SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I know that many of you are ready to condemn me, but I also would like to point out that I am simply asking about adultery related issues and questions. When I have decide what to do, I will do it. Right now, I am learning about RA's and sex outside of marriage. Tommorrow I will maybe learn about rebuilding trust, or how to aid my wife with her self examination, or about how to restart intimacy, or any number of issues.

I don't know that anyone wants to condemn you, they just know (some firsthand) that RAs are wrong (or if you disagree with their wrongness, just a bad idea.) They (we?) are just trying to stop you from reaching a point where you then have a whole other can of worms that you need to deal with.

I think most of the posters would agree that the fact that you brought this up here, knowing you'd get some emotional responses, is a far cry better than if you'd have just ran out and used some woman to feel better/even. I'm giving you a ton of credit for that.

Confused, she is a swinger and so does not view sex outside of marriage as necessarily a bad thing, as long as all parties are honest. She has tried to flirt with me for years, but I always told her to mind her own f**king business. LOL We have been co-workers for a long time, and my wife knows about her. This Lady is the attractive, independent woman that most company wives hate, or are jealous of. She lives her life by her own standards and is unapologetic about it.

Bdell,

Confused615 brought up a valid question. How do you know this woman wants to have sex with you? It's a simple question. And here's something that I'm afraid you'll bristle at...it's a very slippery slope.

How do you think most of us WS got to the point where we are? Talking about things with other people that shouldn't be talked about. Our sex lives, or lack thereof. Our relationship/marriage status. There are things that people must safeguard. That's something I didn't do. I blurted my entire life with a megaphone to people that I should not have.

My AP slid comments in. I slid comments in. Next thing ya know, trashy pics, porn, and whatever all else was being sent back and forth. Dates were being looked at to consummate the affair.

You're incredibly hurt by your wife's affair. I understand that completely. I've watched my husband go thru the same pain. It sucks. And yes, it's incredibly unfair. He had fleeting thoughts of an RA in his crippling pain. But he would shove those thoughts aside. He valued himself more than that. His integrity was more important than trying to strike back at me. In fact, he safeguarded himself in those early days. He wouldn't go to a female client's home alone. If there was a woman present, he would text or call me. He was very accountable with his time and actions. He stuck with business only conversation. Because he did not want to jump into A territory. He refused to entertain or act upon his irrational impulses.

JD brought up a very good point. By your own admission, your wife is doing anything and everything to try to help you heal. That is HUGE Bdell. When there are so many other waywards that could care less about their BS? You have a gift. I know it's hard to see it that way. But a remorseful WS is so much easier to deal with than one that is not.

I don't think anyone on this thread is condemning you. I think they see the signs and are warning you of the cliff that's ahead. They don't want you to fall off. These people have either experienced it themselves, or watched other people do it. Even though there are comments that are hard to read, it is given to you out of care and concern.

Aubrie, I am an open book. I wouldn't lie or dissemble to save my life. There is nothing I have said here that I would not want my wife to read. I am in a game I did not invent and am learning the rules and tactics as I go.

Sisoon, I will answere your questions in order. 1. I do NOT justify an affair, but is what I'm talking about an actual affair? Or is it more like an open marriage, or an understanding? I have never , ever said that I would do anything behind my wife's back, or without appraising her beforehand. 2. I ask for nothing I am not prepared to give. 3. I would not hold a future GF's past against her, if she could show that she learned from her experience and has improved her character.

[This message edited by Bdell at 11:00 AM, January 25th (Saturday)]

One thing EVERYBODY should know is that I am going to give my wife every single opportunity to improve and prove herself and (together) to make a new, better marriage. But I am also going to protect myself and explore my options and learn about other POV's as well.

I think you need to separate the issues here, because tying them all together is generating all the blowback.

First, I don't think there is a BH on this site who hasn't wondered at some point what it might be like to be with another woman in the wake of the devastation that is discovering infidelity. I don't see an issue with that. We are confused, angry, hurt and feeling compelled to action of some sort, either to escape and weather things, validate ourselves or just get perspective.

This is a perfectly rational and acceptable place to be. It is also an entirely distinct issue from a revenge affair, which is just an affair like any other because revenge is just one of many justifications.

