1. All Articles, A Question To A Therapist, Affair Recovery, Forgiveness, Moving Forward, OW/OM, Personal Healing
How & Why to End an Affair with a Married Person
May
In this post, I will be answering a question from the other woman. This can be an extremely triggering and sensitive area for many victims/betrayed partners. I will also be sharing a letter from a betrayed spouse to the third-party/other woman. While this is a difficult topic, it is important to share the honest emotions and feelings experienced by multiple people during marital infidelity.
Dear Therapist,
“I am the Other Woman.
I don’t understand how it happened. If five years ago, I was asked if I could be a mistress, I would have said: “Never!” However, I’m so ashamed to say that I feel differently today. I’m in love with a married man. I feel jealous whenever he goes to his family. I feel heartbroken each time he tells me that I can only be his mistress. He said he loves me, but he also loves his wife and kids. I want to let him go, but it seems so difficult. It hurts that I can’t have him for myself. Each time I decide to leave, I still fall back into his arms. I have ignored other suitors because of him, and that is not right.
Please help me. I need to get out of this relationship.”
Dear OW,
If you found yourself in a love triangle with someone that is married, the first thing to do is to analyze your chances of winning. Does the individual truly love you? Did they promise to divorce their partner to be with you? If yes, what efforts have been made? Don’t you think you have waited long enough? If, after a thorough analysis, you discover that your chances of being together are low, then the best thing to do is to take a walk. Yes! Time is precious, don’t waste it waiting on someone who may never be yours.
Tips on How to End an Affair with a Married Person
Ending an affair is not an easy task. Just like every other normal relationship, strong emotions could be involved. That aside, there could be other benefits; sexual, financial, societal, etc. All these, when considered, would make you indecisive. However, if you are determined about what you want, then the following steps would help you end the affair.
Make a Firm Decision:
The first step is to decide that you are ending it. If having an affair with someone who is married is against your values, you must decide to walk away. Sometimes, such relationships are filled with commotion, and the moment you end it, your peace is restored. If you are married and cheating, ending an affair gives you the chance to save your marriage. After making that decision, confide in a trustworthy friend who would give you the moral support needed to back up your decision.
Delay is Dangerous, Act Now!
After you have decided that you are leaving, act immediately. Contact your lover and tell them that you are done. Don’t delay it for any reason. When you speak to them about it, do not express loyalty, love, or any kind of longing. Just make it quick and straight to the point. If need be, you could sound harsh to show your seriousness. Sometimes, visiting the person to share the news might not be a nice idea as he/she might blackmail you into changing your mind. What about the practice of having goodbye sex? It has resulted in many unwanted pregnancies. Ensure that you don’t fall into that trap.
Take Some Time to Heal.
After ending an affair with someone you love dearly, you would be heartbroken. You would ask yourself if your decision was right, and you’ll wish you were back together. I have been there, and I know how it feels. What about the sleepless nights? Those nights when you’ll cry and cry with no one to console you. The good news is that after a while, your heart would heal. And when that happens, you will be proud of yourself that you had the courage and dignity to end the affair.
Delete and Avoid Every Contact:
Keeping in contact with your ex-lover is very dangerous. If you don’t ever want to go back, then you must burn the bridge. If no child was birthed during the affair, then you must delete your ex from your contact list. Don’t ever go snooping on them on social media. They can be doing whatsoever with their lives, and that is none of your business. I’m not saying that you should become enemies with them, but they shouldn’t be on your list of close friends.
In cases where the individual lives or works in the same place as you, avoid them the best way that you can. In extreme cases, you can change your job, phone number, house address, or even leave a city.
Do all you can to ensure that you never get back together.
Try hypnotherapy to overcome challenging emotions associated with ending a relationship
Being attracted to unavailable men is an emotional habit that, no matter how you learned it, can be broken with hypnosis.
- Chasing Married Men
- Love the Right Person
- Recover from Love Addiction
- GET OVER A LOVER SELF HYPNOSIS!!
Additional Tips for The Unfaithful Partner
Confess and never go back.
If you had an affair while in a committed relationship, then this step is for you. Confessing to your spouse that you cheated would be difficult, but you have to do it. When you confess, the feelings of guilt and fear will disappear.
Please don’t wait till they discover about it. As much as it will hurt to hear it from you, it will hurt much worse to hear it from someone else.
