SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

So often you, Deeply Scared, were the most gentle of everyone. You were so caring and supportive of the BS's that people would think that you were the BS in your relationship. Everyone looked up to you because you showed that "better than now" was possible for everyone.

Not.The.Big.Easy....

Thank you for that...it's always good to be reminded to be kind and considerate. I know I've fallen short of that the last couple of years. I do appreciate the gentle reminder...thank you

I remember being a newbie here and the overwhelming advice I got was to make myself stronger and prepare for divorce. I really didn't like that advice, but it turns out it was 100% correct and the people here were speaking from hard earned experience. There was a time shortly after I finally filed for divorce where my ex put out feelers trying to see if the water was warm enough for us to get back together and thanks to the really good advice I got here (and from my brother in law who had been through the same thing as me with his ex), I shut her down.

I think it's great when people reconcile and they genuinely build a safer, better stronger marriage. Unfortunately, more often than not, I see BSs here who put months or years into "reconciling" with their spouse only to find that it was false and they've been played for a fool once again. I can't imagine that pain and for that reason, I think divorce is probably the correct choice most of the time.

There are obviously plenty of examples of the opposite being true here as well, but it really depends on how hard the individuals are willing to work to fix themselves and to build a new relationship.

Do we sometimes lose members because they really don't want a divorce and aren't ready to admit that it is where they are headed? Probably. Would it be better to coddle them and help build up false hope?

I came here in 2008, heard what everyone said, ignored it, discounted it, didn't want to hear it, rugswept and lost 2 more years of my life to lies. So I walked away because I wasn't ready to hear it. Not because people were too harsh.

It wasn't until 2010 that I returned and fell into everyone's arms as I fell apart. By that point, it was a godsend to hear DTMFA (dump that motherfucking asshole), it was just the kick in the ass I need to understand just how wrong my xWH was, and just how much more I deserved.

But I also got plenty and then some emotional support, hand holding, made some awesome IRL friends who I treasure and gained some great respect for others who I only know through their SI username.

I tread lightly in JFO and General. I worry about getting stuck myself (keeping my past too present in my mind) but at the same time I feel obliged to give back.

I usually only comment on threads that include serial cheaters, since that's sadly my forte of expertise. So when I see evidence of serial cheating and personality disorders that support it (so NPD, sociopathic con-artists) I go straight to the blunt (what me? ) advice of DTMFA. I don't kid around about the probability of someone like that becoming a good enough spouse. But I always also include the caveat that I get why they might try to be the outlier and prove the theory wrong and that was ok. There are no short cuts in getting out of this mess.

Tapping this out on my tablet in the car (not the driver) because I think this is a really important conversation. Well, most of it anyway. It's topics like this that keep bringing that Anais Nin quote back to mind:

We don't see things as they are, we we them as we are.

Asking why people leave is like taking a poll on favorite ice cream flavors. We are all going to have deeply personal answers. Some may be similar, and camps will certainly form. At the end of the day we are going to arrive at our perceptions and conclusions based on how we look at things. I've seen people wield spiked 2x4's and they were thanked for their candor. I've seen people give a gentle opinion on how to handle something only to be rebuffed as mean because the recipient had a very uncomfortable reaction to the advice or wasn't ready to face some truth.

Touching on a couple other things, I think there are definitely groups of posters that are familiar with each other or have formed friendships, but I have never witnessed exclusion and I think that the feeling of cliques is probably due more to a personal insecurity than the reality of what takes place here. I'm saying this as someone who battled with feeling this way for a lot of my life till I learned that reframing my perspective was the solution. If anyone feels deliberately excluded I want you to know that my door is always open to talk about it. The staff is here for YOU. All of you.

Last but not least, my hug to DS. You have shown a million times more compassion than I would ever hope to expect from a friend and mentor. You've put up with my crap with grace that has always made me feel safe, and your candor and honesty makes me trust that you are not just going to blow sunshine at me. I know that people expect you to behave superhuman, and surprisingly you rise to that a lot. Remember that being human and having feelings or frustration isn't a failing, it's a reminder that you take a lot and have a right to be human sometimes too.

