Did you love the mistress more than the wife or did you see her as a means of escape to your life? What made you desire to stray? What were your feelings towards the mistress or were you only focused on pleasure?
Genuinely curious since I know married men who’ve done it and they all seem to love their wives and would never leave them
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A man who truly loves his wife doesn’t cheat on her
Bro, stop cheating on your wife.
Lady, let him go. Some of us will do anything to keep you guys in a leash. And you guys are the most delusional people on earth thinking they really love you guys.
I don’t think you are going to get any answers here.
I don’t object in principle but can’t imagine how you’d have the time and the energy
Don’t pay her hush money from the wrong bank account.
Nice try, wife who knows my username.
I definitely don’t love her more than my wife, no, but she and her husband very good friends. She came with us us to a Broadway musical this weekend and we had a wonderful time, and we all get together for Cards nights and dinners as often as we can. My wife is definitely my #1 and my primary, but my mistress and I have enjoyed quite a few years together as well. I would never ever leave my wife, and any of my additional partners all know that going in.
FWIW, been poly for 25 years. I never “strayed” so much as I’ve never actually really been monogamous. This was all agreed upon well in advance.
“Seem” is the important word in your last sentence. Google “compartmentalization.”
I think there are guys that like the thrill of roller coasters, mountain climbing and haunted houses … and then there’s me! 😂
Partners don’t cheat.
If stuff is broken, work on the relationship. If it is irreparable, break up.
Horny and bored is what seems to be the main reason I’ve found in almost every case I’ve seen it happen. They have kids and jobs and all sorts of financial entanglements with their wives, but their wives don’t have sex with them as much as they want, nor is there any sexual excitement in the relationship. (Though to be fair, there was one guy I knew whose wife never said no; his motivator was he wanted something different and wouldn’t pass up any opportunity, but he was an outlier.)
As far as their feelings toward the mistress… it varies. I’ve seen guys who are infatuated with her dump their wives, and then sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t, but the majority of the time it never goes anywhere. Their marriage has more emotion depth and honesty (I don’t feel like mistresses see the real man for the most part), as well as financial cost if it’s broken that guys stick with their wives.
Mistresses are more of a thing in some eastern countries….
From a mans mentality we can be with multiple women sexually. I personally had several girlfirends at once and even loved two of them. But i knew that was a short term thing and i had to choose or move on. You can love more than one person at a time if your poly. I experienced that. I am just not deluded enough to think thats a feasible way to exist long term. Many guys have flings but still love their wife as well im sure. Its probably far more common than you think
I had a friend of a friend who was pretty open about cheating on his wife.
It never sat well with me but he talked about how she’d gained 60lbs since they got married, she worked all the time so they didn’t hang out, and she nagged him whenever they were together.
I told him it sounded like they should split up since he seemed pretty unhappy with her, but apparently they had a house together and he would lose out if they broke up.
He was a pretty charismatic guy and he worked out a lot so he was in great shape and could attract other women. I saw photos of her and he wasn’t exactly wrong that she was overweight, but still, that’s not the way you should deal with that sort of thing.
He’d date other women casually most of whom knew about his wife and were somehow ok being the woman on the side.
I had a mistress that I fell in love with during the darkest time in my life. I was in a rut, burning through a couple of 8 balls of coke a week, drinking myself into a coma nightly after work, and generally hating my life. I was performing well at work, so no one knew but I was fucking hookers weekly and dropped about 20 lbs of weight. I looked like hell looking back at pictures from that time. I had the “All-American Dream” on paper. Beautiful wife, two great kids, big house, nice cars, watches, toys, money to burn, yada yada, we looked great on Instagram.
I had a alcohol related incident that led to my divorce, and my mistress and I became an item. I loved everything about her…..until I didn’t.
When we met I was so fucked up I overlooked her flaws and incompatibilities, while framing myself as what I thought she wanted. She was coming out of a 7 year abusive relationship, so I was the man who loved her the way she needed. I patched her up, she did the same for me, so we thought we were perfect. Fast forward a few years, and we are miserable because neither of us is who we actually fell in love with. We had good times and great chemistry, but parts of who I am and parts of her do not mix, and it became a terrible environment. We fought, it got physical on multiple occasions (both ways, she loved to hit me toward the end), it was bad. Everyone around us was convinced one of us would end up killing the other.
