SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Sure. I understand about being C-suite, but way before you get there in those careers you are not. You are in the lower ranks. There is maybe a power imbalance at that time where you internalize that you need to control and protect yourself?

I understand what you are saying about not feeling attracted to the attention in that way. Really. I do. I honestly can't picture myself having an affair within a work/career setting. Do you think there's a difference in some way between us in experience or values or coping? I'm honestly curious. In the coping part, I just don't see how it helps the situation at all. That's from the outside though.

I could possibly picture myself having an affair if I weren't a mother with children. Your children were still at an impressionable age as young adults, even being out of the house. It's so hard for me to picture breaking up their family. Do you think there is a difference there?

I can picture myself feeling something and backing off and re-evaluating a marriage to decide if I would be happier with a divorce. I wasn't particularly happy. I have friends who are not now. Is it an evaluation of risk?

I think I understand what you are saying about being avoidant more clearly. I said I was at least somewhat avoidant because I read the descriptions of that. Yet I have taken more than one quiz that say I am securely attached. It might be different.

Still, I think all my close friends and family will tell you that it's hard to get to know me.

"I would never have an affair" is a weaker safeguard than people think for someone that is compartmentalized and avoidant... Most people who eventually have affairs probably believed some version of that about themselves right up until they found themselves inside the affair container where those beliefs no longer governed their behavior.

This. I had committed infidelity multiple times prior to the most recent incident and I still convinced myself that I would never do that to my husband. Isn't that a crazy level of self-delusion!

I could possibly picture myself having an affair if I weren't a mother with children. Your children were still at an impressionable age as young adults, even being out of the house. It's so hard for me to picture breaking up their family. Do you think there is a difference there?

I reasoned that I wouldn't be found out, and that if I was, then my husband would stay with me to preserve the family for our daughter's sake, after seeing what his previous divorce did to his older children... I think other WS don't think about that as a consequence at all, whether because they are absorbed with themselves and the affair, or because they compartmentalize.

[This message edited by GotTheMorbs at 12:50 AM, Thursday, October 22nd]

I reasoned that I wouldn't be found out, and that if I was, then my husband would stay with me to preserve the family for our daughter's sake, after seeing what his previous divorce did to his older children

Yes. And this is a terrifying reality to a BS. You understand our dedication to our children and are willing to count on that in case of an affair being revealed. We would never do that. It means more to us. It just does.

My children are older now, and I will act differently. The difference still exists. I think he knew. He knew. He simply didn't care as much as I did.

We would never do that. It means more to us. It just does.

I don't think that logically follows... Especially considering some people can genuinely believe that about themselves and still end up cheating. *shrug*

I disagree.
By your own admission, you made a logical decision and calculation on the risk of having an affair based on what you knew of your husband and how the outcome would affect you and your daughter. Whether you were correct or not, it was still that. My logical decision, etc. would simply not have been the same as yours.

I am not making any predictions on whether you would or wouldn't commit infidelity based on how much you love, value, and want to protect your family.

I'm saying that moral conviction in and of itself does not guarantee prevention of moral failures.

I also think that it's impossible to quantify such characteristics in order to be able to meaningfully compare them, and even if someone may love, value, and want to protect their family as much as you do, that they still may not act in accordance with those values.

ETA: Personally, I also (however faultily) estimated that I (probably) could have my illicit relationship without jeopardizing my family, so it doesn't make sense to count that as evidence that I didn't value them as much as someone who hasn't cheated. That's not the same as thinking "This behavior presents a significant risk of breaking up my family, but I value the affair more and so I'm going to keep doing it."

[This message edited by GotTheMorbs at 2:09 AM, Thursday, October 22nd]

EDIT:

Ok. No. You edited in the middle of my post. The rest of what I wrote still stands, but i don't think I need to engage anymore in this discussion.

[This message edited by KitchenDepth5551 at 2:27 AM, Thursday, October 22nd]

H kitchen depth-

I just saw seem to want to walk away from this discussion, I am not sure if that was specifically to morbs or not, you asked me some intriguing questions so I would like to answer them, but no pressure to engage if you need to step away. I enjoy our conversations because you challenge me but not in a bad way at all.

I am not sure how to answer your question because I don’t know you to be able to compare our internal worlds, so I will simply tell an abbreviated version of events with what I was trying to say about how my avoidance and life circumstance had come against my limited coping mechanisms. From that, maybe you can ascertain the differences?

