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AP may or may not know you existed and had an affair with your trusted life partner, who made a vow to you, had children with you, a home with you, etc. We accept the WS back with open arms during hysterical bonding and villainize the AP with names years into R. Why are we giving the WS a hall pass? Sure I've made some waves in R for him, but the hate I feel for her, why can't I feel that for him? I feel sad for him and think I will never respect him again. I just can't make any sense of this.

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I just can't make any sense of this.

I think you've figured it out!

If anybody has reason to hate the AP, I do..

Lucky for him, he's dead.

My WW didn't get open arms, nor did she get a hall pass.. and she's still working on the respect aspect.

Wishing you peace..

smy

I only give those a "pass" that are remorseful. If any of the OW in my fWH ONS's were sad, remorseful, changed their lives..I wouldn't hate them. I would wish that they continue to change and become good people.

But any unremorseful WS or AP's deserve none of that.

Its easier to be angry at someone you don't know that someone you do.

Its hard to hate your WS if you still love enough to try R, so I guess some of that hate that was due to our WS is directed to OW/OM.

And of course they did try to take away form us whats ours.

Our WS broke their vows to us but but OW/OM contributed at least 50% for the A.

I think you are asking a very good question. I am not sure if I have an answer. Just because people blame AP and continue to love the WS--well, I am not sure it's always healthy.

I haven't determined whether I will accept WW back. She is the mother of my child, has been with me for half my life and all of my best memories/experiences are with her. While I hate myself for it, I still love her... and despise her, but there is love.

OM is a douche bag of gargantuan proportions. Someone I had invited into my home for dinner with his family and he later returned to that home to fuck my wife in my bed. If this were a couple hundred years ago I'd have killed him first thing. Today I can't even beat the crap out of him. I can't risk a high-paying career and decades of hard work just for the fleeting joy of beating him within an inch of his life (I also worry I wouldn't stop in time). My guess is he would curl up a in a ball and cry anyways and then sue me after wards and have me arrested... it would not live up to the hype. (and obviously killing him is not an option any longer). So, society won't allow me to do what should be done without suffering consequences which I don't deem worth it. So I hate him and I villainize him... but he is a villain. WW is only part villain, or used to not be... or something.

I will get my revenge someday, far from now, it will be served cold and will be the result of longterm planning and will be perfectly legal. He will regret what he did more than he regrets anything that he's ever done.

[This message edited by Lazarus at 9:22 PM, February 27th (Tuesday)]

Oh I have ever right to hate and vilify the OW. She very deliberately targeted my husband. But I also have quite a bit of disdain for my fWH. I think that’s why I’m in limbo.

She lured him but he still took the bail. So if it turns into hate I just need to let it go and leave. It depends on the day on the time and minute.

It’s horribile this state of being.

Be glad you’re not here.

I do have lots of names for the AP. I also have some very rude sarcastic thoughts towards WS sometimes and I have a couple of names for him as well.. one of them is...”the man with many secrets.” I realize this much nicer than how most of us refer to the AP

I still don’t fully trust WS probably never will or have the same kind of love for him as I once did so I don’t think he has a “ hall pass.”

but the hate I feel for her, why can't I feel that for him?

This is the original question.

Anyone?

For me I couldn't let her win. She was very cruel to me personally. She was not taking over my life. When she was gone I gave H an opportunity. He threw it away. I'm not nice anymore. I'm over both of them

[This message edited by cancuncrushed at 10:26 PM, February 27th (Tuesday)]

Not everyone accepts WS back and not everyone villainizes the AP.

However, if a BS wants to reconcile and they have a remorseful WS who is willing to do what it takes to become a healthy and safe partner and to do what it takes to make the marriage strong and healthy that is some reasons we would take the WS back.

We, for the most part, do not know if the AP is remorseful. We do not know if they are doing the work to become healthy human beings that wouldn't go around shitting on other people and their marriages. We do not care if they are. Not our monkey, not our circus. We have justifiable anger for the AP's. Affairs don't happen in a vacuum. It does take an AP.

We BS's have a lot of anger. We direct a lot of that anger at our WS's. But, if we are trying to reconcile, it isn't conducive to reconciliation to be lashing out in anger at the WS constantly. It is safer to direct that anger at the AP's as long as we don't act on it, for the most part. Also, some of us are blessed with AP's that are bunny boilers. They don't go away. They are constantly trying to inflict themselves upon the BS, the WS, the marriage. It is very easy to direct anger at AP's that just don't go away like a good AP should.

ETA: I forgot to add. Many of us still love our WS's even though the pain they caused us is devastating. Most of us don't have a history or love for an AP that we do with our WS's. (Not the case with all kinds of double betrayals!) Much easier to hate on someone we never cared for or loved.

[This message edited by SisterMilkshake at 11:09 PM, February 27th (Tuesday)]

After a few months I actually stopped making it about her. Yes she initiated all the contact from day one, she knew about me and had she not contacted ws he would still be faithful today I am sure. BUT only he could let her into our life, which he did. His choice. I hate what she did. I try not to think too much about her at all really and focus more on him and what he chose to do, his actions. Why he let his guard down. It's easy to blame AP and hate her but I also think by focusing on her it lets him off the hook a little. He is my problem, not her so I do not want to waste my time hating a person that really would not be in my life if ws had said no to her request to catch up for a coffee I guess is what I feel is it is wasted energy hating on the AP, I can't see what it can resolve. Hope this makes sense.

I only give those a "pass" that are remorseful. If any of the OW in my fWH ONS's were sad, remorseful, changed their lives..I wouldn't hate them. I would wish that they continue to change and become good people.

But any unremorseful WS or AP's deserve none of that.

This really rings true, for me. In my case some of the ow were cruel to me and I couldn't figure out what I had done to them.