In the end, I love her more than I can explain, but we were wrong for each other and shouldn’t have been together. Moral issues of cheating on a good wife aside, my mistress and I were not the types we would have ended up had we both been healthy when we met.
If a man is in a place where he is cheating, he needs help, and not the kind that involves an affair. The reason relationships that start in affairs end is because the people are going in with issues that need to be resolved before they look for a partner. You can’t be the right man or woman if you’re unhealed, and any “dream person” giving you attention when they vowed to focus solely on their spouse isn’t someone who is going to be a good partner.
The best advice I have is this: don’t cheat on your spouse. Either get help, fix your marriage, have the hard talk and open the marriage, or get a fucking divorce.
Don’t be the side piece, no matter how magical it feels. It’s going to be great, its going to feel intense and like love but it’s a high, not a state. It’s a shot of oxytocin, it’s a drug, it isn’t real. The relationship exists in ether and when you’re out of it, you’re going to feel like you lost part of you that you can’t have back.
Love people who can love you.
Married, have not had a mistress. Would not do that to my wife no matter what. Morality is stronger than lust.
You really cannot understand the true motivations of human behaviors in situations like this. True cheaters will be downvoted to hell and everyone just gives you “Don’t cheat”. It all boils down to “they are selfish”. Everyone has the propensity to cheat given enough time and opportunity the right situation will present itself.
I just cannot understand people having long term affairs. If you don’t want your spouse in all ways then leave them – lesser of two evils and saves all the long term emotional hurt.
Years ago a long term girlfriend admitted she was sleeping with another guy. It was a shock in the short term however we just split up gracefully. It takes two to tango if she’s no longer feeling it then the relationship not viable anymore.
Do the (semi) decent thing 👍
I can understand some couples who stay together in ‘name only’ for the sake of their children or practical circumstances and then have affairs. I’ve known a few such couples.
This question unfortunately doesn’t have a simple answer.
Some men who do this are engaged in ethical nonmonogamy of one sort or another, and have the informed consent of their wife and mistress.
Others are on the opposite end of the spectrum, and have kept each partner a secret from the other and actively gaslight their partners in order to keep up the charade.
There are innumerable permutations in between these extremes, but even this is only getting into the ethical dynamic of the affair.
When you ask about pleasure versus power, it’s important to understand that there is a spectrum here as well. Some men get a kick out of knowing that they have multiple partners, and the pleasure barely factors into their enjoyment. Others are hedonists seeking pleasure or variety their wife cannot offer. Still other men might want the sense of power that comes from knowing that while they have a stable partnership to return to, their mistress doesn’t. And some wives are into the idea that after their husband gets his kicks, free to play the field, that he chooses to return to her.
The simple TL;DR is there is no simple answer. People have sex outside their relationships for all possible reasons, and pursue it in all possible ways.
In a secondary note, you will have a hard time getting genuine responses from anyone that come from lived experience, in part because many users on this subreddit are not actually men over 30 (AI bots, young men playing adult, etc.), and in part because sharing specific details publicly would out them to society.
Notice the amount of moralizing low-effort responses in the comments. Unfortunately, many people have limited worldviews or a lack of experience, which restricts them from acknowledging or even understanding the nuance of your question.
If you are asking this question for research purposes, I strongly recommend you attempt to treat this as a scientific study. Put together a survey, share the link with a community you expect will provide good data, and you will avoid the pitfall of asking strangers to go into detail sharing compromising anecdotes in a public forum.
I recommend asking this in r/conservative
I wasn’t married but I did cheat at the end of a 10 year relationship.
Basically came down to that I couldn’t get her to stop cheating on me and I stopped suppressing feelings I was having for someone else.
There’s really two angles to your question here.
Firstly, whether someone believes it is possible to love more than one person romantically/sexually at a time. Or if by loving another you are inherently throwing another away, or lessening your love for them.
