New MC, new article has pushed me a bit more to understand how my wife got to adultery. (Homework from a MC? LOVE IT!)
Yes, 17 months out and I still find myself mulling this same old question over. MC said that is fine and gave me an article to further my journey.
Lots of the same stuff in that article as I have read before.....has a connection to "After the Affair" book I read 12 months ago.
Many good points mentioned in this article, made in a way that helped me mature my wisdom from this experience.
But this singular quote is why I am posting.
---"By far, the biggest predictor of affairs, experts agree, is sheer opportunity--how people vary in access and desirability to others."
My wife had zero boundaries with her fAP. She also had VERY limited access to one on one time with a man due to her SAHM status. I say this with some confidents because she was not a member of AshleyMadison or a poster on Craigslist.
Her fAP was the first man she knew that I didn't that she actually did "stuff" with, alone, one on one. From the very first text, my wife never mentioned him to me. At first I thought she had intended to have an affair with him all along...now I see it started with a shockingly lack of a boundary, and she most likely had no intention of keeping him a secret from me or eventually fucking him. (I will never know the validity of that statement, but believe it is likely a truth.).
As I read this article I really started to get a sense of....."Well no shit we were having M issues before the A. No shit she was able to choose adultery." But all of those problems didnt add up to adultery....I was in the same marriage and I didn't choose adultery. Other marriages had similar or less issues in their M and adultery was still choosen by one of the people in those marraiges.........so how did this occur? How was it invited into our M?
Our pre-A marital issues are pretty standard, run of the mill stuff....I think that are pretty common to most marriages. I was a part of this marriage and I did not cheat.....why?
Opportunity.
It was not that I have a higher moral code, stronger moral fabric, less sinful, more perfect, less viral, less attractive, etc.....its that I was aware of the "strongest contributing predictor" to having an affair......opportunity....and I strenthened this weakness by using boundaries and techniques that kept those opportunities below the "choosing threshold".
According to the article, I was actually at higher risk than my wife for choosing adultery....because I came from a D home WITH Adultery as part of that D, travel regularly with work, team building exercises and group projects, socialize with work people......stuff my wife, as a SAHM, doesnt have.
So I really do believe that opening statment about opportunity. God help me, I have the desire in me to interact inappropriately with other women--not my wife. Since my wifes affair I HAVE gone to professional gatherings and loosened some boundaries.....I COULD have the opportunity should I dissolve my boundaries. NOTE: I dig interacting with women....a boundary on SI is no PM women members....honestly, that is a boundary I didnt have when I started my membership here. I thought "Its annonymous, I dont need boundaries where we dont really meet." Through discussions with my wife, I choose to put that boundary up....but it is an example on how easily it is to create opportunities by ignoring or justifying the need for them.
So that, right now, is why I am a BS and not a WS.....my one simple boundary I put in place as a response to one of my long-standing, known weakness's. End of story.
"Boundaries in Marriage"....GREAT BOOK!!!! I read it a couple of months ago.
I mention it because I want to make the STRONG point that the previously talked about boundary is one of a very very very few that I had in my life pre-A.
I see NOW how MY lack of boundaries has played and continues to play a role in limiting intimacy within my marriage.
While I am grateful my one boundary did what I needed it to do, I am sorry for the lack of so many other boundaries. It hurt my wife, hurt me, and had the potential to hurt my relationship with our daughters.
I am hopeful I am developing a committment to new, needed, additional boundaries that will make the framework I can build healthy, strong relationships from.
Like so much of this journey.....I wonder how I could be so ignorant, so blind, for so long.......
God help us all.
[This message edited by blakesteele at 5:38 PM, January 22nd (Wednesday)]