SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Multiple people have apologized for misunderstanding the intent of the OP. But that does not mean that our reactions or feelings weren't as reasonable as yours.

In a thread like this I don't think anyone's feelings should be invalidated, unless they failed to read the majority of the thread. Even then their feelings may still be 100% valid, but only valid for the portions they read and understood.

I really hope that doesn't offend anybody. But, let's get real. Re we triggered because of our initial feelings based on limited information? Or are we triggered by context?

Furthermore, what exactly constitutes a trigger? I felt triggered and mauled by some people's responses. But, I also had limited info in regards to what set them off and why.

I am back to wishing I had never created the OP. I see some good coming out of it, but I also dee some division. Not all the division is based on the OP.

Are there things we can agree with in this thread? Rape is horrible. Infidelity is horrible. A combination of the two is horrible. Both are, in most cases traumatic. But, that doesn't mean we need to shout someone down for having slightly different views than ours.

My experience with rape and infidelity has caused me many problems. One caused 53 years of grief. trauma, sleepless nights, shame, feelings of degradation, a loss of trust for other people...the other was similar, but not the same. Ultimately, both worked together to make my life more miserable than it might have been with one of the other.

36, my problem is not with you at all. And I will bow out with this. I’ve tried addressing Stinger and instead of responding to me, he replies about me and can’t even bother to get my name right, lol.

I am very sorry for all of the pain and trauma you have endured in your life. And I am sorry that this thread turned into such a dumpster fire. A mod will usually lock a thread if the original poster requests.

Commenting as somebody who has not been raped, I would comment on the reference to rape as being that it is about violence. My criminal law class in law school included elements on the psychology of the offender. The teaching then was that rape was about power. It was also that domestic violence was about power. The violence is merely a means for the perpetrator to exercise power over the victim and to deprive the victim of power.

Infidelity (at least recurring infidelity or even a one off incident without immediate confession and remorse) is also about power. The perpetrator exercises power over the victim in several ways:

(a) firstly by denying the victim the information they need to make choices about their own life;

(b) secondly, by holding the victim to the victim's promise to the perpetrator under false pretences [denying them freedom of sexual access];

(c) thirdly, by secretly denying the victim the benefit of the promise the perpetrator gave to the victim [taking to themselves freedom of sexual access];

(d) fourthly, by the combination of these things, elevating their power in the relationship and diminishing the power of the victim.

I will leave it to people who have been the victim of both acts to comment on any comparison between the two (and the degree, or comparative degree, of significance, for the victim, of the feeling of being robbed of power and self-determination).

However in my view it was a serious policy error to decriminalise marital infidelity. It does not diminish the seriousness of rape to say that infidelity in a marriage, especially recurring infidelity, is a heinous act that does far more damage than a great many other wrongs that carry criminal sanction and even prison time. Nor does it diminish the seriousness of rape to say that the academic analysis is capable of supporting a view that the acts arise out of a common perpetrator mindset.

[This message edited by LostInTheDesert at 10:35 PM, November 14th (Saturday)]

36, you wrote

Infidelity, may be mostly about the sex, but it is still an act of violence. It is the violent destruction of a relationship. It is the violent disregard of your partners feelings and emotions.

How do you square that with the fact that the majority of infidelities go undiscovered, and are taken to the grave? That the perp considers it successful if it is never found out and the BS never experiences the true pain of the infidelity?

If I was going to violently destroy my relationship, I would use violence, which I guarantee the BS would know about, happens too much already in marriages, and doesn't need to include infidelity.

I agree there is a commonality, but it is not violence. It is betrayal. The deepest cut.

You were twice betrayed by people you put all of your trust in.

JMHO, YMMV, and all the other caveats. I've learned something from this thread, so thanks for starting it.

How do you square that with the fact that the majority of infidelities go undiscovered, and are taken to the grave? That the perp considers it successful if it is never found out and the BS never experiences the true pain of the infidelity?

Are you wanting to get into a deep philosophical discussion? What about those who have been date-raped and don't know that a rape happened?

Are all situations identical? Of course not.

In answer to your original question, I can say without the slightest hesitation as a long term prosecutor that the two having nothing in common.

Truly man. Anyone can argue that the moon is the same as Saturn, but in the real world those that work in the field know there is no comparison or even a proper frame of reference.

The damage to an individual who has been raped is light years away from the damage created from discovering cheating.

