Found this article ....
If you want the site pm me and I will be happy to share.
Probably one of the best explaination of "why" for my personal experience that I have ever read of heard.
H is not a C, nor is he a CAS. So not a perfect match, and as dangerous as it is to generalize here, this is the best fit I have found. In a way I can understand?
Thought maybe it could help others....
What do y'all think?
How can I ever trust them again? If they cheated once won't they do it again?
"Once a cheater, always a cheater" is an understandable response from anyone who has been betrayed; it offers you the certainty to dismiss an unfaithful partner's pleas for "I can change and won't ever do this again", removing the potential for getting hurt because it allows you to never trust them, and sometimes anyone, ever again.
The problem is it's too simple and fails to appreciate the complexity of why people cheat in the first place, let alone predicting whether or not they are capable of betraying you again - an important question to ask if you are a victim of infidelity.
The psychology of infidelity is actually quite complex, much more than the current moralistic conversation about it where people are "good", "bad" or "flawed", therefore dismissed as damaged goods. Pundits and gurus abound offering their take on "can I ever trust him again" or "how to affair proof your relationship", but too often good intentioned advice misses the real issue.
You see the question is not "Can I ever trust him again"? but rather, "What contributed to this person's choice to betray me - why did they choose infidelity"? The first question is an unanswerable one as trusting your partner following an affair has more to do with YOU and how YOU choose to respond to being betrayed. The second question is much more interesting, and if answered correctly, more likely to keep you safe if you decide to heal and evolve together following an affair.
Every affair tells a story and although it is true that the story has something to do with the state of a relationship where betrayal takes place, what's more true is that infidelity tells an important story about who the unfaithful partner is - the state of their own psyche and soul; whether they are even suitable for a real relationship with anyone with the bandwidth to actually love.
Infidelity always has a purpose to it, although most often that purpose is not known or understood, and must be, in order to really answer the questions around "Once a cheater, always a cheater". All behavior is purposeful and people don't do anything without a reason for doing it. Your task is to become your own "personal psychologist" and ask the right questions about the right issues to arrive at your own truth about keeping yourself safe in a relationship with someone who has betrayed you.
I'm here to help you do that because I am uniquely qualified. I'm an adulterer who happens to be a licensed clinician and willing to tell the truth about why I chose to have an affair. I have an expertise in the "psychology of infidelity", not from a text book or social media platform, but from living the excruciating pain of having an affair that resulted in a divorce, growing up and searching my own soul for the answers to "why I did it", and earning the trust and affections of the woman I betrayed again resulting in a magical reconciliation where we just celebrated our 14th wedding anniversary (Go to www.surprisedbylove.com for the whole story)!
I am going to tell you the "reasons" that contributed to my choice to be unfaithful,and then offer you a context to help you decide for yourself what motivates people to have an affair. My goal is to empower you with choices you may not know you have as you chart your own relationship path.
For me, there were six factors that contributed to a series of choices to have an affair:
1. I believed that the rules didn't apply to me: Being a licensed clinician gave me more excuses and rationalizations to hide behind. The arrogance of having answers for everyone else allowed me to hide from the truth that if you don't show up and ask for what you want in a relationship, you give up the right to expect having it. I expected a lot and didn't show up by being emotionally absent which set the marriage up to be unfulfilling and fail.
2. I confused significance and self-worth with certainty and success: I became a workaholic believing that Julie loved me only because of what I could provide her with allowing anger and entitlement, a dangerous alchemy fueling my acting out, to justify the erosion of boundaries and values giving rise to my affair. Without boundaries and a value base to live from, anyone is capable of having an affair.
3. I made up that my wife was the cause of my unhappiness and disappointment in our marriage: I felt sorry for myself and blamed Julie for why I was so unfulfilled; once you convince yourself you're a victim of something, you can justify anything. That belief alone allowed me to have an affair with impunity, almost a right, to find happiness with another - after all, "I had done so much and got back so little from my marriage". Affair psychology is delusional!
4. I was an accomplished liar: Men have an uncanny and dangerous ability to compartmentalize their lives such that one part doesn't recognize the other. In this split, dissociative state, I rationalized everything including the creation of the two worlds I relished in calling it "complexity", convinced myself I was being taken advantage of by Julie, and therefore had the right to find happiness "as long as no one knows so no one gets hurt". So I did, under the self-deception of protecting her failing to see that the deception in an affair is where most of the pain is. Without integrity life simply doesn't work.
5. I confused sexual attraction and fantasy for love: Early in life, I learned to use sex as a drug and means of escape where I could nurture myself and soothe the chaos of an abusive childhood. When confronted with parallel lives, a child-focused marriage and the perceived neglect and lack of appreciation I felt in our marriage, I turned to strip clubs and pornography as a cure that only made things worse. A real relationship can never compete with a fantasy, and sexual attraction isn't love. I confused an experience of excitement and novelty with a person I called my "soul mate" and chased that person as if they were the source of feeling alive. They weren't. Affairs are not real relationships; they're fantasies on speed built on deception that cannot stand the light of day.
6. I didn't take responsibility for my mental health. To love someone requires that we grow up, rise above our wounds, and take responsibility for what we need as adults. I failed to manage my depression, something I struggled with since childhood, evolve beyond my family of origin ghosts, and attend to my mental health needs. By not doing the necessary work to grow and heal, I never matured into someone capable of giving and receiving mature love. Intimacy, what I claimed to want and crave, was actually not something I was capable of, yet I blamed the marriage and Julie for "denying it to me", further reinforcing my sense of entitlement to get that need met somewhere else.
While there is never a sufficient "explanation" excusing why someone is unfaithful, there is always a reason with a purpose for why affairs happen. Failing to understand what those reasons are robs you of the opportunity to learn from the experience, your best response to it, and can remove the chance to save a marriage ravaged from its effects.
I told you that the psychology of infidelity is complex and now I will tell you why:
The purpose of every affair is often as unique as the personality, life history, beliefs, values, needs and relationship dynamics of the person being unfaithful, and for that reason, I dismiss pithy overly simplistic explanations that try to answer complex questions through 3-step programs. The answer to "why they did it"? And "will they do it again"? can be answered, if you know what "type" of affair it is and the "purpose" of that specific affair. All affairs are not equal although all are devastating.
After searching my own soul for several years, and now walking that same journey with people trying to answer their own questions about being unfaithful with people around the world, here's what I've learned about "why people have affairs" and the truth about misguided advice like "Once a cheater, always a cheater".
[This message edited by SoCo at 7:41 PM, February 21st (Thursday)]
