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BFTG, some quick answers to your question as I don’t want to TJ this great topic.

I don’t think it was either an exit, or even a FU affair. She was in the midst of a MLC and this guy pushed all the right buttons. She lead a pretty sheltered life, and had no experience with someone like him who was a total narcissist. The whole thing for her she described as a runaway traiin. She thought she was going on a fun little trip and then it turned into something she couldn’t control.

For the oral, she said she was freaking out and made an effort to not do it which I kind of remembered, but she felt that by resisting too much it would tip me off as we did this a lot and she never turned it down

During the business meeting, she wasn’t really involved and didn’t push me one way or another. She just set it up for him. She claims that he pushed her to the point where she had no choice and was scared he would blow her up if she didn’t.

Lastly, in terms of the porn type sex, she didn’t want it from me either. She just offered it up as she was desperate to try to get me not to fixate on it. I really don’t think she ever totally enjoyed it. It was more of the currency thing that has been spoken about here. I know her well enough. She was always a people pleaser and she was trying that with him

I don’t think she is evil, and she is not stupid. I think she got herself into a situation where she was not equipped or strong enough to deal with it. She claims her goal was to ride out the clock and end everything when the job was done which was very shortly.

I finally just got tired of who I became. I couldn’t see who she was before, or who she was in the present. I had cut off the emotional aspect of our marriage and that was killing me too

Going with what's in your heart is always the way to go.

RIO, I can't remember exactly what you said or when, but it made me wonder. Do you not care how your CW feels emotionally and psychologically?

Can't speak for RIO, but I know the answer to that question is that I now care far more about me emotionally/psychologically since she very clearly subordinated my concerns to her own selfish impulses.

RIO, I can't remember exactly what you said or when, but it made me wonder. Do you not care how your CW feels emotionally and psychologically?

I'll answer this, but, I want to say, this feels like a very unfair question. Imagine if I jumped into a thread about a woman requesting a post-nup from her cheating husband to more R along and I said "Don't you care about his feelings"? Frankly, in that case (more so than this one, I'm not sure why, but I'm being honest), I'd say "F**K his feelings, get the postnup signed!".

Of course I care about her feelings. If I didn't, this would be much easier in many ways. If I didn't care about her feelings, then "compliance" would be enough. "Just do it" and everything would be better. But that's not it, as many have said in this thread, it's not "just do it" it's "want to do it with my BS as much/MORE than I wanted to do it with the AP". I want her to want to do these things with me, I want her to want me to be her sexual "plan A".

I've gotten compliance. But what I really want is "desire", I don't want to force the issue, I want her to bring it up. I don't think, not for a single second, that the AP had to say "I want anal or I'm not going to see you anymore", I think she WANTED to do it with him. And I want her to want to do it with me.

Of course I care about her feelings, but if her feelings are "Wanted to do it with AP, but not with RIO" well.. I can't live with that. Not because I don't care about her feelings, but because I also care about mine.

For the oral, she said she was freaking out and made an effort to not do it which I kind of remembered, but she felt that by resisting too much it would tip me off as we did this a lot and she never turned it down

There are a lot of threads where betrayed spouses have "what could they have been thinking" colloquy. It is so difficult for us as a BS to wrap our minds around how somebody could decide to have illicit sex, in the home, unprotected, under circumstances that could end up with marital sex shortly thereafter. Sort of like somebody who is not a mass murder trying to get into the head of an actual mass murder. You can't do it. Synapses mis-wired or something.

My curiosity has more to do with what she did, if anything, to convince you that her love and desire for you was true, and why your heart couldn't get to that place. What did she say about her thought process on the first day she had sex with the asshole? How did she justify that to herself? What did she do when caught (in my fuzzy recollection, you caught her in some way).

Or was it more a question of your heart, you couldn't find it in your heart to continue loving her as a wife?

sorry for the t/j

RIO have you and your wife read the 5 love languages ? Taken the online quiz and all that ?

It seems to me that the sex issue is a minefeild for the both of you and the pressure you place on it is working against what you really want.

Maybe it is not your end goal as the problem, but your approach.

I stand by what I told you on another thread. The communication is lacking. There is literally no other way to break the stalemate you seem to be in right now.

If your W isn't willing to communicate I don't see anything getting any better and I think, for her at least, the status quo is more comfortable than anything else would be.

I think you do need to take a serious look at your M and figure out why you are desperately holding onto it despite it not meeting a need you hold in high regard.

