SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Bumping this post..

I needed the reminder of how broken the cheater is. No matter how hard we try to R . True R can only happen if the cheater does a lot of work in themselves.

[This message edited by Emotionalhell at 3:47 PM, April 8th (Wednesday)]

I have and you posted on his story on March 19th.. Who else would name themselves Mr.notaslut...

Uh, ya, which is why I said that I "assume" that he is your husband, but sometimes coincidences happen and I wasn't completely sure, before doing more reading, that he in fact was your H due to the responses he was giving in your very own thread. Made me scratch my head.

And yes, posted on March 19th, I PM'd him AFTER that to make sure.

But back to what is important.. I understand that when a BS reads how a WW thinks is difficult to hear.. To a BS is more WW BULL SH!T, lies..

Precisely. Not necessarily "lies", but "excuses"

But, "RealityBlows" posting put into words what I was struggling to say or explain to my BH. I was not trying to trigger him.. I am not a sadistic B!TCH.. I LOVE him... I want my M..

I understand that. I was commenting on his post in this thread. It obviously didn't sit well with him.

Prevention..

I am not excusing what I did rather I am trying to explain how I got to that point so I do not go there again.. My BH and I now realize we had a HUGE communication issue.. If I could have told my BH how I was feeling for months we could have had a better foundation.. So when the OM was working me I could have said something to my H rather than falling for the ego kibble..

This is POWERFUL stuff!! This was me!!

And that is a perfectly good expalanation.

A word of advice, however. Don't say the OM was "working" you. It puts forward the notion that you had no control over your own desires and is an attempt to downplay your behavior.

[This message edited by vellocet at 3:57 PM, April 8th (Wednesday)]

I have asked my wife why she did what she did and she wasn't always able to put into words what was going through her head. When she saw a thread that described what she was going through she asked me to read it, not to hurt me, but to give me the details she was unable to.

I want her to do this and I have thanked her for doing so, she is not trying to hurt me, this thread helps me understand what she was thinking. Doesn't make what she did right, it is not an excuse, just the stupidity going on in her fucking head at the time.

RealityBlows, Your post and this thread really speaks to me. I would consider my WW a wonderful person and I never imagined in a million years she would have been capable of doing what she has done. She is smart and has a master's degree with a wonderful career. She was a SAHM until the children were old enough to go to school and then only worked part time but makes good money in the healthcare field. She is beautiful, funny, caring, outgoing, has a great personality and has plenty of good old fashioned common sense.

She was diagnosed with depression before we met and takes medication every day but I have never really seen her really depressed as her meds keep her on an even keel. She was promiscuous in her younger days and often told me that she sought male attention as her father was not involved with her during her childhood. I accepted her past and did not hold it against her as I thought she had moved past all of it. I found out later that she still craved male attention even while we were married but it she never crossed any lines and I wasn't even aware of this.

Our marriage has been very good and we always got along great with no real issues. We were very blessed and extremely fortunate and I treated her like a princess every single day. She wanted for nothing. But during the winter of 2013, without my knowledge she became depressed. She never told me and hid it from everyone. She was turning 39 and that was a big deal for her because 40 was right around the corner. She began to label herself as only a mom and, in her mind, her life didn't seem very glamorous and she was defined by the minivan that she drove. And right while this turmoil was swirling in her mind, a son of a family friend befriended her on FB and began to PM her. He lived 2000 miles away but they had met the prior year at the annual army reunion with their fathers. The PM conversations started out innocently but the OM had only one thing in mind and that was to sleep with her at the coming years reunion and he began to work his magic. Soon my wife began to really like his attention through his PM's and later she craved his compliments and attention and it turned into a EA for her only. The OM had no emotional attachment, he only wanted to get laid when the families met at the reunion later that spring.

This is one example of how/why good women in LT marriages cheat. I found out later that the OM played this FB game with many women and it was simply a numbers game to him. My wife was not out looking to have an A but this scumbag came along just at the right moment and took advantage of the situation. Of course she is fully to blame as well as she allowed herself to have the PA when they met for the reunion.

