SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

(((hiswifefor20)))

From your post, sounds as if you need a hug. Here it is. Best wishes on your journey.

I can relate to so many of these things in here that you all have written in myself and I am the BS. I see none of these in WH.

Just opens a whole new can of worms.

Thank you Scarlet

My H cheated on me for 5 years. It made me feel worthless.

[This message edited by dizzney at 5:11 PM, January 2nd (Sunday)]

[This message edited by allgone at 12:05 PM, April 4th (Wednesday)]

I don't really have anything to add at this time, but I find this to be good reading, so I'm bumping for reading/food for thought for the newbies.

I finally realized today why I did it and continued to cause hurt and pain to my wife, even during supposed R. Why I kept truth from her and trickled truth.

Because I am a selfish person with low self-esteem. Because I think only of myself first. Have done in all of my relationships from the time I was a teenager.

I went through two other marriages, before I met my current partner. I hurt my second wife and left her with two young kids for an affair and then onto this relationship.

I never once looked at myself and became comfortable with myself. I was a man without any boundaries for myself, although I demanded them of my partner.

Today, I finally took a step in getting rid of the self. I told my wife of a deceitful thing I did during the time she went on holiday to Tennessee. I had planned out this deceit with secret emails and a Walmart card. It wasn't an affair, with a live woman. It was internet porn instead.I finally understood that me protecting myself, was the root cause of this entire mess. It was so freeing.

My relationship with my BW has probably been the best thing to happen to me ever. She has talked and talked of boundaries. She has given me support all along. Forgiveness after forgiveness.

It finally hit me that this was what a decent, faithful,loving person looked like. There in front of my eyes. There I was a liar, a cheater, a manipulator. The truth hit me square in the eye.

I have made decision to affair "proof" myself. I have always been lazy and never did the hard work to change myself. Another reason of why I did it. I have never had the courage to look myself in the eye and see what it was that was wrong with me. I always laid blame on everyone else.

In short I did it because I was a coward. I felt entitled. I took and took and never gave. I was/am a selfish son of a bitch.

How I got here, I don't know yet. My brother and sister are as dysfunctional as I am. I think the answer lies in my childhood. I am comitted to changing from this POS that sits here today.

TIME FOR A BUMP

Because ((turtle72)) needs to think about this a bit more ... and it never hurts to think about "why' for all the rest of us too!

Wow, so much of the discussion above applies to me. The driving need for external validation. The fears of abandonment. The FOO and abuse issues. The cowardice and selfishness.

Yes, my marriage was completely and irredeemably in tatters. But nothing, NOTHING excuses what I did. The betrayal. The lying. That's on ME. I should have had the cajones (metaphorically) to address my marriage before I gave myself sexually or emotionally to another man. There is no way around that truth.

One thing no one ever seems to say is a factor, however...one thing that that I am taking a tremendous *gulp* before saying it was for me: after finally divorcing my xBH, after months of NC with OM - I still believe to the core of my soul that I really truly love(d) OM. I know, I know .

I am sure so many of you are thinking "the fog, the fog, she's in the fog!" Hell, maybe I am. I know that I am not a master of self-understanding yet. Maybe I'll realize one day years from now that it wasn't anything more than a false construct in my mind. But I am not with OM and I wasn't even as I divorced my BH. I never will be with OM again. I am not with xBH either. And I never will be with him again either (thank goodness!).

I am embracing the time alone to work on myself and the issues that made me feel like it was okay to have an A. It wasn't. I own that. My hurtful and selfish choices were not justified in any way.

But I can't say that I didn't love OM. I did. I do. I think I will always. And that did play a role in why I did it.

One thing no one ever seems to say is a factor, however...one thing that that I am taking a tremendous *gulp* before saying it was for me: after finally divorcing my xBH, after months of NC with OM - I still believe to the core of my soul that I really truly love(d) OM. I know, I know

You are not alone.

Kwills

I wanted to. I'm addicted to porn and the A was the next level, simple.

Why I'm a (SA) addict? Still digging but I have some ideas. Fears of rejection, anesthetizing, self-medicating...

I'm a alcoholic in recovery too.

