SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Thanks for posting this SG - I often feel this way, too. I am an overweight tomboy - happiest in jeans and a sweatshirt. I don't wear make-up or jewelry and am about as far from girly-girl as can be. I always considered my ex to be very attractive - in a rugged sort of way. He played sports, was a musician...that type.

OW was pretty - though I think her face was her worst feature in the pics I saw. But she was thin, had a nice body, dressed well and was very girly. Everything I am not. I am sure if you put pics of me and her side-by-side and asked guys to pick, based on looks alone, they would all choose her.

My ex never complimented me on my appearance, so I am left to wonder if that was just him - or if he never found me attractive. I think it was the latter.

It has been a very, very hard thing to accept - I know OW is not better than me because she had no problem being an OW and all the things that get said around here. I get that. But there is NO satisfaction for me in thinking that at least he was willing to risk it all for someone better looking. I would have preferred his OW was someone more plain, like me.

I actually just recalled something he said during D-Day, when I asked why her and why he wanted to replace me. he said, "But that's just it - she's not you and I picked someone different because I didn't want to replace you." Those were the blubbering mess, snot bubbles days and it was all so overwhelming - but I wish I had asked what that meant.

I still think that she was more "his type" based on his exes but I will never know why her but I have to believe at least part of it was because she was more attractive.

Awesome unrealized futuristic inventions aside ...

One thing that may help is to realize the time we spend mind fucking ourselves about OP is time we are robbing ourselves of good thoughts that can build us up. OP doesn't deserve anymore of our time. We BS's have already taken a beating on our selfesteem by our WS's, we don't need to do it to ourselves.

The OM in my situation is a shit-stain on the underpants of society...why would I want to think about that?

So here's the smiley: the above quote by Aesir is funny, good light relief all around

And is also just SO dismissive:

On the contrary, I thought it was rather nihilistic.

I just realsied the answer to my own question -

Is it attacking the OW where THEY might be vulnerable?

To me this looks like the female version of "Does dick size matter" threads I would think probably so.

I also think my saying every woman is at most 5 minutes in the bathroom away from looking pretty helps about as much as "it's how you use it" when it comes to those doubts.

A lot of how we see people is warped by our perspective anyway. Including ourselves. SG calls herself fat but I don't think she rides around a dump truck scooter at wal mart with her love handles dragging along the floor. Which I have seen up close, incidentally. Like something out of a Heavy Metal movie.

BH's go after the other guy being a chickenshit coward. In a lot of cases that's true but what about the guys who are soft touches whose wives were out fucking muscle beach moose men who killed 47 taliban fighters with three bullets when they were deployed with delta squad? You tell those guys they are awesome dads, loyal husbands, that shit talking internal voice doesn't care. He's just not a moosselman like his wife went after.

The bottom line is no matter what we attack about the OP, the (in some cases unfortunate) truth is that the P is for "Person" and they are inevitably going to share attributes with other people we do not want to insult. Looks are, as someone pointed out, juvenile and therefore easily grasped when consumed by rage and humiliation. They're a social message too, so no matter how forgiving and kind we are, it's a reflex response, however unwilling.

Not saying it's right. Saying you're right, it's where we're all vulnerable. Even big titty cartoon chickies and muscle beach heroes. In the dark, they cry. Because Thor hates them. Okay maybe I made that last part up, I'm stuck in talk mode and my brain is in power save, sorry.

On the contrary, I thought it was rather nihilistic.

it wasn't clear what you were trying to annihilate, and what you were counterproposing with and those were the problem with nihilism.

Sorry to take it all so seriously.

But.

I think that it is normal to look for whatever you can trash about the OP.

I agree. I think one's insecurities are highlighted when one's spouse has an affair, too.

When I'm being rational and objective, I wouldn't swap faces with OW. I'm not pretty. Neither is OW. But my DH told her she was "gorgeous" and he's never said that to me. And thinking of that highlights my insecurities about my not-pretty face. I am a serial dieter. So I despair about the fact that OW has tiny bones and is thinner than I could ever be, even if I were emaciated.

But OW is not particularly bright. She wasn't born in the US and her command of English is not very good.

Normally, I am incensed by people who make fun of those who are less intelligent than they are. I am the first to leap to the defense of those thus bullied. And I go out of my way to help anyone with poor English-language skills. But when it comes to OW my entire character changes. I have said and written things about her which make the normal Cally ashamed. But it isn't the real me saying them. It's BW-Cally. And when it comes to words and OW, BW-Cally is merciless and even cruel. Guilt-feelings? Not I.

[This message edited by Cally60 at 1:32 PM, November 16th (Friday)]

Perhaps it was just extreme cynisism.

I just don't expect to ever see a world with anything on that particular wish list.

SouthernGal~ I'm so glad you posted this.

whenever I see someone posting regarding what the OP looks, I feel the same way you do!

I guess that A's make us, the victims, feel ugly.

Who the hell cares what they look like? They are evil and evil is UGLY!! Even if they did look like Jennifer Aniston or Bradd Pitt!

Before I found out my WH was having an A, I didn't think that the MOW was ugly.

However, when I found out, I was surprised because other than her having big boobs & always revealing her cleavage, I would NEVER have thought her to be someone he would think was pretty.

