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I've given many analogies about it, but perhaps the most fitting here is the kid who says his stated goal for bringing a gun to school is "feel cool" and then, at the end of the day, there are 100 people shot. Why the f**k did you shoot up the school if you just wanted to "feel cool" and bring a gun to school?

You do what works. You don't think about consequences, just what works. You've already said that sex WORKS with men.

Why is this confusing?????

Just a thought:

Instead of telling women to smarten up, why not tell men to stop preying on women?

You're putting too much responsibility on women and far too little on men.

RIO Beyond trying to understand the physical stuff are you struggling with how she feels about you? Your answer to my post and something else mentioned here in another post on your thread cued me in on it. Are you still looking for that proof of love? For her passion? Someone talked about dating advice and it just seemed to touch on some simple facts about dynamics in some affair relationships. The "marry the good girl/guy and desire to be chased or simply want the bad girl/guy".

sidenote:Unless the affair is an exit affair for the woman running from some abusive relationship-it is pretty clear that anyone getting into an affair relationship is chasing(or wanting to be desired by) a bad person. Good people don't cheat on their spouses and IMO no one can be played. You were cheating. The only playing going on is on the BS. You can't be played by something/someone you shouldn't have been with since you were MARRIED to begin with.

My wife questioned me about that in the beginning. Did I stay simply out of value? It was blaringly obvious who was better, but to her that didn't mean jack shit. She wanted to make sure that I had passion for her like a man would have for the vixen/bad girl/slut type of thing. Wwhich becomes the general opinion for many of what an OW is. Putting naivete aside which I don't think can really ever exist if you are married. Come on folks you know cheating is wrong or you wouldn't have hidden it. I can see it being possible in exit affair situations and someone believing they found their "soul mate" to leave with....I have to wonder if some wayward women were attracted to the "player" image. Yeah, that is the immaturity level of highschool good girl/bad girl shit, but lets face it- all cheaters are immature and act like highschoolers. Just saying. What holds true for some men, just might be the same for woman. I know that I was attracted to the "bad girl/slutty behavior" of my APs.

Apparently my WW was so enamored with the compliments that sex was the only thank you. Not quite sure I can believe this. She also said the sex wasn’t that great. But sex is a calorie burn. You have to meet up, You have to get naked, you have to get turned on, you have to clean up. Seems like a lot to just get compliments and ego kibbles. The truth is she liked the sex AND liked the compliments. They’re not mutually exclusive. At least not for her. As far as consequences go, she did the cost benefit analysis and decided that fucking someone else outweighed the moral obligations she had at home. But to be fair, her thought process was to never get caught. So ultimately her AP gave her compliments to get the sex and she loved both. Simple. Demoralizing, but basic as ot gets.

Short answer: my wife took it physical to avoid being called a fraud, and to maintain the inflow of attention.

To this day, I'm not sure if my wife doesn't understand this or is not willing to admit it. It's been several years so we don't talk about it much anymore. I strongly believe this is what happened.

My wife consumed everything around her attempting to find happiness. She was a black hole. She was never content, always wanting more, and never truly happy. Happiness comes from within. It's not provided to you. She always sought happiness in the wrong place, not within, therefore, never found it.

When real life had nothing more to offer her, only a fantasy would suffice. She started giving off sexual innuendoes at work suggesting she was the best, hottest wife around, as a new method for ganging attention and affirmation, i.e., being "happier". One slimy coworker took the bait, and even called me a "lucky" guy. As time passed, my wife needed to raise the stakes to keep the AP hooked. It reached the point of arranging for hookups but my wife backed out on several occasions. The AP went as far as calling my wife a fraud and backed away, to much work for nothing. My wife gave in and gave sex. My wife resistance was not about crossing the line, not about being unfaithful; she just did not want to. She would shake afterwords driving home. But she had to, otherwise she would be confirmed a fraud and conditions would be worse than before all this started. It's all about image, facade, the bubble.

My wife had no intentions of leaving me. The AP knew this and said the same about his wife. Their affair was "no strings attached", no gifts, and was for the sole purpose of recieving attention on one side and recieving more side sex on the other. Neither wanted to give to the other more than they had to. They lied to each other and used each other. It was a method of collecting more with trade.

When found out, the AP dropped my wife like a bad habit. My wife attempted to claim it was more to safe face as being a fraud, but she was a fraud. And our sex life suffers, it has always suffered.