I think that these experiences can be had without cheating - as (by Jrazz I think) was pointed out, with honor. The right way, as it were. Separation with mutually agreed on terms, or divorce. The immediate problem here is this - doing this the right way means giving up total control of the relationship outcome by giving the freedom of choice to the WS. Which is unfair, in the sense that the WS got to make those choices without any input from the BS or any risk other than discovery - the "Easier to ask forgiveness than permission" scenario. So the choice in this case is to run the risk of this relationship ending and not entirely by your decision, or to be a deceptive, cheating wayward and run the risks of compounding the already existing damage.

If you talk to your spouse and s/he is okay with a "free pass" kind of deal then, well, take it. Be absolutely sure you understand that it's not likely s/he is *really* okay with you going there and that it's going to cause a bunch of resentment and anger that you had the temerity to actually cash in. Though I'm sure there are exceptions I don't believe any couple close to dday is in a healthy, stable enough position with their relationship to introduce those variables without massive collateral damage.

Ultimately you decide how this plays out. I still wonder what it'd be like, though honestly more on a relationship level than a pure fuckatronic level. I expect the mechanics of fuckery are compatible between mediums, like substituting miniatures between tabletop games or a gi between fighting styles (though the double weave is probably overkill for shit like tkd but w/e). I mean penis goes in, penis goes out, fun times are had by all consenting parties so I expect the differences are about the brain activity going on there. Maybe pillow talk or toys or shit. I dunno I guess that scene with the car battery in Demon Knight... anyway.

Separate the issues. Infidelity is infidelity no matter the reason.

So she has been flirting with you for years, and has made it clear in this time that she would be up to having sex with you..you..a married man.

Hmmm. Can't imagine *why* most of the company wives "hate" her. I doubt they are jealous. You may be right..women may sense when a man is having marital trouble...they also can tell when a woman acts inappropriately around their husbands. Sounds like they had/have good reason to dislike her. I don't think I'd like it too much if a comworker of my FWH flirted with him, talked about being a swinger, told him her views about sex, etc.

Do you love your wife? Do you want to hurt her? Because it will. It will tear her heart into pieces. She is telling you she would support you having an RA because she is ashamed and guilty and she is trying to help you. I wonder..does she think her affair helped her in any way? If not, then why would she want you to do that to yourself?

Do you really, truly believe this would make you feel better? You are not "just a man." You are a married man. No matter how hard you try to outrun your heartache, it will be there, waiting for you, the morning after. Will you be able to look your WW in the eye..knowing you have broken her heart? (And yes, I understand..she did it..why shouldn't you? I get that anger..that entitlement.)

Forget what your WW did. If you choose to do this, this is all on you. 100% yours to own. We would tell her the same thing we told you when you arrived in the JFO forum..nothing you did or didn't do made him do this. This is all his shit to own.

Im not trying to condemn you..not at all. I know you are in a tremendous amount of pain..and you are pissed.off. You are asking this question here...and you are getting a lot of great advice from several SI members who are years out from dday. I hope you really take into consideration the advice you have been given.

[This message edited by confused615 at 11:28 AM, January 25th (Saturday)]

Did you know that STDs like hpv and herpes are at epidemic rates and condoms don't protect against these? Did you know that most STDs can be caught via oral sex since most don't use any protection. Hepatitis B is also rising due to promiscuity and people freely exchanging bodily fluids as my doctor explained.

Did you know that you can' t tell by looking at someone if they are infected? Goodlooking people with good hygiene can be infected too.

Did you know a more sexually promiscuous person has a much higher chance of being infected?

Did you know some people lose their jobs or suffer career damage when they cheat with coworkers?

Did you know that people lie and you won't be able to control the OW's actions such as who she tells, whether she stalks you or if her BS reports you to company.

Did you know hpv can cause oral and throat cancer in men? Did you know herpes can invade your inner body and cause serious health problems and pain? My fWH had esophagal herpes which was extremely painful and doctor told him about certain head pain could mean it moved into the brain which can kill? He gave both to me.

All A's are bad IMHO not to mention dangerous to both spouses as it turns out.

