Old Truck,
I do not agree with what you are saying.
It is not that to be even the WW has to have another PA for
2 years and 9 months and have sex 90 times with her OM to
be even.
There is NO even. That's a projection of what it must be like. I am in the situation, they are separate and neither cancels out the other. It will not settle either of us emotionally, it will not fix the problems we have, and it really only made our problems 100 times worse. There is no "evening the score". It looks that way on the outside, I get it, but nothing is that neat. An eye for an eye only means you damaged me, I damage you. It doesn't do anything at all towards recompense. Look at Buck, it's obvious he will never feel recompensed.
J Maybe the WW did not keep a clean house
before her PA. BH feels and needs a spotless house. So
he tells his WW you had the time to have a PA with the OM.
So you can now use that time to make the house clean enough
to eat off of the floors.
No, what you are talking about here, and it comes down to most of the recompense that we dicuss on this site is leveraging the affair to keep an upper hand.
What REALLY needs to happen is the BS must accept there is no such thing as recompense in the same terms of tit for tat.
Recompense, if you want a long term marriage/recconcilion is:
"I have made some really terrible decisions that have been abusive towards you. You did not deserve these things. I am going to work my butt off to figure out how and why this happened, and I am going to change those things about myself. In addition I am going to work my butt off to let you know how much I love you and how grateful I am for this second chance".
Recompense can only be given in humility, and it needs to be given freely, but in the form of creating a healthier spouse and marriage for you as the BS.
As for cleaning, or more sex, or whatever the BS wants to be part of the new marriage is not in the area of recompense. It's in the area of working together to create a relationship that you are both happy in.
There are natural consequences to cheating, and believe me if the WS works on those things and accepts accountability and these natural consequences its enough. To keep a power dynamic that one person owes more to the marriage for the rest of our lives, is not going to create a happy lasting marriage.
Instead, the WS does the work, the BS works on the healing, and then together they come together to decide what they want their lives to be like together. If the BS wants more sex, as the WS I should absolutely take that into consideration. Not because I cheated, but because I am now going to see that love is an action. I am going to make more of an effort to meet that need because I want my husband to know he is loved. And, I am going to let him know what my needs are and he is going to do what he can to meet those in reason.
It's transactional versus organic. You can keep someone in a transactional state because they feel guilty and they don't want a divorce, but it's only going to go that way for so long until there are new resentments.
I am not saying the WS doesn't need to work their butt off, they do. They need to prove they are going to be a safe spouse moving forward and show all the signs of being a successful rebuilder. That's recovery. When you offer R it means to me that both people are going to work together to have a more loving, communicative, and mutually beneficial relationship.
[This message edited by hikingout at 9:33 AM, February 26th (Friday)]