It sucks, it is painful and it will hurt a lot. I think you need to mourn your M, detach and figure out what you really want.

Letting go of "I have to stay M because (insert reasons here)," by itself is liberating. You are never going to get anyone to do anything they don't want to do willing. It is impossible. Trust me I have tried. If this is something that is very important to you maybe you need to give that "optimism," up. Concede that it isn't very likely to happen and maybe that means you begin to life your life in a different way.

Maybe her A damaged the M to the point that it can't be saved. It goes beyond love. If love was enough none of us would need this place. It is also about looking out for yourself and want you want out of life.

If your is unwilling to communicate with you about this you have to wonder what else she isn't telling you. Do you really want to spend the rest of your life, trying in vain, to bea mind reader ?

I hate doing this to her, hopefully she won't mind, but I often look at a poster like Hikingout and think to myself, "what are the chances that she make it in R". Because she's here, day after day, working her ass off to find her inner truth. I'm sure, like me, she spends hours a day working on it, thinking about it, and talking through her feelings and inner monologue. She's put 100's of X more time into her R than she put into her A. So long as the efforts that she talks about here are applied to her M, I'd give you 10-1 odds that she and her husband stay married and find happiness over the long term. Because she (and other posters, this isn't an inclusive list, is just that she and I often find ourselves debating on various topics) has put in so much MORE effort into R than she did the A. And, as a BS, that's what I want to see from my W. More work/time/effort and yes, "kinky sex" than she spent doing those things with her AP. Does her husband ask himself "am I worth it, am I worth more to Hiking than the AP"? I'm sure he does. To which she can point to 1000's of posts showing him how hard and how much she's willing to do to get better and heal their relationship.

I appreciate the sentiments here, but I do want to point out a few things that I think should be included.

One, I in fact can not point at thousands of posts that I would be proud for my husband to read. It's easy to forget but some of my posts that first year, and especially the first 8 or 9 months of that year would have been very discouraging for him to read, I believe.

Secondly, my participation in this site, has probably been 75 percent about me. At some point, probably around the time we were preparing to divorce, I realized that I had been in so much pain for so long that I didn't want to be in it any longer. I didn't want to be this person that I was. This site still to this day helps me call myself out on my bullshit. I especially find the BS forums to do that. Even, and maybe more especially some of the threads I do not comment on.

I think in the early days I was here to get over the AP, I needed the strength to help will my emotions because even though my logical mind knew what I wanted and that the A was all based on a bunch of bullshit, I had trouble getting my emotions to line up. I had told myself a lot of stories that I believed. At some point it became how do I help my husband, and then it became how do I help us, and then it was since I have only control over myself how do I help myself in this situation? What needs to change. What thought processes are not helping me?

The last thing I would like to share about that is that while he is aware that I belong to a support group online, he shows zero interest in it. I know that's weird, and probably many would really want to see what their WS wrote. But, he views it as an extension of IC. He really gave me a lot of room there as well. He took on an attitude early on that I was the one who needed help and that I should seek it. And, he's really always been that way. My journal could be out in full view and he would not pick it up. It confuses me a little bit because you would think he would want to check up on me (I am pretty convinced I would want to with him in the reverse situation) but he's very "I can't control what you do". For a long time I didn't even bring up the forum, but that felt inauthentic to me...I was learning so much from it, and asking him really good questions - to pass that off as I was the one coming up with that would have been wrong. So, I frame it, "I was reading in the forum the other day and"...I mean, I do that with the books I read too. I would absolutely show him what to do to get here and read and look at my PM's or whatever he wants...but for some reason it's just not in his personality to want that.

I should also say that I don't come here if we are together. Not out of fear of him reading, but because when we are together, all electronics are away. I give him my undivided attention now. Because I want to. I like how that feels, and I like the effects of it. But it also makes him less aware of the time I spend here. (I should also point out that because our kids are gone and I run my own businesses I have more time and less supervision in my work life than most)

If you are sensing a theme here...these are all things I want to do and I have reasons that might be based on him and I know I want our marriage and I want him to know I want him and our marriage...but a lot of this is about me and what I want. I wanted to be better for me. I wanted to like myself. I want to not be in pain. Not that I wasn't guilty of manipulation or convincing in those early days. A person doesn't go from being self serving to not being self serving overnight.

So, if sometimes my approach seems "maniacal" (and I know that word was being used with a good connotation) it's because I want it. It's not selfless. The motivation is to be a better person, a better wife, and to be able to hopefully keep my marriage. But, a lot of it is I want clarity and truth.

