SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

As i have said before- I think the term RA is all too encompassing. Some people have to decide what it is they want out of life after the trauma of infidelity...and have the right to do so. So long as they are transparent with their WW, they are not in the same pool as the original cheater. They have made there feelings and needs known.. no backstabbing, gaslighting, trickletruth, and blameshofting...THOSE are what makes wayward behavior scummy. As an MH myself i will tell you i didn’t take my choices lightly. But i has to decide if i could live the rest of my life dealing with the disrespect for all eternity. I needed to find out what the world had to offer me after my exw tore my heart out. Revenge to hurt the CS i might agree is unhealthy... exploring your options honestly and truthfully is NOTHING to be ashamed of, and nothing close to what the ww does in their lying, abuse, and humiliation of their betrayed. The difference is a betrayed who goes out after being cheated on and seeks happiness elsewhere, if upfront, has RESPECT for the ww because we are transparent. The WW in their affairs LACKED respect of their betrayed by being utterly dishonest.

i think it's worse to have a RA. so, you want to make the person you love the most suffer as you do to teach them a lesson? how is that the definition of love and maturity?

if the BS never thought of it before they became a BS, why does it enter their mind now?

why do people have to have sex with others to prove their own worth? isn't that intrinsic?

and the vow thing? I didn't break mine, they still hold true. my vow is still there. what he did with his half is his to own.

if he spends 50k on a car does that mean i get to?

" if i could live the rest of my life dealing with the disrespect for all eternity."

so to get your respect back you do it too? That seems like disrespect to your own self. like selling your soul so you can be in the gutter together. how is that appealing?

[This message edited by sewardak at 3:55 PM, November 16th (Thursday)]

I don't think it's right BUT I certainly had thoughts of wanting him to suffer and feel something of the same emotions I was. I don't think he will ever entirely get it, unless he experiences it.

And at that point, he was no longer the love of my life. He was the enemy, absolutely.

I agree with you on the sex thing, that has never been part of my esteem at all. But for WH, it is. So I know it would hit him where it hurts...

i think it's worse to have a RA. so, you want to make the person you love the most suffer as you do to teach them a lesson? how is that the definition of love and maturity?

But this presupposes that the purpose of the affair WAS revenge. I do think that this will not help. But I think the more common reason for this type of rebound affair is to soothe the damaged ego of the BS. While this is understandable to me, it's also not likely to help. In most cases, it's just empty sex, like many ONS. It's a temporary fix. You may have screwed the company hottie, but you still know you were rejected by your formerly beloved WS. It will never be equal. it just won't. They won't be blindsided like we were. They are expecting this possibility and almost looking for it because now you don't have the moral highground anymore.

I don't think there are a great deal of people advocating for RAs, but I do think we have several fairly new madhatters who are very vocal about how it "worked for them". Yet here they are, on SI, broken like all the rest of us.

Why does it have to be about self worth? Its simply hurting someone the way they hurt you. Why do you care about vows, if the one you made them to just dashed them into pieces? Why would you cheat on someone you love? Why would they? Of course cheating implies monogamy which certainly isn't the case. Do they not love you? Maybe not. Why does it concern you what others do to get over the worst pain in their lives?

[This message edited by Randy1133 at 4:03 PM, November 16th (Thursday)]

DevastatedDee, I didn't mean you personally when I referred to justifying.

Carebearstare,

Also, I can imagine situations where they initially plan to divorce before changing their mind and having a "rebound" thinking they are done with their marriage and deciding to R.

That is what my H did. I do not and did not feel "cheated on." He was dishonest because he was telling me he was considering R when he wasn't, but he was not a cheater.

"but I do think we have several fairly new madhatters who are very vocal about how it "worked for them". Yet here they are, on SI, broken like all the rest of us."

yep.

" Its simply hurting someone the way they hurt yo"

this is what I don't understand. why? do any but a couple ppl on here feel that way? it just doesn't work.

"Why does it concern you what others do to get over the worst pain in their lives? "

because it's justification. just like the WS.

Yeah i see... the moral high horse argument... look as i made clear....the vows are terminated after the ws screws around. For the bs to re evaluate their situation and wants and needs out of life after is normal and HEALTHY. And for He bs to openly and honestly state that they need to discover what they want out of life is not purposefully hurting the WS. It’s re establishing firm footing after being upended. Some betrayeds don’t want to wallow in misery of what their ws did to them, they want to figure out what the want out of life. It’s their right. The WS has no say in the matter really...they cant control the outcome...maybe the bs stays after exploring their own needs..maybe they divorce, maybe they know steadfast from the get go that they must divorce, maybe they know steadfast from the get go that they don’t want anyone but their cheating spouse. Different strokes for different folks Seward...as long as the principle motivation is not to hurt the WS, that is fruitless empty and won’t relieve pain...I’ll agree with you there, that is an RA and ineffective for all.

And yes...i said disrespect... call a spade a spade... it is what it is...there is no disrespect for myself for finding happiness in my life after exw affair. only if I allowed myself to tolerate the behavior i had to endure from her-That is the very definition of disrespecting ones self. And yes self esteem- if you love your spouse, part of your esteem is tied into their happiness... you know why? Because we GAVE a part of our selves to our WS spouse on our wedding days. We wanted to be vulnerable to them because they were our life partners. They had no right to use that against us.

