SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I'm sure we've all (as BS's) felt that the fact that our WS loved/love us is whatever! I mean, in my situation, my WH said he loved me before the A, during the A, and after the A. He never stopped loving me. And yes, I believe him, so, So What! Obviously loving me didn't stop him from betraying everything we had and throwing it all away!

Anyway, I've been noticing that there is so much "soulmate" "my better half" "I adore her/him" all over television and movies! And I don't know about y'all, but it is all nauseating to me right now and I do major *eye roll* when I see these super happy over the moon couples! Even reality shows are saturated with it. It gives me the "oh please!" vibe. And the pessimistic thoughts of "just wait till one of you doesn't meet expectations the other feels entitled to and they cheat, it's just a mater of time". I am so jaded about Love now.

Does it even matter? Loving someone? A WS loving a BS doesn't stop them from cheating. A BS loving a WS doesn't stop them from cheating. So what! Even now, when WH tells me he loves me I just roll my eyes and think "SO WHAT".

Does anyone else get annoyed when they see this? Or is it just me?

Lol my username...

I used to believe in fairies and magic and true love and blind trust and soulmates and destiny and now I mostly only believe in luck. I hope to stay lucky from here on out.

Maybe it is your inner woke cynic being nauseated. Love didn't matter, and here I thought it was everything. My world view was built around it. Now I build my world around what works and what feels right. My WH said once it was easier to get into his other relationship than it was to get out. That's kind of what I use to justify marriage on my cynical days when I wonder what matters. I know I care for him, I know I love him, and in his way, he loves me too. And you're right, so what? Assures nothing, now and I guess it never did. I'll be here as long as it works for me too, as long as he stays worthy. All that other romanticized stuff about reciprocal love? I'm learning to let it go and see this new us as a different interpretation.

I have had the Foreigner song I Want to Know What Love Is stuck in my head for days at a time for over two years though...

edited because typos happen.

[This message edited by whatisloveanyway at 9:45 AM, February 3rd, 2020 (Monday)]

I can see why that is an issue.

As a ws, I believed I loved my H the whole time as well. Unfortunately, I have since learned that you can't love someone while completely destroying them, disregarding them, lying to them, etc.

I had to come to a place to decide that I didn't love him, not in the way I should. Fond feelings were there, yes. But, love was not what I could say I had at that time in our life. Wanting the other person to be happy, a full commitment to them and your relationship, more We and less I....

My H didn't want the kind of love that allowed cheating to be possible. I had to spend a lot of time really soul searching on what I believe love is and coming to terms the ways I have made barriers towards it. I think at some point both the WS and BS comes to terms with the idea that the WS didn't know how to love someone properly.

When I was in the A, I was only concerned that everyone else was there to make me happy. Since that time I have had to really do a lot of the heavy lifting in our relationship - and I found that I really experienced love best not with what I was receiving. But, in the effort I was showing every day.

No wonder you don't care about that love, it didn't have anything to offer you. Until your husband can see that wasn't love, he doesn't have enough to offer you yet either.

Oh man this speaks to me on a soul level fournlau. I was cynical and jaded even before the A.... I am just fucked now pretty much

When I think of this though, I try to think not of the shitty non-examples in current days but instead of all the wonderful examples I have seen in my life of real enduring love. My grandparents who were married 63 years - and the way my grandfather up until the day he died would look at my grandmother and call her his 'babes'. My aunts and uncles that have been married 40-50 years and the strength in their love. I don't know if I will ever find that, but it does comfort me to know it exists.

And the other thing I know from looking to those examples is that LOVE is not a word - it is ACTION. Saying it is easy - showing it consistently over years isn't. If you find someone who does that, chances are you've got a keeper.

To love someone is to do more than just express the words. It's action.

I do not believe that my WW loves me even though she repeatedly says she does. Her actions betray the truth.

I don't believe in soul mates, but I do believe that two people can love and care about each other. Hopefully I'll find such a person again.

Now I build my world around what works and what feels right.

@whatisloveanyway I think this is probably the best solution. I don't see my relationship with my WH as having to do anything with love. I decided to stay to see if we could rebuild something new. I have my ups and downs, but I never consider my decisions of staying or leaving with love factored into it. It's much more practical than that.

No wonder you don't care about that love, it didn't have anything to offer you. Until your husband can see that wasn't love, he doesn't have enough to offer you yet either.

@hikingout Thank you for your input. I wish my WS understood this as well. In the beginning and well into the end of the first year after DD, he would try and use the "I love you" "You know I love you right?" etc. phrases as if they should be a balm. As if that should mean something important and significant. Until I told him flat out, "so what, you loving me didn't keep me safe from you betraying me". He stopped. But like you said, he still believes that he loved me through it all and that that should mean something. Honestly, it's worse than if he had stopped loving me, at least then I could more fully understand how he could have so easily disregarded me when making the choice to cheat.

I still believe in love , but I don't know if my H understands what that means.

I too cannot understand the way he threw that word around so casually to his AP and telling me the same thing, multiple times a day while cheating on me.

I strongly believe that my WH wasn’t capable of truly loving anyone prior to dday - at least not any kind of love that I’m interested in. I don’t think he understood it, it was just something you said to get something back. He was never really shown love by his FOO. It’s kind of sad when I look back now on our relationship and realize that no, he never loved me the way I loved him. Maybe he never will, although he thinks he does now and I guess that’s all that matters.

I personally am of the belief that no one can have an affair (not necessarily a one night drunk unplanned something) and love your spouse. There is too much deceit and resentment and knowledge that what you are doing is wrong. That doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t come back from it - by figuring out what the hell went wrong, but if you love someone, you just can’t stab them in the back like that without an overwhelming sense of guilt.

