A
female
age
30-35,
anonymous
writes:I fell for my coworker who told me that his wife had left him, only to find out from another colleague that they are actually planning buying a new house together!I feel so stupid and sick to the stomach, but I can't bring myself to say anything to him or his wife. My colleague told me last weekend, and ever since I have been avoiding his calls or texts. He only started working with us late last year, and I thought he was gorgeous the second I saw him. I didn't see a ring or anything, so I flirted a little bit. He started making excuses to come over to me, and within 3 weeks we had started sleeping together. The lady who told me about him buying a house together had warned me that he was married, but when I asked him he admitted he was married but they were getting divorced. He claimed he was only staying at their shared home as he couldn't afford anywhere new just yet. I believed him, and we kept our relationship hidden due to the fact he didn't want his wife to know incase she used it against him in court. Of course, it was a total lie and I was an idiot for believing it!We have been seeing each other after work, or at the weekend for almost 7 months. He always made the plans, so I guess it could fit in with his wife.So last week, we had a falling out during work hours, it was over our plans for this weekend just gone. When I went back to my department, the lady who had already warned me told me what she had heard from a friend of his wife, and that they were never planning to divorce.I don't know why, but I suddenly believed what everyone had warned me about (friends and family). Now I don't know what to do! Do I tell him I know, or tell his wife? I thought he was a great guy and I thought I loved him, but now all I feel is hate for what he had put us both through. Maybe I should have asked more questions but I thought I could believe him.
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female
reader, anonymous, writes (25 April 2014): Do not have the wife involved. You are nothing but a side chick. He has made this woman his wife who he wants/ed to spend his life with. You were someone who he wanted to have sex with and thought he could with no strings attached.
A
female
reader, nroberts  +, writes (24 April 2014):
It would be better for you to find someone else you can genuinely love( Make sure that person is single) confronting him or his wife will not solve anything. Good luck.
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A
male
reader, dougbcoll +, writes (23 April 2014):
 guys like that will tell you what you want to hear just to bed you. you are the icing on the cake, he has his cake at home. you more than likely are not the first he has done this too.
his wife either does not know, or pretends not to know what he is doing behind her back.
you have been used for his sex toy. just watch out for guys that will tell you what you want to hear.
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A
female
reader, Adeboyefa  +, writes (23 April 2014):
 A guy "planning to divorce his wife" is still married! Hope you have learnt your lessons.
Creating a scene with him at work will not help you in any way. It will only scare away your single male colleagues who will now see you in a negative light. Keep your secret secret and move on with your life.
Telling the wife will not help you,either. She probably know already and has forgiven him. Even if she angrily leaves him and he marries you, you know the type of husband he was to her and will be to you.
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A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (23 April 2014): Sorry it hurts for you, but you have hopfully learnt your lesson, stay away from married men who are not available. It is wrong and always will be wrong no matter how you dress it up, you chose to date a cheater. Do you think he would treat you ANY better than the girl he stood next to in church and promised to share his life with, of course not. I know this hurts you but learn from it and accept you brought this hurt to your own door by the bad choice you made. I would let his wife find out for herself, dumb asses like him always come unstuck in the end, because truth will always come a knocking. Just rebuild your life AWAY from him and look for a single man.You have every right to feel foolish because you were foolish, MARRIED means commited to someone, they made promises, made children,made home,a family and he wanted more, and you gave him it for nothing in return but lies.Lick your wounds and move on, head high, no fights leave them to solve their marriage and have a new start in new job.
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A
female
reader, oldbag +, writes (23 April 2014):
 I have been the innocent wife, my husband had been seeing this particular woman for over 2 years. I was oblivious until after he left.Then, eventually, the truth came out.
I trusted him throughout our marriage, seems he was a serial cheater.
He asked to come back as he missed us,2 kids and myself.
I laughed in his face.
Do I wish the 'other woman' had told me what was happening - NO..
She knew he was married so as far as I was concerned they deserved each other.
Deep down you knew too, so don't smash her world apart, because he will do that when she finally sees what he is really like,when he eventually gets caught.
Ignore him,he's just a waste of space, don't take your anger out on the innocent either.
And start looking for another job.And a SINGLE man.
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A
female
reader, So_Very_Confused +, writes (23 April 2014):
 I have to add my voice to the chorus...
