SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Yes I called main ow a lot of names when I confronted her.

I occasionally call wh a name, the worst part is I do it so casually . This happens when he acts all high and mighty with a lot of morals

I don't think I ever felt an instant of guilt for anything I said or names flung during the healing process.

I don't even understand describing the venting process in terms of guilt or feeling guilty...but then again, I also don't believe in "gentleman's rules" in the practice of war, either. When you're being attacked, you either fight to win, or you don't bother showing up on the battlefield at all.

Now, unless you're having another D-day or something, if you're still fighting down and dirty 18 months into the process, then you probably need to take a look at your resentment stack and healing curve, but anything prior to that isn't something I'd freak out about unless it was like 3 hours a day/7 days a week of screaming that your wife is a whore. That's probably a bit on the extreme side.

I don't think I actually called my wife a name fore than half a dozen times during our recovery, but at least one of those was in the "stupid c***" category, so they probably count double or something.

And this, yes:

There is a difference between name calling and using descriptive nouns. It is not name calling if you use the word correctly. If the shoe fits...

If someone does ugly, graphic, vulgar things, then having those things described in ugly, graphic, vulgar terms should not come as a shock to them. If it does, they need to get their eyeball off their colon and start breathing the fresh air with the rest of us.

I'm all for treating one's spouse with respect, both in speech and action. But I also abhor double standards and don't mind getting down in the mud and slugging it out if one side decides to start fighting dirty (like, you know, having an affair and trying to justify it). You want to play the disrespectful game, I will eat your fucking lunch. I'll eat it, take your lunch money, then shit in back in your toilet.

I understand that our culture has moved toward the "be the bigger person", "de-escalate the tension", and "promote mutual respect through leadership" end of the spectrum. That's cool as a cultural theme (though I imagine your average Afghani or Iraqi citizen's eyes would bug out from that characterization of our placid American society), but starts to look a whole fuck of a lot like just being a doormat in a one-on-one situation.

How did Riddick put it? "You keep what you kill." Not sure that's a bad model...or any worse of a model.

You know what worked much better for me than the occasional explosion of anger and name-calling, though? Detachment.

Detach and ignore.

Detach and ignore means I don't even given enough of a shit about you to *be* angry. Or it can mean that I don't really expect anything better from a cheap little such-and-such like you, so I guess I really shouldn't be surprised.

What do we say the best technique is for dealing with OP's who won't let go?

Ignore, ignore, ignore.

Works with WS's, too. You're talking about folks who have gotten used to getting double the daily recommended allowance of ego kibbles for the entire duration of their affair. You try going from a double portion to a fraction of a fraction of a portion in no time flat -- not only the loss of positive attention, but *any* attention, even raging attention, which also makes you the star of the movie of your own life -- is pretty fucking brutal. Especially for people with low self-esteem and feelings of inadequacy in the first place.

Good weapon, and you don't have to lower yourself into things like vulgar speech.

Or maybe I just spent entirely too much time thinking about the tools of the anger trade.

Then again, I'm also the guy who realized about three months after joining SI that if I paid attention to the thoughts, weaknesses, whys and struggles on the WS forum, they were practically giving me the blueprints to fight dirty. The set of typical weaknesses and vulnerabilities to attack turned out to be pretty small. Then I just had to spend some time analyzing my wife's affair and figure out what it was that she was getting from OM -- because that was the neediest of emotional needs and insecurities -- and consciously avoid giving that. Maybe even treat that thing with a bit of derision.

Then you don't even have to fight. You just identify the weak spots and exploit them until you've filled your bag with your pound, pound-and-a-half, whatever of flesh.

But maybe I'm the only one who thought about this kind of stuff. It happens. I'm probably the only person who read The Art of War as a relationship textbook, too. But I'm a "level playing field" sort of guy when it comes to things like respect and inter-personal relationships. This is also why the RA is not a good technique. Why? Because part of the disrespect and hurt of an affair is that one's spouse has done something to you that is *unconscionable*. That's what you can't wrap your head around.

