SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I do want to say that I do have utmost respect for the waywards who are on SI and are trying figure out their why's. That takes a lot of courage in my book. My ex would never admit any wrongdoing since she is NPD and is perfect. It is everyone else and the world that is messed up. So I do appreciate the insight and courage of you all. I like to think we learn from both the BS and the WS for better lives ahead however the outcome of our lives.

That takes a lot of courage in my book. My ex would never admit any wrongdoing since she is NPD and is perfect.

I will second this sentiment J707. I truly do applaud all of the WS's that are brave enough to come here and face their own stuff, as well as reading through posts like these.

J707, I feel ya. I doubt my stbxWH will ever look into his why or address his brokenness in any way either. He said he wanted a D because he couldn't deal with me 'being sad and angry all the time'. Still floored by that.

Thank you everyone for these words describing the devastating abuse we waywards inflicted on our spouses. I am learning more and more how destructive my words and actions were, and continue to be, for my husband. SI continues to help me get it. Everything you say describes my cruel behavior.

My affair was definitely severe abuse to my husband. As FearfulAvoidance says, I was truly an abusive asshole.

I apologize. I should have attributed the quote to Soleil. "I was an abusive asshole."

When I was a 13 or so, my dad told me he didn't want me, and moved 1300 miles away. He abandoned me. That abuse crushed me, but I survived and thrived.

Becoming a betrayed husband almost killed me. It's a level of abuse all on its own. It took away all my self worth. I have a hard time even feeling human. I don't believe I'll ever completely recover from this.

Those of you lucky enough to not feel abused by what your wayward did, I am in awe of you. You are gods amongst men.

I’ve been a victim of horrific physical abuse. The psychological abuse that is being betrayed, having my reality twisted, and basically being treated as an empty object without feelings is so much worse. In my opinion, waywards are so much worse than physical abusers. At least physical aggression is honest and you can see it coming. You have to choose to stay in it, not be boiled alive like the proverbial frog.

For the record, I don’t identify as a victim. That’s a weakening slip I refuse to slide down. I’m the stronger partner, not the weaker one.

I apologize. I should have attributed the quote to Soleil. "I was an abusive asshole."

remorseandgrief, no need to apologize. I might not have said that in those words, but I absolutely could have. I WAS an abusive asshole. Asshole is putting it nicely, even. The depths of psychological abuse I perpetrated against my wife feel like they have no end.

I used to pride myself in knowing in my core that I would never hit my partner. No matter how badly I would rage, I knew physical violence was a line I would never cross. Sometimes, understanding what I do now, I wish I would have crossed that line instead of all the lines I did cross. How incredibly fucked up is that to think?

Reading story after story of people who have been through the most screwed up heartbreaking things that can happen to a person, and infidelity is what breaks them. Each and every story ends with infidelity being the worst thing they've experienced. Why do we as a society condone this behavior and not just allow but encourage it to persist? Why does the media feed on it and twist it into melodrama or even comedy? Betrayal is not a form of entertainment. No form of abuse is.

[This message edited by Vomitousmass at 10:44 PM, December 10th (Thursday)]

For the first 45 years of a good marriage I placed full trust in my wife without incident. Then, in the lead-up to her 50th high school reunion, she received an email from an old boyfriend to which she responded that hearing from him, "brought unexpected emotions." This began a secret, yearlong email correspondence in which she severely abused my trust.

In the six months leading to the reunion the secret correspondence became increasingly intimate. My trust was further abused by our joint funds being used to pay for the airline ticket for her to attend the reunion (which was 600 miles away in another state) and for the reunion registration fee. Had I known of the secret correspondence and their plans to reconnect at the reunion, I would never have agreed to this expenditure of our limited retirement funds.

To make matters worse, I drove her to the airport and, as she was leaving the car, told her to "have a good time." Little did I know how good a time she was planning to have. Two days later, when I picked her up, I asked, "How was it? Have a good time?" "Yes," she responded. And I, like a totally out of it chump -- a poor deceived schmuck -- said, "Good."

I can't help imagining these airport scenes in a movie where the audience knows full well about my wife's abuse of trust -- her secret romantic correspondence and relationship with her old boyfriend -- while I, the trusting husband, the abused dupe, am totally in the dark and tell her I'm glad she had a good time!

The abuse of trust continued for six months after the reunion as, among other things, she told him in a succession of emails that he meant a lot to her, that she had more in common with him than with me, and in which she denigrated me to him. At the same time my suspicions were gradually growing as she was becoming increasingly cold, distant, and detached from me sexually. Finally, I broke into her email and learned the truth a few days after they had exchanged email Valentines.

