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To my understanding dehumanizing means a psychological process of demonizing the perceived enemy, making them seem less than human and therefore not worth humane treatment. I ve heard it talked about a lot in terms of shootings and serial killers etc but maybe it has a place in infidelity too.

I get that really sick feeling when I think about what this really means. Did I do this to my BH? I would like to say no but the more I let it sink in the harder it is to deny that it probably played a part in how I treated him. How I let myself justify the A. It answers some lingering questions I’ve had, the never ending loop of how could I have done this. I turned him into the enemy and in the process made him “less than”. No one deserves to be treated that way, especially not my H. I can only hope that I can continue to show my H now that I will forever be sorry for how I treated him. I will never sink that low again. The A wasn’t a mistake, mistake makes it sound like something accidental. The A was the worst thing I’ve ever done. Going back and seeing the decisions that helped me get there is shattering but I’d rather own up to being a selfish dehumanizing asshole than fall back into old habits and cause this much pain ever again.

For other waywards do you think this was part of the “how did I” question. I know it’s just a small part of a bigger puzzle but it’s a really shitty one.

Sayu

I think that term might be a little extreme although I suppose I could see how it could be applied here.

Personally I think it’s much more akin to selfish behavior. Simply put, we WS valued ourselves more than our BS, the marriage, our children etc. It is staggering when you really think about it. I would agree that we all demonized our WS in order to give ourselves license to cheat.

FWIW I would stop dwelling on what you did and focus more on what you’re doing now. Easier said than done to be sure. I’m certainly not suggesting to ignore or forget what happened but keeping it in the forefront of your mind becomes counter productive. We can become so mired in this type of thinking that we become stuck. So horrified with what we’ve done that we fail to see what we can do about it now.

Focus on being the best person/mother/wife you can be. IMO, that is the best way forward.

no stop sign so as a BS - that's what hurt the most - realizing initially I wasn't even given a thought to stop WH from CHOOSING (no mistake) to have an affair. And then to soothe his own feelings of guilt - he demonized me to AP and himself to justify his actions. I remember saying after Dday - it's like you stabbed me in the back - he said it's worse - it's like I kicked you in the teeth while you were smiling at me.

BS here as well and that’s the exact term I used to describe what I felt WH and COW had done to me.

Also a BS, and dehumanized is a pretty accurate term for how I felt. The way I was treated made me feel like a disposable tool. Not a husband, not a man, not a person. Just a tool that was used and discarded.

The A was the worst thing I’ve ever done.

An A is one of the worst things you can do to a person without going to jail. A three year affair is particularly awful. Forever being sorry for it is right and proper. Even twenty years from now, it should still occur to you from time to time to tell your BH that you're sorry for what you did to him and that you'll always be thankful for the second chance he gave you. You don't need to spend forever walking in shame, but you do need to forever remember how you treated him like he was less than a person and lower than dirt so that you never do anything like it again.

It's interesting that you are thinking of this. I say that because as I watched my spouse (we had been together 25 years) turn into someone I did not know, I came to understand he did a lot of work doing just that.

Forget the actual infidelity-I am talking about the fears he had (I would destroy him), the lying (when he knew I knew), the changing of passwords on financial accounts, the "handling" of me he engaged in-as if I was on the outside. It was all bizarre to me based on WHO I AM. I came to see that he no longer had a single clue who I was as a person. And, he did that in his own head. He made me the enemy, when in reality I never was. Don't get me wrong, I did not like this new, "improved" version of himself at all. But, the more profound sadness was in watching him rewrite "us". It was awful and hurtful and completely unnecessary from my point of view-you want to go, then go, but let's have an honest conversation on the reasons. Christ, it all sucks.

Looking back I know the AP attempted to destroy other relationships he had with long time friends (I suppose she saw them as a threat) and it saddens me that he did almost ruin some of them-It shocks me as well..I would never have thought he was susceptible to thinly veiled manipulation, but he was.

It's all so sad and I am starting to feel it can't be repaired.

Cheating is about extreme selfishness. I didn’t think about BH other than to avoid getting caught. I didn’t demonize him at all. I wanted more attention and felt entitled to it. Had nothing to do with BH.

Perhaps it was dehumanizing on my part then.

I was guilty of playing the role of victim. I'm a codependent care-taker/rescuer and would give too much and end up resentful. I was responsible for the finances, I would do dishes in the morning and night, laundry on the weekend, grocery shopping, wake up with the kids most weekend mornings, and take care of whatever needs my wife needed. I honestly had the intention of being a good husband, but would expect the same effort back.

Eventually it got to the point where I became resentful and would portray myself as a victim to my AP's ("Oh look at what I do. She doesn't do anything. She just lays around. She yells at me to do things while she's lazy." Things like that.)

I felt entitled. "I deserve attention. I deserve to be happy. I deserve...blah blah bullshit".

I wouldn't say she deserved it, but it was more entitled. But I definitely numbed myself to how it would effect her and my family because I was focused on me. I definitely had no problem talking about her negatives to my AP's to play up being a "victim".

