SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I guess, in some ways, it's like saying "I thought people were good people" after being beat up in a prison fight. Well, yeah, most people are good people, but you've self-selected into a group (prison population) that have shown, by their actions, that they aren't good people. And then being surprised that most people in prison are trying to rip you off or beat you up.. I mean, that's what happens in prison, just like, Hiking, your experience, is so commonly what happens in A's. But acting surprised that the prison population isn't exactly the most honorable out there? That seems to take a real level of active denial.

I understand and agree with what you are saying here. But, you misunderstand me. I was reacting to this, and should have quoted it in my response so it would have made better sense:

You and I know men enough to know that men would say those nice things if she just dangled the possibility of sex in front of him like a carrot on a stick. In other words, that SI orthodoxy is itself a demonstration that women simply cannot understand men's sexuality. Or, maybe they do understand men's sexuality and that orthodoxy is merely a convenience.

I was saying I didn't understand the sexuality of the man. Your prison synopsis is very fitting, but I wasn't pouting about being lied to, only explaining I was naïve enough to allow myself to believe shit that wasn't true. That doesn't mean, "Yes, I should have an affair, he convinced me", we were already there, we crossed a boundary as soon as the texts started. What I was responding to is yes, I was that stupid at the time. Obviously not my proudest moment, but make no mistake - I don't feel like I am a victim of something here.

You don't want a wolf to eat your family? NEVER OPEN THE DOOR.

People are people, not wolves. You cannot expect women to never interact with any men as 1. men make up 50% of the population, and 2. women are not possessions, we are people, and 3. the men here are supposedly not wolves, so how can we tell?

Let's face it. Men are not wolves, they are people.

If you can't understand her or find her post frustrating, then that is on you, xhz700. She was very clear and made perfect sense. Besides, she was explaining that because she obviously was in a place where she wanted to be validated and hear nice things--for whatever broken reason at the time--she believed his words were true, didn't imagine an older man would be acting on pure lust (or his own need for validation). We women marry men and believe their words are true. Honestly, looking at what has happened with many women in their dating and married lives, even removing affairs and OW from the mix, women have a heck of a time knowing when they are being played! We never outgrow that as I see men taking advantage of women periodically show up in the Divorce threads.

But these men are our fathers, brothers, uncles, family friends, best friends, childhood friends, brothers-in-law, best friend's husbands, church friends, mechanics, lawyers, school principals, pediatricians, cable installers, dishwasher repairmen, Home Depot manager, next door neighbor, police officer, and mayor. We cannot call them all wolves and keep the door closed.

You cannot affair proof society!

Human beings will always be imperfect.

Honestly, looking at what has happened with many women in their dating and married lives, even removing affairs and OW from the mix, women have a heck of a time knowing when they are being played! We never outgrow that as I see men taking advantage of women periodically show up in the Divorce threads.

This is why men should never take advice from women when it comes to sex or ‘what women wan in a relationship’.

why men should never take advice from women

Why?

Research actually shows women to be far more relationship savvy than men, far more in tune. I can find you the 3,000 websites and studies if you want. Lol.

But understand men and sex? No.

Butforthegrace,

You are very wise. I had to read your post several times and really take it in.

This relationship piece has a different dynamic for a married woman. Unless the affair is an exit affair for her, the woman tries to hide it from her BH, for the purpose of preserving her M. The prospect of a long-term primary relationship with the AP is significantly diminished compared to when she is single. This is where BH's like RIO have so much difficulty. We men understand why single women give the porn star treatment to a man they are dating and trying to keep around. But when she is married and obviously trying to preserve the marriage (by for example lying to her BH and hiding the A), logically it doesn't seem like there is a relationship goal. I get it that there is a fantasy element, an escape, and we see many threads where a WW has reached a place of internalized despair (that she sometimes isn't even fully congizant of), but there is certainly an element whereby she is there because the sex is good. I actually believe that for RIO it is the sex that hurts the most. The sex is something he consciously sacrificed as part of the balance of his M. In his heart this was something important that he gave his WW -- foregoing the lusty, joyous sex that for him is part of his love language. He is truly hurt by the reality that she chose to share this very love language with another man. The one thing she could have shared with him to tell him how much she loved him.

