# Met OM and now I want to divorce my wife, is this normal?



## John-Smith (Aug 26, 2010)

Thank you for providing this website. I wish I had found it months earlier. I had no idea infidelity followed a standard script. Tried without success on the search engine to see if I could find an answer to my question.

Very brief history. Together 11 years, married 8 years, 2 kids under 8. Found out about wife's 7 month PA and EA Feb 14, 2010. At the time knew I had a choice to either work on my marriage or blindly follow my emotions and end it. Had her break off affair, got counselling, etc. Felt lucky I had a second chance. Things proceeding normally until I met the OM, about 1 month ago. 

The OM was nothing like I expected, he was to put it simply, pathetic. He was ugly, he was scrawny....pathetic. I'm a big believer in that perceptions are the ground under our feet. As soon as I saw this guy, I thought 'Wow, this is what all the pain and suffering has been about?'

Right there my wife went from being my one in a million to just some women. She went from being the mother of my children to just some woman I had kids with. 

I literally felt sick! I felt like I had made the worst decision of my life. I felt stupid and angry that I hadn't divorced her in February. I felt like a fool for putting all that work into our relationship. I'm ashamed to say this but when I saw her after that she just looked 'ordinary' to me. 

I know when emotions are high, it's best not to act. I even discussed how I felt about this with my SO. I've tried changing how I view the situation, how I feel about it, etc. I thought this storm would pass in me. It hasn't, it's gotten worse...Its to the point where my kids are being affected. 

I haven't talked to our marriage counsellor about this yet, too embarassed, seems like it's too soon since it happened. I feel like there's something in me that's causing this reaction, but it's still real and it hurts and it's to the point where I just want this pain to end...

Is this sort of thing normal? Is this part of the script? I feel much worse today then I did 6 months ago. Then divorce wasn't even an option. Today, I'm just looking for a reason to stay...


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## unbelievable (Aug 20, 2010)

You were being successful in saving your marriage but now you are having second thoughts because this guy looks like a dweeb? When people are hurting they can engage in some pretty harsh self-loathing activities. The fact that this guy looks like a pitiful loser might give you some indication of how low your wife had to feel about herself before she strayed from you.


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## iamnottheonlyone (May 9, 2010)

Now you have your confidence back. Unfortunately it has jacked up your ego. What makes you so special? Yeah, this is normal. Now you are the driver. It can swing back the other way very quickly. Just like unbelievable said, how low was your wife feeling? She is just a woman, but she is yours. Go give her a huge hug. Stare in her eyes. Tell her you love her the most in the world. Feel the love.


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## dblkman (Jul 14, 2010)

would it have made you feel better if the guy was a "fabio" duplicate? heck no!! If anything that would have made you feel even worse. It sounds like your wife (once caught of course) has repented and your marriage has a 2nd chance use this opportunity to not put salt in the wound but allow the wound to heal.


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## michzz (Jun 6, 2008)

The OM rarely measures up to the husband.

It's an indication of just how confused the wife is. Willing to toss aside their morals for some jerk?

A jerk willing to intrude on a marriage.

What turns you off is feeling offended at how trivial a rival the OM is. And what that means about how she feels about you. you've stuffed it for months. It's coming out now.


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## Initfortheduration (Dec 12, 2008)

Most of the time they affair down. Either the AP is a serial cheater, old, fat, ugly. A lot of the time they choose someone who will in other circumstances never have a chance with them. You had your wife on a pedestal. Well the pedestal broke and now you have to deal with who she really is. Hang in there if you can. See if your feelings change.


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## notreadytoquit (Jan 11, 2010)

I am in a similar situation too. I just recently got a better photo of the OW that my husband is having an affair with except in my case when I caught him he filed for divorce(not even willing to try to save the marriage). She is about 13 years older than me and about 6 years older than my husband. She was already in a process of divorcing her husband(now her divorce is final), has two older kids, and this is her second marriage(don't know what happened to husband n.1 ). I am no Victoria Secret model(as far as looks) but this woman is just ugly. When I saw the photo of her, I too felt like you did about my husband. But at least if she was younger and prettier I could have said: Yes I am jelous or something like that. As one of my friends told me: women like her probably know how to make insecure guys feel better about themselves.


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## BigBadWolf (Nov 30, 2009)

You probably mustered in your mind this image of the OM as something formidable, and have based your battle against this imagined adversary.

Now you are seeing the reality, yes he's just a man and in most ways not the compare to you.