Other ingredients needed to make this happen were my wife's ability to manipulate, bury emotions, compartmentalize, not love herself, and have low self-esteem. Some of these were used to follow through with the sex.

My guess -- and this is sheer speculation, based on almost nothing -- is that somewhere subconsciously she sensed that you viewed her as a boring lay and she had a desire to not be viewed that way, but she had too many layers of inhibitions and resentments with you to break through. She needed a fantasy escape to break through.

Interesting theory. Makes no sense (as I'm sure your aware); I'm afraid he thinks I'm not good in bed, so I won't be good in bed. But it also rings true in some ways. She's said things like this to me in the past (before the A) when we'd talk about sex, that my experience meant I was always lying when I told her how special sex with her was to me.

I suppose that is a logical conclusion to draw, if A (not enough sex) = B (WH seeks more sex outside the marriage), then simply increase A, the equation is no longer balanced and B won't happen. The problem that I see with that is the uncontrolled variable, or what I like to call the a$$hole factor, which I can't control.

LOL, I love this, because, yes, this is how I think about it and you illustrate exactly what I'm after. I'm after the asshole factor, or I'm trying to solve for AF. Look, right or wrong, let's give 2 situations to illustrate "AF" in action. 2 BW's come here, the first tells a story of loving her husband to death, sex 2 times a day, making him the center of her world, planning trips and time together, she's eager and willing to please in the bedroom and has kept up her appearance. Her H cheated with one of her friends. Second woman comes here and says her cheating H is a tool. She loves her kids and he has no right to expect her to pay attention to him anymore. The children are the most important thin. She also feels like sex is for making babies, and after she had them, she determined that 1X per month was the right frequency, but there would be no more BJ's and she'd only acquiesce to sex, not initiate it. H also cheated with one of her friends.

First off, I'm setting this up as the typical male situations, the first male having "no reason" to cheat, the second having the more typical "reasons" (excuses) to cheat. The first guy clearly has AF through the roof. And that matters, at least to me. There are a lot of suggestions I could give the 2nd woman to perhaps help her relationship. The first woman? You married an asshole, get ready for a bumpy ride. Doesn't mean there aren't things I'd suggest, and maybe other posters would have much better ideas, but I think we'd all read the first and think "leave him" as our first reaction and read the second and this "hmm, well there's a lot of room for improvement here". AF matters, it probably shouldn't (because, at the end, it's all the same issue/crime/problem), but it does. And we even codify AF into our legal system, crimes that are more egregious are those that, in general, have higher AF.

The problem is, I can't "balance the equation". I can't determine the AF (and then decide if I can live with it) because there are imaginary numbers still in the formula. Basically, the equation, as I see it right now, doesn't make a lot of sense.

Instead of telling women to smarten up, why not tell men to stop preying on women?

We do tell men that. But we have to be realistic here, this isn't a new thing. We can argue if its sociological or physical (IMHO, it's clearly physical) but, for pretty much all of recorded history, men have chased (preyed) women for sex. This is why the discussions about male/female sex drive boggle my mind, folks, it's always been this way. It will always be this way until something supersedes sex for male enjoyment (some new porn/toy/VR thing, for example). We can tell men to stop chasing women for sex until we're blue in face (in fact, collectively we have), but I can promise you, they won't. And the problem here is that is horribly asymmetric; even if you get 99 out of 100 guys to agree to stop "playing" women, all it takes is one dissenter (the prisoner problem) to say "No" and he can be the AP for the other 99 guys wives who said "Yes" and stopped pursuing other women. The same is true for women, of course, but it's very rarely the case. Men tend to be outliers on the statistical curve (in many things, but, for this discussion, sexually). Effectively, is a problem caused by looking at the mean without also looking at the standard deviation.

In a lot of ways, the "lock/key" analogy of women and men makes a lot of sense to me. Women are the lock, they guard and decide if/why is going to have sex with them (open the lock). Men are the key. The better the lock, the fewer keys that can open it, however, the inverse is also true, a better key can open more locks. We can certainly encourage men not to try "their key" on lots of locks (and we do and we should). But, at the end of the day, it's really up to the lock makers to ensure their safe is secured. Is it fair? Not at all. Is it something we can dislike about society and people? Sure is. It is something that all the education in the world will change? I doubt it. And, just so you know, as a "key holder", I'd give my right arm, or would have a younger man, to have be the lock. It's real tiring and whole lot of work to go out and try to "pick" a safe. I wished, for a long time, that I had a line of people outside my door (like many women did) trying to open the safe. I only say that to illustrate, it's not all positive or negative, but if I sat around and said "Man, you know what, I really wish women would pursue me for sex like I pursue them" I would have wound up very unhappy. Women doing the reverse, wishing men wouldn't pursue them unless they are interested in a LTR/marriage/something more then sex? They are going to wind up just as unhappy as I would have had I decided that I was the lock, and women the key.