However, I do think the message is right. I think the BS does need to see an all in effort on the WS working on themselves, showing the BS that they are an exclusive team again, the WS will be on your side above all else, and that the WS will do everything he/she can to bring that spirit back for the BS. That is the consistency I was talking about - is your wife giving you that? Posting here is not needed for her to prove she is all in.

I think the best thing you said for WS's to note -there are lots of things that you said can work on making up for. I spent a lot of time trying to look nice during my A. However, post DDAY I was depressed so I took up exercise which has never been regular for me ever. It so happens that I got in the best shape of my life. You still have to take into account I am a middle aged lady - I by far am not what a young man's standards of hot would be. But, in doing that it's given me a lot more energy, endurance, I am able to accentuate it and try and look my best for him. He now feels like he has a younger wife. He feels like he got a new woman. I don't want to be sexist in sharing that, I know that there is only so much people have control over. But, even making an effort with make up and hair or whatever it is - show him you do want to look your best for him if especially if you did that during the affair. I just shared that because several men have talked about the effort the woman put in her appearance during the A, and I don't think that effort is unsurmountable to do more of to show your husband. Whatever the transgressions were, make a list of them. Which ones do you care most about? Because these changes have to be about you. As I mentioned the exercise was to get out of depression, I didn't want to go on medication, so to be effective the changes have to be authentic to your wants and needs, but when you do them think about how they also effect your husband and your relationship. For some, it might be triggering for you to be primping, because it may make him wonder who you are really doing that for. So, take all that in consideration. Okay, I didn't know I was going to write all that, it was kind of a stream of consciousness type of post.

But the bottom line is you can't hold up how much I posted as evidence of my ability to R, or think that's even a behavior that is helpful to you. But, outside of the bedroom, think about what she has done to show you her sincerity. I think sometimes when we are waiting for a specific thing or expectation (sounds like yours is a specific sexual act) - we miss all the other things and focus on what is absent. Look for consistency. As I mentioned in an earlier post, pre-A I kept these cycles of asking for more romance, missing all the little things that H was doing to take care of me because they were not on my list of what I should see.

[This message edited by hikingout at 8:52 AM, March 22nd (Friday)]

Texashunter:

what we believed we had was all a lie and now we have ended up with someone who let’s be honest had we known the could act the way they did we would have run away from.

Yep, " it was all a lie" and had been for a very long time. When you had complete trust in her, and betrayal never crossed your mind, especially on the level I found out about, even if you can get a reasonable level of trust back, the resentment is something you just can't push out of your head. All of her actions are suspect, and may always will be. I expect her to do most of the work, but when she does you doubt her motives. No-win, and I don't know how to deal with it. Fuck!

hikingout:

It confuses me a little bit because you would think he would want to check up on me (I am pretty convinced I would want to with him in the reverse situation) but he's very "I can't control what you do".

As a BH, I had to get to this place, I needed to be " indifferent", in order to deal with it. Not sure that's a healthy place for the marriage, but it got me to the point that I was going to be okay no matter what the final outcome. I could live with her, or with out her. I was through being a babysitter or an enabler. It was no longer a marriage, but an arrangement.

As a BH, getting past that "indifference" has been the hardest part, it took many years before I realized that was now the biggest problem. My wife was a stranger to me, and our marriage had been based on lies and deception. Fuck ! How do you really get over that? No matter what she did, her motives were going to be questioned, so she didn't know what to do, there were no right answers, no-win.

Men are " fixers" by nature. It's what we do best. But I can't fix this, only she can, but I don't care anymore. She has to make me care.

Twisted,

That makes a lot of sense, but in many ways my husband has ALWAYS been that way. I could think of 10 examples off the top of my head. Some of them about other relationships he had. He is a big picture kind of guy. And I think some of it is he'd been married twice by the time we got together and I don't think he really feels that divorce is the end of the world if you don't want to be with someone. So, maybe he's just always been a bit jaded from past experience. His other experiences did not involve infidelity but were pretty bad experiences for the biggest duration of the marriage.

But, on the other hand, he does want to talk, he does want to hear what I have to say. I don't feel he's indifferent towards me (though I have seen him be this way for periods after dday). I don't know how to describe him other than to say he's always been "you are going to do what you are going to do and I can't control it, I will just decide whether I will put up with it".

...he'd been married twice by the time we got together and I don't think he really feels that divorce is the end of the world if you don't want to be with someone.