I was in the c suite for 10 years before my affair occurred. Sure there was a power dynamic involved in some of the trips, especially traveling with sales folks, they all reported to me. But a lot of people I "worked with" were not really in our reporting structure.

The man I had an affair with was sort of a partner kind of colleague. No power dynamics or much face to face at all. He lived 1000 miles from me. I consistently saw him in business trips over a period of 3-4 years. I knew him casually, thought he was funny, but really had not given him much thought ever.

When I said coping- I believe some affairs occur out of personal/existential crisis. I was in a massive one. Many things were converging at once- empty nest, upheaval of my husband trying to pivot his lifelong career into becoming a full time business owner. All the people pleasing, over working, pressure, it had all come to a head for me. I had just been diagnosed with it emotional exhaustion.

In my case I simply didn’t care about anything anymore. I wanted to go live in one of our apartments and be left alone. That was my ongoing fantasy. I had numbed myself in my ongoing crisis for over a year at the point things changed with the ap.

On the business trip where it started, there were a lot of extra celebration type activities as our company was having a milestone anniversary. I don’t usually even really like social events that much, I am a 50/50 introvert/extrovert and at most of these things I was hosting, speaking, etc. So when I could get out and recharge in my room I always did. Some of my Directors made ongoing open (good natured) jokes about it. That I would come out, talk, eat dinner and then run to my cave.

This trip was different. I had less responsibilities and I was enjoying the banter and having fun. This was almost manic looking back on it. I hadn’t felt free or like I was having fun for a long time. The AP had been with our smaller group a lot that trip due to his friendship with someone else on my team. On the last night, as people filed out from the dinner, we happened to leave at the same time. We were in a big city and it was nighttime, and we were walking back to the hotel, but as people veered off to different hotels he just happened to be the only one going to the same one so we continued to walk. I felt safer to be accompanied and he was familiar enough to me that it didn’t seem odd or awkward.

We talked about our family, trips we had done, etc. and because the vibe had been so high that night, there was some sort of agreement to walk a little further (to a landmark) before going back to sort of wind down. I knew by this point there was a vibe. But I really didn’t take it seriously. I just had felt so vibrant that evening and this was something happening in a long and dry flatness.

He did make an overture and it spooked me so we went back and that was awkward. And he was apologetic. The next day in the meeting we avoided each other. I texted him through Facebook in my way home to smooth it over (we had ongoing projects I need to finish back at home that involves him) and that’s when we started taking more and more. It simply became a way of feeling good when everything else felt like it sucked. But I knew what it was, he had made that overature and suddenly I felt more interesting. I felt desired. I liked that feeling. I ignored that he seemed like the kind of person who showed that desire to others often. So in some ways that knowledge made me feel like I would never take it seriously. I was right too- he told me about his other affairs.

In reality, that emotional unavailability became a challenge for me.

In hindsight, I should have really stopped and thought "what do I need to do to bring normalcy back to my life". I should have engaged in self care. Made a lot of changes that might have started to unwind how I had gotten so disconnected from myself and my life. Instead, I leaned into escapism. His texts started becoming the highlight of my day. This went on for two months, and then we had another trip and spent that trip completely together. It ended a week later.

I don’t excuse what I did, I don’t like any of it or think it was the right thing to do. But I was blocking out a lot of reality for that lifeline. My kids were all thriving, my husband was preoccupied, we hadn’t spent any quality time together in over a year. I felt like a maid and the person running our whole lives while he was building his business. None of our conversations were anything other than the business other than the occasional kid thing.

So in essence when I say coping, it was my avoidance that had piled up to where these things felt insurmountable to me. I didn’t feel my husband loved me, and while I did think about my kids I didn’t see how in any scenario we were not getting a divorce anyway. I wasn’t cake eating, I was literally done. The thing is I owed it to him to tell him that. And I did hint at it a few times but that’s not at all even close to the respect he truly deserved. The other man was a way of avoiding all the feelings and I think in some ways I thought either it would make our marriage better (yes I know that’s ridiculous now) or it would cause it to implode when I didn’t have the guys to make that happen.

It was simply just a bad year of marriage and personally I felt just so alone, especially now that the kids were all out doing thier own thing. I felt truly like I had given my all and had outrun my usefulness. But there was a lot of self deception happening here that was escalated by having an affair.