That is interesting to me. I certainly would say I was escaping myself, I was definitely in a existential crisis of sorts. I think the reason I had a hard time following RIO on some of it is that honestly, if there had been no sex in the A, I would not have missed it. Even in my pining time, the things I was reliving in my head was stuff that was said. I did have a hard time understanding I was duped, and a harder time recognizing that I was also duping.

Also, I wasn't vastly different sexually in my A. At home, I have always been up for sex, my H and I match pretty well in our drives, and I am kind of a perv. If anything, I was actually more reserved with the AP because I wasn't comfortable with him. We were together a total of 3 times, all in the same week. I really do believe that in our situation, the betrayal has been more the focus, but I see now the difference in the situation and where RIO is coming from, your post was helpful in that.

You just said women aren’t savvy enough to know when they’re being played. You’ve also said they’ll trade sex, even if it’s lackluster sex, for attention. Women seem to rationalize that the AP is the best thing ever, for a bit anyway, then later backpedal to the BH, throwing everything they have into fixing something that they now see as wonderful even though it was broken for seemingly stupid fucking ‘reasons’ that they can’t quite pin down. Women seem struggle with self awareness and simple fucking logic.

This is why men should never take advice from women when it comes to sex or ‘what women wan in a relationship’.

Why?

Because, IMO, all too often what many women say they want, is not what they really want.

For instance....I watched my older sister give my older brother dating advice. Be nice. Listen. Ask questions. Do not be pushy. Etc. he implemented her instructions.

The result....no 2nd dates.

Then he quit listening to her and instead watched what she did. Who she dated. How she responded to guys. Was she attracted to the “nice” guys? Nope. She went for the opposite type. So my brother started acting like those guys.

The result....plenty of dates.

And that is what he passed down to me when I got older. Real world advice from one guy to another.

It reminds me of a bit by the comedian Bill Burr,

“I saw one article written about it on the cover of Time Magazine. It said, “Why do so many rich, famous, and powerful men act like absolute pigs?” Right? And the article was actually written by a woman. That’s like me writing a book, The third trimester and what to expect. Ladies, you’re gonna feel a pressure… how the hell would I know? You don’t wanna hear that from me, right? Then why is this woman telling me what it’s like to have a d**k“

[This message edited by ramius at 4:27 PM, July 3rd (Tuesday)]

People are people, not wolves.

She wasn't all that clear, and has subsequently cleared it up nicely (thank you @hikingout). Men aren't wolves, that is accurate.

My comparison holds. I was pointing out the dissonance between what she was posting and the truth about how affairs start. It seemed to me that she was (still) making excuses for the escalation of the affair, and I was pointing out that the real lapse was letting this guy have enough of her ear in the first place.

If no infidelity is a 1, and a full emotional and sexual affair is a 10, it seemed like she was justifying going above a 5 (oh, the things he said, whew!) and I was pointing out that she never should have been at a 5 in the first place. So I would say that anyone trying to push from a 1 to a 2 on my scale is a wolf. By the time you hit 5, you might as well be fucking, because it's too late to claim you were taken advantage of, or lied to.

When Ws go out and point out how there were deceived or used (it happens a lot, people often claim that their AP is a sociopath here, rich huh?), I wonder what the flip-side is. So the affair is only a mistake because you were used? It's only wrong because you were lied to?

We women marry men and believe their words are true. Honestly, looking at what has happened with many women in their dating and married lives, even removing affairs and OW from the mix, women have a heck of a time knowing when they are being played! We never outgrow that as I see men taking advantage of women periodically show up in the Divorce threads.