Apparently my WW was so enamored with the compliments that sex was the only thank you. Not quite sure I can believe this.

Same here, basically word for word.

OwningIt: By "we" I meant readers on SI. I've read quite a few WW threads, especially in the Wayward forum, where the WW learns, in trying to plumb the "why" question, that she was suffering from a malaise or existential angst that she wasn't fully cognizant of, possibly even suppressing.

RIO: As mentioned in my post, I think her angst could have been subconscious, even actively suppressed. It's not fun to harbor a creeping suspicion that one's spouse finds one inadequate in some way. It's insidious if the spouse is always nice or polite about the inadequacy. That feeling starts to erode self esteem, sort of like the mild burning of acid reflux eating away at the esophagus.

Suppressed feelings of angst and inadequacy, unspoken resentments, over time these things can build up into a demon whispering into somebody's ear in a way that the person is totally unaware of. When the pressure builds and the membrane bursts, that is where the dysfunctional behavior comes. It often catches the WW totally by surprise, because years of suppressing feeling of inadequacy have become so much her quotidian reality that she is blind to how it is affecting her self-esteem until after the disaster has occurred.

I'm liking this AF (asshole factor) theory. So applicable to my case.

But to be fair, her thought process was to never get caught.

That is a good point to make. Never. That is the honest truth. I don't think a WS is being honest with themselves or their BS when they say, "I never thought you would find out so what you don't know will never hurt you." At least for me and I think for all WS that if you are being honest with yourself it was more malignant than that. The real thought is that "I don't care. I might get caught. Still don't care, but I am going to make sure I never get caught."

Instead of telling women to smarten up, why not tell men to stop preying on women?

It doesn't really sound like you're "OwningItNow". I'm a man, I didn't have an affair.

We aren't talking about rape here.

Instead of telling women to smarten up, why not tell men to stop preying on women?

Must have missed that comment. Women do their share of acting promiscuous. If they do and men accept that, where is the woman's ownership in acting what many deem slutty? Whoever posted that comment are you suggesting that all female cheaters are preyed upon? I can tell you my female APs did the chasing and acting like "players". Dressed sexy (and even comment through texts to each other which they showed me), talked slutty, and behaved slutty. So, to me---that comment is bullshit. Own your own behaviors. Stop claiming being naive and "men" prey upon the vulnerability. If you knew you were vulnerable and wanted the attention to feed your low self esteem, then whose fault is it they put themselves in those situations to get that type of attention? The player or the one that new they had issues? Guess what? It is both. Women/men take care of our issues and own them.

So much of this echoes exactly what my wh has told me. Exact words.

And women prey on men too. They see money and/or power and they offer up sex because 1) maybe he’ll go for it and 2) maybe she’ll have a shot at accessing the money and/or power.

Mow was a serial cheater, it wasn’t a secret. Her MO was to fuck her way into a bigger tax bracket, it just had never worked. The more money he claimed to have, the more “enthusiastic” she became. He got serious ego stroking by being lusted after and feeling like a big rich guy when in fact his whole life was a hot mess. But he also said he was running away from himself more than running to her. I think the fact that she was married also helped. He was full of resentment and went full on dumpster fire by taking it physical. It was a big fuck you to the world that had let him down. Boo hoo, right? He couldn’t find someone who’d agree to help him project his pissy self, until he did. As he said, he aimed way down.

I feel very much like RIO about the sex. Something was taken from me with this affair and it boggles my mind that he was able to justify it. Of course I wasn’t ever going to know. But it wasn’t a sudden office romp. There was booking the room, buying the condoms, picking a fight with me so he could storm out, getting out cash so no credit cards were used. It was fully planned fucking. He said it was easy. My question was “isn’t not fucking her even easier?”

When I was promiscuous, I was only a victim of myself. There were men who were willing but I put myself in the position I was in.

