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Seems like it's very easy for us betrayed spouses, a choice is ownership, a mistake is an excuse. Mistake is when you lock your keys in the car, drop the dinner plate, spill milk. Accidently tear your shirt, or hit the neighbor kid with a football when you're trying to throw it to your own kid. Those are mistakes. Choices are, buying a car, then not liking it. Not a mistake, a choice. Should have shopped better. Buying a house, then finding out the mortgage is too high. Guess peanut butter and jelly are your best option there, huh? Mistake? No. Your fault you didn't do the math.

Yet I hear a lot of people call cheating a mistake. I want some clarity on this. I've had 15 months to heal, and when I hear mistake, I see all the other things that make me scratch my head.

Would you rather hear:

"Tom made a mistake. He's depressed. His marriage didn't give him what he needed."

Or:

"Tom made a choice. He's addressing his issues. He knows that marriages can always be better, but he owns cheating 100%"

When I hear waywards say something similar to the 2nd, I hear ownership. When I hear the 1st, I hear more excuses.

What's your thoughts on this?

this might be a long thread!

Yep, it's a choice, for the reasons you explained.

Even if the WS was pursued, still a choice to engage.

I bet in many marriage both spouses werent getting what they needed yet the BS didn't cheat.

Yes my ex once said he made a mistake.

His bad choices that lasted for well over a year were not just one mistake.

Just like he said he never meant the A to happen.

Blah blah blah fucking blah....

A mistake is dropping your coffee mug. You didn't mean to do that.

Affairs are a CHOICE. Every single time you tell the BS that you're "working late", or skip little Timmy's game to go screw OW, you made a CHOICE, not a mistake.

You MEANT to lie, mislead, and deceive - ie you made a choice.

[This message edited by GabyBaby at 3:13 PM, January 28th (Tuesday)]

Oh, my WH only made a "mistake." If I hear that one more time I think I might punch him in the throat. It was a $&!@$!& choice!!!!!!!

TOTAL CHOICE!!!! new exactly WTF he was doing or he would not of deleted all his texts! ASSH***!

I told him a mistake is getting a word wrong on a spelling bee! I hate hearing that word to and wish I could karate chop him to the throat like she does on identity theif!!!!!!! Would love to do that!(I wont but would love to.)

My fWW only said it was a mistake to me once... I turned so beet red and tried not to go into orbit. Sufficed to say, she hasn't made the 'mistake' of calling it a mistake ever again - around me, that is.

I see what you're saying. The dictionary definition is:

mis·take

məˈstāk/

noun

noun: mistake; plural noun: mistakes

1.

an action or judgment that is misguided or wrong.

I think the term "mistake" still applies. No?

I think the term "mistake" still applies. No?

Not in my house.

Choice, over and over.

Until it can be scientifically proven that my WXH's penis "accidently" fell into his AP's vaginas (and other orifices), he made CHOICES.

ETA: It's somewhat funny. He called his A's mistakes for years until I sent him a letter last year defining the difference between mistakes and choices (among other things I need to get off my chest).

He now gets that he made choices, albeit WAY too late.

AJ's MOM

[This message edited by ajsmom at 3:59 PM, January 28th (Tuesday)]

Maybe it's a mistaken choice?

But yeah, the refusing to own the intentional wrongness of it was infuriating. I loved how my exWBF would suddenly start bringing up random old stuff as a distraction from his terrible choices--afterall, remember when I dismissed that short story that meant a lot to him? And why did I save all the new yorker magazines? And why did I keep bacon grease in the fridge? Why did I buy expensive sheets when he asked me to run a sheet-buying errand for him? ANYTHING to change the subject to how I was the one whose behavior merited discussion.

To me, what you mentioned are accidents. Mistakes are wrong choices. Maybe it's just me.

I say it is a CHOICE that is a big MISTAKE! That's the mistake is that they chose to make it. Is that circular logic? Really, nothing about cheating makes any sense!

An "accident" and a "mistake" are not the same thing...

As I said before, the definition of a mistake is "an action or judgment that is misguided or wrong."

Wouldn't an A be an action that is wrong??

no where in the definition does it state that it is unintentional or without malice. Unlike the definition for Accident:

"an event that happens by chance or that is without apparent or deliberate cause. "

Which obviously this couldn't apply to an A. Anyone who said that it was an accident is just stupid.

A mistake is still a choice.

IMHO, with choice there is will behind it. In my case, my WXH made willful choices to get on planes and screw other women. These weren't mistakes.

absolutely choice!! yeah I got for my waywardour marriage was in a bad place before the affair.I also got the I made the biggest mistake of my life.truth is our marriage was in a bad place but she made the choice to seek another man instead of dealing with our marriage in our problems. That is most definitel choice and not a mistake. she chose to tell all her problems and how unhappy she was to a man that she already knew with attracted to her, she chose to send this man naked pictures of her when he asked, she chose to set up times and places to have sex with this man. These are choices not mistakes.she chose to disrespect me and our family in our life together for this man that told her from the start he was married and only wanted sex from her thats a choice.

I can understand the anger/confusion around the choice of words, but I think sometimes the intention in those kinds of statements is that the choice was the mistake.

The dictionary explanation of mistake and mistakes are still different to making a choice and choices.

If a person makes a mistake they usually learn from it and don't make that mistake again by making them mistakes. Often by making a mistake one feels bad about doing so.

If my ex made a mistake at first by engaging with OW then he would have learned from it.

He chose to keep making the same mistake over and over again.

That to me is not a mistake, or mistakes, but, a set of choices that made him feel good.

mis·take

məˈstāk/

noun

noun: mistake; plural noun: mistakes

1.

an action or judgment that is misguided or wrong.

Choice is defined as

choice noun \ˈchȯis\

: the act of choosing : the act of picking or deciding between two or more possibilities

: the opportunity or power to choose between two or more possibilities : the opportunity or power to make a decision

: a range of things that can be chosen

Therefore you choose to make a mistake when you are unfaithful. Like someone else said, a mistake is not the same as an accident. A mistake is a CHOICE, it just happens to be the wrong choice.