[This message edited by whattheh at 11:38 AM, January 25th (Saturday)]

But I am also going to protect myself and explore my options and learn about other POV's as well.

Understood. As someone who has been on both sides of the coin, I'd like you to take into consideration your integrity. Integrity is a very valuable thing. Integrity is so easily tainted, and once it is tainted, it is a herculean task to gain it back. As you explore your options, try to keep your integrity in mind, and ask yourself the question "Is it worth it?"

You are doing good by posting here and openly talking about your thoughts. Wishing you the best of luck, and hoping you make some wise decisions based upon your own knowledge and experience, and the knowledge and experience that others are sharing here with you as well.

One more thing popped to mind.

In your Just Found Out thread, Bdell (which is now down on Page 8) you mentioned sitting down and "outing" your Wayward Wife's affair to your kids and family members.

Will you be doing the same, or mind your WW doing the same, with your children and family, if you follow through on this?

Food for thought.

Just curious...do you spend any time posting on the Betrayed Menz thread in I Can Relate. Those guys are quite a bunch. I go there sometimes to remind myself of a third kind of kind of hurt my affair helped to inflict which 1) wasn't the hurt I inflicted on myself, and 2) the hurt I inflicted on my betrayed wife. They might be of some assistance to you, IMHO.

Bdell, you seem like a really smart guy and I understand your desire to figure out how to just fix this. Unfortunately, there is no quick or easy fix when your spouse has an A. There are lots of options, but I think that most people who have been on SI for a while will tell you that no matter which one you choose (D or R or something in between), it is not a quick or easy solution.

For a BS, personal recovery from an A is a process--a journey, not a destination. You are still very new to this and understandably very raw. We have all gone through the torturous emotions. Getting back to a normal sex life with your WS takes a long time. I cried many, many times both before and during sex with my FWH. The mind movies were terrible. I never had a RA, but did wonder what it would be like, whether it would make me feel better. I think we all gave it some thought. Those who have actually done it have given you some valuable advice. I am pretty sure that it will not fix this.

Right now, you need time. My advice, for what it is worth, is to not do anything, especially something that can't be undone. Your WW is working hard, doing what she needs to do to make things right. Give that some time--you will have days when you feel like you are going backwards in healing, not forwards. That is the roller coaster that you often hear described. You cannot make this better in weeks or months. It takes years, it really does. There are no magic pills, as much as we all wish there were. You are struggling and we all understand why. Please give yourself and your WW the gift of time.

On the issue of having an A with this woman (I will decline to describe her as a lady) vs. having an open M: I believe that an open M must be discussed and agreed upon by both parties. Have you and your WW every considered having an open M before now? I would assume that if she wanted that, she would have asked for it before having an A. I would guess that, if your WW is doing everything she can to try to make things better, she is going to agree to whatever you suggest. That is not the type of agreement that is needed to have a successful open M. I think she would, as other have suggested, be hurt and eventually resentful. That is not conducive to a successful R. It appears that the most likely outcome would just be a bigger mess on your hands. Which I think is exactly what most of the posters on this thread have been trying to say.

Thanks for your responses.

I didn't see your thoughts WRT my assertion that an RA would not accomplish what you want it to accomplish. You're under no obligation to comment, of course, but I do hope you design your behavior to accomplish your goals.

The open M movement was current when we got married. We considered it. The initial advocates talked some about how difficult it was to establish and maintain a true open M, but that tended to get lost as time went on. In any case, we concluded it wouldn't work for us, and we suspect it fails way more often than it succeeds. Of course, the failures are way more obvious than the successes, and image doesn't always reflect reality.

Open M is difficult in any case. I suspect it's next to impossible to establish one when a closed M is in crisis.

Besides, you started this thread about RAs, not open Ms. It's hard to conduct a decent argument if you change the subject changes mid-stream.

There's a lot of experience here that can help you prevent some mistakes, but you get to make your own choices.

You know folks, to kinda go off on a tangent here, I think the difficulty many BSs have here in relating to what bdell is saying is a gender difference thing....when it comes to sex itself and its meaning deep in the primitive psyche.

First of all, I don't think bdell is advocating for a revenge affair. That of course implies a revenge motive which is nowhere to be found in his posts.