"i think it's worse to have a RA. so, you want to make the person you love the most suffer as you do to teach them a lesson?"

In the aftermath of d day, I did not love my ws the most at all. He came well after my kids, family, friends, myself, my neighbor's dog...

Me too, Carebearstare. HE ranked after the neighbour's dog's shit.

I can understand the want to punish the ws, to even the playing field etc. I think thats a pretty common feeling in the aftermath...

I don't think that its a good idea. I think that it will just complicate things more, no matter the outcome of the marriage the vast majority of the time.

But i can understand the feeling of wanting to....

No Seward, im not broken...not anymore, but i know what it feels like to have been, and i know what it feels like to have escaped it...i stumbled on this site by accident and it caught my interest... given my experience i thought i had some guidance and relevant history that maybe as a way of passing on my healing, I could help others out of their misery like I did..only i didn’t have SI at the time ( wish I would have, this place is great for JFO). I know there are betrayed here who can use my point of view, who I can help, and in a way, i see it as my way of giving back. Of course the infidelity hurt me...it hurts everyone

To me, if a BS gets to blame their WS and use them as an excuse to cheat, then the WS gets to also point the finger at the BS as the reason why they originally cheated in the first place. On this site, the WS is held accountable for their choice to cheat. So should the BS.

I agree. We hold a WS to task for cheating. We say that there is never an excuse for an affair. But then we say a Revenge Affair is acceptable?

^^^ exactly

I kind of get the impression my ws almost WANTS me to have a RA. Right now there is sort of a power imbalance because he feels I have the moral higher ground. I don't want one and I know it would hurt him and make things worse but I almost think that's what he wants because he's broken. Sometimes I think he's be happier with someone just as dysfunctional as him. He told me I could have one but like I said, it doesn't interest me and would mak3 me feel terrible.

carebearstare - I'm so sorry.

i think it's worse to have a RA. so, you want to make the person you love the most suffer as you do to teach them a lesson? how is that the definition of love and maturity?

if the BS never thought of it before they became a BS, why does it enter their mind now?

why do people have to have sex with others to prove their own worth? isn't that intrinsic?

and the vow thing? I didn't break mine, they still hold true. my vow is still there. what he did with his half is his to own.

if he spends 50k on a car does that mean i get to?

" if i could live the rest of my life dealing with the disrespect for all eternity."

so to get your respect back you do it too? That seems like disrespect to your own self. like selling your soul so you can be in the gutter together. how is that appealing?

I can only give you my own headspace when I had my RA. I cannot speak for others. I have done quite a bit of work to figure out why that was my immediate reaction, because that is important. I do think that it signifies that something is broken inside of me. So with some IC and deep contemplation of my own...

When I was 16 I was raped by a friend. My response to that, for reasons that I still don't quite understand, was to become promiscuous and sexually aggressive. To "take sex back" for myself. That's what I told myself in my head, anyway. That's how I justified it. I was a very traumatized teenager with significant trust issues. My world had been turned upside down and for whatever reason, I acted out sexually. Still working on the reason behind that. I thought I'd processed that crap and moved on, but clearly I hadn't.

On DDay, I found out that my husband, my best friend in the world, the man I loved and trusted like no another, had been cheating on me. My reaction was to go be sexually promiscuous for an hour. It's like I was flashed back to being that betrayed and hurt 16-year-old. No real thought went into it. No logic was accessed. No question was asked. I was out of my mind. I strolled in that guy's apartment and performed like a sex goddess when I should have been weeping and wailing instead. PTSD from before reignited by PTSD in the present. I guess you could call it a breakdown.

Am I broken? Oh hell yes. I most certainly am. I am very much not okay. It's like I have to reprocess every single painful thing I've ever been through to try and recover from this because all of the pain, even some I hadn't previously remembered, came rushing right back up. I am a trainwreck. No denying it, no doubt. I was suicidal, as many of us are in the following weeks. I'm on anti-depressants for the first time in my life and still sometimes I just burst out crying with little warning. I'm either an emotional wreck or my walls are sky high and I'm acting like nothing is wrong.

Did I get my self-respect back? Nope. Did I feel better afterwards? Again, nope. If there was any positive result at all from it, it was that I didn't leave my husband the next day because I knew I was going to tell him and I knew that I was going to help him through the pain if he helped me through my pain. Did I do it to hurt him? Probably not. I felt no obligation to him, that's for sure. How I felt about him was a tornado of incoherent confusion.

So what I did was just as bad in some people's minds. Be that as it may. I profoundly disagree.

thank you for sharing that, Dee. I'm so sorry that happened to you.

thank you for sharing that, Dee. I'm so sorry that happened to you.

Thank you, sewardak. Me too. Sometimes an RA happens because the BS was already damaged in life. I appeared to be strong and secure on the outside, but that was a facade. I think we all know that infidelity is one of the most painful things in the world to deal with and if you aren't pretty mentally and emotionally stable, I think you can easily flip out. Doesn't make it okay, no. I'm still responsible for the fallout of it.