SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

plainpain, your signature line always stands out to me. I don't know if it is still accurate or if you haven't updated it in awhile. You say that there are multiple "incidental" infidelities that you cannot begin to process... but that you're in successful R.

I don't know how to reconcile that. And I wonder if that is part of what is still bothering you. What were those OWs' motives? What did they get out of your WH?

I don't know if this line of thought is helpful or not but it seems relevant here.

Interesting topic. I exaggerated what the OW told me. She said that she went out with him the first time for the money and the second time he asked she suggested he take a male employee instead of her. He told her that he only wanted to take her so she went.

So I told my husband that she thought he was weird after the first time and that's why she suggested he take someone else. And when he insisted that he didn't want anyone but her to go that she went because she was afraid she'd lose her job if she said no. I told him that she felt forced to spend time with him. He got mad and said "I didn't force her". I could tell that it upset him and he got all sad but blamed his mood on something else that he was dealing with. It's like it hurt his ego or something.

@tickingtock My WH began his road to infidelity before our wedding, unbeknownst to me. He had a porn addiction. He confessed he left our baby in the crib to run across the street to look at porn. This was before internet. Four years ago he kissed a cashier at our grocery store. He rode in a limo and watched his friends perform oral on strange women. He visited a prostitute, but couldn't do it. He got a rub and tug at a massage parlour. He decided he needed "relationship" so he joined a couple of dating sites and had oral with one of the women he met. He had a one year affair with a 21 year old that resulted in a pregnancy.

When I write it all out like that, I can't believe I am with him. But he "bottomed out" when it all became real with the pregnancy. He realized how out of control he was. He confessed all of it to me in the span of a few days.

I've been severely traumatized. I call them incidentals because, in the grand scheme of things, I never think of any of them. The affair and the kiss with the cashier are the ones that kill me. That cashier ran my groceries through, chatted with my kids and propositioned my husband. I hate that.

[This message edited by plainpain at 12:18 AM, July 31st (Thursday)]

Oh Plainpain, that's awful. Soo much to process for you. Holy *$#/@.

I want to make sure he feels the same so that if she comes back he's not tempted to prove anything to himself....but I have panic attacks and am terrified of being lied to again

I think if you need the conversation and the information for your own healing process and to feel safe you should talk to him more about it.

Can you say to him what you related in the above quote?

Your motivation is clearly not to be nasty or rub anything in his face. It's for your own good...and his and your M's.

my wife had many AP. they appear to have different motives.

ONS 1 just wanted sex. he told her the next day it had been a "mistake" and that he felt he had cheated on his gf. my wife reassured him it was okay .

ons 2 seemed to be on a power trip. he spit on my wife while having sex. generally treated her like a dog.

LTA guy was seduced by my wife. he has low self esteem, is an alcoholic, is anti social, and has no friends. he couldnt believe that someone "liked" him. my wife pursued him for months. finally he took her phone number. she gave him a ride home and tried to seduce him in his home. he also has erectile disfunction, couldnt get it up, and threw her out before any penetration. a few weeks later they did the deed. they had penetrative sex less than 10x in 6-8 months but my wife gave him many BJs (he could stay hard for that but not PIV sex evidently). he fell for the validation that she gave him. when she broke it off he said something to the effect of "if i cant make a relationship with you work then i cant make one work with anyone" - basically stating that he considered my wife to be on a lower level than other women. that put a burn up her ass later.

the guys sexting with her had various motives. several wanted to hook up for sex later. some just got off on the power trip. a few seemed to just find her amusing, a way to spend the day.

but something interesting (to me) is that not one of them actually gave a rat's ass about my wife. they all used her, abused her, tossed her aside, or played stupid games with her. but she seemed to get off on being treated like crap by them.

why? i dont know that. she doesnt either.

It makes my H uncomfortable to speculate much on the APs motives. Or, I should say, he doesn't seem particularly interested. He always says his job is to focus on himself and his actions. He sees her clearly now (as an empty, narcissistic person) but I don't know if he sees himself as being played at all. He does see how she gets what she wants by playing the victim, but I think he sees them as being equally broken at the time of the affair.

I do think he was played to some degree, but he won't take less than 50% of the blame, and I guess that is a good thing.

But the glue that held them together was that they both were immature brats addicted to ego kibbles--there was nothing deeper than that, ever.

