SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

The thing is: words are thoughts.

Once, about 6 weeks after starting a new job, my boss's boss interviewed me to see how I thought I was doing. I asked him how he thought I was doing. He thought a moment and said, 'Now that I think about it, I'd be happy with the performance of anybody who replaced the last guy.'

One one hand, he made me a commodity. On the other, he was honest. I cannot tell you how much I appreciated his honesty.

Words are thoughts. Honesty, by and large, sounds different from dishonesty. Sure, there's manipulation in honesty. Praising someone's performance generally DOES bind the praised to the praiser - but I believe one can hear a difference between something said primarily to praise and another thing said primarily to bind.

And I believe one can generally tell the difference between words of real love and words aimed at getting a person into bed.

The thing is: words are thoughts.

They CAN be thoughts. They can also be explicitly NOT thoughts. "Did you sleep with him" (Thought: "Yes", word said "No"). In fact, I find, especially in the corporate world (and the A world as well) that words are almost more likely NOT to be thoughts than they are to be a fair representation of what the other person is thinking. Said with the intent to deceive and elicit action from another, no matter what you actually think.

I don’t know if you will ever believe the concept that for some men the ego kibbles that come from sexual validation are as important if not sometimes moreso than the sex itself.

I get it, and I agree, for some, that's likely a big part of it. The validation that someone finds me sexy enough to do this with me was "heady" for me as a young man. I don't feel that way anymore, but I do get the appeal of that, someone is giving me something valuable for free, I must be awesome! And I also agree with your husband, that changes in a M because it's not "for free" anymore, and it's also more negotiated. Which isn't bad, it's just different. But yes, I certainly can understand the appeal of it, women look at me today, and I know that I could get sex from them if I wanted to (and was willing to lie to get it) and that does, independent of sex, give me a tinge of "good feeling". I guess I'd say though, if that's the feeling your after (as a woman), put on something sexy and go to dinner with your H; you'll drown in validation from men. And since your not offering anything (sex) to these men, that validation is far more genuine (the looks from men who would like to be with you) than the words that an AP will spew to get into your pants.

My husband is really never interested in sex unless I am into it.

Me either. And this is a huge part of the sexual dysfunction that I now feel with my W as a result of the A. Because now, with this concept of "kibbles", it's not what it used to be for me. "Into it" meant "wants to have sex with me", not "wants me to give her compliments and kibbles so will sleep with me". Because I want her to be "into it" (sex) with me, not "into it" because she wants something else that sex might get her. The first feels like she's "into me", the second feels like "you might as well pay her at the end". As I talked about before, it's not a trade of my sex for yours, it's a trade of your sex for my words. And that feels really unbalanced and lacks the genuine desire that I want from a lover. Sure, I can get you to do it by saying the right words. So can anyone else though because it's not me you want, it's someone who can parrot lines from a pick up book. And I get it, women have exactly the same problem, it's not me you want, it's anyone with a vagina (and, I'll admit, this has very often been true in my past, which just confirms the theory that I have about what my W is thinking). Deliver the right kibble, I'll give you a kibble I know you want. Not, "let's enjoy this one kibble together", which is how I used to view sex in the past.

If you didn’t value what he got, you wouldn’t feel that pain.

Your right about this. No offence to those who suffer with EA's, I know that the pain for people who value that is exactly the same as mine because that's what they care about. But, if my W had a pure EA with this guy, I'd honestly laugh at him and say "Well, my wife played that guy out". Even more so if she got him to buy her things and/or spend time with her and he didn't "get anything" out of it. But, like many, the situation is reversed, he didn't put a lot of effort in and he got a huge payoff, so, the only person I can laugh at is myself. "Wow, you tried harder than him and didn't get 1/2 of what he did, man, you are a loser". Where if the situation were reversed "Well, my W slept with me on the 1st date and I hadn't bought her anything, told her I loved her, nada; where the loser AP was buying her Tiffany rings and re-writing War/Peace every day into love sonnets in e-mail and she wouldn't even kiss him" it would be much, much easier for me (and you, because I doubt I ever would have found SI because the pain wouldn't have reached the level of "you need help").

I got from AP quality time, yes probably not genuine.

Actually, you gave me a good point for comparison here. QT is ALWAYS genuine. Yes, it's often motivated by a desire for sex, but there's no faking it (unless you have a body double or twin). There's no questioning that the QT was real and that it happened. There's no re-writing "he took off the day to spend it with me", all of that is real. It exists independent of words and cannot be lied about. So QT I understand a lot more than WOA as a love language because it's "real" and cannot easily be faked. Now, if you used that QT because you wanted WOA, that's different. If you used that QT because you wanted physical touch, well, that all happened too, so, again, "real" and not faked.

