I am not optimistic as such about R and I don’t believe there is any excuse to step outside your marriage. Whatever terms we use though I think it is important as part of reconciliation to try and understand (and probably put a certain label to it, fog, had their cake and eat it, selfishness) what happened. Without investigation and trying to understand the elements of the affair and what went through at the time it is almost pointless to attempt reconciliation. That doesn’t mean it is an excuse where you go “ah, it was the fog, I get it now, why didn’t you say so?” and put it to bed.
You have various degrees of trying to understand something that most of the times doesn’t make sense. The reasoning behind it, the why’s, the shock mostly so when you perceived you had a good marriage and you took pride in it.
Hormones don’t play a part in my book, I think at least in my case (believing that I have a first time offender and hopefully last), the brokenness came when the line was crossed by playing with fire: simple put flirting. It starts as a game and before you know it things spiral out of proportion. That’s the reason I never flirt. Every time someone pays me attention in that way I shut it down. Because I realise how dangerous it is to play with fire, to feel like when you were a teenager without any life stressors and feel those crazy butterflies at a beginning of a new relationship. Before you know it you want more and more and...
For me it isn’t the sex that bothers me that much, though by no means I deal with it easily, it is the lying, the hiding, the betrayal, the lack of loyalty towards a person that stood by the WS for a long time and committed to them, all that comes with the A and is served to you on a plate you want it or not. It is by no means an abusive behaviour of extreme proportions and recovering from it seems impossible at times. Living with the knowledge that you’ve been treated like you didn’t matter, and more so in the aftermath of finding out you still weren’t enough for the WS to stop the abusive behaviour, knowing that after years of investment in your marriage their loyalty and desires where somewhere else is just shattering. You whole world and values collapses and you realise that you can only count on yourself, nobody else has your back.
Are the WS redeemable? I am sure some are and some aren’t. It is just another risk to take, in a similar way that when/if you decide to divorce there’s no guarantee you’ll meet a better partner and unfortunately once you’ve been through this no matter what choice you make the scars of it will be with you forever and you’ll never be the same innocent, trusting person again.