[This message edited by Jrazz at 2:14 PM, August 10th (Sunday)]

I honestly think this sire can be a wealth if knowledge, support and a place to start healing.

I choose to come and offer support. I do tend to be blunt and sometimes harsh. But that's how I am in real life. I do try to warn newer folks that I'm straight forward and you won't get warm fuzzies from me, but I also think that warm fuzzies in a state of crisis helps no one. I do think that people come and go for many reasons, but most often I honk they step away because it's painful for them.

I know there are some that leave because they have healed and don't need to be reminded of what they've been through.

For me I think as someone that did successfully reconcile a M that I'd pretty dang good have a lot to offer and because of folks here in my early days I survived it, & I want to pass it on.

The really cool thing is to see folks that leave because of one thing or another and then they come back because the advice here helped them.

Thanks to DS, WH5, AND ALL THE MODS. You guys make this place great!

Oh and to inconnu and my other beloved divorcees , I am infinitely grateful to you for taking the time to reach out to me and others. I have felt support for pursuing reconciliation as well as support for protecting myself and investigating my options.

In my experience, the anger here is understandable since we have all gone through this and we trigger. And just like we ignore over-the-top venting on our friends and sometimes think "you don't really mean that", we need to ignore over-the-top venting on some of the people here, but at the same time understand where they are coming from.

I haven't been here long enough to be able to judge if there's more anger or less than before. I know STBXWW saw it briefly, read one or two posts, complained about the anger and never visited again, though to be fair she also refused to read "Not Just Friends" and only read the "After the Affair" parts "that were about her".

I almost never use strong language. It's the way I was raised. So usually when I see someone venting in what I see as too strong a language, I go to their profile to see their stories and previous posts. Since my D-Day late last year I haven't seen even one where after seeing his/her profile I didn't think "aaahh.". It doesn't mean I discard what they said, it just means I get the gist and ignore the language, because I know it's a trigger on their end (we all have a bit of PTSD over this, and our reactions will be strong).

What we went through kills people (I put on a post on Menz a while back - "in fact, back before democracies, wars are started over stuff like this, with thousands dead". So we should not worry about a little strong language.

I usually just relate my own story to make people understand what can happen if I see similar behavior patterns. This is because not everyone can afford (or has a good) IC. Nobody thinks this will happen to us, and we think we're special little butterflies. Turns out, we're not. We thought our relationship was special and unique. And it was, but it was also very similar to so many others. Knowing what decisions other people take under similar parameters only helps.

If the anger is too much, we should maybe ask if it's justified. I happen to think it is. Maybe if there were consequences it would happen less? At the end of the day, it's just words, and one of the first things we learn here is that it's actions that matter.

In my opinion, and the way this site has been a real life saver for me, is that it should be use as a compliment to IC, talking to your family, church and friends, and not as the only recourse you have. I have a good IC, and his advice doesn't differ much (and when it does, at the end I'm the one making the final decision and I get support both here and with IC). If anything, my IC is even more on the NC camp, and he has asked once or twice, as I decide to wait to date again until I'm healthier under the sage advise of both SI and my church, "what makes you think there should be rules about dating again? She clearly is..". So he's in a sense pushing me further into NB than I'm currently comfortable with.

Which is precisely the point. Several people (not just SI) will provide us support and advice based on their own experiences. Where you are mentally, how you feel, at the end of the day provides a decision (R, D, etc), that only you can be comfortable with and only you are responsible for. Nobody is to blame for my decision to D (actually, she filed, but I am also ok with that decision and would have filed if she hadn't). Nobody is to blame for my decision to keep the kids 50/50, or to give full alimony and be responsible even when she clearly isn't, or for my many errors in judgement I may have made during our failed R. I am responsible and I gave it my best given the balance of the information I gathered.

I have found here nothing but support. I intend to continue here. I won't always agree with people here, but I know this is the only place in the planet where I can get support from over 40 thousand people who really get what I went through.