And then I realized this....

Affairs aren't about looks so much as they are about filling a void in one's life - usually with whatever is most handy and willing to be involved.

No matter, how much we want to deny this, it's TRUE.

THIS is EXACTLY what we should keep in mind & stop focusing on the OP's looks.

But my DH told her she was "gorgeous" and he's never said that to me.

I think a big reason why we do this, and it continues to cause us so much pain, is because of our spouse's reactions to the OP. We see their reactions to the OP as special, and it hurts us, because we would like to be cherished in the same way. It is one of the most excruciating losses. I honestly don't know the way to deal with it as a BS.

My H insists that I did not betray him in his eyes. I am ashamed, because I know that I did - I will take the small blessing that he does not compare himself unfavorably to the OM, nor should he. Before I made ex the OM, my H saw a picture of him and commented how ugly he was. I am at least relieved that my H does not lose sleep over the OM, and I would not wish that on him. If he did, I would do everything I could to show him how special he is to me - I did that anyway, from the beginning of our relationship. It hurts that he doesn't try to offer me the same reassurance. But maybe he figures it's the one thing he can be honest about.

yep, mine told her she was beautiful...

makes him telling me that nearly meaningless.

I wonder if our reaction to seeing pics of OP is because of our expectations of what infidelity is?

In movies, books etc, infidelity is portrayed as something very different from the reality, and it almost always "beautiful" other people.

When I discovered he had cheated, I wanted to know who the person was, and although I didn't ahve an exact image of what she might look like, I knew the type of woman he found attractive and imagined it would be someone that looked like that.

I think I was shocked because she was the opposite of the type of woman he finds attractive, and she was nothing like the image of an OW that most of us probably have before we face the reality of infidelity.

I married the woman of my dreams. Good morals, great ethics and the most fabulous eyes I'd ever seen. And looks wow!!! 10 years, 11(or is it 12) fairly serious surgeries later physically she added some weight. I never saw it. Every single day I would tell her how beautiful she was. It didn't matter. I was expected to do that, after all Im her husband right?

Enter DBL, the right compliments slathered in POSOM honey and he could have looked like 4 day road kill in Texas in July and she was gonna slurp it up faster than a bear just waking up from hibernation.

I guess what I'm trying to say in my own limited vernacular is that to the wayward mind, looks don't usually mean crap. It's just how they choose to fill the hole inside themselves.

Great discussion and some insightful points made... Glad you brought this up.

I did want to say though, StillGoing, you have just insulted dump truck scooter riders and beach moose men. Just sayin'

[This message edited by DrivingPast at 1:47 PM, November 16th (Friday)]

I never saw it

Actually, this is a huge truth. I know my ex is very good looking. When I met him I was unimpressed. As I got to know him I saw him as very attractive but it was his wickedly sexy mind. When I loved him everything about him became attractive to me including his quirks which immediately morphed into faults to the point his in and out breathing and the way he ate cereal made me homicidal.

The love is blind thing I think has a very large element of truth to it. Just looking at things they touched or how he left the remote in the cushion of the chair was oddly endearing. Until...it wasn't and I felt like surgically implanting it.

That's why I never ask anyone how I look. I own mirrors and don't want to know how I'm being filtered by another.

I get your point SouthernGal.

In my case, the OP IS truly ugly. I am not saying this to make myself feel better, but people in their circles share the same opinion. Also, I have befriended some people on SI and on the other forum I used to go to a long time ago, and I have finally sent them a couple of pictures of the OP.

In the pictures I am sending, she is with three other ladies. I always ask: who do you think is the ugliest and who do you think is the prettiest? They always come back picking OP as the ugliest. Then, I write back and tell them who she is of the three, the ugliest one, that she is the one my idiot H called " beautiful as Aphrodite."

So, yes, in my case she is ugly.

[This message edited by MammaMia at 4:49 PM, November 16th (Friday)]

I get your point SouthernGal.

In my case, the OP IS truly ugly. I am not saying this to make myself feel better, but people in their circles share the same opinion. Also, I have befriended some people on SI and on the other forum I used to go to a long time ago, and I have finally sent them a couple of pictures of the OP.

In the pictures I am sending, she is with other three ladies. I always ask: who do you think is the ugliest and who do you think is the prettiest? They always come back picking OP as the ugliest. Then, I write back and tell them that she is the ugliest, the one my idiot H called " beautiful as Aphrodite."

So, yes, in my case she is ugly.

[This message edited by MammaMia at 4:51 PM, November 16th (Friday)]

So, yes, in my case she is ugly.

Sure, that could be completely true. But that doesn't make someone unworthy of love. (She should just go looking for it in the right places.)

To send a pageant of pictures to be adjudged really does not get the point.

Our entire marriage my husband convinced me that I was attractive and the fact that the OW is 15 years younger than me, pretty, thin, single and very stylish for me makes it very hard for me to believe him anymore.

*Posting as a member*

Southern Gal,

I completely get what you're saying and I agree. Our society is way too hung up on physical appearance, and besides that, it is so subjective. And I think focusing on looks on here is counterproductive and insulting. JMHO.

AN