waywards who are here now and are trolling this site, looking for justification of their actions. I also hope your post will be seen by those trolling who are looking for permission to wreck a marriage because they think they've found their 'soul mate.'

I hope you find peace, NewCreation.

Im just amazed that you two are still together. Statistics from http://www.menstuff.org/issues/byissue/infidelitystats.html say that 3% of 4000 cheating men married their lovers, and beyond that 75% of second marriages (overall, not those who marry the OP) get a divorce.

So accordingly, you had about a 0.75% chance to make it this far, and you honestly know why that statistic is so low from first hand experience. Cheating is so not worth it. There are no greener pastures, and everything else is a bunch of lies.

They're living separately, wheels.

They haven't really "made it". Her AP/nowH is having an A and they are living in separate houses.

As if her post wasn't proof enough, the current state of her affairage further proves that affairages are not worth it.

Oh I missed that, thanks....well I guess its from 0.7% to 0%.....couldn't dodge that 99.3% accurate bullet.

Really nice post NewCreations...

I have to be honest it's a perspective I've yet to see in my 5 plus years here at MB....

a [seemingly) repentant OW in an affairage.

Wow.

I think your post above may have legs around here for awhile. Time will tell.


I did have a question though:

Often times we'll see waywards and other people come here and try to tell us that they happen to know 4 or 5 couple friends of theirs in seemingly wonderful happy affairages. They THINK we are drastically exaggerating how uncommon affairages are and how unlikely "happiness" is REALLY found in these relationships.

My question is: Did you and your MM go to great lengths to prove to the world how happy you really were...even though you weren't all that happy?

Not just family...but friends...even strangers.



My wife and I have a friend that was raised in an affairage home and she describes it as fantasyland whereupon once the doors closed to the outside "judgmental" world...it was cold, quiet, and empty OR deliberately hateful and miserable...but, shockingly, if ANYONE else was around it was oversexualized public displays of revulsion and everything else was just PEACHY.
It was the charade of "happiness" at all costs.

What was your experience?

Mr. Wondering

Hey... can someone get this SOB pinned to the "Notable Posts" with flags, sirens, and flashing lights?

I wouldn't mind seeing it be required reading for any wayward who comes waltzing in here, determined to show us the "errors of our sanctimonious ways."

Incredible post! I so wish I could copy and send it to the little girl who helped break up my marriage. She hasn't married my WXH and I pray she doesn't. I could deal with XH so much better if she wasn't in the picture.

Thank you for sharing.

Mr.Wondering,

No, we were happy for all of about 6-8 months of our marriage before the world began imploding. Once it started I think it was pretty obvious to everyone that knew us. We however would blame the discord on the stuff going on around us rather than acknowledgeing that the "stuff" was fall out from our affair. It took quite a few years for me to come full circle and realize the errors of my past and see things for what they were.

NewCreation2011

SmilingWoman,

Copy it. Send it. That's what I hope comes from this, one person rethinking this choice!

If you can not contact her and want to give me her info I will send it personally with no mention of you.

NewCreation2011

Oh wow! I would LOVE that. What do you think boardies.....? Should I do that?

Thank you for posting this. I agree that it should go on Notable Posts. I also hope you find peace one day.

Thanks for this post, NewCreation. As a BS with a small child, I can see the path my WH and his OW are on but they cannot. Your post gives them a true picture of their future life, if they survive. And it's not from some "bitter" BS like me. It's from someone who has lived it.

Too bad it took you getting cheated on to realize the damage you and your H did to innocent people. It's hard for me to have any sympathy for you (you need a big, "I told you so.") but I don't think anyone deserves to be cheated on. And I think this takes guts.