And women prey on men too. They see money and/or power and they offer up sex because 1) maybe he’ll go for it and 2) maybe she’ll have a shot at accessing the money and/or power.

I've heard about this, but I've never seen it in person. I'm not saying your wrong, I know it does happen (happens all the time to famous and rich men, I'm pretty sure Entourage was more documentary than fiction, for example). But, absent strong evidence, personally, I'd start with "man fed lines" as the default position. I've dated and slept with quite a few women, and I was always the one feeding the lines. Put another way, I've never had a woman pursue me for sex. I've had women make it "easy", but never pursue me the way I pursued them when I was dating. Does this mean it doesn't happen? No, of course not, and I've been married a long time, so I'm sure if I started dating in my age bracket again, things would be different. But I still think, both from personal experience and from hearing my friends talk, it's usually the man on the hunt that starts/causes A's. If I was a BW, I'd need really strong evidence to the contrary before I believed that my H wasn't the one who initiated the A.

RIO, it totally happens and not just among superstars, even a schmuck like my wh, lol. He owns the company, so that’s job security for her. And the correspondence backs it up. She sends wordy emails about missing him, he tells her yeah, great, I’m with my family, when you’re with your family, be there (irony). Chronologically one can see her start to overplay her hand, and his responses get terser. The bare minimum to keep her from getting hurt or angry or litigious - and she most certainly had a case, he was her boss.

Like he told me, sending a text that says “hey” at 6 am while you’re sitting on the toilet somehow means “I woke up thinking about you” and sets the tone for the day with minimal (2 seconds ) effort while one shits. That minimal effort secures the blow job she may offer up later.

He knows the day he could have given her a warning at work instead of seeing where this would go, and he’s pretty embarassed. She just told him I have to sleep with you. The more he said that won’t happen - without telling her she was inappropriate and this needs to stop now - the more she pursued. He left the door open from the first second and he knows it. That’s when he started treating me like crap and her offer became more and more acceptable. A lot of what we talk about sounds just like Hiking Out’s posts.

He told me she wanted my financially secure life. Problem was we were anything but secure during the affair, hence his new job with the family business. Hence his sad little ego. He got to pretend he was a superstar and got oral sex the more he pretended. She got the chance at a better life (not) instead of being the breadwinner, and sex was the currency. Her bh was also her om previously, and he lacked motivation, as a teacher and pot smoking musician. So she had a sad on too, at over 50 and 4 kids to support. I call it bad affair math.

The problem is, I can't "balance the equation". I can't determine the AF (and then decide if I can live with it) because there are imaginary numbers still in the formula. Basically, the equation, as I see it right now, doesn't make a lot of sense.

You're right, because the equation will always have uncontrolled variables which can't always be predicted, your W has shown you that. Basically, A's don't all fit into a nice tidy box tied up with a bow. If you use your stated M experience with sex and apply the "logic" to it, in theory, you should have been the one to cheat as your "needs" were seemingly not being completely met...but you didn't cheat, why? Low AF I presume (along with other factors of course).

But I still think, both from personal experience and from hearing my friends talk, it's usually the man on the hunt that starts/causes A's. If I was a BW, I'd need really strong evidence to the contrary before I believed that my H wasn't the one who initiated the A.

As a BW, I can say, I don't care if AP was the pursuer. If AP pursued my WH relentlessly, lay on his desk naked, told him how amazing he was and what she wanted to do to him, I don't care. HE chose to accept being pursued or more likely, did the pursuing. AP had no horse in the race so to speak (though to be a decent human being, I would argue she did owe a fellow human more respect than she showed me knowing he was M). My WH had a horse in our race.

[This message edited by hopeandhealing at 12:45 PM, July 4th (Wednesday)]

My thoughts on the idea of "preying on" people:

I get that there are predators out there of both sexes. I believe that when it comes to sex, men are more likely to be the predator. Short of rape (physically forcing sex against someone's will or taking advantage of someone unable to consent), I don't think a predator is any more to blame than their target if sex occurs. It may be an excuse that makes a BS or WS feel better about it, as in "I/he/she was preyed upon so maybe this isn't really an affair affair." or "The predator was just so good at the hunt that anyone would fall for their tactics." I don't think this is helpful. The WS or AP may have indeed been a predator, but short of rape, the target has to be open to being caught.