And that’s how it happened.

In the aftermath, I didn’t feel different about my life, it just all looked worse to me. I started therapy because I didn’t know what else to do. And after a couple of months of that, I finally decided to tell my husband. At that point everything felt even messier and I wasn’t as sure that I wanted to leave. I think it was because I was acting so batshit crazy he had started to lean in more out of concern. I had been saying things over those two months that started to concern him. I actually wasn’t hiding any of it very well, there just weren’t any questions that I had to lie. Because the man lived so far away I don’t think it was seeming like an affair—-I was home all the time outside of having to work. I could text a lot because my husband wasn’t home.

So anyway, my confession was really about - this has happened and I don’t know what we should do. I knew if staying married was at all an option I needed to tell everything. I was already here reading bs story after bs story. But I was open to not staying married. I didn’t see the ap as an option waiting in the wings at all- he was the one to initiate no contact, but I did think I had fallen in love with him and there was grief on that side as well. In reality, I just had attached myself to the good feelings rather than there being any real substance there.

Anyway, not sure if you can glean anything from this in how we are different. But maybe it’s simply that your coping mechanisms or management of your life has always simply been more developed. I had a lot of maturing and getting more self aware to do.

[This message edited by hikingout at 2:46 PM, Thursday, October 22nd]

She was not consciously weighing that and deciding the affair was worth the cost. It was not part of the calculus because there really was no calculus.

Once the affair was inside its own secret container, the rest of her life stopped fully entering the equation. Her values, her love for us, the potential consequences, the risk to the family, those things were still real, but they were not being integrated into the decisions she was making inside that container.

Yes this describes it for me as well. To a T.

I think for me I was pushing away the ideas by thinking we were headed for a divorce anyway and I just kept the ideas separate for the most part. There was a lot of head in the sand thing going in. I wish I had seen your post before responding it probably would have helped me be more succinct.

Is it an evaluation of risk?

I think maybe a difference is you stopped to evaluate risk. I lied to myself about what the risks were, and on top of that the emotional turbulence I was experiencing in my life and marriage made me care less than ever about consequences? Great questions.

I can only speak from the perspective of a BS (still learning the acronyms around here, thank the lord there's a lookup).

I've done painstakingly long analysis on my soon to be ex-WS. She's started therapy; I always knew she had traumatic issues stemming from deep loss of both of her parents (Suicide for one, the other was simply not there). She has severe abandonment issues. It's caused us problems over the years, but it was, I thought - nothing I couldn't handle.

Sorry for the double negatives. In a bit of a state so my usual checking/rechecking of my words isn't happening. So it's raw stream of thought.

I think the OP was pretty accurate at least for a large subset of betrayers; in my case, she definitely has compartmentalized everything. Every time the world 'gets shaken up' she loses it. Soon she's going to have to deal with the long term ramifications of that.

To me, it's been devastating. I was willing to work it out, reconcile, to try... but she's convinced herself she needs this. Meanwhile she continues to compartmentalize the family life, the friendship, etc - and acts as if what she's doing operates in a vacuum. It's maddening seeing this from even a slightly objective view, if I detach myself from my emotions (however briefly I can manage that) and I look at it.. it's just sad. The devastation wrought over one person's inability to be happy with themselves is overwhelming.

So I guess I appreciate the discussion and insight. I realize it doesn't apply to all. I see a lot of WS on here, trying to understand themselves through the lens given. That said, from the lens of a BS - on the outside looking into my own soon to be ex-WS's life - what he says resonates, and resonates clearly.

I suspect the cloudiness involved is oftentimes just the WS's emotions obscuring the situation. I'm sure it's difficult to understand why we act the way we do. I'm sure it's not as clear cut as it sounds in this discussion. But in my case, it was cathartic to hear that it shouldn't just be laid at my feet because I "didn't do enough" for whatever invented excuse was given as to why I couldn't push a Sisyphean boulder up someone else's hill.

I think at the end of the day, if people were more honest and could just call a spade a spade; communicate their own issues instead of hiding from them - we'd all benefit. Alas, unfortunately some people are just very adept at burying their emotions, hiding from their internalized problems, and then waiting until that explodes into something that externalizes and ruins many, many lives.

[This message edited by SilentBulwark at 5:29 PM, Thursday, October 22nd]