For every one of these poor, victimized women, there is one that is just interested in some guy's wallet. I am codependent, and I got royally fucked over in my marriage and divorce. My FOO informs my status as a codependent, but I don't blame anyone but myself for where I am at in my life. AND, I didn't have an affair.

I am sorry, Ws, male and female alike, are NOT victims. They all knew better, they CHOSE to believe lies.

Research actually shows women to be far more relationship savvy than men, far more in tune. I can find you the 3,000 websites and studies if you want.

One more thing to point out. Thank you @hikingout for your responses...

And, like any cheater, I will tell you I never thought I would be caught.

This is one place that I just simply can't go. This is truly the difference between a W and a B as far as I can tell (and makes me profoundly sad for everyone here).

The reason I didn't engage in infidelity isn't because I thought I'd get caught, it's because I had the relationship that I wanted.

Research actually shows women to be far more relationship savvy than men, far more in tune. I can find you the 3,000 websites and studies if you want.

Is that what Cosmo, Buzzfeed and Huffington post are claiming these days?

Xhz- that is more than fair. It was indeed my mindset at the time. I wish it wasn’t, and that I had the character to appreciate more what I had. I wish I had been a better woman in every way.

The only thing I can say now is that I will never be that person in the future. I never want to be that person again. That’s the best I can tell you. The decisions I made last year were beyond horrible and the worst things I have done in my life.

Hiking: it's possible that there are earlier threads by RIO that describe the chronology of his WW's A more thoroughly, but all I know about it is bits and pieces. From those, what I gather is that she was pretty plain vanilla, even tepid, about sex in their M. He tried to encourage her to be more lusty, but she told him that she just wasn't into sex that way. But in her A, she had sex very quickly and readily after meeting her AP, and their time together was almost exclusively spent doing porn star sex stuff.

We've discussed elsewhere that, for men, this invokes the sense of being desired. One of the hardest things for a betrayed man to overcome is a sense that his WW desired her AP sexually more than she desires her BH. Throughout his threads, over and over, RIO invokes that issue.

We don't see it come up a lot here on SI. In many cases, the sex that the WW had with her AP is on a par with the sex she had with her BH. I can think of just a few threads where the WW's attraction to the AP was in part because, by her actions, it can be concluded that she found him sexually more desirable than her BH (I say it that way because WW's almost never admit that to their BH's). And I'm not just talking about the fantasy/escape element of A sex as enhancing its excitement, I'm talking specifically about where the WW engaged in sex with the AP with materially greater aggression and willingness toward adventurous sex acts, at a level that was requested by the BH prior to the A and denied him.

That is interesting to me. I certainly would say I was escaping myself, I was definitely in a existential crisis of sorts. I think the reason I had a hard time following RIO on some of it is that honestly, if there had been no sex in the A, I would not have missed it. Even in my pining time, the things I was reliving in my head was stuff that was said. I did have a hard time understanding I was duped, and a harder time recognizing that I was also duping.

Thank you HO! This is EXACTLY what I'm getting at. My W has said the same, and I've seen the same said in many other WW threads (and exactly 0 WH threads, said primarily for comedic impact)..

And the question that I'm search for the answer on, the one that you've been helping me find, as have others, is why do it then? You seem to know, as my W did, that the sex would be the "real problem" in R. She told the truth about everything but the sex pretty much from d-day onward. And she's also 100% right, I have 0 mind movies about the words, and while the time apart and the lies bother me, I think about them almost very little today. Still think about the sex every single day, sometimes for a few minutes, sometimes for hours. Still have horrible MM in bed. Not asking for pity, just explaining how traumatic the sex part of the A has been for me. And my W knew it would be, which is why that's where she immediately started lying. And then coupled with near verbatim what you said above "I would have been fine without the sex in the A" my head spins. I've given many analogies about it, but perhaps the most fitting here is the kid who says his stated goal for bringing a gun to school is "feel cool" and then, at the end of the day, there are 100 people shot. Why the f**k did you shoot up the school if you just wanted to "feel cool" and bring a gun to school? Didn't you realize that shooting would hurt people 1000X time worse than saying "I have a gun, wanna see it"? And then, to complete the head spinning, you get that same kid swearing "I didn't want to shoot anyone". Well, what the hell?!!