A week after she came home, her conscious was eating her alive and she confessed it all to me. Her words that day brought me to my knees and wrecked my world.

Thought this was well worth a bump.

I'm a wayward wife and most of the story is true but some of it wasn't. First of all I had an EA not a PA. I wanted sex from my husband but he was low drive and wasn't interested. Secondly I wasn't in a good marriage. My husband didn't treat me like a princess. I was more like a piece of furniture. Lastly my kids were young because I had kids late in life.

Being a middle aged homemaker sucks at times. Nobody notices what I do until I don't do it. My kids complain when the laundry fairy didn't wash their favorite jeans. They bitch because their favorite flavor pop tarts aren't here when they want them. The highlight of my day is when I go to bed.

And don't get me started about the cattiness of other women. Some working moms think my house should be immaculate and I cook gourmet meals. They also think I'm at their beck and call for favors. Other homemakers try to compete with me.

This is a lonely place and I know now why mothers in the past drank in the afternoon.

this thread is highly bump-worthy.

RealityBlows described my WW's cliche-riddled cheating to a tee. I would be curious to see if the whole vilification campaign I experienced from her, to justify her actions in her mind, are typical of the middle aged cheating soccer mom too.

This post by Reality Blows should be enshrined in the JFO forum.

Reality Blows - you post certainly strikes a cord with me and my experience with my WW's A.

And after they start "hitting the gym pretty hard" I am surprised by how often in this "script" the affair partner is the trainer, the running partner, the work-out partner, someone from the gym, etc.

The WW then compartmentalizes her two worlds. In one world she is the matriarch of the family, the wife and the Holy Mother. In the other world she gets to be whomever she wants to be. She gets to recreate herself into what ever image she has fantasied about over the years. Fantasys she would never reveal to her wedded husband, too embarrassed to reveal. She has an image to maintain that she has built up since courtship. She gets to break out of her bride/wife/mother mold and escape her 24 year old reality.

This is totally a male perspective. Women don't think this way at all.

Respectfully, you are wrong. This is a generalization. Many women DO think like this. I know some of them.

The WW then compartmentalizes her two worlds. In one world she is the matriarch of the family, the wife and the Holy Mother. In the other world she gets to be whomever she wants to be. She gets to recreate herself into what ever image she has fantasied about over the years. Fantasys she would never reveal to her wedded husband, too embarrassed to reveal. She has an image to maintain that she has built up since courtship. She gets to break out of her bride/wife/mother mold and escape her 24 year old reality.

My ex was a prime example of this...to the "t"...she was the good wife, caring mom, but a false empathetic wife, and one hell of a good actress...she lead a double life...I believed she was this false women 100%...and I was fooled embarrassingly by her act for 9 years...different than most WW, there wasn't "one man"...there were many, and women with men in numerous group sex occasions. She was out of control. Although I found this out afterward, even by her own boasting and bragging to me about these incidents ( screwed up, I know ), I'd be a fool to think she just flicked a switch the day after she ended the marriage and became this humiliating person...I believe she kept it hidden at least a year before she was done with me. All the signs were there; no sex, increased texting, aloofness, ignoring and avoiding me...but she was the friendliest, most warm-hearted mom to everyone else and me...little did I know she hid behind a second persona that didn't ever arise in the bedroom when we had sex...sad, really. Broken, damaged, low if not any self-esteem or self-worth. I wonder if her attempt at her 7 month. new relationship has morphed back to a true, wholesome woman, or is she living this secret life with her new man too..

Great post. Hits very close to home.

"A life unexamined is not worth living."

-Socrates

For most of my life I have had a profound fascination with philosophy, both on the individual level and in society. It began when I was about 10 and my Jewish father explained the Holocaust to me. I remember, very clearly, feeling stunned not just that one group of people could exterminate another group, but that humans were capable of such wanton violence.