There are a couple of posters that come to mind that were posting a lot, then went away. I've sent them pm's to see if they're ok since I.had already had convos in pm.

I worry about them sometimes and hope they will be back. I don't know if they felt scolded by members but I think some were not ready yet for brutal honesty or opinion.

I got my feathers ruffled a few times in the beginning but it was usually when someone told me the truth that I didn't want to face.

I guess the trolls get removed before I see them...is it AP or WS just starting trouble or ?

Tones are set by people, and the people that comprise a population change over time. It's good to call attention to a change in tone, but if there's a quality felt to be lacking, it needs to be set by example.

There's also the not unlikely possibility that in the past decade, the population has dramatically increased and, through no fault or agency of any, said tone becomes diluted by default.

SI does a great job for the volume of people that visit. Especially in the trolls department. I think, in fact, this can be its own problem because it creates the perception that this is a small community, and people tend to behave differently and hold different expectations; things we wouldn't even think about taking personally on a news aggregate site of 35,000+ members aren't just viewed differently because of the subject matter, but also because the relative security of this community grants a certain familiarity.

I think, also, that can be a misconception with the cliques idea. There are just too many people here to be a small, close community where everyone knows everyone else. People gravitate to others. There are unfortunate side effects where some people inevitably feel left out, and others get upset or confused at accusations of exclusion..nnn.. uh..-ism. Exclusivity? Whatever. There probably are a few cliques, but generally they seem to get broken up when it reaches a certain critical mass. DS and MH, from my observation anyway, seem to prefer to let things run their course until there's a real need to step in and steer things back in the general direction of Be Excellent To Each Other.

Whatever the case I'm glad SI is here and grateful for all the people who came before to break ground and make it easier for us who followed.

I lurked for quite awhile before I signed up...everyone is here for one reason....betrayal and how the heck it affects your life....advice here is like advice in general ....take what you think might work leave the rest and revisit it again.

in real life I have friends who are sweet and would never hurt a fly....have friends who hold nothing back....why should this be any different?

I look at life a little different now BUT I have always believed no one lives in anyone else's house

I appreciate all the wisdom of the veterans and appreciate all the mods for being here in my time of need.

thank you!

I think, like anything else, members leave for a variety of reasons. We are all so different. People shop at different stores, wear different clothes, vacation at different spots.

That's the beauty of SI...reading here for almost five years and living with a remorseful spouse who's busted his butt to repair the damage he's done, I can only speak from that perspective. But here at SI I get to read about all different kinds of marriages, different ways of looking at infidelity and the viewpoint of different age groups.

No...healing has always been the goal of SI. No one advocates one way or the other, in the 12 years I've been here people speak from their own experience. That's the beauty of SI. There is no agenda, there are no products or workshops to sell. It's strictly a place for each individual to find their voice and start the healing process.

Healing, for me, is the reason I kept coming back to SI and now I feel a need to pay forward what was so generously provided to me when I was so broken... a need for that caring voice, the knowledge I am not crazy or the only one living in this hell and the assurance that I will survive. And in some cases, there were SI members who had similar scenarios to mine and they shared their life experiences and it helped so much.

I've never felt like there are cliques or groups I could not post in and rare instances of harsh or hurtful postings appear to me to come from people suffering incredible pain. I feel sympathy for them and look for others to respond with kindness to the original poster or try to post myself without creating further hurt.

But we are writing online and it is often difficult to perceive what a reader will 'take away' from our words. Sometimes the readers' interpretation does not fit what we were trying to say. That's the hard part about writing. Writing is work and without the assistance of body language and immediate responses, messages can be misunderstood. However, SI members seem to usually work all these issue out. There is much empathy and understanding....we're all in the same boat.

I hope when people do leave it's because they've found what they needed and are moving on, doing what's right for them. They know, like I do, that SI is here and offers a chance to not just survive, but thrive, whether you stay with your WS or not.