Speak up and ask for forgiveness. It is easier to forgive someone that confesses. However, you must apply wisdom while doing that. Plan on what to say and what not to say. Also, think carefully about his or her personality and health condition before spilling the beans.
After the confession, don’t expect their forgiveness to come so easily. If it takes a lot of time, then you have to wait patiently.
Revive your marriage:
This step is more of a practical analysis. Take a moment to think about what made you cheat. I believe that on your wedding day, while you stood beside your spouse to make your vow, you never wished that you would cheat on them. So what exactly happened in your marriage?
The truth is that every bad marriage can be fixed. Saving your marriage is going to require determination, patience, and self-control. Figure out the loopholes and work together to revive your marriage.
Finally, for support, you could employ the services of marriage counselors, a mentor couple, or join any marriage workshop.
How does the betrayed partner feel about the third party?
Quite frequently, the third-party does not wish to harm the family of their lover. However, it is important to understand the impact infidelity has on families. The logical mind knows that cheating with a married person is not ethical, and it is destructive, however, the heart is selfish and has no empathy for others.
Below is a message from a betrayed spouse, addressing the other woman. I hope those of you who are in love with a married person, can read the impact of the betrayed spouse, and make the decision to remove yourself from this very toxic situation with anyone who is married.
A message from the betrayed spouse
WTF?
Honestly, just what the f&$k were you thinking? You knew he was married. You knew he had children. You knew he slept beside me every night. And you knew that I knew nothing. Is that what made it so delicious? So tempting? That I appeared by his side at various events, utterly clueless to what was going on behind my back? Did you feel triumphant? That you’d beat me at something?
Okay, so I looked stupid, at least to you. Is the satisfaction of that worth sacrificing your own dignity? Because, really, how can you have any dignity when you’re pulling on your panties as he races out the door to be home in time for dinner? How can you have any dignity when you’re alone – again – on a Saturday night while he’s watching Toy Story with his children and tucking them into bed?
And frankly, though I might have looked stupid, and perhaps pitiful, to you…and some less-than-compassionate others, I’ll take stupid over sleazy and low and cruel any day of the week. No matter how awful it felt to be me when I found out, I’d still take that over being you. No matter that my eyes were practically swollen shut from crying, I could still look myself square in the mirror without shame.
Did you think it was simply a matter of time? That you would be appealing enough for him to walk away from the life he’d built? That all those fantasies you’d convinced yourself of – that I nagged, that I was lousy in bed, that I was boring and bitchy – were actually true? Did you really believe that any relationship based on deception would deliver you from your unhappiness?
My guess is, yes, you did. My guess is that very few Other Women honestly admit their role as an accomplice in the intentional hurting and decepition of another human being. Often another human being you don’t know. Or barely know. Or perhaps, shockingly, know well. Instead, they sell themselves clichés. Something along the lines of “we’re soulmates”, “we couldn’t help ourselves”, “the chemistry was too powerful” or “you can’t stop love.” All of which, I suspect you recognize on some level, is total bullshit. All of which allows you to divorce your abhorrent actions from your intent. “We didn’t mean to hurt anyone,” you wail.
Oh. Yes. You. Did.
Because you knew. You knew that I was being hurt, even if I didn’t yet know it. You knew I was being lied to. And betrayed. And you participated in that. Knowingly. Willingly. Perhaps even happily.
What’s more, my children were being hurt. And though I don’t expect you to take total responsibility for that (after all, HE was their father), you nonetheless contributed to the potential dissolution of their family.
And for what?
Was the sex that good? Were the feelings of superiority, if only for the brief time he was with you, so intoxicating that it made all the humiliating departures, all the embarrassment when you were caught, all the shame this no doubt triggered, worth it?
And if he left me for you? What would you have gained? Three emotionally damaged children every second weekend. A man who lies and cheats. A man who doesn’t have the self-control to stop himself from doing something he knows to be wrong. To be hurtful. What a prize. Guess what? If he’s not willing to become something better than that – he’s all yours. At least until he meets another you sometime in the future and you become cast as the betrayed wife.
In our case, you were shocked when he, after being caught and given the choice between me or you, didn’t hesitate. Not for a second. And, believe it or not, I felt sorry for you. Though I raged at you in my head, loathed the look of you, wanted to spit each time I said your name, and shower each time I imagined you two together, I nonetheless felt a sliver of pity for you. Because no-one does this unless they value themselves so little that they settle for another’s scraps rather than demand respect and kindness. Or unless they’re so delusional that they really believe that this is how true love manifests. Unless they’ve fallen for all that “star-crossed lovers” and “us against the world” crap.
