SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I have written pages and pages and pages of words. And time and time again they have been filtered through the lens of what hurt people believe WS are like, and the words are misconstrued-- and often enough that my BS, reading along, perceives consensus. More words aren't going to fix it, but I wanted to leave a warning to those who are still here: There is a cost to engaging with poor listeners.

He has beliefs about his feelings: he feels shame over them, he believes they're a burden to me and he should keep them to himself, he believes they are immature and he should just "grow up" and get over them. I have not done a damn thing to create or reinforce those beliefs. But you know who has? This community. So for almost a year now, I've been BEGGING him to share his infidelity related feelings, and I've written about that here. I was wishing he would stop bottling them up, telling me nothing was wrong when clearly something was and I asked him about that, wishing they would stop leaking out sideways in non-infidelity-related marital discussions, making me have conversations that are secretly about the infidelity even though the words aren't, at a confusing intensity. I wished he would engage more with his feelings, be more cognizant of them, and demonstrate that he's working on his own healing. I realized I couldn't do that for him and wrote about offering curiosity and then disengaging.

But you know what this community heard? "She thinks his feelings are inconvenient and they piss her off. She just doesn't want to hear about the effects of her infidelity on him. She wants him to be over it by now. She wants him to shut up and stuff his feelings. She's not willing to wait for him to heal." And my BS READ THAT. Over and over again. And it cemented those beliefs about his feelings, that he should stuff them, that I didn't want to hear them. And so he continued stuffing them, and suffering.

So good job, you lot. Good fucking job. We could have been SO MUCH FURTHER ALONG!

Beware, other users. Poor listening has a cost.

In general, I see five types of responses on forums and social media.

1. "Agreed", said in a word or emoji or a short sentence.

2. Snark and trolling.

3. Responses that show the person keyed in on a word or phrase, has a certain negative reaction despite everything else in the post, and cannot or will not focus on what the OP meant. Instead it is a semantic argument and they choose not to focus on the true issue. (By the way, I am a linguistic analyst, so my ACTUAL JOB is to analyze spoken and written language for underlying meaning and intent.)

4. Responses that disagree, but will explain logically why. They often miss the meaning of the full message, but they do show reasoning well.

5. Responses that further discussion and pose additional questions, facts, or thoughts that show they read for meaning.

In the case of an emotionally charged issue such as infidelity, it’s not hard to understand why people get bogged down in minutiae, because they are trying to heal and the oddest things can trigger an emotional response.

FWIW, I read your posts. You are definitely growing and learning.