And yes it is in many ways also affecting how you perceive yourself, next to this affair man, not to have won some mighty battle against an attractive and successful man, but the reality is, what you are figthing the whole time is only between you and your woman all along.

I will not judge your feelings, for I know they are most valid (since you are indeed feeling them, no?).

I will say the solution, and this is maybe even seeming to take a few steps backwards, but needs to be done non the less, is the absolutely release to your woman these thoughts exactly.

You must do this to release the resentment, otherwise it will be a roadblock to future happiness, and with this resentment you will indeed see your woman diminished, with resentment, as just some other woman and nothing special, but also I think even worse, not just apathy but hatred.

If this is any consolitation, no matter what the affair man was looking like you would feel these same way, even brad pitt meeting arnold swarzeneger, regardless the affair man would still be just a man, seeing through your emotionally embattled eyes, and to your woman these same emotions would still be needing to be sorted and put to rest.

I wish you well.


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## greeneyeddolphin (May 31, 2010)

I really don't get why this changes your view of your wife. She cheated on you with another man...why does it really matter what he looks like? For her to have done that, she had to be pretty miserable in the marriage, and I imagine, if she'd reached a point where she felt cheating was an option, she simply jumped at the first opportunity she found. 

Whether the man she cheated with was a dorky looking goofball or a Brad Pitt doppelganger really doesn't matter. You and he were not competing for the fair maiden's hand. You were working together with your wife to save your marriage. 

Leave him out of your marriage. This is between you and your wife. He is not the problem; he was a symptom of the problem. That symptom is gone now, and you and your wife were working on resolving the problem. Continue that work, and don't worry about him.


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## nice777guy (Nov 23, 2009)

Fascinating topic. I totally get it.

I've often said if my wife left me for Brad Pitt, I'd go around bragging about it - as if I was in the same market for women as Brad Pitt was!!!

But to risk our marriage for "Bubba" or some ugly creep - yes - I think it shows what kind of place she has been in emotionally.

I think its hilarious and sad that my wife's "secret" myspace page said she was divorced (NOT) and she was just looking for a good, honest man.


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## Sadara (Jul 27, 2010)

I haven't been terribly concerned over the looks of the OW, a little happy about it but not concerned. I actually met her at my families 4th of July BBQ. Because my husband was such a royal jack a$$ that he actually invited her to the family BBQ. She dressed in hooker pumps, tight jeans (it was blazing hot out), a push up bra that showed half her boobs, she looked like a hooker. Seriously. I put myself together a LOT better than that. I actually felt good that the best he could was her, someone with low morals. She doesn't even have a pretty face to make up for looking like a hooker. She has no clue how to style curly hair. There's a lot of things that I would think would be a turn off. My husband actually accused me of being jealous of her. Jealous I was not in any way. I was pissed because my husband was having an inappropriate relationship. Now that the affair has ended and we are in counseling, he is finally starting to understand I could never be jealous of her. I simply have a lot more respect for myself than that.


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## Deejo (May 20, 2008)

Don't look too deep. Certainly don't try to make rational sense of it.

If your spouse felt emotionally at risk, under appreciated, under valued or somehow threatened by you and your behavior (I'm not talking physically threatened) - then the partner she chooses is going to be the antithesis of those things. 

Someone that may feel they don't deserve her, so they put her on a pedestal. Someone that they know with certainty will give them what they need - and to which they feel they have a sense of control over. The contrast being they often feel that they have no control over what happens in the relationship with their husband.

They trade down for assured success. My stbx did the exact same thing. Plenty of other examples on the site of this behavior as well.

If you want your marriage, you need to adopt the same position you had before you met him. WHO he is, is meaningless. WHAT needs he met for your wife are the key to recovering, if recovering remains your goal.

The affair isn't the cause of the problems in your marriage. The affair was the result of the problems in your marriage.

Like Hunt said, you need to be prepared to evaluate and take ownership of your contribution to those problems if reconciliation and a stronger marriage is what you want.


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## josh1081 (Jul 10, 2009)

I agree with Hunt whole heartedly. It had nothing to do with looks but how he made her feel. Every one of my wife's affairs was with someone who was the polar opposite of me, at the time. Looks had nothing to do with it because trust me, they were what I deemed goofy....except the one guy, he had model like features, but that didn't bother me because I could crush every one of them :')
I completely get the whole one in a million feeling is gone though. Everything about my relationship now feels so plain and I guess normal and it's hard to get that shine back or that special twinkle in your eye. I don't envy that position at all, and it doesn't matter how you got there so much as you are there and it sucks. So I wish you the best in getting over that.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## notreadytoquit (Jan 11, 2010)

Deejo said:


> The affair isn't the cause of the problems in your marriage. The affair was the result of the problems in your marriage.
> 
> Like Hunt said, you need to be prepared to evaluate and take ownership of your contribution to those problems if reconciliation and a stronger marriage is what you want.


