SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

ScaredyKat,

See, that's primarily why I agree with tg. First off, my marriage was decent before the affair and had NOTHING to do with why I cheated. Just wanted to get that out of the way. But my H and I do not currently and never did "experience the SAME disconnect" or "go through the SAME hardships." If anything, we were much more "on the same page" wrt our marriage before I cheated. Since we've remarried, where I see problems he does not and vice versa. Yes, we absolutely took the same vows. But to say we're in the same marriage mentally, emotionally, psychologically etc. is not the case.

[This message edited by Darkness Falls at 6:38 PM, June 21st (Wednesday)]

I agree! however, does it really matter? One person chose to cheat. The other didn't cheat (usually). Still at square one.

I hear what you're saying, However, in my case, my husband and I were in fact in the same marriage. We were both feeling neglected by one and other. We were both not giving each other 100%. In fact, we both in some way turned to OW, and she drove an even bigger wedge between us than what was already brewing.

I turned to her as a friend, he turned to her as a fuck buddy. I was sick of her being at our house everyday as was he. We both lacked the communication skills to tell her to GTFO. He was sick of coming home from a long day at work to her kids being here, and I was sick of making 3 kids that weren't mine dinner.

So, in hindsight, when I say we were in the exact same marriage, it wasn't because we spoke the same vows, but in fact because we were in the exact same marriage.

I also understand that in the case of the AP being a hooker or COW, this is not applicable as the BS more than likely is not dealing with the double betrayal and the AP is solely part of the WS's life.

[This message edited by Puglife920 at 8:28 PM, June 21st (Wednesday)]

Your right I was in a faithful marriage....he was in an open marriage.

Yup we didn't experience our marriage the same....still don't. He experiences a marriage with a faithful partner...I don't.

We aren't in the same marriage because in HIS marriage he has a faithful partner who has eaten this shit sandwich with as much grace as possible.

MY marriage is to a lying cheater who is working on himself.

And even though we aren't in the same marriage...and I have experienced the heart break, disrespect lying in MY marriage...and I still didn't cheat.

If a cheater put some energy into the M instead of the A, maybe some of the M issues would vanish.

Exactly.

When I hear someone post crap about how anyone can cheat and that no one should ever say "I'd never cheat" I call bullshit.

I know that I would never rob a bank or rape a child. Same thing with cheating.

I would never say that one could not be attracted to another person. But I have a moral code that prohibits me from crossing that line.

I'm with TG on this one.

At the very least, my wife and I are married to different people. I'm married to her. She's married to me.

I also agree with the assertion that the "same marriage" argument is shorthand for "the marriage didn't cause the affair". (Edit here to give credit to SadieMae for this insight.)

Wrapped up in all of this is my old saw that whenever someone wants to use (even legit) resentments as a causal factor in their behavior, they have to recognize that their spouse likely has a list of resentments about their bullshit that's just as long and just as legit. So nobody gets off scot free. Anybody who thinks their spouse is the only one who is going to have to change to Make a Marriage Great Again(TM) is fooling themselves.

Affairs shatter the illusion that we live in the same reality, share the same worldview, and are playing by the same rules as our partner. They remind us that our spouse is not us. They're a discrete human being having their own experiences of the world through a variety of lenses that we don't possess, some of those reaching all the way back to childhood.

It's good to pull these sorts of platitudes out periodically and critically examine them. They can be useful because they boil down a ton of wisdom into an easily accessed reference. But when they're used as platitudes, they just become excuses for not thinking deeply about our own experiences and roles.

[This message edited by wincing_at_light at 9:28 PM, June 21st (Wednesday)]

⬆⬆ Yes! Exactly!

**sigh**

so I've read this whole thread and I still don't understand the semantics. Perhaps my black and white thinking is contributing to my struggle to understand the greater point of what seems very obvious.

Of course two different, unique snowflakes enter a marriage together. No assumption that they are somehow the same/experiencing the same. Different people, different genetics, different makeup, different experiential understanding/perception of life.

Same two snowflakes decide to play a game together. A game with established rules. Both understand and VOW to play by those rules. Play begins and one player decides to cheat and not follow the rules.

At what point were we not playing the same game together?

Whatever feelings, resentments, anger at their great-uncle occurred DURING the playing of the game with established rules... doesn't change the fact that TWO people were playing a game TOGETHER.

does it?

I've said this several times over false R with WH, because he'd state the marriage as being the driving force behind the A. Looking at the M as being the house we live in, metaphorically, it makes no sense since we both lived in that house.