Exactly this. This is what it all boils down to.

We've discussed OW's motives, which I think stem directly from daddy and sister issues, with my H playing daddy and me the sister she had to one up. H does feel played and humiliated by being sucked in because he was feeling so low about himself. But thankfully he does realize that the blame starts and ends with him. He's accountable for all of his actions.

I think it's perfectly natural to want to examine what AP's motives were--it helps us make sense. But for me the goal is to move away from giving her headspace. And on another note, I actually felt a little pity for OW the other day, which is a huge step for me since all I was able to feel was anger and rage at how she used and lied to me. Pity for what must surely be a sad life. It is freeing to really just let go sometimes.

PP...

Can you take control of the situation and get a court ordered paternity test? Rather than allowing her the control of the situation and living in dread of when she might resurface, and how that makes your h feel, can you take her power away and know once and for all?

She ignored our request for a paternity test to set up child support/custody, so she is still a person kind of just looming out there.

I am feeling that she refused to verify paternity because your husband is not the father, just the sucker who thinks he is.

My husband's OW was a serial cheater, and she was seeing at least four other APs at the same time, we later learned.

My husband was crushed, but claimed he suspected she was seeing other men at some point in the affair.

Yes. She was stroking their ego's big time. You won't believe the stuff she wrote to him. Sounds like Junior high stuff, but yes, she was stroking his ego and his genitals.

She was also a girl with daddy issues. She could not find a man she was attracted to to marry her when she was single. So she married the first guy that proposed. Now she is miserable, and looking for her next husband while married.

I think he believed she was sincerely in love with him because he was just that awesome.

I can relate so much to your post, plainpain. I believe my FWH still feels this way.

When they first started hooking up FWH and OW supposedly "talked" about what they were doing. He said he made it clear that this was FWB's, NSA sex for him and that he was never going to leave me. (awww, so sweet!) He was assured that it was on the same page.

Until...........he became the "Love of My LIfe" to OW.

Four years out from d-day and on occasion, these thoughts come to me, too. What does FWH believe OW's real motives were? Does he really believe that he was Just. That. Awesome. and poor OW just couldn't help but fall in love with him? Do we try to shatter that dream and then maybe shatter their fragile egos/self esteem? Isn't it their very low self esteem that allowed them and motivated them to cheat in the first place?

I sure hope that my FWH now realizes that his self esteem and validation comes from within and not from outside forces. I hope that he has done the work and has good self esteem and validates himself now.

However, we haven't discussed the OW and its possible motives in years, probably.

It makes my H uncomfortable to speculate much on the APs motives. Or, I should say, he doesn't seem particularly interested.

bionicgal, it seems our husband's are cut from the same cloth, not just on this issue, but on many. I don't know if FWH keeps a special place in his mind that he can pull out the "but I was the "Love of T.C.'s Life" when he is feeling low self esteem. If he does, I want it destroyed!

I made a list not too long ago about this. I will share it with you to see if some may ring true for you. Probably not exactly the same, but in general.

Things I Want MisterSister to Acknowledge As Truth/Fact

1. You weren't T.C.'s* (see footnote) "Love of My Life". T.C. was using you, doesn't know what love is. T.C. is a slunt and

gets off on taking taken men. That is how it validates itself.

2. That you were manipulated by T.C., not taking away your 100% responsibility because no one forced you to fuck (and fuck, and

fuck, and fuck again and again) the ugly hag, but it saw you were vulnerable and T.C. worked on that vulnerability for years very

subtlely.

3.That T.C. had a plan to lure you away from me. Actually, it was just waiting (and hoping) for the day that I died from the cancer I

was dealing with. Not because T.C. "loved" you, but because it wanted everything I and we had. It wanted my husband, our

children (it couldn't have any), my life, our "stuff".

4. That T.C. was never a "nice" person. That T.C. was a fucked up slunt from the get go. That it didn't go cray cray because of a

head injury during the LTA. T.C. was always a nasty, selfish, cray cray slunt that just did a good job hiding it from you until it

couldn't stay hidden anymore and the cray cray escaped.

5. Don't you think T.C. was telling *Marco* that he was the "Love of My Life" whilst it was fucking him and married to *Kevin*?