People are people, not wolves. You cannot expect women to never interact with any men as 1. men make up 50% of the population, and 2. women are not possessions, we are people, and 3. the men here are supposedly not wolves, so how can we tell?

Interact with? No, that's unreasonable. Be friends with/share anything personal with (which is part of being friends)/have a "best friend" who's opposite sex. You better believe I can expect it. I expect it of myself, and I now expect it of my wife. Yes, women are 50% of the population. But there are literally BILLIONS of people who are the same sex as you. So it's not like your options are greatly limited by saying "no friends with the opposite sex".

You can't tell the difference. I guess that's a big part of this thread. You just can't. And the stakes are CRAZY high in an A for "love". And, as many stories here tell us, and statistics strongly back up, almost everyone who has an A for love (men or women) will be WRONG. You cannot know, and therefore you should not play a game at that table, the stakes are FAR too high. How do you know dating? You also don't, but now your at the 50 cent table. Throw some chips out there, see what happens. Your chances are vastly improved here because you're not sitting at the high stakes table with a bunch of hardened professional players, you're at the casual/fun table. Yes, some of the players there are bluffing too, but it's not their JOB to bluff, they are just having fun. They are going to be much less skillful at it, and, even if you do run into a player there, you lost 20 bucks, not 50,000 to Phil Helmuth. Put another way, picture the high stakes table with 2 people at it, you and the AP. One of you is a pro, they are there to make money tonight. The other is out to "play some cards". If your not the pro, you should expect a royal beating coming your way because, the other person at the table is an "operator". They are after something (your money) and they aren't playing games, this is what they do. Are all AP's like this? No, they're not. But it's real hard to have an A without at least one "pro" there. Somebody who's convincing you to sit down and play at the high stakes table. If that's not you, if you're not the pro, then your about to lose, even if you don't know it yet.

Women seem struggle with self awareness and simple fucking logic.

At the risk of turning this into a mud slinging thread, yes, what you said is true, but I'd change it to "some AP's struggle with simple fucking logic". Again, to the same analogy above, change my poker analogy to one person is using logic, the other isn't. And the one who's not operating logically, well, they're about to have something bad happen.

Hiking: it's possible that there are earlier threads by RIO that describe the chronology of his WW's A more thoroughly, but all I know about it is bits and pieces. From those, what I gather is that she was pretty plain vanilla, even tepid, about sex in their M. He tried to encourage her to be more lusty, but she told him that she just wasn't into sex that way. But in her A, she had sex very quickly and readily after meeting her AP, and their time together was almost exclusively spent doing porn star sex stuff.

That's a great synopsis of my situation, and yes, the source of a lot of these threads. But, to your 2nd point (which I won't quote) perhaps it's selection bias, but I see it pretty often (summed up as more sexual enthusiasm from the WS toward the AP) in the posts here. Shoot, when I first posted my d-day story, I literally had men PM'ing me (and dropping bombs on the thread) saying "get ready for it, the A sex stuff is almost always over the top and often includes elements that were denied in the marriage". So, while I wouldn't say it's always or perhaps even often, it's also not rare, especially if we include "frequency" (which yes, is a big issue for me as well) as one of the elements. Sex a couple times a day is pretty par for the course in an A, and, desired by at least some BS (myself included).

[This message edited by Rideitout at 5:46 PM, July 3rd (Tuesday)]

Rio- i am probably pretty useless in answering the question. Just like “I never thought he would find out”, I actually didn’t see it as a new boundary or one that would make R harder. That would have taken more consideration than what I was giving it for one, and for two- I saw it as a betrayal is a betrayal and I was well on that road by then.