That's an important part of the equation that a lot of people miss. There are some that don't take marriage as seriously as I do. When I got married, I wasn't just going to "give it a try", I had decided to make a life long commitment. It's like having a kid, you don't give up and walk away and try something else.

I've gotten compliance. But what I really want is "desire", I don't want to force the issue, I want her to bring it up. I don't think, not for a single second, that the AP had to say "I want anal or I'm not going to see you anymore", I think she WANTED to do it with him. And I want her to want to do it with me.

RIO, this came from another site. But there is some truth to it.

Desire cannot be negotiated.

Your WW probably did those things with AP because she saw him as "exciting AP partner." Nothing more. Was a desire, fantasy of hers. She doesn't see him on a personal level anything more than she sees you as "husband." Or saw you as husband.

Any more that if she went on Spring Break in college and did whatever she did. She didn't love those guys either. It was just a bucket list thing.

Many women are common. Maybe your wife is common. They don't know how to love on a deeper level. Maybe they can learn, maybe they can't. I seriously doubt that all of your playa and dawg buddies love their wives on this deep level they claim.

Your WW is just the same, woman version. You were in the husband box. AP was in the AP box. Spring Break guy was in another box.

I hear these statements from women that they need four different husbands through their lives, because they need a different kind of guy at a different point. It's a selfish, self-centered view point. Based on desire, selfishness, not love. The same as all of the playas and dawgs.

If you want more, you are going to have to bring up the issue again. That compliance doesn't cut it. Maybe she has it in her, maybe she doesn't. If she's like a lot of women, it would take a shit ton of work. I wish you well.

Your WW is just the same, woman version. You were in the husband box. AP was in the AP box. Spring Break guy was in another box.

I think you're right, but I also think this is perhaps were some people are better at compartmentalizing. And that's not always a bad thing, in fact, in this case, I think it's a good thing. You have to be able to see your partner as more than one person. There's the person who will hold your head in the pillow and smack you ass, and there's the person who will bring you tea when your sick. And those people CAN BE the same person. You don't need to have a nursemaid and an AP. And I think that I'm much better at that than my wife is. I can have the craziest, kinkiest sex you can imagine and still see the person as a loving/tender woman that I just got done doing some XXX stuff with. Where I think my W has trouble with that, both for herself (how can I be a slut with him and his wife) and for me (how can I let him do that with me and still have his respect). And this is where compartmentalization is a good thing, because you have to be able to be both (or all) those people to be able to fill the needs of most people in a marriage. The mother who kisses her children on the cheek on the way to school becomes the wife who's begging "f**k me harder" 20 minutes later. And I think that a lot, a WHOLE lot of people have trouble wearing all those different roles. They want to be "one person" and to them, that means "wife or mother" not "wife and mother" (and, let's be clear, men have this issue too, it's the Madonna/Whore complex, but I think although that term was coined for men, it's far more common in women). They decide I'm going to be one (Madonna) for the H and someone else (whore) for the AP. Where what the BS wants is BOTH. You don't need to choose one or the other, you can be both people with me.

And if your not, you wind up where I was, you really don't know the other person because they've only shown you one side of themselves. Then they have an A and the other side, so long repressed, comes out with XXX vengeance. The sad thing, especially for the men I know, they are DYING to see the other side too.

If you want more, you are going to have to bring up the issue again. That compliance doesn't cut it. Maybe she has it in her, maybe she doesn't

I agree with this obviously and with Numb&dumb's comments. There is too much "mindreading" needed in this situation. Someone else pointed this quote out the other day, and I have always liked it "Expectations are pre-meditated disappointments". You expect for her to understand, but maybe you feel like you have drawn the picture for her? I understand why you do not want to say "Hey, I need to have that anal sex to move forward" because then when it happens it would be compliance.

I will be honest...as a woman who has done this act (not with AP, but with H - this is one of those things for me that I need to have a helluva amount of trust and probably a ringon my finger from that person to even think about doing), it is never something I desire to do. It will always be a form of compliance. It's not something we do a lot in our normal rotation, but I am open to doing it from time to time for variance. But, I will tell you it is something that will always, always be for his benefit. It's not that I have a mental block. I have learned a lot about it that makes it doable and not painful, but there isn't anything in there that is set up for pleasure.

