I was talking to probably the sweetest, most gentle person among me co-workers yesterday, who was telling me the story of her courtship with her husband. She told me that long after the romance began, he admitted that he was still married to his wife, who lived in another state, but that they were separated. (He had a job that required much travel.) Later than that, he confessed that his wife "didn't know that they were separated." (In essence, my co-worker's soon-to-be-husband was cheating on his then wife with my co-worker, who was basically "the other woman," but who definately does not have the persona and character of being classified as so.)<P>She tells me that after many years, a nasty divorce and a broken family, my co-worker and this man were married, but now she and his former wife are actually friends and share parenting duties of the children of the former marriage, while the husband lives and works in yet another state--again. Wow!! Imagine the bitterness that had to be overcome between the two women. I personally don't think that he is a real catch, but that's not for me to say.<P>Well, anyway, the point of this story is: If you fell in love with a married person, how did you feel, knowing that they had a husband/wife that would be hurt by your relationship? Did you know that they were married and didn't care? Were you lied to initially, but then found yourself drawn in too deep to get away and let go? Did your lover tell you that his/her marriage was basically in shambles and that they found comfort in you? (Even if, later, you found that this was all a big story and that the actual perpetrator of the mayhem in the marriage was your lover!) Why didn't you let go when you discovered the truth?<P>I ask this because of the bitterness I still harbor towards the OW that my husband found and I seek to understand this. <P>After I discovered my husband's affair, I telephoned her and had a polite conversation with her. She informed me that my husband had told her that he was separated from me, and that she would have never gotten involved with him if she had known that he was married. I said, "That's OK. As hard as it is to say it, I guess he lied to you as much as he did to me. Please, just don't contact him again." I actually felt sorry for the woman, sick with anger towards my husband, and yet resolved of the OW. At that time, she was no longer an issue.<P>Then, I found their chat on his computer, dating back from a year and a half before d-day. What I read enraged me: I guess that my husband had lied about being married with children as a way to keep an intersting chat partner--a little fib. While my husband was not innocent of being addicted to this woman, who he met on-line, she was the one who repeatedly inquired about face-to-face contact and initiated it. She was the one who asked if he "had ever thought about having sex with her." She was the one who initiated sex, although it seemed to become HIS major attraction to her. He was the one who pursued the sex, after the initial contact--of course. He also moaned about his horrible marriage to me--yet he could never seem to come up with a good explanation as to what I had actually "done" to him when she asked repeatedly. He just said "It was a nightmare." (I really don't think, to this day, that I personally am the one who made it a "nightmare," but whatever.) <P>The day came when she left her husband for mine, demanded co-habitation, they talked of marriage, and then my husband came clean about the actual situation--he was ALREADY married, although I do not know if he told her that he had never actually been separated. He told her, (albeit regrettably and for the child only) that he was returning to me. She freaked, I guess, understandably.<P>Now this is the part that makes me madder than hell: After he left he and came back to me (when he had never actually left me except to treat me coldly, ask for a divorce and not divorce me, and put me through months of tears and misery with his strange behavior) she would not give him up. She e-mailed him with sentiments of friendship which immediately turned into moans of tragic love, fury over being "used," and pleas for the return of his affection. She asked him to meet her, and if he did, "would he be loyal to me?" She sent him filthy pictures of herself, warning him: "keep them on the computer, lest your wife sees--unless you don't care if she sees." She kept saying "Why would you return to someone who treats you like s**t when you could be with someone who loves you--me!" She even offered to take my child as her own if he would return to her (He told her that I was a terrible mother--but then he tells me that I am an outstanding mother and he would have no other to be the mother of his children.)<P>I did NOT treat my husband like s**t! My every thought was of him, I loved him dearly, I gave constantly and he took without giving back, and this story of my treatment of him was one that he concocted to keep her.<P>Who is sicker--my husband, or this "poor" woman who was duped and used?<P>I guess none of this should matter anymore--I just can't understand the mentality, though, and it bothers me.<P>I have been propositioned many, many times by married men, most of which fully admitted right off the bat that they were married (give them a gold star for honesty, at least.) I even went out on a date once with a man who confessed, while making his moves, that the picture that was on the nightstand next to his bed was that of his wife and that what she didn't know wouldn't hurt her. End of date. Take me home.<P>I would probably rather eat razor blades than get involved with a married man--not calling myself self-righteous, but I know right away that I could never destroy another woman's life and tear her family apart just for a man, no matter how great he seemed to be and how unhappy he told me that his marriage was--that's not my beeswax.<P>Even if I was lied to and "hooked," I think that I would know better than to continue a fraudulent relationship for the sake of this "love" thing.<P>So I don't understand. . .please give me your insight on this. It would help comfort me a little--this is the first Christmas that I will be spending without my husband in 7 years--not that the past two were any better because the man was smitten with Miss Kitty and she was smitten with him--I just didn't know it.

