SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

What is interesting here is all the perspectives, perhaps one issue is that there are too many aspects to infidelity for our minds to hold simultaneously and process. Which may be why it sometimes takes decades to come to a decision.

This may be even more true for people lacking the collective insights of a website like this one. Or who stumble upon this website decades after the fact.

One aspect of my Ws affairs is that they happened so quickly and made evident a vulnerability which could result in another affair at any time. This in and of itself is enough to keep me unhealed and triggered as it demands vigilance.

Someone earlier wrote about insecure men wanting to dominate their wives, but more so it's about my W allowing OM to dominate her, when I respected her autonomy and freedoms.

A reason for my staying was also to protect my W from OM and even more to protect my children from emotional, financial and sexual abuse by OM types.

you asked me "is there anything you want to talk about/ask me" countless times. I can't speak of how genuinely you ask me these days. But in 2019 I learned how my questions didn't merit honest answers, expressing my well-founded doubt was discredited and my feelings were punishments according to you. So now I don't speak regardless of how terrible I may feel and you don't do more than repeat a question that you know I'll not speak on. Because I perceive that you understand this cycle, and real communication is nonexistent, this becomes my reality. My gut feels like you want to avoid hearing my pain because it makes you feel bad and if that comes at an emotional cost to me you ignore that. But this is not a new thing I am sharing with you. I've shared this how many times now?

So much of what you wrote I could quote as a female BS as well. ^^^^^^ The above is so true for a BS.

What we found out is that we have a WS who is "white knuckling it" they have lied and denied who or what they TRULY want to do for what they hope is "long enough" that in their mind the BS will BACK OFF and not talk about it any more. This is not a recipe for R, what a BS finds out is that they potential have a mentally disturbed WS (and I truly mean that) that still feels like lying and denying are the ways to keep a marriage. But a BS may not find out all of this until maybe 2 or 3 or 4 or 8 or more years after you offered the gift of R.

You can't tell me that the WS does not know what they are doing, because they are intentionally shutting down the BS from talking about things with them. So a BS will beg, ask, cry....rinse wash repeat. And a WS will shut it down, cuz it is HARD FOR THEM. Are you kidding me???

I literally just went thru this, Covid and having to only have each other to talk to has either brought couples together or they are tearing them apart. I was trying to really open up and ask my WS if we could really talk about some things in the past, he clammed up like you would not believe, then went back to the same old patterns of "blaming me for making him feel bad" or I actually got the "I thought we were beyond this and did not have to talk about this anymore" phrase one night.

I looked right at him and said "So you feel we should just sweep this under the rug and never talk about it? Thats not what we discussed many years ago when you first cheated and were caught, you actually walked out on me and the boys for a few months, but then begged and pleaded with me to come back and said you would do whatever I needed, so you felt that was just for a few months or couple of years?" "And then you go back to doing some selfish things, that I now question and you don't want to talk about it?"

Thats not how this is going to work this time. And he just clammed up. He literally won't talk to me about it. He gets defensive again, he gets mad, he tried to emotionally bully me.... it is truly like this is happening all over again, just because I DARED to bring up how I feel and that I wanted to talk about it.

So no, you cannot heal if you don't have a WS who is being truthful. And has not gotten the help they need to figure out why they can't deal with their own selfish tendencies and won't let their spouse be open to how they feel.

I actually told my WS this time to please leave, I don't need this any more. I actually don't even like him any more. That he is a coward and that I have had it. That I just don't want to live with someone who truly does not know what love is, does not want to be open and transparent with me and also WONT TALK TO ME.

And you want to know what he has done? Nothing. He won't leave, but he won't talk to me about the hard stuff either. Its the weirdest damn thing. When I finally stopped trying to keep him and actually told him to leave, he won't leave either! He won't get help, but he won't leave. Its like living with a child. And when you live with a child you don't have sexual feelings for that child.

And yes, I have been going back to therapy that has been helping me to finally have a voice in this marriage and my WS does not like it when I have a voice.

So to go back to how this thread was started, a BS and a WS can be thinking that they are both "trying" for R, but a BS wants SO MUCH MORE then a WS wants to give. I wanted to make sure I was talking to my WS and I was asking him to talk to me and I was trying to give him 1 more opportunity, however he won't or can't grab onto that lifeline or concept, at least not with me.

But he did think things were fine in his mind, until I dared to want to talk about the A and other things from the past. Then it was a total shut down by him again....years later. It was truly hard... and sad to see.

