WHEN THE OTHER WOMAN BECOMES THE WIFE
by Linda on SEPTEMBER 6, 2012 in PREVENTING INFIDELITY

When affair partners get married does it really turn out to be as wonderful as they thought it was going to be? Read more for the perspective of a woman who married her affair partner.

As I mentioned in a post earlier this summer, I not too long ago discovered that a friend of ours – who just recently divorced – suddenly ran off and married his affair partner.

This discovery motivated me to search for some stories of when the other woman becomes the wife. I found the following on Dr. Willard Harley’s Marriage Builders website. If you’re not familiar with Dr. Harley, he is the author of several books such as Surviving an Affair and His Needs, Her Needs: Building an Affair-Proof Marriage.

I feel that this woman’s account of her situation is very powerful and should be read by anyone involved in an affair – especially if they think that a future life with their affair partner will be nothing but a blissful bowl of cherries.

Of course there are exceptions and a happy marriage to the affair partner is possible, but I think that many of the issues that the author shares will arise in their “new” relationship at some point. They will no doubt put a lot of stress on the relationship.

When the Other Woman Becomes the Wife

When an Other Woman Becomes the Wife
Chances are that things will get stressful when the other woman becomes the wife.
“My perspective is from that of the other woman (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 [betrayed wife]. 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 bitch for the entire rest of your life. No matter what changes or personal revelations you come to, you will be the bitch 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’T HAPPEN TO YOU!!!!!!!!!! The stats are overwhelmingly high. No one gets married thinking that their spouse will cheat. No one. I promise that 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 is.

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!!…”