I completely agree with this but one more question. I am all about taking responsibilities for whatever might have contributed to an affair whether you are the cheating spouse or the betrayed spouse.

How is a spouse supposed to go about this way if the cheating spouse:

-is not even willing to discuss the true reasons behind the affair
-refuses counselling
-goes ahead and files for divorce once busted with the OP
-does not even admit that the affair is taking place or took place at all, no remorse nothing.

All this considering that the cheating spouse's behaviour came over night and there were no obvious signs of trouble in a marriage.


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## John-Smith (Aug 26, 2010)

Thank you very much to everyone who responded. Your insights were greatly appreciated.

(Mods, could you end thread?)


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## notreadytoquit (Jan 11, 2010)

Hunt Brown said:


> @ notready... the key to taking responsibility and for going about the hard work of change and improvement is letting go... completely letting go of any expectation of what your wife should do or how she should feel.
> 
> you do your work. you clean up your side of the street. you make yourself the better man. one of the big steps is letting go of the blame. you probably have a pretty good moral precipice to stand on, no dobut she did you wrong, but as long as you stand there, pointing the finger, demanding explanations and apportioning blame, she isn't going to come to the table. she isn't going to feel safe. she isn't going to want to be honest with you. part of it is her guilt, part of it is just a natural defensive reaction to being blamed. we all do it.
> 
> ...


Sorry I should have been clear that I am the wife and it was my husband that cheated. When I discovered the cheating I was not pointing any fingers at all. Of course I was hurt beyond belief. In fact instead of rushing to a lawyer to file for divorce I gave him the opportunity to explain himself and I even suggested separation instead of divorce. I took 2 weeks went to see my family in Canada which gave me opportunity to clear my head from the initial shock and gave him the opportunity to do the same. All I wanted to do at that point is sit down and talk to him in a civil way to find out what went wrong. Now this same husband a month before the affair came to light gave me some speech that he has not been happy for 3 years, blah, blah basically what he said never added up to his behaviour of a happy man in the past 3 years. I even asked at that time if there was another person which he said no(without looking me in the eyes). That's when I pursued to find out more and discovered the OW.

Sure I want to let go of the blame(i am trying to do it every single day) and sure I want to make myself better person but don't you think it would be helpful to know where I screwed up so I know where to focus my attention?


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## OhGeesh (Jan 5, 2010)

John Smith said:


> Thank you for providing this website. I wish I had found it months earlier. I had no idea infidelity followed a standard script. Tried without success on the search engine to see if I could find an answer to my question.
> 
> Very brief history. Together 11 years, married 8 years, 2 kids under 8. Found out about wife's 7 month PA and EA Feb 14, 2010. At the time knew I had a choice to either work on my marriage or blindly follow my emotions and end it. Had her break off affair, got counselling, etc. Felt lucky I had a second chance. Things proceeding normally until I met the OM, about 1 month ago.
> 
> ...


Sounds like you had some pretty high expectations of your wife almost had her on a pedastal? I know I have mine up there she sits all hot, sexy, and beautiful. For me I could understand how if she had a affair and the OM was to me "lesser of a man" that would make me look at her different. I would expect the OM to be a "better by a worldy standard" suave, $$$, studly, built, good looking, successful! If he turned not be that I can see how that would make me go hmmmmmm is my wife that great or is she just "another woman".

Only you can answer........I know if my wife were to have a affair it would be with some barely making it musician/artist because that's what she gravitates too by nature.

Good luck! Only you can make the call if the marriage is worth saving. I don't know how you fix it except to remember why you love her, remember she is the mother of your children, and try to move forward having fun together and rebuilding the family.


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## moeman (Aug 12, 2010)

We're in the same boat. See my posting, "does the status of the other guy matter." I also thought that if this bozo was a man of status (or an actor as others have said) I would not have been hurt as much. As a suggestion from a member on this forum I got the book Five languages of love by Chapman. I realized that my wife is of service oriented but I am verbal confirmation type. I had been giving her verbal confirmation but when she asked me to do something it sounded as nagging to me. Now the guy that she liked was their male maid. The book has a point. You may also benefit from it. Check it out.

M.


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