In college, I came across the following quote by Ayn Rand, the founder of "Individualism."

"As a human being, you have no choice about the fact that you need a philosophy. Your only choice is whether you define your philosophy by a conscious, rational, disciplined process of thought and scrupulously logical deliberation--or let your subconscious accumulate a junk heap of unwarranted conclusions, false generalizations, undefined contradictions, undigested slogans, unidentified wishes, doubts and fears, thrown together by chance, but integrated by your subconscious into a kind of mongrel philosophy and fused into a single, solid weight: self-doubt, like a ball and chain in the place where your mind's wings should have grown."

Now, I cannot say with all honesty that I have always followed the advice of these two philosophers, particularly over the last few years. Since D-day, however, I have been living an examined life!

They see themselves as:

And herein lies the problem. Far too many people live an unexamined life. We know we have a belief system and core values (aka a philosophy) and occasionally that belief systems is tested. Often enough, we pass our tests. A simple example is coming to complete stop at a stop sign, even at 3am. The next time you come to stop sign, ask yourself why you didn't follow the rules, and cheated.

Once upon a time philosophy was actually taught in schools. Once upon a time the vast majority of people attended Church on a regular basis. Even in our modern world there are philosophical examples of a living an examined life.

Most of the time, we are far too busy and way too exhausted to live an examined life, "to define [our] philosophy by a conscious, rational, disciplined process of thought and scrupulously logical deliberation." I'd do some of that but the Cardinals have won the division (again) and will be vying for yet another World Series title. I have a kickball tournament to attend, work, kid, former (I hope) wayward wife, cars to get repaired, dentists appointments to make... and replies on SI when I get to examine the hell I've been through and still experience today.

And so, I believe, your quite right RealityBlows. We are left with a "a junk heap of unwarranted conclusions, false generalizations, undefined contradictions, undigested slogans, unidentified wishes, doubts and fears."

Diane Lane movies? I watched one with my wife with Richard Gere in it. She cheats, he kills OM, and they have to decide whether or not he should confess to the police.

Anyone see "Crazy, Stupid Love" before D-day and want to the smack the producers of that movie today?

I see everything through the lens of infidelity.

I see two people (my wife and I) who have been living unexamined lives. Once upon a time we really were happy with each other, spent most of our free time together and shared ourselves, completely. That changed. Deaths, births, moves, careers, finances, all got in the way, and more.

We are humans and as such we are philosophical creatures. I can tell you why I think my wife cheated. I can also tell you why our marriage became so fucked-up in the first place. And I can also tell you why I never cheated, nor ever would have.

I try to live an examined life. I may always know--or think I know--the right path, but I don't always follow it. Sometimes, my philosophy is tested and when that philosophy is found to be lacking, I fail.

to the sahm - imagine you are male. women consider you an incompetent with children, too lazy to work, and a loser. men often judge their self worth by their jobs and define themselves by it, they are befuddled by a sahd.

the grass isnt greener.

now imagine doing the sahd gig AND working from home as an author. work thinks you are home so have time to work whereas others see you at home and not working.

guarantee the gender bias is alot worse for a sahd. even one who has novels doing quite well.

been there. done that. have the t shirt. and the ww.

and as a sahd with 2 kids, a job, 2 cats, and a dog - its not that hard as long as you 1: realize the main role is parent, 2: that having things done good enough rather than perfect is okay and that the saved time invested back into the kids is better, and 3: before thinking working at home is hard go grab a pickaxe and do some serious manual labor for awhile and then you realize that as hard as being a stay at home parent is tis alot better than breaking rocks and the advantages of having time for the kids are unbeatable.

dont knock what you have.

Thanks all for the Bump.

I wanted to clarify that this is not an excuse, justification or a good reason to cheat piece. It is to help us Betrayed Spouses to not blame ourselves or the state of the marriage. To not question our physical attributes and sexual prowess. It is the state of the wayward that is to blame as-in this scenario, personal predetermining factors and external factors all come into alignment at just the precise moment in time.