So the motivations were just to continue the fantasy that we were falling for each other. I literally cringe when I write that. I hate that I was so immature when I am so capable of better than that. The opportunity presented itself and I went with it.

Still it’s not the point of contention for my H. We just have a different situation. It’s the deceit and the fact I told the guy I love you. Probably that wouldn’t have happened had the sex not happened though, in retrospect. I guess I am kind of a walking cliche.

Rio- i am probably pretty useless in answering the question.

You couldn't be more wrong on that. Your posts have been very helpful to me; no, I'll be honest, your answer doesn't make sense to me, but it does ring as true to you. And I think you're more able to see it for what it is/was than a lot of people, my W included, are. So please, just because I don't understand, or ask further questions, don't take that to mean your answers aren't helpful, they are, immensely, especially since your "surface answers" (the things you thought at first) seem pretty much dead on to what my W said.

Still it’s not the point of contention for my H. We just have a different situation. It’s the deceit and the fact I told the guy I love you. Probably that wouldn’t have happened had the sex not happened though, in retrospect. I guess I am kind of a walking cliche.

We're all different. Maybe if my situation was different, I'd be more upset about the things said. It doesn't mean I'm wrong, or your H is wrong. It's just that certain things hurt us more than others. Yes, there are generalizations, men and women are more often hurt by certain things in an A, but those do nothing to tell us the individual reaction we'll have. If you'd asked me before the A, I would have told you it would be the lies/betrayal that would bother me the most. And that's number 2 of the list (with the I love you's at a distant 3rd). But I thought the sex stuff wouldn't be that bad, I'd had sex with other people before, I know what it's like, so, what's the big deal? Well, none of us chose this cross to bear, and none of us know where that cross is going to dig in our backs. And I think we all would give a lot to have it gone (the cross).

[This message edited by Rideitout at 7:15 PM, July 3rd (Tuesday)]

Okay, a little light humor here, and somewhat off-color at the expense of Hiking Out -- and Hiking please understand that I do not mean to imply anything by this at all about you, just that I like puns and such -- but I couldn't help but chuckle that RIO abbreviated HikingOut's name as "HO."

RIO, I think what we've got here is failure to communicate. Specifically, I don't perceive that your WW is coming clean to you about this, probably because she believes that the truth will really hurt you and she is afraid of losing you. Which is a sort of backhanded flattery, but also unhelpful because you are dwelling on this to distraction.

We can only offer advice based on the limited information posters provide, and of course we only hear your distillation of this. We don't hear your WW's POV, for example. But based on what we know from you, it sounds like she found her inner freak. It's likely at that point the AP was just a fantasy creation in her head, a sex doll who said and did just enough to not distract her from the artifice that she had created. Again, based on what you have described, there really isn't any other logical explanation.

Why she couldn't find it with you is anybody's guess. My guess -- and this is sheer speculation, based on almost nothing -- is that somewhere subconsciously she sensed that you viewed her as a boring lay and she had a desire to not be viewed that way, but she had too many layers of inhibitions and resentments with you to break through. She needed a fantasy escape to break through.

By the way, I'm not suggesting this was a conscious thought process of hers ("Ride thinks I suck in bed. I'll show him.") Rather, I think she had feelings of inadequacy on the issue of her sexual performance, it ate away at her self esteem, and the A offered a boost to her sexual ego. All totally subconscious other than the circumstances of the A tasted like a drink of water to somebody who didn't realize she was parched.

In the end, we find that to be the case with a lot of WW A's -- something they aren't fully cognizant of, some malaise or existential crisis that they suffer silently and stoically, and along comes the AP with a drink that slakes that thirst. It isn't until after-the-fact, as they piece it together, that they realize the root cause, the "why" as we say here on SI.

[This message edited by Butforthegrace at 8:09 PM, July 3rd (Tuesday)]

You know WHY, and once you know the why, you can dig back and say "here's how to prevent that" or, if not that, "here's what led to it".