So I'd make that statement. WH's response was always "Well I'm not you." and my response to that was always "Exactly."

To me, that's distinguishing the excuse from the reality. The reality being the problem is not the marriage, it's the thoughts within the wayward.

It's good to pull these sorts of platitudes out periodically and critically examine them. They can be useful because they boil down a ton of wisdom into an easily accessed reference. But when they're used as platitudes, they just become excuses for not thinking deeply about our own experiences and roles.

fair point... when finally working on the marriage dynamic yes it is essential that both partners (as was mentioned) in the same game/dance/house/marriage recognize the work is 50/50 and done by investing 100% honestly.

If the basis of the post comment that causes a bristling from the wayward side is due to semantics regarding differentiating, well of course I won't disagree that I am responsible for 50% of the marriage and am my own unique person always with my own unique perspective. It has been said there are three views going on at any one time - my perspective, your perspective and reality.

Sure I suffered from lack of introspection regarding my word choice = especially the times I expressed anger = and I still suck IMO at empathetic diplomatic speech.

But as I recently borrowed what I heard my goal is not to be right, it is to be real. If those "rules" of mutual respect, consideration, and honesty are not applied, how can there be a "marriage" as in meeting of the minds?

So yeah, tiredgirl, if both partners are not sharing an ethic that abides by the golden rule and works to repair for the hurt than of course it is fine to leave as no one should stay in a relationship that is harmful.

I guess I am asking - what is the point of the hairsplitting "same" ? The marriage and the infidelity are two separate issues. Correlation ain't causation.

And it never ceases to amaze me that when thoughts and feelings are questioned and that when communication based upon truly listening is the goal, it is often the wayward that realizes how that resentment and blame and adoption of a "victim mentality" that created the "I deserve" crappy coping mechanism was the toxic root...

when that self-focused mentality changes it is no wonder that there evolves a better dynamic in regards to processing "hurts"

is that the point of breaking apart the "catch phrase"?

editing to echo: this!

To me, that's distinguishing the excuse from the reality. The reality being the problem is not the marriage, it's the thoughts within the wayward

[This message edited by Merida at 4:55 AM, June 22nd (Thursday)]

Yeah, unfortunately marriages have little to do with the choice to cheat.

Plenty of people are in bad marriages that decide not to cheat, and plenty of people are in healthy marriages that choose to cheat. The problem is with the cheater. Everyone who cheats is unhealthy, either chronically or acutely (emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, etc.). They need to figure out why they are so unhealthy.

Case in point: If the BS is such a terrible person, why not just divorce him/her first, then go find your "true love"? I don't get it.

Affairs shatter the illusion that we live in the same reality, share the same worldview, and are playing by the same rules as our partner. They remind us that our spouse is not us. They're a discrete human being having their own experiences of the world through a variety of lenses that we don't possess, some of those reaching all the way back to childhood.

While it's true that adultery shatters our illusions, reality is always reality. Individual perspectives are by definition just a perception of an actual truth.

The experience of a BS is that we failed to SEE that our partner didn't share our values and that s/he plays by different rules. The reality, of course, is that the cheater does in fact have a different worldview which s/he then acts upon.

To say that two different perspectives somehow produces two different marriages though, denies the reality of the exact same vows and the exact same marriage certificate at the time the marriage is contracted. Two different perspectives can't deny the absolute reality of an event. Both partners stood together and committed to a marriage. That happened. It wasn't a matter of perception, it was an event.

Fidelity is only one of several marriage vows. I don't know a single person who hasn't broken one if not all of those vows.

I started a thread on this very topic a few months ago ( A vow is a vow is a vow).

Granted, not one is perfect in a M. We each hurt the other in some way along this course. (that is the worse part of for better or worse)

However, adultery is much more serious, it is hidden and it is bringing another person into the M. It seriously poisons and adulterates (debase, make impure) the M on a major level.

It is the only stated instance where Divorce is allowed in most world religions.

All these other vows that the WS says the BS broke pale in comparison.

"All these other vows that the WS says the BS broke pale in comparison."

agreed. and even in the best of marriages and in the best of reconciliations, there you have two people still in different marriages because they aren't each other.

Merida, you rock.

WAL, the problem with a wayward posting issues with some platitude or another is it seems like accountability dodging to me. Did the cheater's particular marital experience cause them to cheat? Was the M issue a factor therefore easing the poor little cheater's culpability? That's the underlying message here isn't it? Some cheater saying, "hey, you weren't in the M where your spouse gained 20lbs". Or some other fucking unmet need.

