SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Is it possible for someone to be that clueless?

Yes. Get her into MC, and bring this up. Otherwise, it is just going to fester. You cannot R without talking about the difficult things.

And I will always see your name ending in vodka. Just sayin

Ditto what betrayedwife said....no way do I ever want to be anything like AP...no way no how.....first of all it was ALL about him because AP could have been anyone....I told him recently that when his AP put on the Victoria secret outfits and F'k me shoes and pranced around it was all about HIM....he agreed! !

I have no desire to be the woman he LUSTS after....

No thanks....we were our one and onlies and early on I

Of course compared myself to her but you know what I thank God I am NOT her! We have REAL intimacy! We truly make LOVE....

And since dday these empty nesters have had sex in the car....and on the patio table and lots of other places and it was FUN!

oh hell yes this shit storm hurts like hell but it will NOT define our almost 38 year marriage....

We have REAL intimacy! We truly make LOVE....

And since dday these empty nesters have had sex in the car....and on the patio table and lots of other places and it was FUN!

But that's just the point. For some of us, that's not happening. It did with APs, but not with loving spouses trying to make their way through R.

Take her someplace new....my H had sex in his office...I dont need to "claim that" ....id rather make OUR own memories....

just KNOW she feels shame...acknowledge that in your head....she may feel unworthy....understandable! Since you have been " lurking" you must know ....and I hope you do... her A was NOT about you! Time has given me that peace that I have desired since dday!

And even as I write this something could trigger me tomorrow....

this is a shitstorm I NEVER planned/expected ...but here I am...and if not for this site and IC and my own deep digging and a faith that something far bigger than me...I'm not sure WHERE I'd be....

But some of us have been so starved for desire and passion that cheap Cnn tawdry still sounds better than boring and disinterested.

But that's just the point. For some of us, that's not happening. It did with APs, but not with loving spouses trying to make their way through R.

I totally understand that. But that still doesn't mean you want what you thought, what they thought they had. What you want is a better sex life with your wife. Period.

And you aren't going to be able to fix this by taking her places and trying to appeal to her inner slut. She has unresolved sexual issues, among others. And unless she's committed and working her ass off to identify and resolve them in a healthy way, getting to that happy, healthy, exciting sex is never going to happen.

This, unfortunately, is a marathon, not a jog around the block.

I'm human, I understand wanting to get your bipper wet, but her reluctance to share this side of herself with you isn't changing anytime soon. And it's not a simple choice she makes, it's a deeply ingrained, unhealthy response.

We all take a major hit to the ego and self esteem after infidelity. This is when we feel lesser than, and in great need of validation from our wayward spouses. Struggling with not getting that is very common. Don't let that struggle cloud your goals or allow you to lower your standards.

Just to be clear, I'm much more of a fuck girl than a make love girl. When I say lower your standards i do not mean fucking over making love. I mean wanting or allowing her dysfunction to be acceptable or enviable, even in your most searing pain and loneliness.

That's all. I know you want to feel desired by your wife and feel her attraction to you. Don't fool yourself into believing that's how he felt, or that you would feel desired if she behaved in a similar manner with you. She's not well, she can't attempt to give you that feeling without her dysfunction screwing it up. You are chasing a ghost.

Hiking with vodka sounds better to me too.

I don't want my husband to be with me like he was with the OW. Everything with them was bullshit fantasy unicorn land, no reality.

I also don't want to have sex like they did, nor where they did. I have read on here of people goin to same hotels and stuff, but I just don't think I could do it. For me, I think I'd be too consumed with the affair shadow - with relcaiming, with making it mine, with taking it back, all of them with the affair defining the moment - than to be actually present as *me* with *my husband* and *in our marriage* to have it be meaningful. I worry I'd feel used, by myself, just using my body to make a point, to myself, to my M I don't even know.

So for me, I don't want those things, because I don't think I'd get any healing out of it, it'd just be revenge-ish if I were to carry it out.

My sweet wholesome wife did things that would make make Bangkok hookers blush. When I confronted her about her depravity during MC she said she could only do that nasty stuff with someone she had no respect for. She hated doing those things but her AP was driving, she submitted to him. With me it's love making and that's what she loves. At least that's what I'm told. Poly did verify most of this but I still have my doubts. I love to have fun in bed. Tried to get her to open up a bit for years but she didn't want to. It bothered me but I didn't go out and find someone to cheat with. The whole thing continues to blow my mind.