I don't know if I can offer any insight, since I'm just another BS.<P> I can tell you I did a radio show on this a few years ago. We took calls (anonymously, of course) from plenty of OW's. I was shocked at how many were proud of what they were doing. Some of them like the stability of having a married man on the hook, some of them look at a wedding ring as a "challenge," some of them are just happy knowing they have stolen a man from his wife.<P>They say things like: "If you can't keep your man happy, I'll be glad to take care of him" and stuff like that. They're predators, and there's a lot more of them out there than you think.

Well, I was sort of the OW, only I didn't really know it. H was living with another woman who he'd been engaged to, only he told me that their relationship was over and that they were only living together because of their lease and financial constraints. He seemed to come and go as he pleased and did things as a single, available man would, so it made it easy for me to believe ... at first.<P>Then the doubt crept in. He took me to off-the-map places, because he told me that his ex-fiancee was hurting and wouldn't want to hear about us. He didn't introduce me to his friends "yet" for the same reason. Hmmm ....<P>Then he moved with her to a town thousands of miles away because both of them had already accepted a job there, and the "wheels had already been set in motion." At this point, I wanted to call the woman up and confirm his story. But for some reason, I didn't. If she was truly upset about the thought of him dating someone else, then I didn't want to make her distraught. Plus, H told me that she was psychotic and depressed and didn't have a handle on reality. Recurring MM line, so I've read.<P>Only right before we got married did I find out the truth through one of H's remaining friends who knew exfiancee. To my H's mind, they might have "broken up," but exfiancee knew nothing about it - in fact, she thought that once they moved, they would be getting married. She literally had NO CLUE. I felt so ashamed, I could hardly stand myself. But by now, they'd already broken up officially, and she knew about "us."<P>H lost his job because of it, and moved back to the city I live in - and in with me. He lost all of their mutual friends, and I don't blame their friends for taking sides in this instance. They never accepted me, no matter how hard he tried to smarm them. He never told his parents about me, like he claimed he did - they didn't know we were seeing each other until literally months before the wedding. Only after I told my FIL and MIL did they finally understand - FIL told me that he always wondered why H and I married so quickly. In fact, we'd known each other for a long time. He was just trying to cover his butt. <P>Only years later did H finally confess that he was staying with his "ex" and keeping me on the side to see which one of us he wanted. Well, as his EMR was driving his ex-fiancee around the bend, she lost the golden prize because of her "inappropriate behavior," and because I was "nice to him" all of the time. Like, duh! How was she supposed to act? Warm and loving 100 percent of the time? Hello! Believe me, if I'd had this bit of info, I would have been making that man's life hell on earth, and exfiancee would have known in a flash.<P>What was so eerie is that my H's EMR started in the exact same way as our relationship. He told the XOW that we were separated and getting a divorce - which was news to me. He told her a bunch of lies after he moved in with her. They even met under similar circumstances. H and I met at a party and exchanged cards; he met XOW at a happy hour and they exchanged cards, and within a few weeks they were in the sack. H lost his job because of his affair, and a lot of our mutual friends, which he complained about bitterly. And to which I say, "too bad, honey." <P>The twist is, he ended up coming back to me. Had the XOW not tattled, become obsessive, or wanted something that he was unable to commit to right away (she was gunning for marriage), I'm fairly certain that he would have dumped me for her. I guess I'm lucky that she was more "pushy" and "demanding" than I was when it came to the relationship.<P>Ha. Ha. Ha.<P>belld<P>P.S. After I got my act together, I wrote a sincere note of apology to the ex-fiancee, confessing my misdeeds and wishing her a very happy life. This was during H's EMR, and I told her that he'd done the same thing to me. Crazy as it sounds, I hope that she got some measure of satisfaction out of that - I'm sure she really hated me.

"just" another BS? No, CJack, you're "just" too cool.<P>That's scary! That scares the crud out of me that people can be proud of their cruelty. I can see the cattiness in some other women--but as for guys that have full realization that they are taking another man's wife? What's up with that?<P>Miss Kitty was married--my husband seemed to have no reservations about courting her, and in fact, was made to feel like the stud of the universe compared to the poor guy, who I hope still does not know what he endured--(I hope!)--that 1)spent his time hunting, golfing, and watching football 2) never cracked a book, and who 3) worked out of town a lot--and these were the terrible crimes that he committed. Oh, Miss Kitty, this was a classic case of out of the frying-pan, into the fire!!! If she had actually landed my husband, I wonder how many days (or hours) she actually would have been happy with him?!!!!