I'm sorry you had to learn this life lesson the hard way. I can't improve on anything anyone has said... Honeypie nailed it (as usual).
I am going to ask you to THINK about WHY you want to tell the wife... what (DEEP DOWN INSIDE) do you think/hope this will accomplish?
do you hope she will get so mad as to toss him out... why would you want a lying cheater as your boyfriend?
do you hope she will divorce him and take him to court and get all his money so she will punish him?
telling his wife will hurt her. She may already know deep down inside he was cheating. She may have known and accepted it. Perhaps they have an agreement and she won't care... and then you told her with hopes of punishing someone and all you will get is MORE disappointment.
I think that the best thing to do is to totally ignore him.
100%... just DROP HIM FROM YOUR LIFE like he DIED... give him NO explanation, give him NO CHANCE to try to talk you out of leaving... GIVE HIM NO CHANCE.
now for you....
allow yourself the permission to grieve.
grieve the loss of this relationship (for while it was playtime for him it was real for you)
grieve the loss of your innocence and trust (because your trust in people AND YOUR OWN JUDGEMENT is forever changed)
after SIX WEEKS maximum time grieving it's time to move on and NOT punish yourself any more for a bad choice.
LIVE and LEARN... it's what makes us adults.
but I can tell you that telling his wife about him will NOT bring you the satisfaction you need... living well and totally ignoring him will in the long run serve you best.
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A
female
reader, Daisy_Daisy +, writes (23 April 2014):
 Easy for me to say but you should have walked when the colleague told you he was married and still living with his wife. I personally wouldn't have believed his lies from then on, but I'm older and I've had a few experiences - and read a lot on this site.
I recently had a 'charmer' of a suitor reveal to me that he still lives with his ex, and though he said he's planning on moving out of the house (he shares with ex and their daughter) and they're "no longer a couple"... and even if I believed that.. it's just too much drama. Last year, I dated a different guy who referred to his "ex". I thought he meant ex-wife but he hadn't even started divorce proceedings after 9 months separation ... so no thank you, no married men.
Learn to take it slow and watch out for signs, and ask questions if you're unsure. Lack of wedding ring means nothing. None of my male relatives (all married) wear a ring. Because you work with this guy, you had plenty of opportunity to find out whether or not he was single.
You have every right to be very angry with him, he actively deceived you, but I'd advise against making a scene at work and I definitely don't think you should bring his wife into it.
Sorry this happened. There are some shitty people out there, and all you can do is try to spot them and avoid them/ know when to walk away.
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A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (23 April 2014): A few years back I was the 'wife' in a situation very similar to this. Not married but we never wanted to, instead we were together for 17 years.Out of the blue I got an email from a woman, his co-worker, claiming that she was 'the other woman' in his life and that they had been having an affair and he'd told her he was trapped, wanted to leave me but couldn't because I'd "take half of his flat". She thought I didn't have a job either.What she didn't know was that we had made solid plans to buy a house together and I was just about to put my own property - I had a flat I was renting out but he'd obviously not told her about that, or about my job - to contribute all of the equity as a massive deposit for it.I emailed her back as calmly as I could because although I was heartbroken and could barely breathe, I wanted to cooperate with her to get as much information and to try to get to the truth.What emerged was a messy situation, but not quite in the way you'd expect. My partner had a drink problem that he and I were aware of and that he'd said he wanted to get medical help with. This woman had grown up with an alcoholic father and she was also on medication for anxiety and panic attacks. She was so used to being around someone who was drunk all the time that she didn't recognise when my partner was actually off his head on booze. The way that she wrote her emails was also strange, by anyone's standards. She went into absolutely every single minute detail of him - describing tiny details as evidence that he loved her. For example, I had actually met her without realising at a public event attended with my partner. As it was extremely crowded and a long-standing friend of ours was also there, I said to my partner that the friend and I would go to the nearby pub and wait for him because I knew he had no choice but to stay and talk with his bosses etc. Unbeknown to me this woman was watching his every single move and, when he kissed me on the cheek just before I left for the pub, she thought that I was completely gone for the night and that I'd just left him on his own for the whole evening, and that his kiss on the cheek was evidence that he didn't really love me.The thing is, my partner and I had a really, really great sex life and in all of that time together neither of us had ever even wanted to be unfaithful. It's not that I didn't believe he'd somehow got into a messy situation, but that I knew he had a drink problem AND that he was totally naive