SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

One thing I notice many waywards do is rewrite the marital history. It's a way to reduce their guilt for their actions.

Have you searched inside yourself to make sure you're not rewriting the affair history? To give yourself to another man for 3 years and to not have any deep feelings, other than friendship, sounds hard to believe.

A kids with even mild autism needs all the stability that's possible. With your BH working insane hours, that put a lot on your shoulders, yet you wanted to separate several times. Was that because you hoped that with BH out of the picture OM might want to step in?

The emotional energy you expended for over 3 years to be 1 of OM's girls, all the lying and sneaking around involved while dealing with a special needs kid, is like you were REALLY into this guy. Why else would you put your kids stable home life in jeopardy.

Apparently I’m completely wrong about the conversation I had with BH yesterday. Taking a break from this post till I can atleast talk to H again about it.

Rogue, am I the only one reading "EA turned PA" in your profile? Honestly, I think you are simply too afraid to admit that you had a romantic relationship with that guy that had led to sex.

And twisting your story with rationalizations and linguistic manipulations will only help you reconcile with your pride, not with your husband.

[This message edited by wordsofwisdom at 11:39 PM, August 6th (Monday)]

I know that “sleeping with other people” isn’t the only justification for why this wasn’t a real relationship, but it was important enough to result in the title of this thread. I just want to caution that you be careful with this line of reasoning — how would your husband feel about your relationship with him, given that you were sleeping with other people?

Rogue- simply put the views and opinions your H has are his and I think that he sees it as a relationship.

Right now the physical part is the part he will focus on. If you want to work through this with him I think spending some time just focusing on that part will help you align with where he is at.

It comes down to s simpler line(s) of thought (and I am vastly over simplifiying this to save space). . .

Why did it progress to the physical level that it did ? Why multiple times ? What was your payoff for doing so ? Why benefit did you derive from it ? I'm talking beyond the physical release element. You could have done that alone or with your H, right ?

So far, it sounds like he doesn't have an acceptable answer. That is what his line of thinking is going. To find answers there.

Humans are meaning giving. He needs to find an explanation that makes sense so he can begin to find out what that means. For him. For your M.

Just a hunch, but I'd bet there is a lot of insecurity and less than positive feelings about himself. He needs to understand that his responsibility stops where your free agency began. He blames himself for your choices still. That is his road block right now. You can tell it is not all you want, but until he believes that it won't change.

Just my .02. Religion based counseling is big on forgiveness and rarely gets to the root of why that choice was made. A secular IC is going to be able to peel back those layers much better.

I read the OP, but not responses.

It seems to be you and your BH are arguing semantics. To you it was not a true relationship but to your BH it was. I can see it either way.

I mean, by my way of thinking anytime a person is meeting another for sex more than once there's some sort of relationship to it- but that's just me.

BS here - no stop-sign.

It seems to me that you and your BS are arguing over technical semantics. Whatever you call it - it was an affair. Bottom line. No matter what you call it - it was cheating.

Instead of arguing with your BS over the definition of "relationship" between you and AP, I would try to redefine the relationship between you and your BS. That's the one that should be priority for you.

Wishing you the best.

I think you and your H would be well-advised to set up some ground rules for SI.

I found SI to be a great venue for working out many of my thoughts. My posts were works in progress. I don't think they were pretty. I don't think my W would have enjoyed reading them - not because I beat her up, but because they were about my doubts that R would work.

When she joined, we agreed to avoid each other's post to as great an extent as possible. We also agreed not to argue on SI.

I suggest adopting similar boundaries, so you both can have a safe place for yourselves.

***********

At this point, after several years on SI and with an R that is solid, we can read each other's posts, though we don't search them out.

Thank you all for your continued good advice. This post was one of the first ones that caused a huge issue at home. I thought I might just let it die but I learned a hard lesson from it. I am a huge work in progress, and it’s not going to be pretty to work this stuff out in the public “court” of SI. Bottom line with this post is that I screwed up, but I learned from it. My idea of what a romantic relationship is and the kind of relationship you have with a cashier are very different. It is all semantics though. I posted to understand and now I do. I wanted to wrap my head around what BH was saying and this helped. Now the blow up at home was all me. I left for a family reunion and saw what bH has said about blaming him and I lost it. I sent him a text saying that he threw me under the bus. Yup, not my finest moment. I lost service on my phone and didn’t see any of the follow up from him. It was just bad all around. Only got worse when I got home and he left. Luckily he came back but it took us another day to talk through what had really happened with both of us. I thought I was protecting him and assumed he was trying to hurt me and lashed out. He in turn went from 0-10 in about 5 min( understandably)I see progress in how we worked through this, I tried not to shut down and he stayed and listened. Had a great night last night and an awesome morning. Hope is still alive and well.

Your lover was your companion and comforter for extended period of time. Then you had sex with him. How was this not a relationship????

Rogue: I work in a profession that is about problem-solving. There are a few basics that I try to follow when I can. One of them is to eschew what I call "side-show" issues. No matter how they are resolved, will not advance a solution to the basic problem at hand, and the bad feelings engendered by bickering over these issues can often push the main discussion backward.

The distinction that you were trying to draw with your BH about whether you had a "relationship" with the POSOM is a side-show issue. You gain nothing by engaging on this issue. Your best case scenario is that you anger your BH, possibly hurt him, all of which will cause him to take a step or two backwards from R.

There is a substantive bit to this that I would gently point out. One hallmark of what people on SI call "wayward behavior" -- mental gymnastics that are common among people who have affairs -- is the tendency to minimize, in their own minds, the degree of "badness" of what they are doing. This is all part of how cheaters compartmentalize and live with themselves while engaging in wicked and dishonest behavior.

I think you should take note of how quickly and naturally your thinking went to the place of "my A wasn't a relationship." It's really irrelevant whether it was a "relationship" or a *relationship* or a relationship. What is relevant is that your thinking instinctively and effortlessly went to the place of viewing this in the light that minimized it as much as possible.

That is the thing that most cheaters, in my observation, have difficulty overcoming: the notion, held by many cheaters, that what they did isn't that bad (usually based on some twisted subjective reasoning).

[This message edited by Butforthegrace at 8:23 AM, August 9th (Thursday)]

That is the thing that most cheaters, in my observation, have difficulty overcoming: the notion, held by many cheaters, that what they did isn't that bad (usually based on some twisted subjective reasoning).

it's true BTFG. We are 10months post d-day and even now my WS will, in the heat of an argument, say he has to live with this for the rest of his life, which seems unfair as it's not as if he killed anyone. I said once it was us he killed. Needless to say my comment wasn't appreciated and deemed unnecessary and inflammatory.