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Help me see this from the wayward side...

I feel second best. I feel like she's settling for me because she just can't be the "evil woman" who destroyed her family. I feel she'd rather be with him and I'm sitting here watching her trying to forget OM. She says I'm not second best yet this guy was so amazing she was OK lying to me for a year to be with him. She was willing to gamble me away for a mere chance with him. She says three hours could go by like 5 min... never said that about me. She used her pet name for me with him (seriously, WTF?). She was sooo "head over heels for him".

Seriously, sometimes I feel like I've stood in her way of real happiness..... come on, its kinda the definition of second best. You're not special enough to this person for them to do something as simple as not fuck someone else? To not seek out the attention of another person?

Tell me how we're NOT second best, second choice... whatever. It seems to me that we BSs are literally second choice. If we were truly that special to you this wouldn't have happened. I bet you wouldn't take any chances that would possibly lead to you losing your diamond rings or your cool sports cars or whatever it is that's special to you. Why is it so easy to throw us to the side and do something like this. In my mind it is because we just aren't that special to you. At least not special enough.

dude i am sitting here feeling this way. i hope someone provides some perspective.

I think about this all the time

One of my WH's emails to OW said this : "I want you, I want you more, but I have to do this right." That was 2 months before dday. He confessed his love to her 2 days before I found out. In his breakup email to her, he wrote that he felt obligated to give his marriage a chance because everything I have gone through (10 years of marriage at the time, 5 deployments, one being almost a year long, and three being to Iraq.....never once did I get close to straying....).

Hearing that I am an obligation (which he denies, says that he just didn't want to get her mad and have her keep calling him) has stuck with me.

I feel second best, the silver medal....the consolation prize.

Same here.

JGB,

What is she doing to fix herself?

It always about the waywards brokenness, their inability to cope with whatever hole, poor coping mechanisms or poor processes that are going on inside of them. It is not about the spouse, not about the M. It is not about the spouse being second best.

It was never that for me, and I know that was not the case for my H either as we are madhatters. I know it was about his brokenness.

I hope ever BS can someday get to a point where they truly understand it was not about them.

There is a thread in our I Can Relate forum specifically set up for BS's to ask questions for WS's. I'm just suggesting it because a lot of our awesome FWS's check it in order to help with perspective questions.

http://www.survivinginfidelity.com/forums.asp?tid=470108

Hope this helps.

Good question...

I don't feel special anymore. And since dday, I have become more aware of who my WH is...someone I didn't know existed.

I guess I had him on a pedestal.

At any rate, I am now fully aware that he finds so many women attractive. I used to think he had a 'type'. I've come to find out that no, he doesn't have a type. Makes me feel like he would 'tap' just about anything with a spot to do so. KWIM?

I just don't feel special or the most beautiful thing to him. Second best as you put it...and, frankly, I think this makes me ripe for the picking.

Don't like to say it, but it is the truth.

I know my BH felt like this. That if given the choice, I would have picked OM.

It was a bullshit fantasy based on lies and mutual mental mastabation.

There was no real life. No shared experience. No trust. No honesty. No depth.

I can buy my own diamonds and sports car. I chose my BH. I am so fortunate he chose me, despite my horrible actions.

He was never second best. I lost sight of our love and what he meant to me. I pushed it down. I am forever sorry for that.

He may not ever believe 100 percent. But I know. He is simply the best.

What TG said applies to me as well.

It was about me. In reality my BH was never second to the AP, however during the A I put him, my kids and my M second to my self. I was self-destructive, emotionally immature, and driven by a desperate need to escape being with myself.

I bet you wouldn't take any chances that would possibly lead to you losing your diamond rings or your cool sports cars or whatever it is that's special to you.

Makes me feel like he would 'tap' just about anything with a spot to do so. KWIM?

Are you guys really asking or just venting?

I feel like the second choice too. Every time he was with her he could have been with me, I was sitting at home waiting for him. He didn't come around to R until she wanted nothing more to do with him. Now I feel like his first choice but I wonder if she showed up at our door would I still be his choice? He says I would but he lies. I think I would be his first choice because he has changed so much but I will never again be 100% sure and that's one of the many consequences of his choices that I have to live with. It sucks.

We become second best because of the sheer, numbing familiarity of marriage. When it become monotonous; kids get on your nerves, petty resentments, tired of routine sex and complacency, then along comes the walking, talking fantasy and your BS has little chance to compete on a level playing field.

The AP represents unfulfilled dreams and aspirations; an escape to a romantic alternative to everyday living. We never stood a chance.

I personally don't feel second best; it was never a valid comparison between me and the OW. My FWH is damn lucky to have been almost totally forgiven and especially fortunate to have me as a wife. If he dabbles in extramarital fantasies ever again, there will be no reconciliation on the table.

What I did was purely selfish and was never about my SO. I adore him and the fact that he gave me another chance was priceless. There was no comparing him to OM because OM would come nowhere near the amazing man my SO was. At the moment of the actual A it was completely about my depression, my issues and my horrible coping mechanisms. See the me me me above it was selfish and never about the amazing man that I shared my life with. He was not and will never be second best.

Do you really believe if she was that same selfish person, and she wanted to be with him, she wouldn't be?

We were all second choice. But not the the AP - to our spouses, and their demons.

You are trying to apply logic and rationality to a situation that bears none. It can't be done. The best I can do, is focus on the words of my IC; if he wanted to be with her, he would be. Certainly a wayward suffering from chronic cranial-rectal inversion isn't going to choose anyone but themself.

The bigger choice, is why do you want to stay with her.

No I am asking... ( I said the tapping anything comment) and the truth is that this is what I FEEL LIKE because of his actions.

I do not feel special. I feel replaceable, disposable...by any number of women.

And I don't know how to explain it because certainly, I knew my WH husband found other people attractive before. We all do. The difference is that I did not think he would ACT on it, ever.

I do feel second best. I feel that if he was single or not married or we did not have kids he would have tried with her, stayed with her... Doesn't make me feel like first choice. Sorry.

And it is getting in the way.

Well, I don't have diamond rings or flash sports car, in fact, I have a bicycle.

I threw myself away.

Might as well have just thrown myself in with the garbage and recycling. Painful to realise how like trash I felt. Always had.

Taken a long time to begin to find me again. It's without end really. In saying that though, the outcome for the BS is still the same, immense pain, hurt and betrayal.

I remember a friend saying when she went to a therapist who said that a truly healthy response from the BS is if they walked in on their WS in bed with someone and their first response was to say "OMG! What are you doing to yourself"?

Starting to understand now what that means. Hard place to get to though, for both WW and BS.

edited for typo

[This message edited by ophelia24 at 10:01 PM, May 26th (Sunday)]

I think about this all the time

I do feel second best. I feel that if ....we did not have kids he would have tried with her, stayed with her... Doesn't make me feel like first choice.

same here

Have your spouses said that they wanted to stay with the AP? Or that they preferred them? What are the actions that make you believe they would have preferred the AP?

The A wasn't about how great the OP was. It was about how messed up I was. I know it's hard to fathom, but it's true that my BH wasn't in second place to the OM. He was in second place to my selfishness. There wasn't anything about the OM that was so amazing. He just told me what I wanted to hear when I was in such a broken place that I put that need for validation ahead of everything else.

When I chose R, it was not because I saw my H as second best. It's because I finally figured out that I had to stop hiding, put to rest my fear of abandonment and put him and our marriage first over all of those things.