[This message edited by realitybites at 7:25 AM, September 18th (Friday)]

So no, you cannot heal if you don't have a WS who is being truthful. And has not gotten the help they need to figure out why they can't deal with their own selfish tendencies and won't let their spouse be open to how they feel.

Truth.

And I would add that these are defining characteristics of WS’s in the first place that provided them with the toolkit to step outside the marriage.

And yet... we have to contend with things like "pussybombing"

Dafuq??

So if I have sex with my WH and he's still a horse's ass and thinks that bc I "put out" for him that all is well, have I been dickbombed? I don't think so.... i'd like to think most folks are smarter than that.

GMC - I can absolutely see why this is offensive as a woman.

However, it's 100% true what they are talking about when they are referring to the sex bombing.

It's in the specific context of a wayward wife, who likely used their sexuality to manipulate their AP, because it's a pattern they have used with men a whole lot.

Why do I know this? Because I can see in hindsight that I was like this. I definitely sex bombed my husband the first year after DDAY. I do not think it was conscious. I did in fact want to have sex with him. But, I amped it up and put a lot more effort in concert with the knowledge it was a way he could understand my love and affection for him.

I know that we too as women feel love and intimacy and closeness through and after sex, but I truly do think it's a different animal altogether for men. If H and I have great sex, the next day he is so much more lovey dovey than if we hadn't. I don't think it's like that for all men or in all relationships, but I do not think we are in the minority.

The more sex and the more amped up after dday the better we got along, so yeah definitely I put a lot of effort in that. And, it can suppress the harder discussions. It took me a while to see that I was manipulating the situation to control the outcome. I so badly wanted us to get back to good, that I was willing to be naked all day long if that's what it took.

Desperate? Yes. But, I think it comes from a pattern of behavior that started clear back in my youth.

Do I think my husband is stupid? No. Do I think it's effective? Yes and No. Yes, I do think that hysterical bonding can be helpful for certain couples to reconnect, but NO I only think it's helpful if it's accompanied by a lot of work and communication.

GMC - I can absolutely see why this is offensive as a woman.

However, it's 100% true what they are talking about when they are referring to the sex bombing.

Guys I think I’ve only rarely used that term and I was only deploying it as an example of the vernacular used to describe the phenomenon. You’ll notice I “censored” it myself because I’m uncomfortable with it.

No intent to offend.

I don't think it's the word that offended, it's the concept.

Yet the concept can be real.. In my last discussion with my WS she has finally gotten around to reading something about what needs to be done to help us heal.. And she realised that ANY time we argued she would try to settle it with sex.. Placate me that way..

I was being **ssy bombed by her...

And I would add that these are defining characteristics of WS’s in the first place that provided them with the toolkit to step outside the marriage.

Yep^^^^^. There are 2 people in this arrangement, yet the WS wants to hang onto their dysfunction so badly (and I truly mean that I have asked him to get help many times in the past, but I am done with being the "helper" and suggesting anything any more, per my therapist) so he just sits there and looks at me like "what happened?" each time.

This is what so many have said on here that a BS truly needs to understand, yet like most of us, I went down the same road... you cannot fix them. Don't try to, don't think you are smarter, don't think it is all magically going to get fixed. You must realize that the tendencies for a WS to feel that cheating was OK to do??? Lies within them. It is their perceived dysfunction. And if they do not get serious help with it, they will just keep going back down that road. Because it is so ingrained in them.

I mean this very respectively, but I am tired of hearing "well then you Mr or Ms BS need to leave then, cuz nothing is going to change." Well heck yeah I know it is not going to change, but why should "I" be the one to leave? Why don't they leave? Or go get help?

Nope, they cling to the roof over their head and a BS who more then likely has taken on way too much of the burden and the WS does not want to let that part go, yet they want to still lead their little mysterious life on the side and still manipulate behind a BS's back. Yet cannot perceive that this is wrong, just wrong.

Its just bizarre to me that a WS is shocked when a BS does finally walk away.

Just my 2 cents.

[This message edited by realitybites at 11:11 AM, September 18th (Friday)]

Yet the concept can be real.. In my last discussion with my WS she has finally gotten around to reading something about what needs to be done to help us heal.. And she realised that ANY time we argued she would try to settle it with sex.. Placate me that way..

Yes. I do believe it can be very real as well. As I already shared I think I was doing this. Not intentionally, not maliciously. It's more of a pavlov dog's thing. If I do X, I get Y. I like Y, so I do X. It wasn't even contrived, I did want and enjoy the sex we were having. But, certainly the effort was different for a reason.