I received a lot of advice. Some fantastic and some not. It came in many forms -soft to brutally harsh. I took what I needed from it all. I'm thankful to all who responded. I can't think of a single post in which I haven't been able to glean something if vlfrombit, even when I disagree with most of what's in the given post. The ones who lobbed 2x4 are amongst those who's advice I respected the most.

We are all different and The more advice from such acdiverse people I got = resources I had access too

I love si just the way it is.

If I see a thread that feels "harsh" I make a point to post and offer compassion. I don't challenge the posters who may be swinging a 2x4. How am I to know what is needed or might resonate with the poster? If I feel like a thread has gotten out of balance and could benefit from a mod, then I post a request for mod assistance or send a PM to the same.

Why do some members leave? I spend less time here than I used to. I log in and I see all new names and stories and some days I just don't want to get invested in all new people. I do feel like I "know" some members from reading their stories over a long period of time and learning their online voice. I will always click on their threads if I see them. Does that contribute to a cliqueishness? I don't know.

There are no member dues. People come and go. As a member who divorced, I feel most comfortable in D/S and NB. But I feel a responsibility to post in JFO and General too. I do not read or respond in R, and rarely in the Wayward forum. If I "support divorce" it is only to say that it is survivable and for some cases, the safer and better alternative. I always felt like D=failure, and I hope to alleviate that for others.

Anger? Yes. It is easier to express than pain, but I suspect they come from a very similar place. Hard to write wah, wah, sniffle snot bubble wail cry cry.... Anger and venting? Much easier to express.

I "lurked" on this site for over five years before I had the guts to join.

I was – and still am – definitely one of those who wanted to stick it out and do everything possible before "giving up" on my relationship.

Because of this, I certainly got my fair share of "straight talk" about how I should drop my wayward husband like a hot potato.

I also received posts from those who offered suggestions of things I could try in order to know I had "done everything I could".

For a a while, I wondered if each of us was simply at the mercy of whomever happened to be "listening" whenever we posted. If someone angry was posting, we would get one type of response – and if someone of the same mind as ours was posting, it might seem more compassionate.

I have come to believe that the world – and this site, too! – come to us in many different ways, offering us assistance. Sometimes I was happy to get the compassionate support. Sometimes I certainly needed the 2 x 4s. And, sometimes I even needed to hear the "angry advice" with which I did not agree. Somehow, it helped to reinforce that I was coming from a different place.

I agree with whoever said that considering the number of people on this site, we are quite lucky that the hurtful and harsh post are so few and far between.

I want to take this moment to thank everyone associated with this site who has ever in the past, now, or in the future – cared enough to respond to any of my posts. One way or another, we hear what we need to hear.

This is something I have noticed, craig, about some BH's. It is something I just recently noticed, too. It seems that a lot more BH's than BW's take it as a personal affront to their WS's when someone is venting about OW's/WW's, or just using a graphic, unpleasant adjective to describe said people.

SisterMilkShake, what I saw on the JFO board was another poster calling a BH's wife some overly nasty things.

No matter what, the WW is still the BH wife and advice is needed, not four letter words thrown at them.

This post was so bad the BH told the person to back off and he wasn't about to take that either. I have seen several posts with attacks on the BH's wife.

Advice is needed, not calling the BHs wife everything in the book.

I don't doubt that I'm one of the members who is known for giving sharp (i.e., pointed) advice. It would probably shock some of you to know that when I first joined (two years into the betrayal) I got hit with quite a few 2x4s to the point that I backed off from posting. However, I kept reading and the dawning light was that everyone had my best interests at heart and were speaking from experience. I started posting again and never looked back.

Something to remember is that you are posting on an open forum. Even if you're just venting, there are no rules that say someone can't give you advice. The mods and guides here are top-notch. If you are being flamed, believe me, they will be all over it, and if they don't react fast enough, you can always ask for a private message.

One thing I've seen over the years (5-year member now) is that those who 'protest too much' are usually the ones who come back and devastated from yet another d-day bemoaning the fact that they were again blindsided, when so many had been trying to help them see the light all along.

