SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Hey JT, once again, thanks so very much for the time and effort you’ve put in here. For the most part, I got what I came for when I started this thread. I know how we men mostly view the expectations of our WW, and the input I very specifically asked for at the outset was for you ladies to chime in, too. There’s plenty that’s been said here that isn’t what a BH cares to hear. The idea that we’re supposed to take into account the realities of the female body and mind entering their 50’s means that if we’re to reconcile, the betrayed has to do some of the heavy lifting, too. That’s very hard to hear when as the BS you feel like the WS ought to be doing whatever it takes to recover the relationship and make their partner ‘whole’ again.

Look, nothing you’ve said to me ‘hurt.’ I’ve admired your brutal honesty and understood that it comes from a constructive place meant to inform. Cool. And I even think that what you’ve had to say, frankly, confirms what I’ve known and/or suspected beneath the surface. Actually seeing it here in writing serves to make it more real. It takes some of the guess work out of my understanding.

So, now, as DIFM has so very accurately posited, I have to balance the practical way forward with the lingering resentment that comes from the betrayal. And I agree with keptmyword that some of what you’ve described is horseshit wayward thinking IF a woman ACTS on what you describe. However, know that I understand your intent which was simply to describe the ‘real’ which is, if A, then B. And, after all, we pretty much know that we all harbor unfaithful thoughts. That isn’t the problem. Acting on those thoughts is.

Real quickly, and this will be my last mention of the subject, I hear what you are saying about the nerve struck by my description of aggressive sex. However, and I’ve only been at this site for a few months now, but this is the first instance I’ve seen where the attack on the BS has been so overt. Frankly, I’m glad she came back with her snarky response about the fine circumstances of her reconciliation and how she and her WH are now ‘fucking like bunnies.’ She outed herself as a vindictive, nasty excuse for a human being when she intentionally attempted to pile more hurt on the BH looking for assistance here. I really could give a shit if she’s a long time respected poster here. Even tacitly defending her behavior on this thread is… questionable.

On to more constructive things. So, yes, you have, for the most part, nailed the observation of how my marriage evolved. There a few “but’s.” My wife was never a ‘good’ Catholic girl. She liked pushing the envelope when we got together. It’s part of what attracted us to one another. The ‘beneath her dignity’ view came along with the menopausal changes.

And also…

Kids have a wonderful way of taking the romance and lust out of a marriage unless a couple really works at it. So does life, being married a long time, health issues, etc.

Check…

Your marriage sounds like a classic "been married for a long time, too familiar, built-up resentment, bored with it all, and menopausal-fueled issues" kind of marriage.

Check…

It almost becomes a "hurry the fuck up and get off of me" experience for many women.

And this shit was funny because some of her friends actually said this recently when we four couples got together for dinner. We all, the women and men, had a good laugh over it.

She didn't tell you that her body took longer to respond; that perhaps she was angry with you and held resentment over things and therefore just wasn't getting hot and wet for you anymore.

To be fair, she did tell me. Frankly, I took it as an excuse for not being interested in me. And then when she started looking for the ego kibbles outside our marriage, after having lost a fair amount of weight, I took it as confirmation of my conclusion.

He fucking got pissed; lost his hard on, jumped up out of bed, and stomped out of the room. She followed him, trying to explain she was telling him what turned her on (instead of telling him the way he was kissing her was grossing her out) and he shut her ass down. Said he wasn't in the mood anymore.

Been there. Got up and exclaimed ‘oh, for fuck’s sake,’ and walked out of the room.

Truthfully, sex is the most important thing in a man's life.

Yup, I know it is for me.

So, we suffer in silence if our husbands aren't open to discussing what pleases us, trying to do what is expected of us, faking our way through it with lots of "Oh yeah! That feels good! Oh yeah, Baby - you're the best ever" shit. All the while we're mentally thinking, "Hurry the fuck up and get off of me." Or we just shut down sex completely.

