Did you initiate a breakup with someone you loved?

Oh good fucking christ, you reap what you sow. A relationship built on lies and deceit is not going to end well for anyone, and the suffering the parties bring on themselves, while very real and painful, is deserved.

To answer your question, I broke up with someone I loved because he was a lying, deceitful person. It hurt like hell, but I was not torn at all. I did what I had to do and was much better for it.

Same as @nikipedia
I broke it off with someone I loved only to find deceit from a pathological liar.
Hurt like hell for a very long time.
In your case, they need to seperate and come to closure without the thought that someone is waiting there in the wings. Making decisions on your current situation because you have someone waiting is so f’ing wrong for many reasons.
They are sucking the emotions and diverting their feelings. So many people do this and find themselves “stuck”
They each need therapy on how to no fuck up or fuck over people.
End it.

Most every time I had a break up, yes.

You don’t know a governor by any chance, do you? :)

I wish people would just stop lying. The affair hurts not because of the “affair” but because of the lie.

And frankly, with the revelations of the past weeks….it’s exhausting to even contemplate.

Live a decent life. Don’t sneak around lying to your spouse and thinking that something miraculous will happen (like somehow your husband will suddenly think it’s super cool that you are scr*wing some other man). Either divorce your husband, or get some professional help. It’s VERY simple and straightforward. You (or whomever this fictional person is) needs to cut all the cr*p and stop wishing for this erotic fantasy to somehow be OK with everyone. Try thinking about someone else besides yourself and think about your children and your husband for a change. Would you want some idiot marrying one of your children, letting them think their relationship was monogamous when in reality, they were out scr*wing around with other people? Would that be OK with you, if one of your children were being hurt in this manner? How would you like it, if you found out that your husband, who claims that he doesn’t want an open marriage, were found out to be having an affair with someone else? Would that be fun and wonderful for you? What if your husband said he has been having an affair and he would “die” if he had to give her up? Wouldn’t you think that you were being played? Most people in that situation would just kick the cheating spouse to the curb and get on with their lives. Maybe you should offer your husband that chance (or the fictional heroine of this story should).

Two cheaters are not a “couple”. The part of the couple that each is part of, and that should be the focus of their attention, is their marriages. If you don’t want to be married, end it, and let your spouse move on. Often, one of the people who is cheating on their spouse doesn’t want to be with the person they’re cheating with.

Go to marriage counseling with your spouse, and either work out your relationship problems or move on alone. If the other person is coping just fine without talking to you, they really do love their spouse and their families more than they love you.

Your characters can’t possibly ever be able to honestly know where they stand with each other because everything about them together is a betrayal of someone else. Their entire “relationship” has been an interaction with woven together knowing each other’s capability and level of adeptness for lying, deceiving/acting and cheating. Having an affair is one thing but I can’t imagine those two ever being able to have a trusting relationship once it’s just they two.

Did I ever initiate a breakup? Sure, a few times but nothing along the lines of what you come up with. Gah.