I don’t get annoyed by all of the mushy love stuff anymore. The only thing I get annoyed by is my WH when he tells me he loves me more. Like really? C’mon. The mushy stuff on tv just makes me feel a little wistful, like maybe in another life I would’ve had that fairy tale.

In 1993 or 1994, my W lost her wedding ring. We went looking for a replacement. The saleswoman asked us when our wedding was going to be. So ... after 25+ years of M, we looked like soon to be newlyweds to that saleswoman....

There is or was a photo of us sitting side by side on a bench overlooking Lake Tahoe. No one looking at the photo would think infidelity was part of our history....

I believe in love. I believe we have soulmates - multiple one for each of us.

I agree, though: so what?

Love was not enough to keep our WSes from cheating. And love of each other is not enough to make R successful.

[This message edited by sisoon at 11:04 AM, February 3rd (Monday)]

..LOVE... is highly over-rated !!!

We use the word for everything.. and I mean everything.

I love Chinese food.

I love being in my jammies.

I love p and j sandwiches.

I love sunny days.

I can claim to love just about anything but 'love' can't be given to sandwiches or sunny days. It cheapens the word, disrespects the word, dilutes the word.

I now feel the same way about the word 'FRIEND"

As my tagline says: trust no-one, love only your pets.

smy

I think love is fleeting and yes I no longer believe in "soulmates" or "The One"

When I see super happy couples I think it is only a matter of time.

I am happy for those that can keep the flame burning. I often wonder how they are able to do that.

As someone in R much farther along on the healing trail, it was initially very depressing that love doesn't seem to matter to others when needed most.

So, now, my wife and go with, "love and...."

By that I mean we realized love by itself was never enough. So it needs to be a combo -- like love and communication, love and giving to each other, love and showing empathy.

Does anyone else get annoyed when they see this? Or is it just me?

Yes! And it's partially why I can't stand most TV or movies now.

STBXWH still says he loves me. After all he's done, which has inflicted more pain and destruction than I could have ever imagined, he has the nerve to say he loves me. His "love" (whatever!) is lightyears away from what I think love is or should be, and clearly it's nothing but a flimsy shell of a word he's using for some reason that I'll never fully understand.

But I do think love matters in the way I understand the word, use it, and show it to the people (and animals) in my life. I know what love means to me, but that's as far as it goes. I get the whatever! so what! aspect. The word that once meant so much between two intimately bonded people has been totally stomped on, deflated, and rendered meaningless through actions that are opposite of love.

I love my H. He is it and never was my soulmate. He adds joy to my happy life - he’s not my sole source of joy.

I have best girlfriends and good friends and guy friends etc. I think I have it covered in the friends corner.

He’s my H. He’s my friend. End of story.

My WH said the same thing to me. Always loved me...before, during and after the affair. Yet cheating to me is the most unloving action one can do. Maybe like others have said...he doesn’t know how to love.

Romantic love is bullshit. It's a lie we were fed by fairy tales growing up and I bought it. I bought the whole soulmate crap too. Nothing but nonsense. Had I not been so in love with love I might not be here.

The only love I now believe in is the unconditional love for my children, my mom and one or two of my closest friends. You can add the unconditional love my fur babies always show.

My WH tells me he loves me. Do I believe him? No. He could not have betrayed me for years, lied to my face daily, put someone else above me and treat me like shit if he did. What? Now that there's no side piece he loves me? Right. GTFO. It really doesn't matter what he would ever say or do to change my mind, the damage is done.

fournlau,

Thank you for posting this. This speaks to me in a profound way, and it’s also one of the things that has been the hardest for me to wrap my brain around in regards to my husband’s affair.

Like yours, my WS insists that he’s always loved me and never stopped, even while he was lying to me and gaslighting, pushing me away, and telling some other woman that he was in love with her. He was treating me like a piece of shit that got stuck on his shoe during his affair, but I’m somehow supposed to believe that, deep down, he still loved me? Bull shit.

I also confronted him on multiple occasions while it was happening, telling him how lonely I was since he was out every night and begging him to take a step back if he felt himself falling for somehow else. Tell me, if someone you loved did that, would you blow them off and act defensively? Not likely, not if you have any once of empathy anyway.

To top it all off, his AP was going through this whole self-discovery thing about polyamory, which of course, led my husband to believe that he was also polyamorous (convenient, eh? It’s not my fault that I had a secret relationship, fell for someone else and lied about it — it’s my sexual orientation!).

I think that maybe he really and truly thought he loved me, but he sure as hell wasn’t acting like it, and I sure as hell don’t believe it was true.

Their affair was only about a month long, and they told each other that they were in love after just a couple of weeks. To me, that tells me that love means pretty much nothing to him. It’s just a feeling you get when someone new is giving you attention.

So yeah, what’s the point of love and does it actually matter if my husband says he loves me? I’m not really sure.

[This message edited by Joanna1013 at 4:24 PM, February 3rd (Monday)]

Patty Smyth says it best- "Sometimes Love Just Ain't Enough".

Love is a feeling. It's also an action. Feelings drift in and out. It's the actions that count.

Maybe your WH felt love feelings. Did he perform loving actions? If not, that says it all, to me.

I completely agree. WS said he loved me all along, but we obv had very different definitions and expectations of love, as I never went out looking for someone else, yet he did on more than one occasion. How can you love someone and have sex with another behind their back? Perhaps love and sex are mutually exclusive for some ppl. Not for me.

But yeah, his words of love mean nothing now, as it appears to be just a word without caring actions to him. If you tell me you love me at the weekend and shag someone else through the week, love means nothing.

Patty Smyth says it best- "Sometimes Love Just Ain't Enough".

Tina Turner had wisdom to add to that as well:

"What's love got to do with it."

If you describe a dozen actions that reflect what love means, and you did them, you would never have to use the word love.