I have learned that the "reasons and whys" are largely irrelevant and many times ungraspable, nebulous and ever changing. The performance/behaviors/actions of our WS's, post affair, is what we should really focus on, what really characterizes them-and you can't accurately evaluate them if we summarily demonize them.

[This message edited by RealityBlows at 5:20 PM, October 4th (Sunday)]

Pretty much this:

What drives me crazy, though, is that she had a loving, passionate guy at home who still found her very attractive and would be happy to rock her world anytime, anywhere. Evidently, though, a "husband" wasn't as thrilling as an AP, because she had zero interest in being attractive or exciting to me.

And a side piece of this:

She betrayed a man that would have given his life for her for someone that considered her a nice piece of side ass.

Aaaand--holy sh!t--this:

And she rages on me more than ever right before and after

(Apparently, at least partially alcohol-fueled each time.)

This, though, is what really resonated with me, and I've said the same thing to my own confidants:

WW is only the woman who made vows to me, and she destroyed all those vows. What about WW as a Mother of 2 small children? Just sayin, WW low self esteem, lack of attention etc... I get it. As a mother who did these things, I don't accept this as a valid excuse for her A. Husbands and Wives are allowed to be selfish and make horrible mistakes because we are only human. I feel Mothers and Fathers do not have that luxury of being selfish. Sorry to offend anyone but that's only my opinion.

But, ultimately, this:

I see everything through the lens of infidelity.

And it's nerve-wracking as hell.

Perhaps this thread should be up for pinning consideration?

[This message edited by StreetMedic at 6:15 PM, October 4th (Sunday)]

So now the stage is set. Then someone comes along loaded with flattery. Many times a skilled home wrecker who knows how to work the vulnerable "MILF" or "Cougar". It progresses from flattery, to flirting, texting, to sexting. It evolves insidiously, the highs get higher, the lows get lower, the excitement, the ego kibbles, the endorphans become an intoxicating drug-an addiction. These feelings are amplified 1000 times by the forbidden fruit nature of an affair. This forbidden fruit, this dangerous liaison, this high stakes surrealistic adventure, that exists in an exotic nether world, in the shadows, in romantic secret, creates an artificial high that eclipses the feelings they felt courting their beloved spouses. Some times this leads the wayward to believe that this must be true love, a love greater than that with their spouse. They begin to question their love for spouse, their marriage, their past life, their fate. They compartmentalize, rationalize ("I deserve this", "What he don't know wont hurt him") and they demonize the BS to squelch any internal conflict.

This describes my situation with my WW to a tee. Perhaps what makes 'good women' cheat is that it is a convergence of factors at the same time, at the same place, and the decisions that might never had been made before or since happen not all at once, but in small steps that take them on completely the wrong path.

As for compartmentalizing, my WS said that is exactly what she did, effectively running parallel lives, one at home as wife, mother and professional and the other escapism-driven, a mostly online/phone EA and occasional PA.

Sorry, adding to clarify as the above may sound like multiple partners. It was one EA/PA.

[This message edited by chelsea9 at 8:28 AM, October 5th (Monday)]

This is a great thread...thanks for reviving it! I will be gender neutral. I think much of what was said in here applies to males equally as it does to females!

Unhinged hit on it head squarely...as did Reality Bites.... The essence of the Why... IMHO is WS lack of insight into themselves ..."What are these voices outside loves open door, make us throw off our contentment and beg for something more" (Don Henley/"Heart of the matter")

A WS may have none, some or all of the textbook "excuses"...mid-life crisis, low self-esteem, ego boost, FOO issues, boredom, stress, fear of failure, being taken for granted' exit strategy...bla bla bla and so on, and so on....