Mine was the attention. To invite someone to lunch, make out with them afterwards and then call them an hour later and beg to see them again and meet in the park 2 hours later and make out again? He's never wanted to do that with me. Even when we were dating. It's... ugh.

I have a few theories...

Sometimes, I think they behave like this during an A because its sorta like being drunk. Nothing feels quite real and your inhibitions go down.

Sometimes, I think they do what they think they need to in order to get the APs attention. I think woman especially assume that wild sex is what will keep the man interested. Once you are married, it seems "unnecessary." Sad, right? My fWHs offered lots of sex and my fWH offered her emotional connection, family discussion, and future faking. What a perfect arrangement

You mentioned being "good." After I had my son, everything sexual felt "inappropriate." Was such a turn off. But in the A "space," the children don't "exist" so you can go back to your "college days."

Real life is full of turn offs. Namely: anything to do with responsibility. The fantasy A world has none of that sexy-sapping reality making lots of room for energy.

Lastly, they want to tap this fantasy arrangement for all its got. As are a lot of work. They lying, cheating, deceiving, planning, etc. is time consuming; they seek to get their "monies worth."

Its all pretty lame.

Now, onto your sex life. Your sex life is an issue even without the A. It fell to the wayside long ago. What are you going to do about that?

My libido took a serious nose dive after having a child. A couple of things above played into that and so much more. It is very very complicated and it wasn't until we had his dday and marriage counseling that I was able to have a better idea as to what was going on within me.

Instead of having an affair and utilizing porn, I wish my fWH had taken me to a gyn or an MC or a sex therapist or had done an internet search on love languages. Something. Anything that wasn't fucking someone else.

(Things that have helped us: finding ways to emotionally connect as often as humanly possible rather than waiting for date night, being flirtatious and anticipating sex, making time for emotional and physical intimacy after our son is in bed which means having our own bedtime without the TV, etc., giving me more attention and less pressure over responsibilities, alone time (our son goes to a friends house regularly - we get to go to bed loudly together and wake up slowly), he had a vasectomy and I went off birth control bc birth control can reduce libido, and letting go of my hang ups and remembering that its OK to be sexually "naughty" with your spouse.)

I don't have as much time to respond as I'd like. But, instead of the concession stand example, my H had sex-in-a-truck. . and I was critical of myself for a long time for not being able to incite that kind of "desire" in him. I thought he must have been driven by a powerful, blinding lust. But he said to me, that it was not desire, lust, love, or passion that drove him to having sex in an abandoned construction site in his truck with a married woman. It was desperation.

So, please forgive me, but your wife on her knees in a concession stand on the cement floor? That ain't passion; that was desperation. May you never value yourself that little.

That ain't passion; that was desperation. May you never value yourself that little.

^^^^ this!

Thank you for this thought. I think it hits something I had not before quite been able to verbalize. Yes, desperation for filling their leaking broken glass of self-esteem, with anything on the outside they could grasp. A desperation for an "easy" fix instead of fixing the leak in the first place. What is so so sad, is that trying to fill a leaking glass is actually an endless quest that is far more destructive and ultimately unsuccessful than just fixing the leak in the first place.

Here is a quote from one of my "egocentric threadjacks" that speaks to some of this:

The WW then compartmentalizes her two worlds. In one world she is the matriarch of the family, the wife and the Holy Mother. In the other world she gets to be whomever she wants to be. She gets to recreate herself into what ever image she has fantasied about over the years. An alter-ego. Fantasys she would never reveal to her wedded husband, too embarrassed to reveal. She has an image to maintain that she has built up since courtship. She gets to break out of her bride/wife/mother mold and escape her 24 year old reality.

My WW said she (the wife, mother, matriarch) was too embarrassed to ask me to do or try certain risque 'out of charachcter' things. The A allowed her to reinvent herself, to sort of rollplay with a degree of anonymity, a clean slate and no preconceived expectations from her AP. She was stuck in a self concieved and self maintained marrital paradigm. The A allowed her to escape all that and break character. What sucks is, I would have LOVED to help her/us try new things, mix it up, break molds, experiment. What I perceived as a lack of interest on her part was-according to her, actually a lack of courage. This is just a damned shame.

[This message edited by RealityBlows at 3:31 PM, March 28th (Saturday)]

She was stuck in a self concieved and self maintained marrital paradigm.