in regard to women - he honestly was and remains so. This woman had just come out of a divorce and was hell bent on finding true love with him. His version was that yes, there were two times when he was out of his mind on drink and he'd 'fumbled with her. I will never know the exact truth, but I do believe it would be more along those lines. She was EXTREMELY vague about whether they'd actually had sex or not. I asked her" are you telling me that you regularly have sex with my partner and that this has been going on for some time" and she said that there 'had been sex, yes".The woman tried to justify all of this emailing to me, which was incredibly painful for me, by saying that she needed closure. She had no conscience at all about the fact that I had not done anything wrong and that her supppsed 'closure' would open up an enormous amount of pain for me. I subsequently did look very, very closely at our relationship and at my partner's problems and I did leave him. But it was much later, and it was not because of this woman as such. Her emailing me made me realise just how bad his drinking was and that there were other problems, that had always been there on his part. I stayed and tried to help him for a couple of years after that, but it didn't work.years later and we are still very close friends. We can see so clearly now that he wasn't growing up properly and resented me at the same time as loving me, simply because he had not matured in himself. I can now see that the woman simply wanted to dump a load of her hurt on to me and that her idea of 'closure' was to do this dumping onto another woman. It was also vindictive on her part - it was very, very clear that although she thought she knew my partner because she'd scrutinised his behaviour, she really barely knew him at all and, when she didn't get what she wanted, she simply wanted to tear him and me to shreds, all the while making herself out to be totally innocent by saying that she thought he was leaving me. I am actually sure that she really did believe this and I am sure that he told her he wanted to - BUT - had she seen beyond her rose tinted spectacles and actually got to know him, she would have known that he was not quite telling the truth and, had she been more emotionally mature, she would have been able to seperate her needs to have a partner from the truth of the situation. She WANTED to believe that it was all true.Funnily enough, a couple of years after we split up I nearly fell for a married man who told me he was separated but was vague about getting divorced. I walked away. I wanted him more than I've ever wanted any man in my life and to this day I still want him. But I feel proud that I didn't blur boundaries. He's now almost finished with his divorce, but in the meantime he had a 'rebound' with another woman. I was not his rebound, but because I maintained boundaries, there's a good chance I could become his partner in future.
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A
female
reader, CindyCares  +, writes (23 April 2014):
 Poor wife, now it's her fault for being cheated on ?!, so she should pay for her sins ?...why do you want to punish the wife, because she did not warn you that you were sleeping with her husband ?...
The guy... well, we are all human, so I imagine that making a big fat scene , with shouts and insults , would make you feel better there and then, but what the long term benefits would be ? None.
Do you think he would feel ashamed, that he would fall on his knees and ask sincerely for your forgiveness ? I doubt it. He probably would not give a f..k, he 'd be just annoyed that he got caught and that would make him hostile , he would call you a psycho, and so on and so forth. All very unpleasant, undignified and a gold mine for gossipmongers.
Just stop seeing huim, in fact stop talking to him altogether- just get rid of him right now, learn your lesson, and move on.
Unluckily, it's always buyer beware. If you chance into someone who could be married, or whose marital status is not crystal clear, or for whatever reason is too close for comfort to his so called ex -wife... before proceeding, YOU turn yourself into a sleuth and make your inquiries with due diligence. You don't know them , at all, they may be telling the truth, or, very possibly, be married guys who don't mind bending the truth to get some fun on the side. It's not that infrequent , as you have seen. So, yes, you should have digged for the truth more diligently, and not just by asking HIM, - of course he'd say other lies to back up the original one,- but , asking to colleagues , friends and neighbours, performing a background check, consulting matrimonial records ( they are public ) , etc.
It's a whole lot of work for a shag ? yes, exactly. Maybe the best idea is simply to only get involved with blatantly single guys. And with those that are " waiting for their divorce to be final "... postpone anything to when this divorce HAS become final.
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A
reader, anonymous, writes (23 April 2014): OP with all due respect the only person you should feel let down by is yourself.
You knowingly got with a married man I don't know what you expected.
I mean if I told you I had a girlfriend but I'm planning on leaving her would you be stupid enough to get with me? No you wouldn't, because it's the wrong order of things and planning to leave to someone is not single. Well marriage is no different, "planning to leave" means he's still in a relationship so you knowingly have been having an affair with a married man.