The damage to an individual who has been raped is light years away from the damage created from discovering cheating.

Except for those of us who say otherwise. I'm not remotely kidding about the infidelity rocking my world worse than the rape did, and both were extremely damaging.

I'm willing to entertain the idea that taken completely separately, maybe rape is harder to recover from. Maybe this answer only applies if you have been raped before you experienced infidelity. It isn't only me who had the infidelity bring the rape trauma screaming back into the present.

But if I accept that, that sounds like I'm saying "it was harder for me to be cheated on than for you, person who wasn't raped" and I don't believe that's true for a second. The pain from infidelity seems pretty universal.

The damage to an individual who has been raped is light years away from the damage created from discovering cheating.

Except for those of us who say otherwise. I'm not remotely kidding about the infidelity rocking my world worse than the rape did, and both were extremely damaging.

And this is a good example of why statements expressed with excessive confidence are more likely to be wrong. I noticed three people in this thread with experience of both say that their experience as a victim of infidelity is worse. I only noticed one dual victim say the reverse, but I was not diligently counting so there might have been others in both directions.

The best that can be said on the available evidence is that for some, the experience of infidelity is worse, and for others, the experience of rape is worse.

In some respects a prosecutor is at a disadvantage in making an assessment. While they may have some experience dealing with the victims of rape, they are less likely to have had the same experience dealing with victims of infidelity so as to provide a proper basis for comparison. A prosecutor is also not in a position to assess the extent to which the trauma is incurred from or compounded by the interaction with the criminal justice system. The prosecutor is also conditioned by being preferentially exposed to evidence that aims to demonstrate that the harm is great so as to achieve more severe sentencing, which might tend to affect the comparison by amplifying perceptions of that trauma and diminishing perceptions of other traumas.

Even a lawyer with experience in the family law system will not get much insight into the trauma caused by divorce. The whole modern family law system is designed to dismiss the lived experience of the victims of infidelity. The victim is repeatedly told that their trauma is irrelevant, and even that their perception is meaningless. They are even told that if they seek to raise their trauma, they will be punished for it by the Court (one of just a few places where the law seeks to punish the victim). Evidence of the infidelity and the trauma arising from it is treated as an inconvenient threat to the established order and suppressed.

Coming from the law is coming from a system that has baked in an assumption that one trauma is real, and the other trauma is imaginary. It is an unsound position from which to seek to make a comparison. I would much rather hear (and will give much more credence to) the testimony of people with the direct experience of both.

The original post was about commonalities, not which was worse. It was clear that 36 acknowledged that both experiences were traumatic. He never minimized rape. So, why some took offense is a mystery to me.

I see no reason a longterm prosecutor would have any particular insight into this as compared to victims who have been through both.

Stinger, what caught my eye was the flow of logic that said rape is violence, infidelity hurts as much as rape, therefore infidelity is violence.

I disagree with that.

I don't dispute at all that they hurt as much. I'll never know personally (well, I hope I never find out).

My sister's husband just up and left. Just threw in the towel on marriage, decided he didn't want to be married to my sister, and checked out of the marriage. No other woman, no affair, just gone. It destroyed my sister, who is a kind, gentle, beautiful soul. Took her years to get over that. Yet I'd not say that my former BIL was violent with her. Complete neglect, yes. Feelings of rejection? 100%

Can words be violent? Can actions without hitting be violent? Is violence limited to fists? Is giving me HPV and having me go through tests and biopsies and fear not violence? Is having sex with me under false pretenses not violence?

For the most part, by definition, no. none of those things are violence.

Except for those of us who say otherwise. I'm not remotely kidding about the infidelity rocking my world worse than the rape did, and both were extremely damaging.

Same here Dee. Now, to be clear, there are "levels" of both offenses, I wasn't beaten to a pulp or savagely attacked; however, I was, by the law, clearly raped by a group of women in the past. But, I'd say that experience was on the "low end" of rape trauma, I wasn't hurt (physically), I was just embarrassed and upset at what had happened. On the other hand, my W's A was a bad one; lots of sex, denied sex acts given to the AP, sex in our house/cars, the AP was a "friend".. It's not the "worst" I've read, but, it was pretty darn egregious compared to my assault which was one the very low end of the scale for how bad a rape can be. So, for me, like you Dee, the A "rocked my world" far worse than the rape did. For others, I think it might be completely the opposite, to the point of being silly to even compare (if I'm honest, until this thread came up, I would have said "it's silly to compare" for myself because the rape was so much less impactful to me). So, to have this discussion, you really need to look at the facts for the individual person, some rapes are much worse than others, and some A's are much worse than others. Sadly, you can't generalize that between people, but I strongly feel that for each individual, we all have "scales of bad" for each offense and what we all call an "affair" can land all over the map depending on how each individual scales it. For me, an EA would have been a non-event, where what me wife did blew my world apart. And for others, the situation is entirely reversed. For some, being held down and forced to penetrate women would be a horrifying experience, for me, it was an embarrassment and a new set of shorts to replace the ones that were ripped. All are "A's" or "rape", but the degrees of damage are entirely personal.