RIO, when you were on the hunt did you ever run across a solid NO when it came to sex? Someone that you realized was not going to do it no matter what you said or did to try and persuade them? Their moral/religious convictions were too important to them to engage in sex with you? Maybe they were just not attracted to you personally? I assume that you did.

How did you handle that? I know in my case I just moved on. I even admired their commitment to their beliefs. It takes strength to do that. It doesn't just happen on accident, it takes forethought and fortitude. People like that are introspective enough to even avoid situations where they know their defenses are weak. They make it a point to guard themselves. I knew single men and women like this. It's pretty impressive, actually.

In a marriage, this is how we expect/assume our spouses behave. This is the standard that I held myself to after I was in a committed relationship with my wife.

The crux of the issue is that WSs are not like this. Whether they are predators, passively open to something, or just unthinking, they get themselves into trouble. All three of these options are destructive to a marriage. Either maliciously or passively they get themselves into an affair.

If it takes determination and forethought to remain faithful, which I believe it does, waywards prove by their actions that they are not determined or thoughtful enough to do so. It doesn't matter to me one iota about how much/little of a predator the AP is. There are predators out there, it's the responsibility of a married person to proactively block a predator. We aren't talking wolves and rabbits here. WSs always have a choice, barring rape. If they don't block it, they are showing they are open to it.

BSs, your spouse was open to an affair. Some aggressively, some passively. They were open to it. They did not take their vows to you seriously in a determined way.

Circling back to RIO's original question, why take it physical? Because that is what they were open to. It made them feel good in some way. It was another conquest. It kept the ego kibbles coming. It made them feel wanted. Whatever. They wanted the same things all of us do, but they were selfish and wanted those things without the doing the work a successful marriage requires. Affairs are easy. Real life is hard. WSs chose the easy.

Predators may circle their prey, but they usually slink away if they know it's not going to be easy.

RIO, when you were on the hunt did you ever run across a solid NO when it came to sex? Someone that you realized was not going to do it no matter what you said or did to try and persuade them? Their moral/religious convictions were too important to them to engage in sex with you? Maybe they were just not attracted to you personally? I assume that you did.

All the time. For every yes, there were probably 20 no's. It takes a lot of lines in the water to sleep with lots of women for most guys (absent fame or impossibly good looks). Usually I just moved on, sometimes I'd try again, but, that was rare. And this, IMHO is a unique level of pain for at least some BW's. How many other times did he try? Because hitting a "home run" on the first try with a woman in the dating world is hard. I can only imagine how much harder it is in the A world.

IMHO, and this is just my opinion, that does matter a lot. How many other men tried with my W? I can tell you, it's more than 1. A lot of men have tried to wiggle their way into her skirt, one succeeded. I can't imagine it's not harder for some BS's who know their WS was out "swinging the bat" over and over again. Yes, it's still one A, but he/she tried with 25 people to get that one A. That's gotta be even harder to deal with, because it's a pattern of misdeeds, not pattern of good (saying no to advances) with one misdeed. Now, of course, this is very unfair to many WH's, because, as I said above, it's just the way it is, AP's don't fall from trees for most guys. They do for some, as we see in this thread, but I can't imagine why/how it would be easier to get a woman to "date" you when your married. So it's very likely there were other misses or near misses leading to the A. That would be hard for me, and I'm sorry for those in that situation.

The other thing, for WW's (or even better, those contemplating an A); please realize this is the way that at least some men (me) are. It's not how irresistible you are, he asked the girl in accounting last week and the bosses secretary a month ago. They said no. Don't be the one to say yes!

"Because, IMO, all too often what many women say they want, is not what they really want.

For instance....I watched my older sister give my older brother dating advice. Be nice. Listen. Ask questions. Do not be pushy. Etc. he implemented her instructions."

^^^that was posted a few pages back. So damn true. Some women can be such unconscious liars. Lots of reasons.

I have so fucking much resentment over that. It has also hindered my healing and R.

I was friend zoned so damn much only trying to do what's "right."

but I can't imagine why/how it would be easier to get a woman to "date" you when your married.

Surely you've heard of this phenomenon? There's entire web sites devoted to it. More men cheat than women (or at least used to)...who do they cheat with? Single women willing to fuck married men. They like the power over the man AND his BW, (they "won"). They like the freedom, no strings for them. They like the leverage it gives (I'll tell your WW)......