Great post. i to have been pondering this thought for some time like many here i did not have any reason to cheat, i had it all, a wonderful wife. i was and have issues, though those were not a reason for the an A; i still cant pin down what it was that drove me to go for 5yrs, wasn't the sex, maybe the attention, the hole time during i had no thought as to what i was doing, except the secrecy, and the deception i had going, trying to live out to lives, both were complete opposite, i had it really good in my marriage. and the other i had nothing more then a sex buddy, though that came with a kind of relationship pattern that grew over the yrs.

i keep asking my self why, why for so long, why her in particular, why not others, i had the open door to shag who i liked, so why pick one and stay. its been hard trying to explain this to my bs,for i dont know the why. it really makes no sense.

for me it was like i could have any cake in the shop, as long as i never had the same one, and i told my wife what cake i had. and then i decide i not want to do that and go across the road and have a doughnut, for 5 yrs, ??? it really bothers me too..

i certainly had my feel of the cake and eat it thing, and never a again will i look at another cake in that way again....

BS here. No stop sign so I'll ask.

My WW had a 7 month affair with a coworker who was located 2000 miles away. Made many trips, for work, to his location in 2009. She had worked with him a few times before in the previous 5 years, but strictly professional and never one on one. Barely knew anything personal except that he was married and had lived in our home state as a kid.

From everything I have read, affairs usually begin as a friendship and then get physical. She started with the PA and then developing the EA. My WW ended up going out to dinner alone with him one night in June because another coworker wasn't able to make it. Within 3 hours she ended up going to bed with him and the affair began. The freindship developed after the affair was going on.

She doesn't understand why she did it. She said she was happily married. Said she wasn't looking for it. We are beginning MC next week to try and understand.

Just curious to see if any WS have a similar story and if they were able to come to any conclusions as to why.

[This message edited by Workin It Out at 2:40 PM, March 25th (Thursday)]

She doesn't understand why she did it. She said she was happily married. Said she wasn't looking for it. We are beginning MC next week to try and understand.

I think in my circumstance, xOW could have been anybody giving me a certain type of attention. It started the same way, EA, then became a PA.

I'm owning my s***, but I think I've come to the realization that I had a poor understanding of what a relationship is, and I'm obviously living and forced to accept the consequences.

I was very similar, very happy with my relationship, and then out of nowhere, I started the EA.

I've come to realize that through my upbringing, experiences (or lack of), and lack of a sense of consequences led me to choose the way I did. I know that's being general, but there are specific things in my personal development from childhood to adulthood that really molded me.

I'm not ready yet to be more specific on my situation, but I'm getting there.

Thanks for your input BLV

But my wife was the opposite. The PA started first with a coworker that at the time equated to be almost a complete stranger. The EA and remaining months of the PA developed after that first night.

Deleted. I was out of line. Sorry.

[This message edited by Lost68 at 12:29 PM, March 26th (Friday)]

Workin It Out.

BS's can not pose questions for the WS's in this forum regardless of stop signs.

You can ask questions in the "BS questions for WS" thread in the I Can Relate forum.

You can find it here.

http://www.survivinginfidelity.com/forums.asp?tid=342072

My sincerest apologies for posting a question. I misunderstood the stop sign symbol.

I don't know how to explain without falling into justification and rationalization. There is no excuse for my emotional affair. I knew even while I was doing it that it was wrong. Just couldn't turn off that need to be wanted, to be desired.

The last six years have been hellish. Not always, but for long stretches. I never recovered from WH/BH's affair. He was unrepentant, trickle truthed me to the very limits of my sanity, he sexually rejected me for three and a half years, mooned over his OW's email more than once, and I suspect but cannot prove he's had several ONSs since. And there's a lot more. Way too much to post.

It did a number on my mental state.

My biggest justification was that if he felt it was OK to continue to lie, then fine, I was just going to play by his rules. In other words, I developed a huge case of the fuck-its. Selfish, stupid, immature, I know. But that's where my head was at.

I had what I'd call an AHA moment yesterday (and no, I wasn't listening to 80's pop music). It hit me that the affairs were a way for me to celebrate.

All through my life I'd accomplish things and there was never any external validation (worthless mom in my picture, divorce, abuse... the list goes on). I had no mechanism to tell myself that I did well and I went and found it elsewhere. For me, it felt my BS was too close to me to be an external validator. I know she was proud of me and things I had done, but I wanted more. I wanted someone who didn't know me to tell me how amazing I was and how great I did. That was asinine at best and destructive to an nth degree.

The pattern is so obvious now. Got a girlfriend (my W now) go have an affair. Got a huge promotion, affair time, had a baby, celebrate with someone else. I feel a sense of relief to know the why, but the act will always haunt me.