I read this when it was initially posted. I think what you are saying is brave, and might be true. I have tried hard to put that hat on to see if it fits. I think I have been more in Root's camp though...for me:

Cheating is about extreme selfishness. I didn’t think about BH other than to avoid getting caught. I didn’t demonize him at all. I wanted more attention and felt entitled to it. Had nothing to do with BH.

I didn't think badly or speak badly of my h, or outwardly treat him differently. Yes, I rewrote the marriage to some degree but more about incompatibility. And, some of that incompatibility was not imagined, it was just more surmountable than I was making it.

Where I can sway more to your point - I did think that he had a few expectations that he didn't. I was cheating on him which I believe is abusive behavior, so maybe we do have to dehumanize someone to abuse them. And, I lacked empathy which might put a another checkmark over into what you are saying.

Moreso than anything - it seems like I compartmentalized and ignored a whole lot to do something I knew was wrong because it felt good.I minimized him and his importance in my life. Those things I chalk up to cognitive dissonance.

Its interesting, and as you can see I am still mixed on how I feel about what you are saying.

FWIW I would stop dwelling on what you did and focus more on what you’re doing now. Easier said than done to be sure. I’m certainly not suggesting to ignore or forget what happened but keeping it in the forefront of your mind becomes counter productive. We can become so mired in this type of thinking that we become stuck. So horrified with what we’ve done that we fail to see what we can do about it now.

Focus on being the best person/mother/wife you can be. IMO, that is the best way forward.

I disagree with this to a certain extent. I do believe we have to focus on what we are doing now. However, part of what we are doing now has to do with really being able to empathize with our BSs and understand the magnitude of what we have done to them. This is a crucial element of the work to help our spouses heal.

In your situation, you don't have that element to deal with as much. You are attempting I assume to make amends with your wife in other ways.

I do agree that we have to watch about self flagellation, and staying in our shame because we have to focus on healing ourselves and neither of those things will heal us. It doesn't sound like to me that's the context in which she writes this though. Instead, it sounds like she is really listening to her husband and evaluating her behaviors and how they came to be.

We can't heal the past without understanding it. And, we can't heal our spouses without understanding them.

I believe that most BS would consider dehumanized a very accurate word. IMO you have to feel it to really know and I definitely felt it. To minimize what is done is cruel and more abuse heaped on an already abused person.

I have always felt that the WS, that truly gets it, I mean gets it all, feels pain to the extreme, very close to what a BS experiences. The trouble is there is no minimizing the pain for a BS, even when they rug sweep. We just don’t have that luxury.

Yearsgoneby~

Thank you all for the responses. This one is still really hard, there’s a lot of levels that got me to thinking yeah it really does apply. I don’t think it has to be true for everyone though. I know there were a lot of times when I had compartmentalized and wasn’t thinking about how things would affect my H. Then there were times when the guilt and shame started to set in. It doesn’t make sense to feel either one of those things if I’m not relating what I had done to how it would hurt my H. I wanted to say that maybe I had just belittled him, but I can see his pain and I’m trying my best to understand it. It’s so deep that it’s more than saying nasty things or confiding in AP, I took away part of who he is as a person. Being able to do that to him says way more about me and has nothing to do with my H or how good/bad things were. No one deserves this, it strips people of their basic human rights of safety, trust and love.

I can appreciate the concearn that I’m sitting in the bad things that I’ve done or dwelling on the past but I feel that it’s actually the opposite. I came across the idea in one of the books I’m reading to continue my learning process as a wayward. That process doesn’t end 6 months, a year or even 2 yrs from DDay. It doesn’t stop even if we end up D. I learn something new about myself, my family and my H almost weekly. I wish I could share here more often about the good, I think we are in an okay place right now actually. Our lives are hectic and incredibly complicated, I’m hopeful but not finished with the work by any means.

I didn’t think about BH other than to avoid getting caught. I didn’t demonize him at all. I wanted more attention and felt entitled to it. Had nothing to do with BH.

What is dehumanizing someone if not deciding that they and all the promises you made to them are so insignificant that they can simply be reduced to irrelevance? An affair having nothing to do with your BS is another way of saying your BS meant nothing.

Intent, compartmentalizing, selfishness, etc. Doesn’t matter what the WS was thinking or feeling, or not thinking or feeling towards the BS. The BS IS Dehumanized as a result of your infidelity, end of sentence.

Yearsgoneby~

I can appreciate the concearn that I’m sitting in the bad things that I’ve done or dwelling on the past but I feel that it’s actually the opposite. I came across the idea in one of the books I’m reading to continue my learning process as a wayward. That process doesn’t end 6 months, a year or even 2 yrs from DDay. It doesn’t stop even if we end up D. I learn something new about myself, my family and my H almost weekly. I wish I could share here more often about the good, I think we are in an okay place right now actually. Our lives are hectic and incredibly complicated, I’m hopeful but not finished with the work by any means.