As far as why I can't feel that kind of hate for my fwh? I have been completely in love with him for most of our relationship. I have often been baffled by how I stayed in love and attached for so long. My previous relationships were relatively short and the in love feelings were gone in about two years.

Not only was I in love with him for 21 years, I also knew/know the better side of him. I have always been able to see the good in him. When d-day happened, and we separated, within 3 days he started working on himself. He started making the changes that showed me, who he really was. The ow, well the one I talked to was smug and self righteous. Making it much easier to hate her. She was one of the ow, I did not know. I hated the ow I did know, because finding the truth made all their cruel crap behavior towards me make sense. They were horrible people and I doubt seriously they would want to change. Of course, I could be wrong.

Because you are in R. You are channelling your hate to the AP since it's not very constructive to hate someone you want to reconcile with. Now, if you were in D, it's very easy to villainize WS and not give a solitary thought to AP (unless they run off together then it's different esp w kids).

I can only speak for myself but it takes two people to have an A (excluding an AP that doesn’t know about the M). I do not think of R as a hall pass nor did I forgive my WH with open arms.

For R to work the bare basic requirements are a remorseful WS who consistently shows in their actions they want to save the M and work wholeheartedly on themselves. And a BS who is willing to consider R and put just as much effort into their own healing and the M. It’s fucking hard work in miserable conditions.

An AP doesn’t do a thing for a BS, nor is it their job to. If you are lucky you might get a sincere apology, truthful information and they exit stage left with no further ado. But many of us get the complete opposite to that.

So it’s much easier to be angry at a stranger (or worse, not a stranger) who was involved in causing you all this pain. If in R the WS is living the consequences of their actions every day and facing the anger and pain. If D the WS is facing the consequences of the end of the M. The AP isn’t facing the consequences of their part in the A or impact on our M at all.

I think hating the AP is a necessary phase of healing and fades to nothing much over time. My WH still lives with my anger.

The AP in my case took the “opportunity” to attack me on all avenues since DDay 1. Social media, to my WH saying I am manipulative and vile (between DDay 1 and DDay 2) and she continues to do so. I don’t want to post her last status on FB here in case she recognised herself but let’s just say the way she perceived me is actually projecting, she is the manipulative, vile person. May I just say that she knew from day 1 that my WH was married. She asked him if he was happy in his marriage and he said yes. That didn’t stop her pursuing a relationship with him. What have I done wrong except existing? Nothing, I listen to her begging me crying not to go to HR to tell them about their affair, I didn’t, yet here she is 5 months after DDay posting vile stuff on social media targeting me and my WH. I literally had to talk to my WH last night asking him what have I done wrong, why does a person who never met me in person hates me and targets me when I literally did not do anything wrong, I didn’t go to her door making a scene (as she was planning to do, told my WH she was going to drive to our house at 3am one night), I didn’t attack her on SM, I didn’t react towards her because she’s not the one I am having a relationship with.

My WH? Trust me, he gets a piece of my mind every day. He’s not faultless by any means, he knows what I think of what he’s done and I don’t hold it in. Did I accept him back? We plod along but I am in limbo with regards to our relationship as I am not sure I can get past the lying. His life isn’t easy at the moment, not because I want to punish him but because the fallout of his actions is huge and I will not rug sweep because I am not able to.

Not all do this.

The AP does not exist to me. He is dead to me. I wasted little effort or emotion over him. My focus was 99.9% directly on my WW. Of course he is a person without character. He is a jerk, a horrible husband and father. But, personally to me, he is nothing. He had absolutely no power to cause the trauma I experienced. My WW was the only one that could make anything with anyone happen. There was no decision he made that could have been any threat to me without my WW's permission. She had all the power to trash our marriage, he had none.

So, my WW got nothing close to a hall pass. She was on the hot seat and held to account. I spent what little energy I had left from the trauma focused on the only one that betrayed me and the only one whose remorse mattered. I had no energy after dealing with her and the A to spend on the guy my wife chose to cheat with me on.

I don't even give him enough power to call him a villain. He was dead to me. I have to admit though, there were plenty of times I villainized my cheating, lying, WW. While it does take two to have an A, only one of them have the power to cheat on their spouse. The AP can only go as far as the WS lets them. The WS is the driver. If the WS had said no, there would be no "two".There would be no A.

[This message edited by DIFM at 4:19 AM, February 28th (Wednesday)]

I used to (prior to this whole chapter in my life, back when I knew everything about how to have a perfect marriage. Lol) run around making this generic statement when the subject of infidelity came up:

"We cannot control all of society and the thousands of people that our spouses encounter in a lifetime, but if we all just kick our cheating spouses out the first time we find out, married people would figure out pretty quickly that cheating ends in divorce and cheating would stop."

Now I realize that ending a relationship with your spouse is much, much more complicated than this. Hating an AP is a no brainer.

Yesterday on the radio I heard them say that all a marriage needs to survive forever is two simple words, according to a new book or psychologist or something. According to this professional, if you enter marriage and believe it is these two words, you will survive almost anything. What is the best way to describe your marriage?

Good enough.

One more thing: I have always noticed a connection between the way a BS feels about their WS and the way they feel about the AP. The more invested the BS is in the WS, either lots of loving "we're great" comments or wanting to keep the M but struggling with a very cold, remorseless WS, the more they will hate the AP. There isn't a 100% inverse correlation, but it's a common connection.

The anger is normal and rockets around day to day, but if you are indeed feeling unable to place your anger on your spouse because they may emotionally move away from you or from the marriage and you fear that, you will place an undue amount of anger at the AP's feet. Simple displacement, and it's unhealthy avoidance. (Not everyone has this type of AP anger.)

I believe a lot of hysterical bonding is bourne from this same concept: it's "don't leave me" sex.