Oy, I'll see if I can answer this without causing a ruckus.<P>When I first got out on my own, all of my friends were men - I've always related a lot better with them than with women. I did have 2 best girlfriends who were a lot like me, but other than that, my friends were guys. In my wrestling days, I used to flirt and pursue a lot of the MM. Lots of them were married, but only one of them (that I knew of) was faithful to their wife (if you smell what I'm cookin'! ) I kissed one MM, but that was as far as I went. The motto with most of us gals was "marriage is a condition that is easily remedied." Boy, is that coming back to bite me in the [censored]!<P>Like CJack said, some consider it a challenge, some consider marriage "irrelevant" if the MM propositions them or encourages their advances, and some "fall in love" with the MM and follow their heart.<P>My H (yes, I'm still calling him my H. He will be again as of Valentine's Day) was (and still, on a technicality, is) still married to Dana, his first wife. I knew about this going into the relationship. I didn't care because #1 - I knew that they had been separated for 4 years, and #2 - she was living with another man and had already had 3 kids with him. So no, his marriage was not an issue with me.<P>I later into the relationship found out that he had a very serious relationship with a woman - his mom says that they were engaged, he says that they weren't. He was supposed to move in with her, and I found out. I was in extremely deep at that point - I told him that I loved him with all of my heart, but once he moved in with her, we weren't to see each other any more. That weekend, he ended things with her and we moved to the other side of the state.<P>I never met her, but I've heard a lot about her from his mom and him. She sounded like a wonderful woman, and I feel horrible about what happened. I honestly thought that they were "just friends" in the beginning - he had always talked so fondly of her, but would never let me meet her (hey, I was 18 and naive!). I even gave him a mother's day card to give to her (of course he never did!). But she really tried to mold him into something that he wasn't. My H is a rugged redneck type, and she started buying all of his clothes for him (college-prep looking clothes), taking him to meet with her upper-class friends, etc. Even his mom admitted that that was why she had hoped that he and Lisa would make it. But he didn't want to change.<P>She still visits my MIL, and I guess she saw a picture of our son. She asked my MIL who's baby it was, and my MIL said that it was CB & H's. Lisa started crying, and my MIL didn't talk about it anymore. If I had known that she was in the picture in the very beginning, I would have ended it before it had begun. But when you find out after you fall in love with them, the difference between "right" and "wrong" becomes a lot less clear.<P>

Ok, here's my sordid story.<P>Almost everyone I ever dated I took from someone else. I just thought it was some huge coincidence that guys that were already with someone else came on to me. In retrospect I think I kind of sought them out. <P>First husband, casually dating someone else when we met. My best friend really liked him, but we ended up together.<P>Current H was living with someone else when we met. I was in the process of getting a divorce. I knew he cheated on her. I worked for an answering service with him, and his gf used to call in the middle of the night for me to page him. He was sleeping with a girl that worked two businesses down too. He pursued me for months, and a few months after my H and I split we started seeing each other, he was still living with the girlfriend. He told me how horrible the relationship was, didn't know how to get out of it, had a lease, blah blah blah. He quickly left her for me.<P>I know, color me really really stupid. A few months after we started dating, we moved in together, a few months after that I was pregnant, and a few months after that he started an EA that turned P. Few years later, another baby, another affair.<P>Why did I constantly look for men that were already taken? Well, I just figured it out yesterday in counseling. My father left my mother for OW (if you can call a 16 yo a woman). Married her. Left her for still another woman. I always thought both stepmothers were stupid, didn't they know he would cheat on them too? Well, each time my father left a wife, he pretty much left the kids from that marriage too. So I've spent literally over half my life going after taken men to kind of replace or reinact my father's pattern. I thought that if these men wanted me it proved that I was worthy since I had such low self-worth because of my father's abandonment. And even better, if these men would leave the women they were with for me, and not cheat on me, well that would really give me some self-esteem, huh. <P>I know, an extremely dysfunctional way of thinking. But I don't think it's that uncommon. Both times my H cheated on me, it was with women who had the same exact pattern I had had. I'm guessing they both had some issues with their fathers too.<P>I spend a good amount of time now thinking of the woman my H left for me. She pretty much stalked us for three years. I kind of understand now. Part of me wants to write her and apologize, but I think it would open a can of worms that it took a long time to close. I'm so so sorry for the pain I must have put her through. <P>Karma is a b****, isn't she?