Stop it, JT. I can’t unsee this.

Crap, ran out of time. More tomorrow.

She outed herself as a vindictive, nasty excuse for a human being when she intentionally attempted to pile more hurt on the BH

Name calling is deeply unconstructive and is only your anger dumping itself - comment on the behaviour and its effect on you by all means, but don’t escalate it into a slanging match. Take responsibility for your response. I. E respond, don’t react. Harness the energy of your anger down more constructive and productive ways, it’s really important as a BS that you learn how to do this.

IMHO

keptmyword-

It’s about self-loathing and trading sex for praise and compliments that fleetingly makes them feel not so empty inside.

Well put. For most WS, I think this applies totally as the root cause.

Recognizing that is the first step for both. Fixing it and dealing with the leftover shitstorm is the hard part.

KeptMyWord,

My comments were simply to illustrate how or even potentially why women act so differently with APs vs their husbands in the bedroom. I'm not blaming ANYONE but the WW. Note that I used the words "if we feel he's not meeting our needs." I was simply talking about feelings. Right or wrong or screwed up the feelings are there. Perhaps I should have used the words, "If we feel neglected." Because honestly, isn't that what it comes down to a lot of time for both men and women? We feel neglected? Men will say they weren't getting enough sex and women will say their husbands don't care about their feelings in the bedroom?

But, I certainly do agree with you that a healthy, adult person unhappy in a marriage tries to help the marriage and then divorces instead of cheating.

It’s not about anyone else not meeting your “needs”.

And for you to say it's not about anyone else meeting our needs - I don't understand that at all. Isn't that what the whole "Love Language" concept is about? Discovering their "love language" and attempting to do the things that meet their needs?

An emotionally healthy adult person unhappy in a marriage tries to help the marriage and, if unable to, gets a divorce.

I absolutely agree with you there. That should be what happens and what a decent person will do.

An empty, weak-minded, emotional black-hole can never have their needs met by anyone and becomes the adulterous powder keg that submits to their addiction.

Those are really strong words used to describe every person that ever has an affair. I do NOT support cheating in any way and believe there is NEVER any excuse for cheating. Yet, I refuse to characterize every person who has had an affair in the way you do.

Perhaps even more experimental because we are so starved for emotional and sexual completion and wrapped up in a new lover's moves that we'll do things with him we would NEVER do with our husbands.

Like a drug addict willing to do anything to obtain another hit.

It’s not anything at all about emotional or sexual “completion”.

That’s wayward horseshit.

It’s about self-loathing and trading sex for praise and compliments that fleetingly makes them feel not so empty inside.

I'm not a WW spouse and I'm sure you didn't mean to imply I was by your comment. I'll agree that the "high" that comes from an affair can becoming intoxicating and that many cheaters become addicted to that. But, to say that no cheater is looking for emotional and sexual "completion" is a very narrow view. We are humans. Most humans have an innate need for connection to other human beings - both emotionally and sexually. And to try to say that women are trading sex for praise and compliments that fleetingly makes them feel not so empty inside is also a narrow view. Of course that is the case in many, many cases of cheating. I think anyone who does that is one of those "black holes" you were talking about. They're just looking for someone to make them feel better about themselves and are willing to sell out to get that. I think those people are just selfish, disgusting, abhorrent people - there is some gene missing in them that allows them to do whatever they want without caring about anyone else. But, I don't believe every women who cheats is that person. Just as I don't think every man who cheats is that person.

As I said earlier, I think everyone has the ability in them to cheat. It doesn't mean they do or will. It means that even in good, decent people, should the circumstances of their lives line up in a certain way, vulnerability creeps in and can allow a person who says they would NEVER cheat to do exactly that. People are human - they are not perfect. Every person has weakness in their character. Unfortunately, some people let that weakness overtake their lives and it's always at the expense of others. The devastation it leaves behind can never be truly understood unless you're the one on the receiving end of it.