I suppose that is a logical conclusion to draw, if A (not enough sex) = B (WH seeks more sex outside the marriage), then simply increase A, the equation is no longer balanced and B won't happen. The problem that I see with that is the uncontrolled variable, or what I like to call the a$$hole factor, which I can't control. Knowing "what led to it" makes it very much feel like it was my fault. I didn't "satisfy" his defined drive/need, so I got what I had coming. Logic doesn't make it ok or necessarily cease it from occurring. The justification may just become something else, because in my mind, the reality is something is broken (even just temporarily) in BS to allow them to cross what they themselves define as their ethical lines.

You have said you like sex a lot, preferred to have it more frequently than your WW...but it isn't you who betrayed her, because you honoured your vows, they meant something to you, that variable is controlled. I just don't think the logic you seek necessarily makes it more palatable. It also puts the onus on me to ensure I am "wifely" enough to satisfy his perception of sufficient frequency or get cheated on.

Option 1

"I don't love you/love you as much as I did him".. OK, sad to say, but we need to D (and this is my #1 fear, that this is the real answer)

Earlier you recognized words said in an A are meaningless. a means to an end, that if she had had an EA, it would have likely caused a blip in the relationship, but not the dagger to the heart this has been for you. I know I have never met your WW, but I do not believe she loved him as she does you, or she wouldn't be here still. It was fantasyland and that's not real. Even if she thought she loved him which I doubt, it wasn't real. It isn't the history she has with you etc. It's not real love, the vulnerable stuff.

Option 2

"I love to have sex, but I just didn't think that was acceptable for a married woman"

I am not a WW, however, I do seem to be in the same position as your W, with having a lower sex drive than my H. TMI, but when I was trying to get at the sex details he and his APs did, he said it was nothing we hadn't done. My reply was that I didn't believe him, because I imagined if it were me, I would have had completely different sex than we have had in the M, the reason being, I wouldn't have cared what the AP thought of me (maybe I would have in A fog, I really have no idea), but I framed it as I am not looking for his respect, I don't genuinely care about the AP. I do however care a great deal about keeping my H's respect and in my head that means adhering to my "boundaries" which have been instilled in me as "this is acceptable" and "this is not". Sex is not my love language, it would have simply been the commodity in which I paid, to get that which I was seeking, likely validation/attention.

I agree with Butforthegrace. I believe it is possible your WW, because she didn't really care about her AP, was able to abandon any preconceived notions she had about sex and perhaps discover something in her that she didn't know she had, or didn't feel was acceptable to acknowledge, until she tried it in a "safe" (obviously not ideal and not really safe, but emotionally safe if she didn't care about him) place.

But, let's turn it around. Your H tells you what he did (it was all for sex) but then, you find 100's of pages of love letters. Plans to leave you. Talk about their future together. Basically, you find evidence that it was much more emotional than expected

That is an absolute possibility and one on which I am trying to get to a place of acceptance. I suspect all of us BS in R, or considering R have to reconcile this very thing. We were not present in the A, we can only go forward on the evidence we have (which in my case is essentially none) and the words of our WS. At some point, we either move forward accepting what our WS is saying as honest, accept there may be more we will never know, that they have minimized or kept out details they fear would be deal breakers or leave the M.

The unknown is a reality I am trying to accept to move forward, which is very hard, as I am evidence based, logical and analytical by nature. None of this sits well with me, but it's now a chapter in my life story which my BH has written for me. Sadly, it's all of our life stories as BS.

I wish you the best and hope you find healing.

[This message edited by hopeandhealing at 12:21 AM, July 4th (Wednesday)]

In the end, we find that to be the case with a lot of WW A's -- something they aren't fully cognizant of, some malaise or existential crisis that they suffer silently and stoically,

Who is this "we"?

Can I read about this truth in The Healing Library?

Is there literature?

Where is this "we"?