Why can't these fucking "broken" waywards simply raise their hand and say "I fucked up"? No veiled blameshifting, just simply be accountable for your choice to knowingly do something you knew to be wrong.

People are different. No matter how bad a relationship got I would never cheat. Neither would you. Some people do.

No matter how bad someone was making me miserable in life I'd never murder anyone, neither would you. Some people do.

No matter how broke I was I'd never rob a person, store, bank, etc. Neither would you. Some people do.

There are bad people in the world. Liars, cheaters, murderers... There just are. That's life.

Take comfort in that you're not one of them.

I understand that we're going to bridle at this notion, because generally, the first attacks the BS has to fend off is blame for the marriage and blame for the spouse. The very first move by most WS's is to try to invalidate the BS's perspective and convince them that they've really been an asshole all along, so the WS was practically forced to fuck around.

I'm not in any way saying that the WS's perspective on this is valid or true. Only that it is theirs.

If the ideal (in the platonic sense) form of the marriage (my perspective, your perspective, reality) is a Venn diagram, chances are that the BS perspective is closer to that slice in the middle than the WS's is (at least from the point that the affair begins, and arguably until well after D-Day).

I don't think anyone is arguing that because we're in wildly different perspectives on the marriage that you have to begin with the WS's perspective as the new baseline. If they're a complete and raving idiot, then call that out. (Reconciliation is, as I like to say, more of a war of attrition than anything else.) This is where you set your boundaries and your non-negotiables, and you're essentially saying to your spouse, "Get your head right and come closer to this perspective, or you can get the fuck out."

But by acknowledging that they've got a different perspective, you're already changing, because you've got to come to terms with the idea that your spouse doesn't share your perspective. And you've got to figure out if you're capable of staying married to someone who converts resentments into hand grenades. (Which can be hard, especially when their core resentments strike you as bullshit. That they have a resentment is a statement of fact, not of validity.)

My wife had a bunch of resentments towards me. Some of them were stupid (my perspective), but I still needed to change some of those behaviors -- not because I think they were inherently wrong, but because I'd finally been told that they triggered whatever correlations from her past or her parents' marital dynamic or whatever, and if I wanted to be married to her, I should try to respect those things. Love in action is less about giving you what I think you need based on my perspective than it is about learning how you need to be loved and doing that, even when it doesn't seem valuable to me. Love is trying to speak in your love language rather than mine, even when the tongue is foreign to me. The fact that I'm willing to learn to love you in a way isn't instinctual for me is what love is. That's love as a verb.

That's part of the ways we change and grow. It's not "stop doing that because it gives me the 'zentments". That situation is about power and coercion (because the implied threat is that if you don't treat me exactly how I want, I'm going to act out. I can hurt you again if you don't comply.)

For the record, I think of this as fourth or fifth year stuff. I wouldn't even think about it before then because, fuck them, you know? Your mileage may vary on the timeline.

I haz 'zentments

I totally understand perspective. I get we all internalize what happens (happened) to us. 2 folks hearing the same song and interpreting it in vastly different ways. Been there done that, got it.

But what in the hell does that have to do with the price of cheating in China? My WW had a bunch of contrived notions that she knew were false yet chose to use them as fuel for the A rationalization machine anyway. The tried and true "I thought you didn't love me" reason for instance. Bullshit in retrospect, she even admits it now. Cheater's turn molehills into mountains if it suits their purpose. We all do to some extent. Some of us just don't cheat. That's the simple distinction really. We are all ultimately accountable for our choices. It doesn't matter if daddy didn't love you, momma didn't support you, you were picked last for the kickball game, uncle fucker bounced you on his knee too much, or whatever other excuse you want to use.

I am damn sure not doing a damn thing that lessens the guilt any cheater feels. I don't care how far they've gone to redeem themselves. Let that twinge of guilt and shame gnaw on their psyche forever. I must haz the bitterz too.

I agree 100%. Perspective is everything and everyone's perspective is different. With that said, not all A's happen when circumstances in the marriage are bad. My husband was quite happy with our marriage and with me until he had to somehow justify it. He even told OW several times that he loved me, that I was a good wife and that we had a good marriage. So our marriage wasn't a factor in his cheating. Interesting isn't it?

[This message edited by W3IRZ at 7:49 AM, June 22nd (Thursday)]