I'm willing to entertain the idea that taken completely separately, maybe rape is harder to recover from. Maybe this answer only applies if you have been raped before you experienced infidelity. It isn't only me who had the infidelity bring the rape trauma screaming back into the present.

For the most part, by definition, no. none of those things are violence.

I agree with the exception of the HPV example. Knowingly giving someone a disease that could injure/kill them crosses the line for me; that's violence to me. The rest of it just falls under "standard human sh*tty behavior" in my eyes.

[This message edited by Rideitout at 8:47 AM, November 16th (Monday)]

For the most part, by definition, no. none of those things are violence.

Then I prefer violence. A punch in the face would have been far kinder.

That’s understandable. Just because those things are not violence, doesn’t mean the impact of them isn’t as bad or much worse.

duplicate

[This message edited by DevastatedDee at 9:07 AM, November 16th (Monday)]

I do disagree on the violence definition. If rape is violence, I do not see how having sex with me while cheating on me with prostitutes isn't violence against my body. I was exposed to I can't even imagine how much microbial horror against my will. I had sex with my enemy without knowing he was my enemy. I am lucky to have come out with only HPV. I could have contracted HIV. I could have died of cancer due to HPV. For that to not be violent and a form of rape doesn't make sense to me.

I have reason to suspect that the guy who raped me drugged my drink to incapacitate me. I tried to fight him off, but just didn't have the control over my body to even make an impact. I lay there conscious during most of it, but I knew that I was being raped. The horror of that cannot be overstated. But, I knew. I knew it was happening. I didn't know for at least a year and probably more that I was being sexually violated over and over by my XWH. It is worse for me that I was not aware. It felt like I had been raped behind my back. That is why it was worse for me. That is why there's nothing not-violent about it for me. It's like instead of having a stranger put a gun to your head and shoot you, you're being poisoned at a nice dinner by the one you love.

I think the term violence can be used so as not to include any physical involvement. I have seen it used to connote destruction or ruination through means other than the physical.

Violence, an act of physical force that causes or is intended to cause harm. The damage inflicted by violence may be physical, psychological, or both. Violence may be distinguished from aggression, a more general type of hostile behaviour that may be physical, verbal, or passive in nature. Src: Kristine M. Jacquin

Dean for Student Development and Doctoral Faculty, Fielding Graduate University.

It seems to me that we're straining at gnats.

I appreciate what the prosecutor had to say, but based on my personal (<-- keyword) I disagree.

Now, I am not saying that I, as a person who has experienced both rape and infidelity, have an opinion valid above all others. But, having experienced both, I can tell you based on the definition above, violence was present in both.

Those who have not experienced both, don't necessarily lose credibility for their position, but I give a little more credence to those that have.

Those who have not experienced both, don't necessarily lose credibility for their position, but I give a little more credence to those that have.

I've had a lot of experience with violence. Literally, in some ways it was my job for 30 years (military). Here's the bizarre thing. I've had to interact with people who tried to kill me, and in fact hurt me. Yet it wasn't all that big of a deal, because we were both doing our job. We fought, they surrendered, from that moment on there was a modicum of respect.

Or when I worked at a bar, and we had to handle drunks. Or when I myself was the drunk.

But an insider attack, where we were betrayed. Now that is a different thing. Think Benedict Arnold or similar. They get to hang by the neck until dead.

It's the betrayal that hurts more than the punch. That causes the longer lasting damage.

Imagine being in a pool, drowning, desperately needing saving, and a trusted person just sits there and watches. Does nothing. Violence is an act, and they aren't acting. Yet the betrayal...

36, for sure I know that you were betrayed twice by people you had every right to trust in, horrifically. Again, strength for your healing.