Having an affair back is...well, conscionable for your spouse. It's on their radar as a likely consequence, an ambush part of them is expecting.

You want to level the playing field, you need to figure out what is unconscionable for them and exploit that. If you pay attention and know your spouse very well at all, you can probably come up with half a dozen things like that. For my wife, one of those things was changing the beneficiaries on all of my life insurance policies so that she would get nothing in the event of my death.

I knew this because my wife's affair was rooted in the fact that I'd just come out of a period of deathly illness, and she was -- likely on a subconscious level -- trying to ensure her future security by lining up a new family in the event that I died. OM was her backup husband. I also knew that she'd spent her formative years watching her father eventually succumb to cancer. My illness triggered all of those fears of death and abandonment and not having anyone to take care of you or shield you from the world.

Which made changing the life insurance thing the emotional equivalent of a nuclear bomb -- a very clear message that "I don't care what becomes of you once I'm out of the picture."

Sort of puts some hand-wringing over name calling in perspective.

[This message edited by wincing_at_light at 7:36 AM, May 9th (Thursday)]

Geez, I'm a jerk. lol. But, I'm working on it. It's been a week since I've yelled at him. I'm trying to replace all the hate with love from now on. Also, we have two little guys looking up at us, watching us.

I'm digging deep for all the love I have and save the hate/anger for MC.

I used the eff word for everything and would constantly ask how when he effed them. I'm over it now. My biggest bash was calling HIM a Wh***.

I know no name calling on this board, but the title IS "name calling."

To SI monitors, we're not bashing, just talking about bashing...

Wow, wincing at light. I saw the smashbook... "tools of the anger trade" really struck me.

This was an excellent exercise post for us all, I'm sure. Thanks, Yakamishi.

[This message edited by libertyrocks at 5:33 PM, May 9th (Thursday)]

Sure I've called WH many names, and OW as well, when the rage hit boiling point and resulted in arguments. Also have no qualms about using the F-words and such aplenty. And no, I am not sorry and will NOT apologize for it. I told him like it is, from my POV, and made it very clear that all that was the result of HIS actions.

wincing_at_light:

Sweet baby Jeebus. That one got printed and put on the office wall.

Yakamishi, If the best way through your anger that you can think of is to call your WS names, well, being called names by one's partner seems like a very unsurprising consequence for cheating.

If you've called your W names continuously since 2008, you've probably got a problem. If you're referring to the period after your 9/22/12 D-Day, I can definitely see a new rage stage just about now, compounded by being the umpteenth D-Day. So maybe you've got a problem, but maybe not, and I think 'maybe not' is more likely.

I absolutely reject double standards.

I called my W names a number of times, and I certainly said a lot of things that I knew would hurt her (they hurt me, too, thinking/knowing they were accurate), but I went through a lot of therapy years before D-Day, and that taught me the most effective way through pain is thinking and talking in terms like, 'I'm furious that/about....'

Don't get me wrong - I wasn't trying to be a bigger person; I just wanted to process my anger the best way I knew how. I could say I was trying to 'de-escalate' tension. It's just that in the post-D-Day sitch, the best way to reduce tension was to process my anger, and the best way to do that, for the long term good of our relationship, was to let my W know I was furious. Yeah, tension went up for a few months - but releasing anger during those months helped me choose R, and it helped R progress, too.

It's probably better to call your WS names than to swallow your anger. It's definitely better to shout, 'I'm angry that...' or 'I'm angry at...' or 'I'm angry about...' than to call names.

Responding to w_a_l -

I've read Stephen Leacock and Stephen Potter on gamesmanship, and I think that marriage is a relationship for which gamesmanship is out and authenticity is in.

You're a pretty astute observer, and you make a lot of sense, and you've certainly helped me, but...

Did you detach in order to win a game with your W, or did you do it for your own reasons. Did you name other beneficiaries to beat your W up or to meet your own need and desire?

In other words, did you R by acting 'against your WS' or 'for yourself'?

