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Mine said he didn't know if he wanted to leave when this all was going on. I told him the same thing: he DID leave when he chose to do this.

While I agree that an A is the most unloving thing a person can do to their spouse, I disagree that a blanket statement can be made that no WS loves their BS during their A. Perhaps it's semantics, if your definition of love automatically is cancelled by an A, which I can understand.

My H had an almost 4 year LTA and behaved as lovingly as usual throughout. We raised teenagers, built careers, traveled, shared great passion. Meanwhile he had a dirty little secret that had everything to do with his unexamined issues and nothing to do with me or the M. He never pretended to himself or the OW that he was in love.

When he says that he loved me and never wanted to leave I believe him. The caveat is that he didn't really know how to love at the time. Didn't know about attachment, true intimacy, unselfishness. Almost no self awareness.

He is learning, however. Now I do believe him when he says that he can't imagine doing this again. It's not just the shame, the pain he has caused. I think that he TRULY loves me now.

In the very beginning I questioned how he could possibly love me and hurt me like this and then I thought back to my childhood. There is no stronger bond than that between a mother and child and yet my mother put me in dangerous situations, let things happen to me because she was in denial, neglected me etc. She didn't treat me like this because she didn't love me...she did it because there was something wrong with her. She loved me but she was selfish and had poor coping and parenting skills.

Scuba-my Mom was the same and I like the analogy. That's helpful for me. I never doubted her love for me, she didn't always act loving towards me.

Sorry - I can't buy this. If they don't know how to love, then they don't love the BS.

And a neglectful mother - did she go out with other kids and treat them wonderfully? Did she lie about it? did she sneak around with these other kids for years, lying to you and being very cruel and hurtful?

An A isn't a case of not knowing how to love - it's a case of very willful deceit. It's a series of actions that could ONLY be perpetrated against someone that the perpetrator thinks NOTHING of.

I completely disagree that there is any real 'love' from anyone in an A. It is to willful and too cruel, and they know what they are doing every step of the way.

Do you think after a lie they thought about it and felt bad? No, because only a few times of that and they would stop. No, they walked away grinning that they 'got away with it'. They wanted to trick us. They wanted to make us trust them. The gaslighting was all on purpose.

I will never buy that there was love during my husband's A. I used to, but for me, it was only me trying to make myself feel better.

Just ask yourself this - could you behave that way to someone you love? Let's not pretend that our WSs are these sad, incapable of holding relationships empty souls. They had run of the mill cheap affairs.

This hurts my heart worse than anything and as such I don't know if I can provide productive feedback.

They did not love us. They did indeed leave us.

These are my premises.

My wife said she did love me while having her affairs but that there are degrees of love. She said she never thought of divorce, but I am suspicious that was because I make a lot of money. I guess it is possible for people to fall in and out of love. That is our only hope to salvage things right? I disagree with the idea that they left though. At least my wife attended family functions, was pleasant, we had sex( though she always said she wasn't in the mood for an orgasm...god I'm an idiot). So they lived two lives, and stole from us, but they left enough of themselves behind to fool us for a long time.

My fWS uses the word "oscillation" to talk about his actions. He had a four year LTA in which he oscillated, in his way of compartmentalizing, between me and her. The way I think about it their affair lasted four years, during which time it was either "active" or "dormant." I believe there were times when he did love me and times when he didn't. I don't know exactly how they correlated to the active and dormant phases with the AP, because I don't entirely know when they were active or dormant.

But nonetheless I think it's complicated and not at all straightforward like "he did or he didn't." It's hurtful to think about, but at the same time, the fact that he DID oscillate has a lot to do with why we are working on reconciling. On one hand, he used having a wife and kids as a screen for his terrible behavior, because he seemed like such a charming family man. On the other hand, he really didn't want to leave me ENTIRELY, and was committed to me at some level that made him ultimately try to get out of the affair (before I found out) and be willing to do NC the moment I found out. In the process of learning to forgive him, I am growing to understand some of that.

Possibly the most important lesson for me out of all this is that I can hold complex and sometimes divergent feelings and ideas at once. I'm still a novice at doing that, but it is rewarding when I am able to, and it's something I've found really valuable to other parts of my life as well.