I can't repeat this enough: This is a 'take what you need and leave the rest' kind of place.

I am a newbie & left the site for about a month after I first posted because someone had responded with something I found to be rude & insensitive. The indiscretion in my situation had happened a long time ago but I had just found out & it was/still is incredibly painful to me. I think because of the timing factor & that it happened before marriage, people tend to discount my experience. I had similar reactions from "friends" IRL that I had told & even a therapist but I didn't expect that here. Everything I had read on here up to that point was nothing but supportive. I don't know, maybe I should have just posted in the I Can Relate forum but I hadn't read that far yet. I also didn't know anything yet about 2x4's. Looking back at that poster now, I realize that is probably what they were doing although it came off as hurtful & unsupportive to me at the time. The rest of what they said rang true & was helpful, I just didn't know enough about WS patterns & the differences between regret & remorse to see it.

I checked out other sites & realized that this one had the most to offer me. I'm glad that I didn't let that first experience deter me for too long. I need to be here. I am 6 months out & still waffling between R & D, although most of the time D is winning. Mostly because I know I never would have married him if I had known the truth of who he is. I have no one to talk to IRL about this. I could never tell anyone in my family about what he did. The few friends I did tell I no longer consider friends because they were so unsupportive. My husband was my best friend & I used to talk to him about everything. That is no longer the case. I am so grateful for this site & glad that I gave it another chance.

I found SI about 6 months after DD #1....which is 5 months and 29 days too late!!!

I, like others, spent much time trying to convince fellow members that my wife and M was NOT as they thought it was. That was back before therapist really started to break through my thick coping skills and bring to my attention my destructive CoD patterns.

Some of my most 2x4 filled posts have resulted in me dispelling some pretty horrible false assumptions...assumptions that I treated as facts and were making decisions based on them. Saved me untold new pains. Thank you SI members!!!!!

I just started going into other forums....JFO, Wayward and S/D.

For a long time it broke my heart to go into JFO and see statements like "Its been 3 weeks and my husband is the man I knew I married again!!" I sooooo remember play-acting like that. I refrained from commenting as I DO want marriages and families to survive this attack of attacks.

My brat pack of SI members has changed over the past 1.5 years. A few are in S/D now, some have just disappeared, others are well ahead of me in R.

"Telling your story helps others write theirs"

That is an annonymous quote I heard on a radio broadcast.

It was said as part of a larger program on "the value of support groups".

My wife is a lurker of SI....at times I resent this as she can see into me as much as she wants. Support groups work best when you regularly and authentically interact with them. My wife has a life long pattern of hiding herself from the world...revealing only the parts she is proud of, denying the rest.

At times I feel very exposed and naked on SI as I know my wife lurks my posts. But I also know from $11k worth of therapy that to heal I must expose my inner self.....flawed, hurting, ugly parts of myself.

It hurts to do this.....but I trust it will produce healthy fruit during a harvest time not yet upon me.

May God comfort and be with us all.

[This message edited by blakesteele at 3:09 AM, August 11th (Monday)]

I do have some RL friends who I can talk to about my pain....but have chosen to just talk to one about it.

The fact is, until you experience adultery...you simply cannot understand what it is like. This is not something you fix by more date nights or a trip to the Bahamas. Adultery opens a pandora's box of shit that must be dealt with and healed from....in our case, shit that was established early in our respective childhoods. Stuff we faintly even recognize as part of ourselves...

Just like adultery is not the fruit of a single seed sowed, healing from it is not simply dealing with the pain of that singular choice.

People on SI get that......the membership is filled with people that get that at various stages....all of us healing as we go. All of us starting our membership here thinking we are unique and alone.

All of us finding comfort in the fact that we are not unique in our struggles nor are we alone.

All of us enjoying the process of NORMALIZING our experience vs societies general desire to MINIMIZE our experience.

God is with us all

Maybe some people leave because they have healed. Period, and they have no desire to return to the pain. They are living their lives. Moving on.