It has been almost four years. December 11, 2006 – a date that’s seared into my mental calendar. I have no idea where you are now. And though I still taste anger when I think back, I’m able to wish you, if not well, then at least better than what you had. If only to spare another woman the agony of finding out that you’re sleeping with her husband.”
Forgiveness
One of the exercises is to write a letter to the third-party. This should be done by both people separately. However, the decision to send or give the third-party this letter will be made by the couple together. There is much consideration to be had before such a letter is physically given to a third party.
In the case above the betrayed spouse found it beneficial to write and give a forgiveness letter to the third party. Writing is quite a cathartic process and can provide a release of all the built-up tension and stress caused by infidelity. Especially during a marriage reconciliation when the marriage for the most part is back on track, the betrayed partner may not wish to talk about the strong emotions held towards a third party.
The issue, which could arise from sending this letter to the other person is you may, in fact, reengage all parties in a conversation. So always heavily consider the consequences of sending such a letter directly to the other person.
“Despite your desperate plea to have my best friend, sons father, husband and soulmate [my life partner] leave us; I would like to say that I forgive you. He is much happier and stronger as you told him he would be if he left me, we both are. I hope that one day you discover the “clear lighted path” to your own true dignity, grace, integrity and inner peace [although you walked all over mine]. You are a closed chapter in our lives for which I am grateful; for we have been enlightened with a greater love & connection; a deeper meaning to our living & to one another allowing us together to explore new places of ourselves & our relationship we never knew existed. You have accidently uncovered previously shadowed misconceptions about others & have helped us both find a greater strength, understanding, forgiveness and peace. Your fantasy affected my reality as you know and a part of my healing journey is acceptance and forgiveness. Included in that process for me is sharing it with you.
Do not mistaken my forgiveness for forgetting; do not enter my personal world again. ‘My Barret’ lost sight of his values & opportunity (you) emerged – his true self would never waste his time with a person so low to spread her legs for a married man. His words that he chose to write to you were from the heart and mind of the man that I know, love, married and will continue to make memories with. Your ‘special memory’ of the lakes & Ingramport have been revisited & replaced with our own; naked and intimate (with very happy endings I might add! I normally wouldn’t divulge that info but hell, I know all details about your indiscretions with my husband, so why not?!) Unveiling your true colors has earned his nickname for you to be KrazyKrystle. [Yes, we can joke about the situation in our own way.]
May you find your very own [unmarried] “meant to be” without causing another family strife, hurt and betrayal. I feel pity for you if you truly believed I was bullying you; teach your children truths. You said you feel no regret for your actions or anything that happened, not surprising to me as it speaks volumes of your true character. If one could hold inside of them the heart of a person who has been betrayed by the love of their life and feel the anguish that lives there, no decent human being would play any role in that pain. I understand now that not everyone in this life will share the same high values; certainly not everyone will respect them.
“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language. And next year’s words await another voice. And to make an end is to make a beginning.” T.S. Eliot
To you this may seem delayed but this has been an prolonged internal challenge for me. When I delivered the letter, I falsely expected a sincere eye to eye introduction with a woman who was remorseful in her actions of tearing a family apart; instead you showed me what a coward truly looks like. I am fully aware that I don’t matter to you but this ‘letter’ is for me, not you. I will not put your feelings above mine & that is why I am choosing to send to you.
Before you [over]react, please remember that I ,Barbara (full name hidden) – B(withheld) wife, AM entitled to have a reaction to you & your actions since you willingly placed yourself into my life. You are not my punching bag & I am not being a bully but speaking/sharing truths; you are simply the “[insert negative adjective]” human who made the choice to fuck my husband, beg him to leave me and felt entitled in doing so. If you ‘do not do drama’, do not involve yourself with another woman’s husband. My mind is free where my thoughts were once stolen, final words from me spoken and the weight once again lifted. I will save your time & wasted energy ~ if you still haven’t discovered grace & consider sending a reply to defend/justify your self/actions ~ by blocking your number.
Goodbye Krystle. May the world of karma have mercy on you.
Signed, The woman who can not classify you as a woman but can however find other ways to describe you and your actions without calling you a slut or trash.”
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In case you weren’t aware there are acronyms, we typically use for the “third party”
OW= Other Woman
OM = Other Man
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