I don’t think that was made clear in the OP at all.
It’s not what you do, it’s how you do it.
Relationships end, divorces happen, new relationships start up…it’s part of life. But there are ways to go about it that show respect and ways that are just assholish. People may not always have a choice on how their relationships go, but they have a choice to not be assholes. Sadly, I know too many people who take the latter route, because it’s easier (like a friend’s ex, who broke up with her and left while she was in the process cooking their 7th year anniversary dinner, in order to go fuck his first girlfriend). I tend to lose respect for people who take the easy route.
Oh wow…that was amazing stuff to read, if for no other reason than it made me feel very good about myself and appreciate my wife all that much more.
Does anyone know if there was ever a resolution posted about this?
/end hijack
My mom and her second husband (my step-dad, but only 11 years older than me, so not really) made sure that when she traveled for two weeks out of every month that they had lots of phone sex. They didn’t try to ‘stay strong’- they just raised the bar on communication.
The fact that I am here to recite this is proof that the communication was family-wide. Communication will keep things healthy- what broke up my mother’s marriage to my father was his own desire to never communicate…
Um- NO, it IS about his sex life. If you disagree, please re-read the OP.
It doesn’t label him a shitty parent- it labels him a delusional individual who cares little for anyone else’s feelings- which indicates that he is likely to be a shitty parent. I wish him luck. It is hard enough to be a parent with direct support…
Very true. I would love to have that communicated by the OP in as clear and objective info as he can, now that you have given him the opening.
I haven’t met a relationship problem that wasn’t due to lack of communication. Forgetting to tell your spouse that you plan to spread your seed indiscriminately is, IMHO, a communication issue.
Is there something in the water?
SOme friends came back from a group ski trip to Tahoe tightly bonded, the most unlikely coupling I can think of, yet ymmv and what do I know? nothing!
here we have an independently wealthy middleaged adoloescent providing his version of guilt free fun to a friend’s sister who is the wife of another man. I can’t judge, but I can roll me eyes…
nm
Well, for me it’s not even that. It’s having the kids at all, since they’re very young and he says his marriage was unhappy for “several years” before he started working out of town. That means he was already unhappy when they chose to have not just one, but two children. The mind reels, frankly, and it makes it pretty goddamn hard for me to condemn the person who suggested a vasectomy–if someone is that bad a judge of either appropriate timing to procreate or effective use of birth control, just taking the option off the table entirely isn’t really such a bad idea.
As for whether the OP should have worked harder to save his marriage, I don’t have a dog in that fight. The only think I’ll say on that subject is the same thing I said about my aunt and uncle splitting up under similar circumstances: She deserves a hell of a lot more than to be someone’s “better than nothing” option, so splitting up in even the shitty, hurtful way it went down is ultimately in her best interests. Not that it makes the shitty, hurtful way it went down even the tiniest bit more acceptable.
Whatever someone owes to his or her own children, it certainly isn’t fidelity to their other parent. That’s between the parents. I don’t agree that people who have children without being certain that they will never split up with their spouses are somehow morally unfit to be parents. Whatever children are owed, one of those things is not certainty about their parents’ future as a couple.
And all this handwringing simply flies in the face of the basic reality that whatever people’s failures might be in their first marriages, that a ton of people have successful second marriages, with children issuing from both. And even in cases in which people are serially unable to maintain long-term relationships, the vast majority of kids from such unions are just fucking fine.
And I suspect that if infidelity is looked at statistically that you will find little correlation between incidences of infidelity and other “moral” failings. The correlation, I suspect, will be between incidences of infidelity and opportunity. So those who are examining their partners for moral virtues will be far less successful in avoiding getting cheated on than those who choose partners based on the likelihood that other people will not find them attractive. The more attractive, powerful, wealthy, and resourceful your partner is, the more likely you’re going to get cheated on, and that’s the fact. Blaming their lack of character or morals is a red herring.
I’m not sure you could have fit any additional speculation pulled straight out of your butt into this post even if you tried!
You’re doing a lot of declaring of facts that look suspiciously like your opinion.
A good predictor of future behavior is past behavior. You can certainly feel comfortable that a known cheater you hook up with won’t cheat on you, but let’s not kid ourselves that for all kinds of behaviors you can tell a person’s morality and character based on their past choices.
I knew a woman who chose her boyfriend based on this reasoning. He wasn’t particularly attractive, not wealthy and quite a timid guy.
He wound up cheating on her. YMMV
It’s not possible to be completely sure of the future, and I don’t believe that parents must stay together while obviously unhappy simply for the sake of the children.
I do believe that a parent does have a responsibility for making a greater effort than what a person who doesn’t have children, especially if it’s just a matter of being bored rather than, say, abuse.
I wrote an earlier post about faith and trust when each of us has been on extended absence from the other, which has been borne out through 25 years of marriage. What I didn’t mention was that I’d been married for 12 years prior to another wife. Had nothing to do with infidelity. She just didn’t want to be saddled with a husband and, especially, two kids which I ended up getting. My current wife had also been married previously, but obviously it didn’t work out.
It’d be easy to assume that a second marriage for either of us was likely to end in failure, but as I said, after 25 years neither of us wants to be separated, let alone divorced. And sure as hell not for anyone else.
No, the more attractive, powerful, wealthy and resourceful my partner is, the more likely he’s going to get hit on. What he does with that is, indeed reflects on both his character and his morals.
He might have found her boring. But there’s no indication the children felt that way.
The kids are still young. Wait until they’re teens. 
Bingo. As for the emphasis on The Girl being 29, I just find it darkly humorous that The Girl(s) are never 9 years older, say, 43.
I don’t see their ages as being unequal or even all that relevant–it’s not that big a gap. I do wonder what happens when she’s 36 and he’s 43.
Second marriages often work out for the best; let us hope this one does (if they get married–there’s an awful lot going on very quickly here).
This seems a little contradictory, no? I think it’s pretty evident how much you’re projecting in this thread. Not sure saying it over and over again is adding to your point, to be honest.
That age gap fits about 75% of all the couples I know.
What saying it over and over again? I’ve posted my explanation about my reference to her age once. 
How is that contradictory? At 29, she’s a fully fledged adult–she knows she was cheating on her “husband” with a married man. She’s not that much younger than the OP, as Nzinga has pointed out. I never thought The Girl was too young for the OP and never said so.
I do find it amusing that men like the OP are[del] almost[/del] never attracted to women 9 years older than they are: make “the girl” 43 and I bet his infatuation would wither away.
I’m not projecting much of anything in this thread. I’m a child of divorce and now, after 23 years of marriage, I’m separated. But we didn’t separate because my husband found a younger, unencumbered model (nor did I). My parents didn’t divorce due to any kind of extramarital shenanigans, either.
Why is it amusing? Is it equally amusing from the point of view od the younger women? After all, older men wouldn’t be able to carry on in this way inkeas younger women were amenable as well. I take it that you understand that human males have evolved to prefer younger females as a result of reproductive advantage, right?