I was both crestfallen and enraged as I obtained undeniable evidence of the depth and duration of her abuse of 45-years of complete trust. And I have yet to fully recover. If it were not for our children and grandchildren, with whom we are close, I would have divorced her. But for the sake of family integrity, I am choking down the shit sandwich for the years that remain.

[This message edited by SeventyFour at 1:01 PM, September 8th (Sunday)]

my sense is that the abuser intends to manipulate the victim

That is what every cheater does. They manipulate their marriage. Their family. Their betrayed spouse. It is intentional- always. Lies, secrets, hiding =manipulation. Therefor abuse. I get it though that you don't feel like a victim Sisoon. My wife tells me the same thing. Since it was about my epic falling apart she was collateral damage that got shit flung at her while I was spinning my wheels. She was able to take the situation and grow from it.

[This message edited by Zugzwang at 2:11 PM, September 8th (Sunday)]

How does this make you feel? Are you able to digest the reality of what you, what we, have done and what that actually means? Are you sitting there thinking that this isn't you? You aren't a bad person who willingly abused your spouse, these people are being dramatic and obviously had underlying issues before they were cheated on. "My BS isn't like them, and I am not like their WS. I am better than that, and so is my spouse."

I kept thinking that these were good questions, and yet I also had an amorphous reluctance to post. I had a long talk with my BH last night about it because I didn't want to be doing exactly what you describe -- otherizing the WS experience to avoid my own accountability. Ultimately, I told him that I felt like there was an off note in what you were posting, as if the call for general self-flagellation was a piece of theater. In effect, it felt like you were doing exactly what you were criticizing -- displaying that you were one of the "good ones" who "get it." He read the thread and saw what I was getting at. Together, we decided that it was probably best to just not respond, because so many BS were clearly getting useful catharsis from it.

Today, I think it might be useful for you to unpack why I had that impression, and to share the results with the group, the way you challenged us to share.

No soliciting

[This message edited by SI Staff at 11:02 AM, September 9th (Monday)]

I felt like there was an off note in what you were posting, as if the call for general self-flagellation was a piece of theater. In effect, it felt like you were doing exactly what you were criticizing -- displaying that you were one of the "good ones" who "get it.

I think it might be useful for you to unpack why I had that impression, and to share the results with the group, the way you challenged us to share.

There is a high likelyhood I am going to come off as defensive in my response, and I truly don't mean to. I'm learning when I feel defensive there is something there I need to look at, so I've brought my microscope. That being said I'd like to clarify/unpack two things:

1. I didn't intend to make a call for general self-flagellation in urging other Ws to speak up. There is nothing productive in that. The intent was to get a dialogue going between Ws about how we all can get to a place of acknowledgement, acceptance, and eventual self and BS healing in the reality that we are the perpetrators of heinous abuse. In asking for feelings the hope was to unpack as a group in a safe setting how we can internalize this horrific reality and not crumble under the weight of it.

2. If I was coming across like I am one of the "good ones who get it", and thus not like "those people", that was not on purpose. I am far from being that, and I never intended to present myself that way. I posted this topic directly after listening to a podcast that was discussing how infidelity is abuse which rocked my core into a place it hadn't been before on a relational level. Logically, yes, I have been struggling with the knowledge that I have abused my spouse, and I had been struggling with that far before I abused her with my cheating. But I was still holding onto the sliver of "that isn't me, I'm a good person".

Looking now I can see how that came across in my call for action. There is a gray area between 'This doesn't apply to me' and 'I am a piece of shit that doesn't deserve to live after what I've done'. I wanted help finding that area because much like my moods, I swing from one end of the pendulum to the other and can rarely find the calm acceptance in between. And instead of leading by example and unpacking my own shit, I expected others to open themselves up and do it for me. In not being vulnerable in the way I was asking others to be I did, in effect, present myself as something better than I am. So thank you for calling me out on that.

She could have destroyed herself by herself and let me go, but she didn't. She chose to drag me with her while I had no clue.

So much this. If he wanted the fun, sexy, fantasy, taboo stuff and the freedom to pursue that, he could have done that without me. Why drag me into his fuckery?

I feel emotionally abused. I know there's some debate on that word abuse, but it's how I feel. I asked him several times for years if he was cheating on me, and got the range of angry responses to of course not, you're crazy. I had him ignore me, act like I was an idiot, show no interest in me sexually, early on almost ruin our chances of having a child I desperately wanted, he would lay next to me and talk to other women, get excited to other women, take showers to get release and then climb back into bed with me, fall asleep early every night and not engage with my son or I, etc. Then since the initial discovery lots of lying and trickle truth. I still don’t believe I know everything. WTF is all that if not emotional abuse?