Now you feel somehow hard done by that the guy who is cheating on his wife with you has been lying? He's cheating on his wife, OP, it's only your clitoris that made you willing to believe he'd somehow be truthful to you.
You got burned by you, you got burned by knowingly cheating with a guy you know is married.
You can't sit here and pretend that part of you didn't think it was possible he was lying, you just didn't care. You were not only willing to shit on your own doorstep by dating a colleague but you started an affair with a married man too.
Stop playing victim, OP, you're not. He didn't do anything but do what cheaters do, lie and cheat the women in their lives.
Just get rid of the fool and next time don't be a guy's mistress and expect him to be a nice guy who is trustworthy.
Never, ever get with a man who is still married no matter what the hell he says because "planning to" is bullshit, OP. Married is married, until he's officially divorced he's officially in a relationship.
There is a lot for you take away here, OP, but you must accept the responsibility for your actions here.
You honestly trusted a guy who kept you as a dirty little secret? No alarm bells rung when he made up that bullshit about his wife using it against him? Why would she use it against them if they're getting divorced? OP she couldn't use it against them if they were separated and filing for divorce, it wouldn't hold up in court at all because it's not cheating if they'd already agreed to separate.
She could only use it against him as cheating if they've never even discussed ending their marriage.
You basically believed what you wanted to believe and now you blame him for his lies when the truth is you knowingly cheated with a married man and were willing to accept any kind of vague justification he gave you just to get yours.
Get rid of him, he's a fool and learn your lessons here. You deserve better than to sell yourself so short as to get with a married cheater, OP.
Next time think with your head instead of your clit and don't let guys sucker you into bad deals based on lies and false promises.
Seriously, OP, he didn't even tell you he was married when you started sleeping together, you had to find out from someone else and for some reason that didn't ring any alarm bells in your mind.
If it was all above board he would have made it clear his situation before he got his dick wet, you honestly didn't think it was suspicious that he failed to mention he was married?
Learn your lessons, OP, you've either been very naive or you believed what you wanted to believe because you wanted him inside you.
Get rid of him, dust yourself off, take responsibility but don't be too hard on yourself and examine all the little signs that are so clearly there the whole time which you ignored. most of all though, OP, never, ever get with a still technically married man "planning to" is the shittiest excuse I've ever heard, especially given the fact that he wanted to hide you from his wife meant she has no idea that he is "planning" this if he even actually is.
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A
female
reader, Honeypie +, writes (23 April 2014):
 I'd just stop seeing him. ASAP.
Should you confront the wife? Why? What has SHE done to you?
Should you confront him? Well you can. I don't really see what you will get out of it other then more lies.
LEARN from this. NEVER get involved with a married man.
NO matter what SOB stories he tells you, no matter if he "claims" to be separated", to never sleep with his wife any more, not to love the wife any more.. wanting a divorce, the wife is really cheating on him, or she is evil...
ALL those SAD pathetic excuses are USED over and over from married people to sucker some poor Schmuck into being their "dirty little secret on the side".
And lesson #2.
Son't get intimately involved with a guy til you ACTUALLY know him and know MORE about him. (like the tiny detail that he is married, dating someone or single)
Lesson #3.
Don't crap where you eat. Which means... don't date in the work place because you can so easy make the environment awkward or hostile. You might even have to leave the job due to this.
Lesson #4.
Telling the wife. You were OK to sleep with him and "date" him til you found out he wasn't leaving her - so YOU want to tell the wife to get even with this guy (and maybe even with the wife). Your motives are not nice. What he did was disgusting. Towards his wife and you. YOU can tell the wife if you FEEL she deserves to know, but remember two things... if you tell her it can create the above-mentioned hostile work environment for YOU and she might already know. If she doesn't know, do you think he will not stoop to lying his ass off ? To paint you as some psycho? Make it as if YOU are just some crazy chick? After all YOU believed all his lies.
So make sure IF you tell the wife, that you do it for the RIGHT reasons and that you provide proof.
Lesson #5
Listen to your gut and to family & friends. Family and friends LOOK out for you.
Last but not least STOP beating yourself up. You made a mistake in trusting a guy who isn't trustworthy. And you made the mistake of not listening to friends/family. Because you WANTED this guy to be a good man (which obviously he isn't).
Chin up.
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