Many, myself included, feel it’s very possible to have more than one love(r) in your life, without taking away from another relationship.
Secondly, is the issue of consent and relationship agreements. Without consent and honesty it’s a much sticker thing to navigate, and very often leads to broken hearts.
Fundamentally the majority of people don’t agree with the first point at all, and thus are unable (or don’t try) to obtain consent and transparency.
I’ve dated multiple women for several months at the same time before. Frankly it was the best time of my life. It was invigorating in a way nothing has came close to since.
It made my interactions with all of them much more intense, raw, animalistic and satisfying. It took me from the default mode of thinking if “is this the right person for me” and wondering if I can do better to, God she’s got the perfect ass to slam during doggy, let’s enjoy the fuck out of it while she’s here.
But it did keep me from forming any deeper feelings for them. Ultimately there was going to be another girl under me a few hours later regardless of what happened.
If i could keep my primary relationship with all is emotional security and company and have a few side pieces for raw sex every now and then, that would be optimal.
Just leave your wife and get on with your life. Don’t drag it out.
There will always be damage to one of the women you allegedly care about.
Unless you are a psychopath with no regard for others, you will carry some damage too.
If you are really lucky, you will not damage your relationships with your kids.
You are forever untrustworthy.
I knew a guy at work who did it and was there when he crashed out over work beers.
Long story short, he cheated on his wife for 7 months with someone else at the firm. She wanted him to leave her + get married, he didn’t, she told everyone.
His wife left him and took the kids, mistress left him.
He said he felt complete by having his wife for emotional stuff and his girlfriend for social + physical stuff. That he wasn’t happy with just one or the other because he had needs that weren’t met.
But tbh, I just came away from that evening thinking he never found the right wife for him. He married someone who was good at 1 thing, then tried to plug the gaps literally and figuratively.
There’s often a few factors at play. It could be:
You’re in an unhappy relationship, and you’re too much of a coward to address that in the correct way, so you seek escapism elsewhere.
You really do just want to have your cake and eat it, like, hey you’re such a player right? You’ve got this woman interested in you, why would you not go for it? Having consideration for other people’s feelings isn’t something “real” men trouble themselves with.
You’re mentally ill. You know it’s wrong. You know it’s destructive. But you can’t stop doing it because the buzz you get from it seems to provide temporary relief from the absolute emptiness you feel everyday. So same deal as drink and drugs, which you probably have a problem with as well.
I have not, and would never be unfaithful to my wife, but to my shame in my troubled younger years I have been various combinations of these shitty men.
Wouldn’t call her a “mistress” as my wife knew and pointed me that way, but we would go out to dinner and movies and bedroom fun. It was more like “play dates”/she was there for sex and friendship only. Never fell in love with her but enjoyed my time with her (still do, just without the sex). I ended it when my wife had surgery and couldn’t have sex for 10 weeks (I didn’t want a chance for it to get to her, that I could have what she couldn’t give me) she never asked me to stop
As a guy who got caught cheating, it fucking sucks.
Believe it or not, you can actually love your partner but be horny and stupid and engage in sex with someone else.
Was absolutely not worth it.
I lost a lot more than just my gf of 2 years.
I lost friends, social circles, reputation and self respect. I hated myself for a long time and the guilt/shame can be unbearable.
0/10, would not recommend.
I will not make that mistake ever again.
My wife (divorced now) got a ring and didn’t want to have intimacy with me. Lots of counseling, lots of therapy and it never changed. Seven years in met a woman and had an affair for six years. It was for the need of intimacy. It was really good and it was once to twice a week. I never regretted it since I was getting my needs met. I always wished my wife would’ve put out and I would’ve stopped having the affair but it wasn’t the case and I didn’t want 50/50 with my kids.
It’s hella fun getting some strange
So many of these answers are very childish. “Just get a divorce ” sounds easy. But do you realize divorce costs $ it’s not a college breakup over coffee figured out in a few days. It’s years of potential fighting in court that will cost most or all of your money, and emotional energy. If you had property like a car or house it could be gone with a word. Divorce isn’t a simple little conversation. It’s serious business that sends people into bankruptcy regularly.