The issue to me is about how a MAN can deal with the fact that another man conquested his wife, physically. The penetration and domination. BWs here can not relate to the deep male programming about how self worth may come from female conquest. Heck, think about even poor Rudolph playing all those reindeer games to attract does!

When another man has 'boned' one's own wife, there is a primitive *feeling* that your wife has been ruined, used up, and now lacks value...due to just the sex itself. After all, for a BH to affirm her value, in a way also affirms that the rival, intruding man is better than him. After all, she preferred getting boned by him than the safety of the BH's cave and fire.

The other course of mental action is to minimize the sex symbolically, which in turn calls into question the gross unfairness itself, and begs the question of how could conquesting some other female just sexually actually mean anything...if it is not supposed to mean anything to the BH in terms of his wife's infidelity.

Finally there is the issue of HB, sex with the WW, and the possibility of staying in the M due to bad reasons...like fear and being pussy-whipped. You know, the fact that there are vaginas everywhere is a rational observation. But like some odd theory in quantum physics, attractive vaginas are both omnipresent and scarce simultaneously.

So lets say for shits and grins that bdell gets laid by some attractive woman, and that we suspend the moral assessment of the actors. Either he will come away saying, hey, there are a lot of babes out there, nothing special about my WW and her vagina, that infidelity deal was a deal breaker, and I am outta here! I am no longer whipped!

OR, he will come away thinking, this vagina is no better than the one here at home. Heck, they are all the same. So getting this new vagina is nothing special as this was just some bodily function like using the bathroom and thus highly ordinary: so the sexual acts my WW had with rival man meant nothing and are symbolically of no consequence.

It is especially hard for a BH to make the physical acts of sex with the WW special, when she did not previously treat it that way; further that mistreatment seems to have some kind of permanent effect. In some ways, the BH has to surrender any importance of the sex and focus on other aspects of the relationship as what is important...which then invites again the circular argument about how can having sex with another woman be so bad?

Maybe this is a question for WSs - and referred to by the sage WW Aubrie - the hypocrisy of insisting upon something that they were not willing to provide. So yeah deception is very wrong, but to any WS, in a spirit of openness and transparency, if your BS now asked for permission up front to try out sex with another body, what would you say? Maybe they just need more 'information'.

Happy Saturday!

[This message edited by MC_Jack at 1:54 PM, January 25th (Saturday)]

Sigh. That's right, I forgot that it's worse when a man is cheated on. A wife couldn't possibly feel that her husband was ruined by going outside the marriage.

I think the difficulty many BSs have here in relating to what bdell is saying is a gender difference thing....when it comes to sex itself and its meaning deep in the primitive psyche.

Please. Stop. With. The. Generalizations.

Just stop.

You know Jana, most every authoritative book, from NJF to ATA, observes that the BH on average is more affected by the PA while BWs are more affected by the EA. So why is that? Statistics are descriptive yet NOT always predictive. I am not making a 100% claim for all individuals. Just the average case.

[This message edited by MC_Jack at 2:14 PM, January 25th (Saturday)]

If we "suspend the moral assessment of the actors", then why are we even getting upset about our spouses having A's? Let's just all do whatever we want, whenever we want to. No problem.

Actually, you can do that, it is called getting divorced. Or not getting married in the first place.

Statistics are descriptive yet NOT always predictive. I am not making a 100% claim for all individuals.

But you're applying the statistics specifically to the members here by saying "many BSs have here". There are a number of women here who feel devastated to think of our husbands having sex with other women, whether because now they're "tainted" or because we worry constantly about being good enough now that they've tasted someone else, etc. Generalizations on this site don't help because all our stories are so unique. For some folks, the situation you describe will apply, and for many folks it won't. That's all; it's important to be mindful of those kinds of generalizations especially when it comes to gender. It doesn't have to be a war, in my opinion.

[This message edited by silverhopes at 2:17 PM, January 25th (Saturday)]

When another man has 'boned' one's own wife, there is a primitive *feeling* that your wife has been ruined, used up, and now lacks value...due to just the sex itself.

Is this feeling only applicable to one's wife during the courtship/marriage or does it also apply to her previous partners "ruining" her? In other words, does your partner need to be a virgin before you?