My husband loves me now. He loved me in the past. But there was a point in time that he stopped loving me. Once he said, I never stopped loving you - and I responded that that's a lie. You can't look me in the eye and say you loved me while you were in bed with her. And he pulled back and said, you're right. I wasn't even thinking about you.

See, I think it's all part of the crazy A thinking and justifying that's done to make what's going on OK. He says he shut down and detached from me - even thought I didn't love him anymore. It's so stupid.

This is one of the most painful things to have to grieve, isn't it?

I guess my point, is that the affair isn't about love -- even if the wayward thought they loved the other person. Also, you can lie and cheat and steal behind your partner's back, and still love them. The lying, cheating and stealing is not about them. Also, you can massively disappoint people, and still love them.

I think many BS suffer because they feel like the choice was between them and the AP, and that the affair was done to them. I certainly struggle with this daily. It may feel that way, but I don't think many waywards feel/think that way at all. The waywards are choosing to "use" or "not use" - their mindset is distorted. That is why when the choice becomes real (on dday when the light of day shines on the A) many, many waywards end up staying with their marriages.

An affair is an addictive fantasy - not a "real" relationship. It is my feeling that it is not a choice between two people, and really not a legitimate relationship in any sense of the word. I can think of no other situation where humans are able to deceive themselves more fully, except perhaps with other addictions.

[This message edited by bionicgal at 4:25 PM, January 21st (Tuesday)]

I completely disagree that there is any real 'love' from anyone in an A.

I think that is a bold statement given the many different types of affairs. This topic of a WS still loving the BS during the affair is a common topic in the LTA forum. I can tell that it is probably more common that the WS actually does still love the the BS during the A than not for LTA type affairs.

It's a series of actions that could ONLY be perpetrated against someone that the perpetrator thinks NOTHING of.

It is to willful and too cruel, and they know what they are doing every step of the way.

This is probably very rare. Sure, some WS probably are so broken they may fit that statements you make but likely not many. You assume that the series of actions that eventually led to the A were actions in which the WS knew would result in the A. Many WS never recognized where their poor boundaries were taking them. Yes, at somepoint they are faced with the simple decision to do it or not but the series of actions that got them there are far more complex than you are presenting.

Just ask yourself this - could you behave that way to someone you love?

Well as a BS who has had a year to process it all and understand it, of course I could not. Prior to DDay I was an idiot on the topic of affairs, I had no idea how they happened. I believed many untrue statements about affairs. When the series of actions that lead to affairs where presented to me at times I made better decisions than my WW obviously. But it wasn't due to the knowledge that I have now that helped me make those decisions. I attribute it to a clear black and white, right and wrong type of brain processing and simple luck.

How many BS after having fully processed their WS's A have made life changes to help them avoid the series of events that lead to an A? I bet many have. Maybe it is a different attitude toward porn, maybe they talk to a co-worker different now than before, I am sure many have made changes. Do we love our spouse now more because we made a slight or major change? or is it we are more aware? I think we are more aware.

I have to admit that I gave my H the "I never stopped loving you" statement. But from almost a year away, I totally see that I "left" the M, my H and my kids. I was rude, irritable, and anti-social. I didn't want to be bothered with talking with or engaging with the kids or H. And I thought during the time that I was acting "normal" and that nothing would seem amiss to them. I know now that my H and kids saw the changes and H thought I was starting menopause. He couldn't understand any other reason for my behavior.

I believe my WH has loved me all along as best he could in the only ways he could. Having so many undealt with issues from childhood trauma, never facing or dealing with those things, he never really knew how to not lie or cheat. He'd been lying and cheating for years before we ever met.

I see it in his eyes, hear it in his voice and feel it when he touches me. May have doubted his love slightly on occasion but see what he has done as the actions of a very sick person. Very, very sick. My WH didn't have a typical affair, rather his behavior could have put himself and our entire family in danger. We could have lost everything because of his sickness.

Unfortunately, his therapist doesn't believe in SA...and we're stuck spinning our wheels in R right now.

I've hurt people I love very much when I was in great pain and suffering PTSD, diagnosed or treated. I DID love those people and am lucky they forgave me. I guess this is why I am working on R. I know how it feels to hurt others. PTSD is not an excuse, not at all, but it explained a lot about my behavior, and his.