It’s just hard to watch you cling to your argument at all costs because I think you are torturing yourself with some of it.

I don't actually feel the desperation that I portray in my posts as much IRL. I often write from a "no nonsense" angle to try to help other people understand men like me who have been injured this way and how to help them heal. I feel like much of my healing has occurred, and, while I don't want to derail the thread entirely, I'll say it's because my W took the advice of others where this issue exists and has, in many ways, made it clear to me that I'm her sexual #1 again. And actually, I was pretty impressed with myself when I wrote this post because it wasn't about sex, sexual acts, or penis size and orgasm. :) Yes, it all relates back to that, but my OP was really about how I see WOA as an ineffective tool to compel behavior and how WRONG I was about it for my W, and how I think I was generally right about it for most of the men I had reporting to me. WOA can absolutely compel an employee to stay in a dead end job against their better interests, just like it compelled my W to get into a dead end relationship against her better interests.

But yes, I do draw and also believe the analogy that what my company was trying to do is very similar to what my W's AP did do. "Here's how you can most effectively motivate people without using either a stick (I'll fire you) or a carrot (here's more money)". Because it's in the companies best interest to do so, if they can get their managers to motivate people without money, their bottom line improves. I just find it interesting, looking back on the experience with "A eyes" how similar the things they told us to do were to what the OM did with my W to motivate her to "work hard" (sex) without actually paying more (commitment, leaving his wife, etc) through the use of words.

Okay it makes me feel better that you have addressed it and things are not as stuck as they sound.

And your narrative was one that did help me understand my husband in a way I am not sure he could have. It’s easier to say it on the internet I guess and I think there was so much emotional confusion that first year that unwinding it all enough to articulate might have just been hard for him to do. So these posts have been been very helpful over the time for me as a ws.

It is not trading sex for words. It is trading the

need for sex for meeting emotional needs.

A man does not wanted to be treated as a wallet.

A women does not want to be treated as a sex toy.

A man will spend his time, money, and effort on a

woman because his end goal is to get sex.

A woman wanting her needs met will give sex to a

man that is meeting her needs because having her

needs met makes her happy and she does not want the

OM to stop meeting her emotional needs.

Yes there were WW's that made their BH wait 3 months

before she had sex with him, and on a GNO after

the OM bought her one drink she then promptly

went outside and let the OM bang her. Then there

are the WW's that it took the OM one year working

the WW before let the OM bang her.

To me it does not matter why one WW dropped her

panties after one drink and the other WW took one

year for her drop her panties for the OM.

I does not matter that all the OM had to do was

just call the WW and she would drop every thing

and met her OM repeatedly for a 5 minute romp

when the OM never bought the a dinner or took her

out on dates.

Maybe all that WW needed was to be lusted after.

For a man to want her that bad that he would

cheat on his own BW.

The WW saw that her OM was providing some need

of value, or offering to provide some need of value to her so to obtain that need she gave up

sex.

There was an Adam Sandler movie. He was a famous

celebrity and he was out with his newly hired

personal assistant.

They pick up two young attractive women and they

agree to go back Adams house. After some polite

chat Adam peels off one of the women, gets her

alone and bangs her good.

Mean while the assistant is trying to chat up the

other woman but you are shown that she is not

interested in him.

Adam, come back to the living room alone and the

other woman said where is my friend. Adam said

she got a call and had to leave right away so I

put her in a cab. She said she did not want to

ruin her night and said you stay.

2nd women nods her head as if makes sense. Adam

then says let me show you my house.

Next scene the camera shows Adam banging the 2nd girl in his bedroom.

Adam, re-enters the living room and his assistant

asks where is the 2nd girl. Adam says I sent her

home in a taxi after I banged her.

The Assistant you had to hog both girls.

Adam tells him come you did not see you were not

going to get anywhere with either of those girls.

They were not going to cheat on the boyfriends

with a personal assistant but they would cheat

just so they could put a notch on their

lipstick tube because they got to bang a

big star/famous celebrity.

The more a woman wants a need filled the more she

is willing to pay/do to get that need filled.

Idk rio, i was thinking about this, and I think the five love language analogy might transpose to work here. Sure there's ego kibbles to go around at work like the candy dish at the front office, but there's also words of affirmation. And sometimes one person's egokibble is the next person's affirmation.