When you give up everything for another person?

Question

When a person leaves a spouse, children, everything they built with the spouse, their financial security, their self-respect, their friends, etc. because they decide they are no longer happy with their marriage - and they chose to be with the person they had an affair with - will they find the happiness they were looking for? Do they ever look back at their married life (one with no abuse - but one in which things got boring) and wish they would have done things differently? Worked a little harder? I am just trying to understand how a person who walks away from everyone and everything they know - including children - come to terms with what they have done or how they can look at their new life and say - okay now I am happy. What makes them happy??

Answer 1

Obviously the person is seeking happiness in something that will never fulfill them. A spouse is not given to fill every need and desire. Marriage isn't about being selfish. It's about being selfless and loving someone faithfully.

If someone has an affair because it's exciting and then ends up with that person... they will eventually get bored with that person and end up leaving them too... hence, a life of unfullfillment.

Happiness is within oneself somewhere. Leaving a life, a marriage, children, everything... will be regretted later.

If the marriage is boring, communicate! Care enough about the person to make it more exciting. Stop looking inward at your own desires, and look at the desires of the kids and the spouse.

That's where you'll find happiness.

Answer 2

The bridge out of the marriage is rarely the one that person ends up with.... the marriage was troubled, even if the other person didn't know it, before that partner left.

Do they every come back? Sometimes. Does it ever really work? Usually not.... the resentment that each holds for the other remains, and grinds on and on, and even in therapy, it is more than two years for it to heal....if it ever does, and with no guarantees even if both wish to save it. ..... it's just extremely difficult to unscramble an egg, and if one leaves for another, the egg got scrambled.

Evolutionarily, we were never meant to last in marriages of 20 or 30 years.... until just recently, people didn't live much past 35 or 40. It has been only in the last 300 years, that we actually live and stay healthy long past 40.

I realize this is no comfort, but it is a reality check.

Answer 3

I assume you are on the receiving end of this lousy situation and my heart goes out to you. People reap what they sow - if he treated you badly (having an affair qualifies) he will get bad treatment in the future...I've seen it happen over and over. Cheaters tend to get cheated on.

Will he look back and wonder if he could have done things differently? Maybe, probably, I don't know. Some people are so self-centered and uncaring that it just doesn't register that they have been hurtful and are responsible for their actions. I don't understand how that can be but have seen it too many times. Yes they can truly be happy with their present lives - seen that too.

The bottom line is you need to hurt, grieve, get mad, get determined to move forward and find a place in life where you are content and not being hurt. It's not impossible to do...it just takes some time.

This might sound like a cliche, but go talk to a counselor - an uninvolved objective third party. A good counselor will not judge - they will listen empathetically and give you some tools to use to help you move forward and start feeling better.

Please remember that in general most people are good - don't let this bad apple sour you on the rest of the folks out there.

Feel better.

Answer 4

For one thing, most people when they Divorce a spouse , they leave that spouse NOT their children. If the children are grown in time they will come to the realization that their Dad or Mom are happier with their NEW found life instead of the hum drum life they had with that ex-spouse of how many years? What MOST children don't know is theres two sides to every coin. Maybe their Mom had an affair when their parents were together and her kids don't know about it so therefore her ex-husband and his love of his life which you use to call the " HO " have to keep it a secret from their kids because it would devastate them if they knew the truth instead of thinking Daddy left Mother for another woman. Maybe the ex-wife should have kept her boyfriend. ? Maybe its time for the Mother to let her children know the WHOLE TRUTH about the situation???? Maybe she wants to appear to be the abandoned one and get sympathy???? Sorry, but you ask. Have a good life. Yes, he's very happy but his girlfriend has hard time with the fact that she DID NOT break up his marriage. It was broken BEFORE she came along. His family think she did which is not right ! Thanks to the ex- wife of 36 years.

Answer 5

I don't know if people like this are ever really happy with themselves or anyone else. People who are willing to walk away from their marriage and family because they got bored are looking for something they'll never find in my opinion. Eventually the newness wears off of every relationship so you have to have more than just excitement to make a relationship work. It has to be much deeper than that.

Answer 6

l don't know what makes them happy. l personally could never have an affair in the first place. Cheating is just so very wrong. Being bored or unhappy is no excuse to cheat, you should leave if things are so bad. Also l could never leave my children for any reason. l could never come to terms with that and it would certainly not make me happy. Leaving my children, my family and all my friends would make me terribly sad. l honestly could never come to terms with any of that.

Answer 7

I know one thing: you are best suited to finding a good mate when you are single. In order to leave one person for another, a lot of deception is required. Your actions, emotions and words are all out-of-synch, and you are not an integrated person any longer (e.g. you have no integrity). This leads to a host of other character flaws.

So... who's gonna be attracted to somebody with all these character flaws? Probably not a person of good character, or a person that is not confident, or a person who is needy and can't hack being alone. And none of those kinds of people make good life partners either.

So... it's like Karma in operation: you can't leave one person to be happy with somebody else 99.9999% of the time. Now if you leave somebody, spend a little time being single and then meet somebody, that changes my analysis.

Answer 8

You know what is really sad about people who cheat on their spouse is that they are looking for that 'new rush' you get when you meet someone new. It isn't neccessarily that they fell out of love with their spouse, it is just that they want to relive the 'new' part of relationships..the infatuation stage. i honestly can not say if most people are happy with their new life, spouse, etc. Sometimes, people don't really know what makes them happy, so instead of working on improving their current situation, they would rather jump up and start fresh.

Answer 9

My divorce lawyer once told me there are some questions that you will never have the answer for. I think this is one of those questions. I'm sorry. Somehow, within time you will dwell less on those questions and turn inward to try to find what pleases you now, learn to love and appreciate yourself and eventually find someone new. It's ok to be mad, upset and ask the questions now, it's like a death...it's the death of a marriage, so you go through the 5 stages of grief and learn to let it go. Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. Work through it because you and your kids deserve better. Let it go. Good luck to you.

Answer 10

the spouse who wanted to keep the marriage did nothing wrong. it is clearly the other spouse who wanted to give up and leaves fault. they didn't want to try to make the marriage work, instead used the excuse of being bored. that person will never be happy because they will always want to seek for more.