He should have just left me. Would have been easier.

My mother emotionally abused me up until her death. She resented my existence because she never stopped loving the sperm donor who left her when she found out she was pregnant. Even got in a couple of shots with letters she left for me to read after she passed. Though in more recent years our relationship got better and I have forgiven her, I will never forget. There's a bruise on my heart that will never go away. It has forever changed me. That's how I feel here. I am sure eventually I will find a way to forgive my WH, but he has left a mark that has forever changed me.

[This message edited by landclark at 5:59 PM, September 9th (Monday)]

Also to add to what another poster said.

Yeah, the A was about him. His selfish needs and desires. He didn't think "I am going to knowingly hurt my wife", but he also didn't care. The truth of what it would do to me wasn't enough to stop him. I was completely and totally secondary. Well, not even secondary because he even put his affair partners needs above mine. At the end of the day, I wasn't a consideration. The woman he vowed to love, honor and cherish wasn't a consideration.

Whether it was about me or not, that's messed up.

the calm acceptance in between.

The calm acceptance in between is being able to point out how heinous,cruel..whatever you want to call it and it is stated as fact void of defense. Not the viewed "self-flagellation" which I don't see. You are connected to it. You know you were guilty of it. It doesn't weigh you down in shame. You owned it. I guess I just see acceptance and not a piece of theater because I know what it is like to put a word to the actions and all it means is a good description of who you became.

I needed to add something here.

I want to acknowledge that this thread, amongst many other recent events, led me to disclose the last remaining things I had been hiding to my BS last night. It is documented in my other post. I realized that by continuing to hide/distort a few things that i had rationalized as "not mattering at this point" regarding my A that I was in fact continuing to abuse my wife, actively in a subversive way. I was still controlling the narrative of her reality to some degree, which is manipulative and abusive.

I couldn't come to grips with what my abuse meant because up until yesterday I was still abusing my wife. I couldn't see it. This thread helped me. So thank you. I'm ready to do all that unpacking now...

Tonight my wife said to me, "When you shut down, you show me that you can't handle what you've done to me. But I HAVE to handle it, everyday."

If we as WS can't process, own, and sit in our own pain and devastation over realizing what we became in our infidelity (abusers), we leave our BS completely alone with it. We are the only other person on the planet that took direct part in that trauma, and if we are gifted the chance of R and our BS decides to stay, we absolutely owe it to them to sit with them in their pain. We can't do that effectively if we don't understand the gravity of it, and we don't do something productive with our own.

I obviously don't have the answers. But I know damn well now it must be done.

My wife also shared ongoing survey results from a psychologist named Kevin Skinner. The survey used a PTSD criteria model to measure emotional and physical distress after discovering your partner's betryal. Infidelity, porn use, addiction, and other sexual betrayal. The results of one question in particular made me want to cry:

How long have you been experiencing the symptoms described in this assessment (e.g. recurrent thoughts, feeling anxious, being afraid)?

Less than one month (3.77%)

2-3 months (4.95%)

4-6 months (5.42%)

7-12 months (10.85%)

More than one year but less than two (16.51%)

More than two years but less than five (25.47%)

More than five years (33.02%)

These questions aren't about anger, resentment, or overall feelings. They are specifically about symptoms of distress. Staggering. 68% of respondents are married, which means, hypothetically, they are trying to keep their marriage despite suffering PTSD symptoms.

And yes, it is a surveymonkey internet poll with no control group and blah blah. It doesn't matter. I feel like I'm belaboring the point, but I feel like I can't be the only one struggling with this reality. I broke my wife's brain. But I didn't break her. She said tonight, "you might not be able to break me, but you CAN change me". And I did. I changed everything.

I am amazed with the people on this site time and time again. Just...thank you. I cannot begin to express how by you sharing your realities you are helping not just myself process and accept things that feel unimaginable, but so many others reading, both BS and WS.

My thoughts exactly. I am impressed by the level of writing ability by so many of you.

Incredibly insightful and honest thread.

I want to build off of what is here.

The reason I think the term abuser and its acceptance by many WS is because lots of WS were abused. When they use the word on themselves, they see how the Bs views them.

This then raises many questions which the word wayword doesn't. Same as the work mistake or errors.

The WS can ask themselves if they were abused, what is the relationship with the abuser?

Did it ever get repaired?

How do they see the abuser today?

What similarities can be drawn between how the BS behaves and the WS during the abuse?

This allows for more connections between the BS and WS by sharing the pain. Relating life events. The BS typically feels the WS doesn't understand and the WS feels the same but due to the BS not seeing how hard the WS is trying. Maybe this can help improve growing beyond. Also it will help the WS understand future scars and relapses.