Cheating is not the right thing to do. Absolutely not - not ever, under any circumstances. I don't condone it and will say almost unequivocally that a person who cheats is a POS. But, I refuse to paint every WS as an empty, weak-minded, emotional black-hole.

We feel neglected? Men will say they weren't getting enough sex and women will say their husbands don't care about their feelings in the bedroom?

I've got to agree that there is no blanket reasons , JT.

I wasn't getting enough sex, but she apparently was. Elsewhere.

Of course it's not true in all cases, but my fWW was just damaged, and I'm convinced that no amount of attention from me would have made a difference.

It seems that sex was a tool for some sort of validation of acceptance / self worth/ attention or solution for whatever malfunction she has. It was learned behavior for coping with those issues.

I'm convinced it was separate from our marriage, at least in her mind. Her actions within the marriage were to justify that action.

Obviously there are many underlying issues, both personal and within the marriage construct, and none can be applied universally.

[This message edited by twisted at 1:10 PM, January 16th (Wednesday)]

People up above are, frankly and IMHO, mistaking 'feelings' and 'thoughts'.

Feelings are emotions. Thoughts both come from and determine emotions. While there are several schools of thought on what, exactly, is an 'emotion', I don't remember seeing 'neglected' as an item on any of the 'list of emotions' that I've read.

Here's a little, (very) contrived example:

Ladies, your H ignores what you say. You talk to him and he doesn't respond. You walk in the room and he doesn't acknowledge you. You sit beside him and talk and it is exactly like you're talking to yourself. In fact, sometimes that's exactly what you're doing. Literally, he shows no reaction at all to whatever you say.

Does this scenario leave you thinking that you're being neglected? Here's the kicker. He's had a head injury and he's not woken up yet. Still "feeling" neglected? Or, has your _thinking_ changed and driven a different emotion out? The "neglected" conclusion (thought) was coming from a lot of assumptions. The "head-injury, not neglect" twist drives a different conclusion, hopefully one that we're helping by stimulating his recovering brain with our talking etc.

This isn't limited to women, btw, and I really struggled with making the above man and woman just "people" and "your spouse" and "them" because we all just make this whole load of assumptions and those assumptions drive emotions and then we just toss out all of the act of making the assumptions and label those thoughts and conclusions as "feelings" when they're not.

ChamomileTea gets a lot of stuff right, but she's not infallible, and neither am I, and neither is anybody else. Ever. If something she, or anybody else, says trips an anger trigger then we owe it to ourselves to sit back and ask ourselves, "Why did that make me angry?" I say that because anger is recognized as a "secondary emotion." It is usually driven by other things, often by the angry person feeling that they've lost control of the situation and are trying to, perhaps instinctively, reassert control of the situation so that they can feel "safe" and "in control" again.

JT4588, you've been great and honest with your posts and I appreciate that. I also see you mixing up "feelings/emotions" with "thoughts/conclusions" in your posts a bit. I don't say that as an attack, but I do think that you are being a bit sloppy in your thinking and introspection there. Again, not an attack so much as an observation. If you say something and cause me to re-assess then I'll certainly do that and no hard feelings, and I hope that you feel the same.

NotTheManIwas, and everybody else, I've had sex with different women in my life. Some like it rougher than I, some like it gentler than I, and some seemed pretty okay with my style. Some didn't. Some were bad choices to get intimate with and went all batshit psycho on me. That doesn't mean that I'm a "wimp", nor does it mean that I'm a "rapist." Or a "closet rapist", if that's a thing. Those are their choices, their hang-ups, not mine. I have my own extensive set, thank-you-very-much, and _those_ are mine.

