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Can things really be that bad for a WW that they decide, to give up on the M, their family, their children, their God?

Adultery destroys marriages and families....however, the real defeat is a reflection on where the WS got to.

They had such emptyness, such isolation, such pain, such "other something" inside them that cost them all hope....and they simply gave up and...........escaped.

In affect, I believe they gave up on themselves first and foremost....us, kids, God, careers, all were secondary to the initial quitting they did on themselves.

The first lie told in adultery is the lie the WS tells themselves.

Maybe it started from childhood when they said to themselves "My feelings dont matter". Maybe there was another point in time where they said to themselves "I have no feelings...feelings are for weak people". Maybe there was a point in their life where they said to themselves "I don't warrant being loved".

All of this is internal dialogue that influence a person. The answer to adultery is within the WS...both the "whys" and the "how not to" answers are just within them.

I pray for us all.

No matter if you are a man or a woman....with kids or no kids....long marriage short marriage....ONS or LTA.....it is tougher than anything I have experienced. It requires more courage than is humanly possible to endure.

You are feeling pain right now...tremendous pain.

You, like me, resort to thinking and philosophy when the pain is unbearable...

Keep the faith brother.....we got your back.

[This message edited by blakesteele at 10:57 AM, February 18th (Tuesday)]

Another take.....look at how many male adulter's use prostitutes. I see it often here on SI....men using prostitutes. I can't recall a single SI member whos wife used male prostitutes.

I think that fact alone warrants that there could be a fundamental difference in how men approach adultery vs how women approach and view it.

It is a difference… but what that difference means could be open to interpretation.

It could mean, as you've said, that (some) men approach adultery differently than how women approach it. It could also mean that female prostitutes are more available to men than male ones are to women. Or it could mean that men are more accepted as sexual people while women are shamed for wanting purely sex and wind up attaching emotional significance to feel like less of a slut… See how many different interpretations of that difference that could mean?

The thing is, probably all the meanings of the difference are right, based on individuals' different experiences and specific cases. The trouble is when, as Jana Green so beautifully put it in another thread, when people play the Pain Olympics. It's invalidating to try to say "this gender is worse" (blanket statement) or "I've had it worse than you". It's probably something a lot of us do at one point or another in our lives, as an attempt to validate our own pain, so it's normal. But it can also invalidate others' pain and alienate people. That's what stereotypes do too. Caution...

Rock on Silverhopes! I get what you are saying. I apologize for this large oversight. I kinda like my last post better than my first post to this thread.

Thanks for the gentle, tactful nudge...I appreciate it.

women are shamed for wanting purely sex and wind up attaching emotional significance to feel like less of a slut… See how many different interpretations of that difference that could mean?

This resonates with me.....could see the applicability in my wifes affair.

My wifes desire to read more into the emotional meaning he had for her...therefore making the sex acts seem more.....noble? caring? not cheap? innocent?

God be with us all.

[This message edited by blakesteele at 11:02 AM, February 18th (Tuesday)]

My wifes desire to read more into the emotional meaning he had for her...therefore making the sex acts seem more.....noble? caring? not cheap? innocent?

It could…and these questions are something she is going to have to work through and answer in order to give you the full story of the affair and to make sure that she never gives herself permission ever again. The do's are so very destructive, no matter the whys.