I can almost guarantee...and this is with 90% certainty that she wasn't thinking she wanted something in her butt. I can go into what she likely was thinking, but it's not desire it still goes along with compliance. There may be women who like it, but I think that would be a rare woman. When gay men participate in it there is at least the benefit of the prostate massage - women don't have anything in there. At best, it's just "well it doesn't hurt but hopefully it's over soon" and at worst "this is the worst feeling I have ever felt in my life"

I still 100% get why it's important to you, and only part of it is for sexual reasons. I just think you might have to realign your expectations about desire versus compliance on that specific act. I am not saying she couldn't like it but the probability on that is pretty low. You talk about all the conversations you have with guys, well this is one I have had with women. Either they are a strict no on the subject, they think it's alright (I have a friend who does this regularly with her husband but she only does it because he likes it. I am sure he thinks she loves it) or there is no other opinion given. The only person who has ever told me they know women who love it are men.

So, just saying.

[This message edited by hikingout at 10:35 AM, March 22nd (Friday)]

I realized after posting that my question could come off as insensitive. The sorry about that. I didn't care about my fCH's feelings for years after dday.

I was wondering because almost all the posts seem to be only about the sex. I understand that's the most important thing to some, but there are still other issues that need to be addressed for true R. There can be a lot of emotional and psychological issues around sex for women that I don't think men can fully understand.

It's ok if you won't accept that. I just wonder how successful R can be if you don't.

And, that's where the compliance vs. desire comes in. I don't want just compliance on anything. I want desire. If I were just getting compliance, especially wrt sex, I would not want it. I wouldn't want my fCH to tell me he loves me because I said I need to hear it if he doesn't feel it.

But, those words can't compare to sex. That's on another level.

Men and women put a huge amount of time and energy into courting. And I think for both, when we get married, there is a tendency to think, “Whew! Thank goodness I don't have to do that courting thing anymore. I don't have to spend an hour on make-up; I don't have to shave every day; I can wear my comfortable baggy pants; I don't have to watch every little thing I say and do; I don't have to be constantly stroking.” The person we spent so much effort on before marriage, we can now take somewhat for granted.

And that is the beginning of the end.

And, of course, the courting starts all over with the AP.

At best, it's just "well it doesn't hurt but hopefully it's over soon" and at worst "this is the worst feeling I have ever felt in my life"

I don't know if the goal is to turn this into a straw poll, but since we dance around this topic a lot, what the hell, I'll follow hikingout's lead and address it head (butt?) on. I have had a few recent episodes of anal where I enjoyed it a lot more than I ever thought I would. It's still never going to be my first choice act, but I'm starting to think it may actually be possible for me to achieve orgasm from it. However, a lot of the turn-on factor is BH's pleasure, both his reactions to the sensations themselves and his excitement at getting to do something kinky. And that, in turn, makes me feel wild and sexy and more into it than I would be otherwise. It's one more example of arousal being driven by the brain at least as much as it is by physical sensation.

I will also second the other end of the reaction spectrum. The first time I did it (and I've only ever done it with BH), I thought my poor butt would rip right open. Anyone who is thinking of adding this to the menu should really do their research on relaxation techniques first, because the tendency when you're nervous is to clench, and the result is an anus that feels like it's being hit with a blowtorch.

Up until this moment, I've never really been all that concerned about someone figuring out my IRL identity, but now I'm rethinking that policy.

[This message edited by BraveSirRobin at 12:14 PM, March 22nd (Friday)]

You are the first woman I have actually ever heard say that. I stand corrected. I might need to reconsider different weekend plans.

I dated a woman for a time who was very into this. Probably more than 50% of the time this was what we did, and she did orgasm from it. She was the first to initiate it in our relationship. I learned that I myself am sort of "meh" about it.

That is what my husband says, BFTG. He likes some variety, so we'll just throw that in now and again but he really prefers other things much more. The times we have done it have just as often been my suggestion as it being requested to be honest. And there have been times I have gotten a "nah, not now".

Maybe it's a difference between partners enthusiasm about it, because I can at least read BSR's post and I can think of other things that might seem like they would benefit him more but the mental part of it is very stimulating because of how much he likes it. I never heard it that way about this specific thing before but I understand what she is saying.

Wow...this thread...

After finding out about my wife's affairs, my vanilla duty-sex missionary style wife and I started having conversations about lots of things regarding sex. This one in particular, and it happened pretty quick after d-day during HB. Now it is something she initiates, and although she has not had an orgasm from it, experiencing her reactions and enjoyment have been pretty amazing. I know she gave boring vanilla sex to all of the APs and faked orgasms for them, but this would have never been on the menu. Now it is, so do I say 'Thanks' to infidelity?

YMMV