I agree, and feel at a similar stage.

What is dehumanizing someone if not deciding that they and all the promises you made to them are so insignificant that they can simply be reduced to irrelevance? An affair having nothing to do with your BS is another way of saying your BS meant nothing.

I understand what you are saying, and I agree it's abuse, so I can see how it applies. I think I had a hard time lumping it in with serial killers and such and that's probably where I was giving the most pause.

However, I want to say when I say "it had nothing to do with my husband" What I mean when I say that is that he didn't do anything to deserve it. That it wasn't about anything he was or wasn't. What he did or didn't do. It effected him greatly of course, and it was and is very personal to him. But it's my way of saying "this was caused by my own stuff, by own bad decisions, coping, and lapse in exercising my moral standards". I just want to clarify that part.

I have used the word ‘dehumanised’ several times and I think it absolutely holds true. While my husband and his AP were in the throes of all their fun, my worth, my compassion, my kindness, my humanity was completely ignored. I was literally NOTHING to them. Their texts and emails to each other are evidence of that, I was a major inconvenience that just needed to get out the way. The AP also dehumanised my children. She never spoke of them by name in any text and if she could get away with it, never mentioned them at all. They did not exist in her world. It was inconvenient to really accept their existence, it would have clashed with her ‘oh so morally right’ views, cognitive dissonance in action.

Do I believe my cheater husband ‘meant’ to dehumanise me... NO... but the process of infidelity most certainly does.

Yeah, this is not a stretch. I ended the marriage and am rebuilding my life precisely because I was dehumanized. I still feel far less than human most days even with no contact. It takes conscious daily effort to remind myself I'm a worthy human being.

It makes me sick that I've arrived at this point, but that's what being an afterthought to your spouse for 5 years will do. So yes - dehumanized.

BS here as well and that’s the exact term I used to describe what I felt WH and (C)OW had done to me

Same here. I used the same word.

I wonder just how different it is for me, whose WH admitted that he did, in fact, think the exact thought, “This is going to hurt [BlueIris]” right before sex with OW1. Or how my phone call to him while he was driving with OW2 to a mini vacation rendezvous, apparently meant ...nothing? Or how he could call me and chat happily about his fun evening with his extended family as he drove back to OW’s place. I know others have similar stories - where the worlds seem to share space and yet, somehow, the WS kept them separate.

I understand about compartmentalization, but this seems so far beyond that, that it’s stunning when you’re the one who’s been ...shunted away into irrelevance. Well, into ‘less than-ness’. Because if a person or even an animal were standing in the road, I presume my husband or would have swerved to avoid hitting them, but this feels like ...I was there, in the road, and he saw me right there and still kept on going, not likely even flinching as he drove right over me. Or, if I use the words I might have used right after dday, not only did he not flinch as he drove over me, but he was so excited about being with AP that he smiled as hit me and then kept on going, eager to get to his destination.

Because in my mind, I think to myself that I would never deliberately cause harm to anyone, whether I knew them or not, so ...to know that it would be harmful to me, how is that not, in a way, denying my humanity? And...in a way, also, denying his own?

I don’t know about the demonization part of the original question. I know that some WSs do that. Our M was very rocky back then, and I think we both had wounds from the M and from other sources anyway, so for us, there wasn’t much need to demonize because we were both already hurting.

However, although I can try to portray how it feels to have been on the betrayed side of this awful equation, I also have tried to understand the other side. I rarely get far, though, because I keep going back to this: even when I thought our M was over, and even when I was lonely and would (also) have enjoyed time with someone who wanted to be with me as much as I wanted to be with him, I couldn’t have crossed the infidelity boundary. Not because of my husband - although to be honest, I do recall thinking that he wouldn’t have cared anyway - but because of who I am. Fidelity, then, was less about my husband, and entirely about my own values. He could have been The Most Horrible Person Ever, and cheating wouldn’t have been an option for me. Leaving, yes, but not infidelity.

So...yes, from the BS POV, I can agree that it feels dehumanizing to be betrayed in this way. But, nearly four years out, I also see the decision to be unfaithful as something that denies even the WS’s humanity. I mean, okay, we often say it’s selfish, and I won’t disagree, but I think the root of all of this is emotional immaturity, so it is not surprising that selfishness and a lack of empathy play key roles when it serves the purpose of feeding the Id of the wayward.

[This message edited by BlueIris at 9:06 PM, February 2nd (Saturday)]

I agree dehumanized is a very good word for it. I was treated like I didn’t matter to both wh and ap for a decade. It felt like I just didn’t matter. Like I was invisible.

I have never felt so inconsequential.

I think you’re as close as I’ve seen on here to figuring it out. This is incredibly insightful. Dehumanized is exactly what it feels like to be on the betrayed side. Take note of the responses from those who have experienced it. You’ll notice a pattern. You’ll also notice a conditioning of the term from some who aren’t on this side. It’s a rough realization to face. I

[This message edited by LongSigh at 7:44 AM, February 5th (Tuesday)]