THIS!!! This is key. Her reluctance to behave in a sexual way with you that might be considered wild or fun, is because of her, and her own problems. It has nothing to do with you or her attraction to you.

my WW had an affair to "feel desired" and to "feel sexual and alive"

That's not why she cheated, that's just the excuse she is using because she doesn't know better yet.

Sounds like she was trying to fill a lack of internal validation with some unhealthy external validation.

When she finds her real reasons you will understand why it's not a personal rejection of you or that that guy had anything better than you have. You and he can't be compared. He'll never be what you are. You don't want that. What you want is the real deal.

BetrayedWife, you are absolutely correct. Eloquent too. The viewpoint you provided is so important for us BSs to realize.

FWIW, my WW recognizes this and is doing lots of work to answer the very questions posed in your response.

I'd still love for her to jump my bones from time to time.

Sigh....

For me, it's not the sex which after 18 years fucking him

I know couldn't have been that different that what we have...while the sex is obviously painful and hard to move past...

It's the time and attention. Making out. Flirty conversations and texts. Emails. Effort.

It's been so so long since I've felt my WH put EFFORT into us and me and what we have together. Knowing he did that with her is the killer. I don't want him to treat me like an affair. I want him to treat me like his wife...to woo me and romance me and make out with me and touch me. I know that isn't what he had in his A. What he had was desperate and broken sex. I want him, now, to prove he realizes how lucky he is to have me by fighting to make our marriage passionate and sexy and romantic.

Oh my gosh. please, please, please. Any of you wanting what your Wayward Spouses had with their APs - do not EVER lower yourselves to that. This thread makes me so sad.

They are both very broken, broken people. Desperate people. Yes, they can overcome their issues, but what they did together was not sexy. It was disgusting. They couldn't do it with us because they also know it was base behavior. It was lower than scumbag behavior. It was both of them disrespecting themselves and everyone in their lives and forever scarring everyone involved in their lives. Never want that. ever.

Hugs to you all... We BS are all better than THAT.

Bionicgal's example is similar to my own. My H had sex with the OW twice in the back of his SUV. That he used to carry garbage. And never cleaned once. And she was on the bottom. That doesn't speak of passion to me. That speaks of a supreme lack of respect and the unwillingness to take the time or spend the money on the hotel across the street. Do I want that? No way in hell.

So your wife's first time with the OM was a BJ in a concession stand? Just gross. How romantic! Of course she's ashamed. She was being used and disrespected.

I agree with others that she needs to do a lot of work. But I also agree that you shouldn't be looking for A sex, but true intimacy.

Best to you.

Catlover. . . My H did clean the truck occasionally, but our son once barfed back there, cinematically, and we have never quite gotten 100% of the smell out.

I am going to venture re: the concessions stand that I never plan to be intimate in an establishment in close proximity to hot dog buns. But, those are just my standards. I can't imagine that makes me less sexy.

[This message edited by bionicgal at 11:18 AM, March 29th (Sunday)]

The realization dawns on me as I read these posts that I am waiting, wishing, and hoping for a return of passion that simply may never return. How long to wait. Life is so short. We all need that spark that drive that joy! What has waiting done but increase frustration and depression ae! And waste even more time. We don't have kids. I could start over. What am I afrai of?

Please forgive thread jack. At least I was relating.

How long? I just do not see the point. I do not want more of the same nothingness. It is lonely. Do very lonely.

[This message edited by Brass Tacks at 8:08 PM, March 29th, 2015 (Sunday)]

Hikingwithkoda, or vodka, your post speaks exactly to so much of what I feel and struggle with as well. I don't know how you get past these feelings, but I have appreciated many of the responses above.

As tfkeel so eloquently put it, when your WW would rather watch a "fucking episode of "Wheel of Fortune" to spend nookie time with you", that really hurts. You don't feel valued. As a spouse, I see nothing wrong with wanting an M that involves some level of passion and desire.

But my frustration and personal experience with the rabbit hole, is that when my WW can't express any level of lust or sexual desire for me. Then the thoughts creep in, is she "back for other reasons". I want to think she's back for me, I want to be wanted and I assume you do to.

I'm careful not to project too much here. But we the BH don't want the A, but we do want to restore a better sex life. And a healthy sex life can include desire and passion, and it can be playful and flirtatous, and it can be loving. But after the A it seems such a difficult goal to attain.

And Brass Tacks, it is lonely and I don't know how long to wait. What if you never get there? Is that true R, settling for a sex life with your WW that leaves you unfulfilled?