a loser, just right place at the right time
It's really hard for someone who has not been a wayward spouse to wrap their mind around the thinking that goes into cheating. My wife actually said she doesn't think she was really thinking when this happened. Just doing things.
There is a good reason to believe that that is true, perhaps not just in her case, more "reacting" but actually thinking in a rational way. They may be lying, sneaking, hiding, etc., but something else is going on in their brains.
Something that doesn't make sense to someone who doesn't do this.
Her behavior at the time was very destructive, family and self-destructive, etc. Who wants to get involved with someone like that?
Somebody else, with the same type of destructive behavior, and as the poster mentioned, a loser. Put two losers into the same place at the same time, who knows what you'll get. My wife was no better than the affair partner. He was no better than her. They were both married, both had children, both floundering in life, both wanting to run away from reality.
His wife, I never met her, went to work every day, primary breadwinner in the household, same on this end. We did not have time for a fantasy life on the side.
I don't usually like to use the term "loser" to describe people, because sometimes people are "lost" and can't figure out their way out of the forest of life.
In my wife's case, the chaos that she grew up in, contributed to that. She actually did not know how to have a real relationship. She wanted to, but she just did not know how to do it. There were four girls in the family, no boys, every single one of them cheated on their spouses. Most of them cheated on their spouses multiple times. All of them had cheated in previous relationships prior to being married as well. My wife and I are the only couple who have been able to maintain our relationship. We have now been married over 30 years, it has not been easy. For the others, it was impossible.
How does it have to do with the term? "loser"? Well, I grew up on the wrong side of the fence, too much work, too little money, by age 25 years I was completely broke financially. I did not have a car, I had never had a car, nor a house. But I did have a college degree at that point, and I did have dreams. The family that I grew up in encouraged that. Many people have probably looked at me and thought "loser", but it's a great lottery, random birth, I came out way ahead of most.
By the time my wife was 25, she had already been married at 19 years of age, divorced, worked her way to college, similar to me, except she didn't have any idea how to live a stable personal life. The lack of that caused everything to be more difficult. She finally graduated from college when she was 27. But she had no clue how to have a stable personal life.