I think discovering infidelity provides an opportunity for ALL of us, BS and WS alike, to examine ourselves...(although perhaps some do not choose to engage in self-examination!... I am guessing they aren't in here and aren't reading this )

Its unfortunate that some have to suffer significant trauma to learn and grow from the experience...but then I suppose if human beings didn't make mistakes, and everyone followed the greater moral imperative, we would have no need for the commandments; man made laws; vows, promises, moral compasses and etc.

Food for thought....animals live by instinct to survive...they are not governed by a sense of morality, the difference between right or wrong, as we understand it... Is infidelity/betrayal only particular to humans? Perhaps there is something more primal going on??? with the result being that such behaviour engages the survival instinct!

For The WS engaging their subconscious desire to change something they are dissatisfied with in their own life, without understanding or acknowledging they likely are dissatisfied with themselves, not their spouse or SO....they risk losing all of it!

For the BS having to survive from the agonizing hurt and breach of trust forced upon them, sometimes discovered through their own instincts being engaged by the WS behavioural cues or because of WS's confession, but nonetheless, when facing the reality of betrayal, they must re-examine EVERYTHING!

Take the opportunity for learning and growing from this experience and doing so with integrity and grace to the extent possible. Perhaps that is the key??

"I would rather be human dissatisfied, than a satisfied pig.., a Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied" John Stuart Mill

Not sure where to plunk this down, but it seems to fit well-enough here, for now.

I have really been beating myself up about comparisons between me and the OM that my WW made in some journal entries that I once read. As many times as I have had to have it explained to me that a long-term spouse--with all of the "real life" distractions that encumber real life "spousiness"--will never compare to an AP, it never really "stuck" with me. Not in so many words, exactly, I was stuck thinking, "He's just better; I come up short by comparison; I could never have offered that level of emotional intensity and excitement;" etc. It was maddening. It still is.

But I experienced a not-so-minor breakthrough the other night as I was reading a book about (ironically enough) being completely honest with women, by being completely honest with yourself. The author strongly discouraged "game," "pick up lines," all that sort of cheesy stuff. But it was one point he made that caused me to sit up and rethink how I have been feeling about what my WW wrote about me and the OM. It helped to nudge me a little further out of the funk I'd been in.

I'm gonna misquote the author all over the place here, but--trust me--the spirit is accurate enough. We all have heard the admonition that "actions speak louder than words," or--said another way--"show me, don't tell me." (Rush fans, anyone?) Well, the author took that concept a step further and said that when men are evaluating women, and women are evaluating men, we shouldn't be evaluating them on the basis of "what they say, or what they do, but--rather--what they are."

Then I flashed to the journal entries I had read where my WW described her OM as "sings every song to me," "never takes his eyes off me," "pulls me into a corner and kisses me," "doesn't let me go all night," "holding hands," "dancing." My page in her journal--rather blandly--said things like, "Good father," "kids love him more than anything," "stable," "good provider."

Back then, I was deeply, deeply wounded, knowing that in her eyes the comparisons had been laid out there and that I came up short; I was found lacking. I have been haunted by that almost every single day since D-Day. (Thanks for that, too, WW.)

The other night, after reading that part of that book, I suddenly saw it completely differently.

She was evaluating him on what he said and what he did: His "game," his "pick up lines," his act, his shtick. I lose that every time. We're married over fifteen years. Two kids. A mortgage. You know: life.

She was evaluating me on what I was: Good provider, good father, stable. He loses that every time. As I posted elsewhere, he's a low-life who chased a married woman who he also knew had at least one young child, was happy to hear she'd acquired a pay-as-you-go "burner phone," at least two unspecified items on his criminal record, he snuck around and conspired to sneak around with her, ran for cover when he was called out by the BS. Not a quality individual at all, as far as that goes, if you're truly searching for a better life-partner or soul-mate fit.

Unfortunately, where her head was at, the saying and doing was more important to her. For my part, I'll take being a solid individual, able to look myself in the mirror over having good "game" any day. So should the rest of you. JMHO.

[This message edited by StreetMedic at 10:30 PM, October 5th (Monday)]