Here's my interpretation of what NotTheManIwas has and _hasn't_ said: He's frustrated. He's been betrayed. He doesn't quite know how to handle all of those feelings. On top of that, his WW isn't helping, isn't opening up, and he's betrayed by that, too. When she _does_ say something it sounds like there's a lot of blameshifting and crap going on, or he thinks that there is, and that's frustrating, too. Since he's frustrated and confused by this whole mess he's getting angry and more frustrated as a result. Since _she's_ decided to act, and is acting, in certain ways _he's_ deciding to act in certain ways, too. That's not a get out of jail free card for either of them, it is just the situation. It doesn't sound like a healthy, happy, productive one, either.

Here's another fact: the BS has to eat a shit-sandwich. They do, always, and the WS served it to them. After DDay the WS's job is to pile on the ketchup and fries, mustard, pickles, whatever it is, to make that shit sandwich something the BS is _willing_ to keep eating. My personal take is that NTMIW doesn't think that she's doing that. That's a conclusion of his and that's okay, it is (I think) his conclusion. He can live with it and the results if he chooses. Or, he can re-think things, re-assess, and change it. Or not. Like, whatevs, kapiche?

Studies show that people have a built-in sense of "fair." If we think that we're not being treated fairly then we seek to correct the unfair situation. We're animals, basically, and sometimes our correction of the situation is more basic than thinking. Kid 1 comes up to Kid 2 and takes Kid 2's toy. Kid 2 then gets up and whacks Kid 1 with a Lego. We've all seen that.

We try to teach the kids that 1) don't grab stuff and 2) don't hit. We try to teach them correct social behavior. We teach them how to be good humans, for some value of "good".

NTMIW has, I think, said that he's walked out of the bedroom in anger, disgust, frustration, something. NTMIW, uncool, dude. Would you want your wife to do the same to you? Look, people are different all of the time. Sometimes we want one thing, sometimes another, and _you_ can't know what _she's_ thinking because you're not in her head. She is. Opening up to another means being vulnerable, willingly, to them. Where'd that get him so far? Well, it got him to the life of a BS. But, he's got to be willing to do it again.

So does his WW. She has to be willing to open up, he has to be willing to listen and adjust. She has to be willing to listen and adjust when he opens up, too. That's how we communicate what we want. Just like you don't expect a Doctor to fix a broken leg when all you tell him about is your hangnail, you can't expect a spouse to read your mind. That "you" is the non-specific, general pronoun, btw.

NTMIW, a direct question: Who do you think has the power in your relationship? Whom do you think caters to whom more? ( Was "whom" right? Crap, I hate that whole who/whom thing. )

I asked that because a tenet of SI is that "you have to be willing to lose the M in order to save it." If you are not willing to walk away if your WW doesn't give you what you need then _she_ has the power here because, simply, whatever she decides to do is okay. Think about that. If you are not willing to leave then all that she has to do is put up with a bit of complaining, but you'll still be there at the end of the day. Same goes for her. If she is willing to up with whatever you do then you have the power, here. If you both are willing to put up with whatever the other does just to keep the M then, pretty simply, you are both terribly co-dependent and the whole thing is just a mess. Good news? It'll go on forever...

NTMIW, the only responsibility that you have is to try to create an environment in which another human _can_ be happy. You can't _make_ someone else happy, just like you can't _make_ someone else not betray you.

Think about that one for a while, okay?

NotTheManIWas, what do you want out of this marriage? You're not getting honesty, openness, faithfulness, sexual fulfillment, etc. You're resorting to childish tactics like threats of an RA just like the men described in "No More Mr. Nice Guy". Seriously, you could benefit from a copy of that book right now. This isn't good for you at all.

If it's really so terrible then take back control and do something to change it. You can't change your WW but you can sure as hell stop looking to her to fulfill the needs that she won't. Maybe you can't D but you can separate and keep your dignity if you want to see other women who will fill those needs. And if you do act on a RA, who's to say your WW won't be the one to file and you will be exactly where you don't want to be? You're playing a losing game here all around and it seems like there are options you haven't yet explored that could help you.

NotTheManIwas, you have a PM.