[This message edited by hikingout at 10:35 AM, September 18th (Friday)]

I agree, hikingout, I don't think it's malicious (maybe in some cases it is) but I definitely think it's real. And from a WW's perspective, they're not rubbing their hands together but instead are in all likelihood desperately trying to find a connection with their BH they can see is dying on the vine. I know this is the case with my WW because we've talked about it.

Hikingout, that subconscious approach to A-healing for you H is exactly how I believe my W approaches our situation. If I believed it to be founded on malicious intent, I'd be out with the quickness.

But I believe it's a natural, flawed and yet a trained thought process. You related it to Pavlov's dog and I think that's a very appropriate parallel.

As raw data, here are my facts:

• She cheated, gaslit, lied, was awful to me for *many* years.

• She was also the one who told me while I was clueless and I've yet to find any evidence that an outside influence prompted this. (She admittedly acknowledged that she fell back in love with me, saw my efforts/love and me not knowing was on her mind 24/7 -she describes what I would call having a more refined and audible conscience)

• She TT'd me until I accepted that this marriage would be truely broken if it really required I be a detective. (Yes, this sends mixed signals when considering "her desire that I know")

• While she made me wildly angry for putting me/us where we were, I could not ignore that she *was making changes* and I felt it reasonable to wait and see if we could R.

• I have a high sex-drive and regardless of the reasons, being intimate with her feels good physically and I feel emotionally drawn to her (this new version...the old version was pretty awful for the reasons you can guess).

• She naturally does not communicate well. It's not an excuse for her to not try to improve. But empathy can buy patience for those we care for.

• I've no doubt she saw how intimacy has a net-positive effect.

• And so we've all the ingredients for her to feel as you expressed...all she needed was positive reinforcement which I provided.

But here's a caveat for me. I told her long ago that sex could feel good to me even if she had a bag on her head (I made it clear that what I was saying is *not* a suggestion or even a thing I would ever consider acceptable). That, as a man that is in tune with my physical appetite and emotional needs, I could potentially have the former satisfied in purely selfish ways if I accepted that but that the emotional part will require far more effort than getting freaky 5 times a week does (which I've kindly told her should have been present from the beginning and not in response to an A). I expressed my gratitude for her physical efforts to please me but for me to heal and us to R, that the emotional part is non-negotiable for me.

The formula for her to "drink the koolaid" of believing sex is the key to making it all go away was present and it will remain present. The only way it won't is if I become a mean person post-intimacy...and where does that lead? Regardless, I'd pass on that as I won't become a mean person because of her or this situation. But I must continually help remind her that the emotional repairs, which are hardest for her to execute, are the ones she keeps ignoring/forgetting/"wooshing".

To sum it up, it helps me to recognize that her path will take time and it's natural for her to fall into the philosophy you yourself believed to be healthy. If *I don't firmly remind her* as necessary, she will default to that philosophy and we. will. fail.

I do have a point where I will walk and I've told her my patience is not without limit. If anything though, reading how some other BH's in this thread feel has given me extra conviction to speak to her regularly about her own growth and not leaving me behind as she rug sweeps the damage she's caused me. I perceive that for many BH's, they gave up/in to not confronting the pink elephant in their own mind and that serves as a warning *to me* to give it all I have and if the day come where I feel as they do, I just walk. For posterity's sake, it'a not that BW's don't face something similar but I have a type of connection with the BH's on this topic that I just don't with even the most lovely and poorly treated lady -but in other ways, I've empathetically connected with many BW's I've read the words of.

realitybites great post! What you described is what killed the M and my love and respect for him. It did take me years to figure this out. When I stopped trying to get him to "get it" and just observe that was an eye opener for me. Then I started reading about personality disorders. My STBX was diagnosed with strong NPD tendencies shortly after D-Day#2 and I did not want to believe that 'MY WS' was like that. Sure enough False R changed my whole perspective. While I stayed an extra 5 years after False R I spent that time watching and waiting and he never stepped up to the plate it just got worse and worse to the point where he started becoming really emotionally abusive.

I do have a point where I will walk and I've told her my patience is not without limit. If anything though, reading how some other BH's in this thread feel has given me extra conviction to speak to her regularly about her own growth and not leaving me behind as she rug sweeps the damage she's caused me. I perceive that for many BH's, they gave up/in to not confronting the pink elephant in their own mind and that serves as a warning *to me* to give it all I have and if the day come where I feel as they do, I just walk. For posterity's sake, it'a not that BW's don't face something similar but I have a type of connection with the BH's on this topic that I just don't with even the most lovely and poorly treated lady -but in other ways, I've empathetically connected with many BW's I've read the words of.

