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Stillstings posted 1/19/2014 21:31 PM

Lots of people seem to be triggering from movies lately. Watch The Descendants. George Clooney is a BH who finds his voice and takes control in light of a very bad situation. I don't want to give any spoilers but he's a good guy. DH and I both have a hard time seeing cheating in movies due to our own bouts of infidelity before we met but agree this is a good movie.

Brandon808 posted 1/19/2014 22:04 PM

*partial spoiler alert* Be forewarned though that you will not see any depiction of the WS being remorseful at all.

2yrsblind posted 1/20/2014 04:42 AM

Hated it, the WW was a total POS.

The WW in Unfaithful (richard gere, diane lane??) Was my exWW almost to a tee. Except the emotional connection. Sex whenever and where ever they could for two weeks

Funny thing about triggering, is it doesn't really ever stop. Unfaithful came out around the time of my D-day I can't remember if I seen it first before or after, but whenever I flip though and see it, even for a second it takes me back. Its been a decade, I'm remarried and still.

[This message edited by 2yrsblind at 4:43 AM, January 20th (Monday)]

Skan posted 1/20/2014 14:27 PM

I saw The Descendants about 4 months after DDay. Jeze, did I have tons of empathy for the main character!

MindMonkey posted 1/22/2014 08:20 AM

I previously posted about this. I am a BH from Hawaii. I was out of town on business (long term) when my wife started her secret second life culminating in an affair. Really hit home.

But...Clooney and children came out on top. Lots of emotional growth and I feel better watching it. WW (movie) on the other hand didn't fare so well.

As a BH, I say go see it although you may trigger at parts. It was worth it to me watching BH stand up to OM, something I never did because OM hides from me.

I may also help an unremorseful WS see a little bit from the other side. But it will hurt.

sadone29 posted 1/22/2014 08:34 AM

I watched it a few months after DDay. I liked it and definitely wasn't glorifying infidelity like so many other movies. It was kind of cathartic experience for me.

Ascendant posted 1/22/2014 09:50 AM

WAL posted a thing about this a while back:

*100% spoliers*

I finally got around to watching The Descendants this weekend. If you're a guy and you're more than about six months out...yeah, you should watch that movie. (Might be triggery before the six month mark or so.)

You know the best metaphor in that whole film? The wife is dead. At least for all intents and purposes. She is a corpse. She has no stake in the narrative. She doesn't have a voice. How her husband heals from her infidelity is NOT HER STORY. It's not her narrative. She doesn't get a spin, a position, a take on it, or an attempt to manipulate the outcome...and in fact, the only time in the film where her BFF *tries* to give her a voice, Clooney dismisses her as full of bullshit, cliches, blameshifting and chick-pandering nonsense.

This is a beautiful movie for betrayed men. It is odd. It is quirky. It is authentic...and there is a strange, deeply abiding dignity to George Clooney's process. Even when he fails, when he's out of his mind, when he's terrified about the future, when he doesn't understand, can't understand, can't figure out where his life jumped the tracks...there is a deep-river dignity.

This is a man who's going to be okay, and whose life isn't built around nose-fucking his wife's sensitive vagina because he's got to be all up in her business lest she trip over the soap onto another herd of strange cocks in a public shower.

I realize that this entire post feels like it's unrelated to the original question.

It is not...and that doesn't mean I think you're out of line or paranoid for asking.

Your life is yours. Your story is yours. It's the only one you'll ever have.

Don't waste it trying to re-write your wife's part or give her a role she isn't capable of playing.

Don't pander to her. She has no voice except the one you give her. She can have all the voice she wants in her own story (and she's got her own story -- it's the one where you're the asshole, the villain...and now you're the rock, the redeemer, the knight in shining armor who will forgive her sins and give her a new hymen in a God's-Truth-Baby-Jesus-in-the-Manger-Holy-Bible Miracle. The story where she doesn't have to do anything but pout while you do the heavy lifting, change none of her unsafe behaviors, read what she wants, do what she wants, mouth some apologetic words and then wait for everything to go back to normal...and if they don't, then you're just a dick who can't let it go.)

Do you think your wife would spend as much time trying to dissect what's going on in your internal landscape if you decided to start watching more porn?

I wonder. I doubt it.

See, because that's the problem with so many WW's. They don't want to just be the star of their own life story, they want to be the star of yours, too. And if they think they're not, they'll make damned sure they're on your mind.

I suspect it's because in their own life stories, they feel like they're too often playing the Invisible Woman. Not that it's true, mind you. Not that it's your fault. It's what often happens to the girls who longed to be popular princess and couldn't get a role above handmaiden. Then they hope to at least get to be Bess Throckmorton, but when all else fails, it turns out that porn stars are princesses of a sort. Dumpster princesses, maybe, but you get your jewels where you can, right?

URL for original thread is here: http://www.survivinginfidelity.com/forums.asp?tid=474333

[This message edited by FacePunched at 9:50 AM, January 22nd (Wednesday)]

DixieD posted 1/22/2014 10:20 AM

Love this movie! Will watch it again and again. Finally a film that focuses on a BS emotions and the WS, like WAL said, doesn't get to spin it.

It doesn't trigger me, but it makes my husband cry. He loves it too because the WS doesn't get act like a victim.....except for reasons of the plot.