IMO, I've recovered (to the extent I've recovered) by doing things that benefit me, even if they benefit my W, too, and even when I was angry at her. If I needed to do things that hurt her, I did them, but I didn't go out of my way to hurt her.

What are you advocating? (I'm not arguing (yet ) - I'm still trying to get a good understanding of your approach.

i've called him a coward twice, he called me a fucking bitch the day i told him the truth. the coward thing really hurt him, the fucking bitch thing - well, i thought I'd get much worse...

we don't go there anymore.

In other words, did you R by acting 'against your WS' or 'for yourself'?

IMO, I've recovered (to the extent I've recovered) by doing things that benefit me, even if they benefit my W, too, and even when I was angry at her. If I needed to do things that hurt her, I did them, but I didn't go out of my way to hurt her.

What are you advocating? (I'm not arguing (yet ) - I'm still trying to get a good understanding of your approach.

These are excellent questions, sisoon.

Taken in order:

1. A little bit of both. Some things were just to twist the knife and felt immensely empowering, so became "for myself". The more that time passed, it was definitely a standard curve toward "for myself", because I just wasn't much interested in acting "against" her. It's worth noting that things like changing the beneficiary weren't initially about hurting my wife at all -- they were more in the vein of self-protection (i.e., "There's no way she's going to get rich if I die. Let her beg my brother for the money if she wants it." Note: I picked my brother because he knew about the A and would manage the trust for my kids responsibly. So I was making sure they were provided for...just not *her*, at least to the extent that I could prevent it.)

There were times I intentionally went out of my way to hurt her and to flaunt my disregard. More often, it was my personal favorite, which is simply *not* offering support or regard. Remember, the opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference. Indifference to your spouse's struggles, sufferings, misery, progress, etc., is a powerful tool.

(It can be fairly argued that intentionally withholding support isn't really indifference, because it *is* intentional. Doesn't matter when you're the only one who knows it's intentional.)

2. What am I advocating? Nothing. I can't say I'd strongly recommend the path that worked for us. It's more of a gamble than most people are comfortable with. If you're the sort of person who would be haunted by someone else blowing their head off when you might have said or done something kind that would have stopped them, then this sort of gamble probably isn't for you. It is admittedly punitive on some levels, and some people are uncomfortable with that.

The whole point, really, is that I think BS's should give themselves a break about a bit of name-calling. I see the argument frequently about broken people feeling kicked while they're down and trying to put themselves back together, therefore harsh language has no place in a mutually supportive recovery atmosphere.

It just doesn't resonate with me. "Can't you see I feel bad enough already?" is not a sufficient indicator to me that anybody's learned anything. It just means you're miserable and want the bad feelings to stop.

FWIW, I think the way I handled things is much more appropriate if your spouse keeps acting like an idiot and doesn't seem to be particularly ambitious about making progress, but you're not quite ready (for whatever reason) to give the marriage up as lost yet.

Oh, and if you've got one of those WS's who wants to pine, grieve, and talk about their pain from not seeing the OP anymore or whatever, I'd recommend it then, too. But that's just because I believe that sort of behavior is cruel and more than a bit fucking stupid. Do you *really* want your spouse to understand how much you miss another person's genitals and warm sexual feelings?

Because they will. And they'll remember. And neither you nor the marriage will never again matter to them as much or mean as much as an exclusive, intimate relationship as they once did.

My WH said some pretty awful things to me during his affair. But quite honestly, I hardly remember any of it. I only remember his actions:(

So don't beat yourself up!

I did make gyrating motions with my hips when I talked about him pounding the OW. He did not take to this well but for some reason it felt fucking great to do it! Don't be afraid to "break the rules" b/c the rules as you once knew them have all changed.

[This message edited by so_lost at 1:26 PM, May 10th (Friday)]

I didn't call my WW any names or label her at any point. I thought them sure, but I just couldn't bring myself to say them. I'm not comfortable doing it either. Partly because my WW is a master at poisonous hurtful words. I'd no doubt get into a never ending back and forth with her that would only leave me feeling like crap afterwards.

Some people need to do that I suppose. To each his own in situations involving infidelity.