And how many BSes will start asking themselves - and their WSes -'Where did you learn that trick? YOU LEARNED IT FROM HER, DIDN'T YOU!'
Which, to me, would be a 1000X preferable to "I learned it from her, and no, you're not worth doing it with". Yes, this is a risk, but IMHO, it's a fraction of the risk of not doing it at all, at least for BH's when it comes to sex. I stand by my statement, do it before your asked and do it before it becomes an issue. And frankly, if there's anything left of the "typical" sexual menu, even if you didn't do it with the AP, do that too! Didn't swallow for the AP or your husband? Good for you. Now show him how sexy you find him and do it for him now.
My reading of the arguments for demanding certain sex acts is that they're really not requests. The WW really can't say 'No.' Even when stated in the form of a boundary - 'if you don't do this, I'll D' - my reading of people's posts is that it's not really a choice.
We twist this up every time. What's it look like if the WW "really can't say no"? It looks like rape. You have a gun (a physical gun) to her head telling her to do something. You have her held down and do it. You drug her any do it. NOBODY is saying any of those things are all right. What I am saying is all right is "If you don't want to do it with me, OK, but I'll be filing for D". That's not "can't say no", that's a consequence for her actions. She may very well not like those consequences, but she ABSOLUTELY has a choice to participate or not. And if she chooses not to, the "consequence" she gets is something that she entirely brought on herself, NOT by refusing to do it, but by sleeping with someone else while married. That is "really a choice", WS's may not like their options, but that doesn't mean that they have lost the ability to choose. Think about a criminal being offered a plea bargain, 5 years in jail or take your chances at trial. I'm sure they really aren't to happy about those options, but, to say they don't have a choice is false. And this isn't 5 years in jail were talking about here!! This is something that my WW willingly did with OM!
That's not what we're saying. If you somehow get yourself into a psychological state in which bot 'yes' and 'no' are OK, respectable responses, I don't have a problem.
I have always said both are respectable responses. In my example, my W was free to not write a timeline. But I would have divorced her if she hadn't. But a "no" response was respectable, it just carried with it a different outcome. The same is true for the sexual acts. Sure, you can say no, but that "no" is going to cause me to take action to protect myself and change my situation. I fail to see how it's any different; yes and no are both fine answers, just leading to different outcomes.
Yes! But you have to find the real damage and address that.
I totally agree with this. Which is why I wouldn't suggest to a WH here "break out the lube and get freaky with your W" because that's typically not the area of most damage for BW's (it is for some, just not most). But for BH's, it's typically very high on the list of where the "real damage" lives. Speaking for myself, I'm "over" just about everything from her A. The lies still bother me, the "emotional" component of it I was over almost immediately, the time stolen was painful and difficult to let go of. But the sexual stuff, that still burns like a lump of coal in my heart. That's the "area of damage" for me (and that does not seem unique). I don't think I've looked past my real hurt and focused on this to distract myself from what really bothers me, I think this IS what really bothers me.
But I'd argue that your W didn't force you. Rather, I'd argue, you let your self-talk do the 'forcing.' In fact, however, I bet you made choices freely.
I wasn't clear, but your right, my W did not force me to R. What I meant was I forced her to take the steps to R. She didn't want to tell me the truth, I forced it. She didn't want to go NC, I forced it. She didn't want to write a timeline, I forced it.. I made my choices freely, she did not.
Only if the person with, possibly, less power cannot say 'No.' If both partners maintain the power to reject a request, I don;t think there's coercion.
I'll close with this one, because while I completely agree with this, that means that the only way to have real coercion is to have a physical "gun to head" situation. Let's talk for a minute about our member who had his wife in parking lot demanding a BJ, perhaps the worst example I've heard of where this issue is at play. No matter what you think of his actions, and I think we all agree they were terrible, his wife ALWAYS could have said no. She might have cried her eyes out, she might have gotten booted from the car right there never to see her H again, but she was NEVER in physical danger (at least not in the members telling of the story), he did not have her restrained with his penis in her mouth, and he was not threatening to hurt her friends/family/children or others she cares about. What he was threatening to do was impose the rightful consequences of her A on her if she did not comply. She never gave up the ability to say "No".
Let's draw an analogy to something that exists pretty commonly in society. Let's say you get caught by the police doing something minor, for the sake of argument let's say you are drunk and get arrested with a gram of cocaine in your pocket. Well, in a lot of jurisdictions, that can be really bad, that could carry a multi-year sentence and a felony record with it. But, most of the time, you'll be offered a deal, some sort of "rehab" program where you can have the whole thing "go away" if you take certain steps. Things like attend meetings, submit to drug testing, check in with a probation officer, allow for random checks of your home, etc. So there you are, standing in front of the judge and they lay out your options, 3 years in prison or rehab. Now, you might not like either choice, in fact, I can nearly promise you don't. But is your choice taken away from you? No, it's not, you can suffer the full consequences of your actions and go to jail (divorce) or you can go into rehab and deal with the requirements of that program (reconcile). And the "requirements" of the program, at least for me, is frequent, experimental and enthusiastic sexuality between two people who are supposed to love each other. And to me, that's the best requirement in the entire "program". The rest of them really suck, timeline, disclosing to family, quitting your job, cutting off contact with AP and friends involved. Those are the "really crappy" parts of R, or would be for me. The sex stuff, that would be like having a PO who happens to be your best friend; oh darn, I need to call in to my PO, who I'd be calling anyway to talk about the Patriots game from last night because he's my best buddy..
Rideitout- I thought about the question you posed. Did your wife make it up to you? In the past it sounded like she did. If not, yes I think it’s okay if it’s okay if it’s a dealbreaker that she can not elicit the desire for you that you need to see and feel to be. So far, it doesn’t seem to be a dealbreaker- you are still there. If she DID do it then where do your posts come from? The pain of having to tell her to do it and not feeling from her what you need to see.
She's done what she did with the AP, yes. The dealbreaker for me, and the reason I try to talk to WW's on these threads, may burn out to be that I had to ask and tell her that this has to happen for R to continue. It removed all authenticity from it, and frankly, while she'll do the particular thing that was my issue now, I don't even want it anymore. Which is extremely difficult because I used to (and almost certainly still would with any other women) find it the most intimate and special of sexual acts. I don't even try to do it with her anymore because it's hollow, not because she did it with the OM, but because I had to "demand" it as part of R. That's the value in these threads, don't put your BS into the situation I'm in, do it before it becomes an issue, whatever it is; buying flowers, anal sex, or anything in between that your BS finds valuable and was given to AP and not him/her.
[This message edited by Rideitout at 10:25 AM, September 29th (Saturday)]