Meanwhile, it had you on the back burner, actively working on you being the next married man it was going to fuck. It then

marries Marco (yes, and is fucking you now, too) and is telling you that you are the "Love of My Life". Really?

6. That T.C. was ugly. You were so desperate for attention/ego kibbles/stroking you overlooked how ugly it was. No, it didn't age

poorly, it was ugly, ugly, fugly.

7. T.C. was never your "friend".

8. You weren't special. You were just another in a line of married men that T.C. got off luring away from wives. It wasn't about you,

it was all about T.C.'s insatiable need to prove that it has the magical golden va jay jay and to validate itself that it must be

something special.

9. That T.C. was most likely faking its "orgasms" with you. Get a grip. That is the oldest trick in the "How to Be a Slunt" book. Many

"fake" to build up the man's ego, and in particular whores and slunts do this.

10. That T.C. was evil.

11. That you have no fond memories of anytime spent with the slunt. Even the "passionate" sex aren't thought of fondly.

*T.C. is short for: The C you next Tuesday.

My H was told by its adult d that he meant nothing to them " Mr. TBM supplemented them".

The realization that he was no man with an S on his chest, but someone that was used says it all.

From my perspective, it wanted to lift its self esteem by stealing another woman's H. Stupid beotch set up a competition that the object was not aware of.

What does that say about it? It says that it is do do on my red bottoms. The terrible, sexless, cold mean W that he does not love, is still better than her.

t/j Sister... I hear you!!!

end t/j

I am of the opinion that it is good for WS to start facing up to the reality of the A. If he is always going to hold on to the fantasy of a wonderful "relationship" then I cannot be a party to that, and this M is over.

It is no longer my job to prop up his ego, and it probably was never healthy for me to do that. Support healthy habits, offer encouragement, OK. But trying to make him feel good about himself when he was screwing up...just creating an ego monster. He didn't give two shits about my self-esteem when he betrayed me.

I think it is actually much healthier for him to learn some humility. He had this whole Secret Agent Life going on in his head. Discussing the manipulative aspects of AP is a kind of reality testing for him, and lets me know if he is a safe person who will not fall for the trail of ego kibbles that lead to the witch's candy hut next time.

Yeah, he doesn't like thinking about it and it makes him feel foolish, but that is part of the hard work WS have to do. He always had the option of NOT cheating, and in that case we probably would have continued on in the old path of our M. He didn't take that option, so this is the natural consequence, and honestly it is much healthier.

It's like if a kid did something harmful or dangerous - you wouldn't avoid talking to them about it because you didn't want to damage their self-esteem. You would want to make sure they understood why it was harmful/dangerous, why people don't do that - so the kid could learn, understand, and begin to make better decisions.

It's not as if you are walking behind him all day yelling "You suck! You are not even human! You are not fit to lick my boots!" (well, OK...maybe on the worst days you may have said somoething like that... ) Instead, you are trying to have a respectful, adult conversation about something that you both need to process. If he has never learned to have adult conversations, and how to separate out feeling and thinking, this is now his golden opportunity. How lucky he is to have you still there and willing to help him to grow in this way.

Yeah, he doesn't like thinking about it and it makes him feel foolish, but that is part of the hard work WS have to do. He always had the option of NOT cheating, and in that case we probably would have continued on in the old path of our M. He didn't take that option, so this is the natural consequence, and honestly it is much healthier.

It's like if a kid did something harmful or dangerous - you wouldn't avoid talking to them about it because you didn't want to damage their self-esteem. You would want to make sure they understood why it was harmful/dangerous, why people don't do that - so the kid could learn, understand, and begin to make better decisions.

I agree ^^^^^^^^^^^

I don't think we would be doing our waywards nor ouselves any favors if we failed to point out their foolishness, an how deceptive and OW can sometimes be if they are looking to change out their own husbands.

In the tons of emails I read, my husband was very consistent in pointing out that he only wanted an affair, and being that she instigated it, that's all she was going to get.

It was also just as obvious to me that at some point she was clearly stating that she wanted more.

Also, she at some point, when he ran into his OW with her husband, and my wayward saw that he was a nice guy, despite what the OW said about him, and she looked like a slob when out with him, and I think at that point the blinders slipped some, and he started to feel foolish thinking he was special to her. He realized likely no one was special to her.

He missed this part of her, at first, because he wanted to.

He needs to acknowledge that.