I 100 percent believe if I had not come to this site, we would have fallen down the path of him clamming up and me feeling like everything was fine again.

I am not saying he is the type that would have just gone on forever like that, we would have divorced for sure.

There were certainly periods over the years where I too wanted to just fall back into marriage and everything be normal again. That it could go back somehow. This is just a normal aspect of grief - specifically denial. I do not think that my lack of understanding would have been malicious either.

Without this site I would never have understood what would have been underneath that. But, at the same time there have been periods where my H was didn't like how often I would bring it up because we were having a lot of heavy conversations and I think it was exhausting and overwhelming to him. It's very difficult to find the balance and as I said before it's just about getting very honest with one another.

What is interesting here is all the perspectives, perhaps one issue is that there are too many aspects to infidelity for our minds to hold simultaneously and process. Which may be why it sometimes takes decades to come to a decision.

Exactly, exactly, exactly.

Healing from infidelity is not simple.

However, the whole "your choice to heal" strikes me as taking a kernel of truth and contorting it into something that implies fault and blame and a bunch of other projection. ... But implying that you can let it go if you just "choose" it is shortsighted IMHO. It was ONLY after I realized the depth of trauma impact that I could even contemplate self compassion for the all of my trauma response.

I understand. I've gone through that. Consider this, though: most judgments are generated internally. People can learn to change their self-talk - not easy, but very rewarding.

I used to feel criticized when someone told me my problem was mine to solve. A good therapist evoked my sense of being criticized and helped me work through it. I now feel empowered when I hear that I have options where I thought I had none, and when I hear that I have the ability to solve my problem.

So no, you cannot heal if you don't have a WS who is being truthful.

Very gently, you can't heal if you think someone else controls you and/or you can control someone else. You may not be able to heal if you want a specific outcome that requires changing someone else.

If your WS is not remorseful, you can't R. If you want your H to file for D, and he won't, you can't make him file. Normally, however, either partner can initiate D.

If a BS needs time to plan D or to gather the financial and/or job resources necessary to D or just to gather the internal resources necessary to D, there's no shame in that.

hikingout

"Without this site I would never have understood what would have been underneath that. But, at the same..."

I'm pretty sure this has a lot to do with the fact no one knows anyone else here IRL. So what you read is the genuine feedback from human beings on both sides of betrayal. A critical thinker has the ability to assess that what they're reading is not there to impress anyone and no one really cares how you ultimately behave. Anything can be claimed by anyone here. But where the tread hits the road, either someone acts to correct and they stick around or they don't and they become one of some 70k+ "randoms".

Lying here does one no favors.

*edit: I've recommended that my WW spent time here and who knows, maybe she is reading this very post. I believe it would be healthy for her to have a candid discussion about her actions and outlook(s) here. Maybe one day she will??

[This message edited by NotMyFirstRodeo at 6:05 PM, September 18th (Friday)]

Hiking Out said:

"It's more of a pavlov dog's thing. If I do X, I get Y. I like Y, so I do X. It wasn't even contrived, I did want and enjoy the sex we were having. But, certainly the effort was different for a reason."

Sounds like the typical WS, giving sex gets ego kibbles. They like kibbles, so they give sex. Seems to be usually WW, but not always.

Very gently, you can't heal if you think someone else controls you and/or you can control someone else. You may not be able to heal if you want a specific outcome that requires changing someone else.

If your WS is not remorseful, you can't R. If you want your H to file for D, and he won't, you can't make him file. Normally, however, either partner can initiate D.

If a BS needs time to plan D or to gather the financial and/or job resources necessary to D or just to gather the internal resources necessary to D, there's no shame in that.

This is more in response to OwningItNow, but it has come down to this every single time. R in aggregate I view as morally neutral, beyond financial considerations and things affecting the kids. Don't do it for love.

I never had the choice for R. xWW walked out. I would have tried, would have tried to save the family. I guess I have no guilt, since I had no say in the matter.

On a personal level, my relationship with my GF is better than had I stayed with xWW. So that's better. Experiences I would have been denied. I do not see a way that things could have been that good with xWW once things went down.

The R board is the hardest one here for me to read. I'd rather read about people actively in affairs. Some Rs work out, I will grant that. Probably fewer people should try, I will say that. I read the R board, see all of the mehs, the BS who are praying for their WS to pull the plug, BS who have sold their souls so they can say "this is fine." Glad I'm not there right now.