SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I love this ^^^^.

Me too, so glad it went well and worked out for you Brave!

I also, implausibly, was feeling horny

That happens to me sometimes too. Sick as a dog and horny (hornier than normal). I'm sure there's some explanation for it, but I've not looked it up. Interestingly, I did look up why I'm so horny if I drink too much the night before and wind up with a hangover, there's some chemical process going on. But that's another great example, puking my guts up and horny as hell.. It's crazy, but it's happened to me before (and I'm always horny with a hangover, puke or no puke!).

Now, I want to be clear that I am still and always following the policy that BH's needs come first in R.

I'm going to say, I cannot speak for your H, but I suspect I know where he's coming from. His needs aren't always about him. In fact, I suspect what he felt, or putting it another way, what I would have felt, was that "she needs me" and especially if that's a "sexual need", it's incredibly fulfilling to me to "help" with that. What I'm trying (and failing) to say, where you are thinking "but I was only worried about my needs", when your needs are "please f**k me and put me to bed", those are satisfying, in an incredibly attractive way, his needs. "I need you to F me" is up there with the most seductive things a woman can say to me, it's a need that I enjoy, and it's ONLY me who can fill that need for you. So while you might feel selfish saying (and I'm not saying this is what you said, I'm embellishing it for the sake of clarity) "Please come upstairs and go down on me until I orgasm a few times so I can feel good in this sea of awful/sick feelings" that literally could not be further from the truth. Even typing that out is mildly erotic to me, thinking that there's this "need" in my wife that only I can take care of is like catnip to me. And it's a huge part of the reason that sexless or low sex marriages are so hard to deal with; because that's as clear a message as you can get, "Your not needed" or, even worse, "Your not wanted except for the money/cooking/babies/fixing the car". Your a tool to me, if you break, I'll find another tool, but I don't "need" you.

Also, the other thing, you put your H into a tremendous position of power by saying that. It's venerable to say that, he could have said "no", or even something more hurtful "what's the matter with you, aren't you sick" (something my W would have said pre-A, for sure). You give him the power by saying that, HE chooses, not you if he want's to fulfill that need for you. He could have said a million things negative and you had no control over it, you let go and let him choose. And that's also very erotic to me; I decide if we're going to have sex or not, if I'm going to fill that need for you. Now, just because I'm always going to say "HELL YES, see you in 45 seconds", in no way negates that you; by saying that, are handing the power to me.

I'm so glad it worked out for you. What I say might not always be popular, and it might not even be true for most/many other men. But I'll tell you the truth, without "varnish" and without the things "I'm supposed to say" jumbled in there. And I'm glad that at least in this situation, it helped you and your H connect (and battle that pesky cold with some hopefully A+ level orgasms).

So silly.

My H wanted everything in the universe to be about him, and I wanted affirmation and value. Sex was the vehicle.

But if you want to torture yourself with painful untruths, have at it. Enjoy the pain.

It may be about reasons other than sex, but the WS is investing more time, effort & energy into having sex with their AP. The AP is their priority. Plan A.

I sometimes think that people post stuff like this out of jealousy. After all, if people are able to reconcile, then they don't have to go through a painful D, lose half of everything, and lose friends/family. Those that do go through D simply must tell them that they are "sexual plan B" to make themselves feel better about their lot in life?

By the same token, I could say that all reconciling BSes HAVE to convince themselves that it wasn't about the sex, that they weren't sexual Plan B during the A, in order to allow themselves to reconcile.

[This message edited by GoldenR at 11:54 AM, March 24th (Sunday)]

As far as losing everything?

Aside from a serial cheating wife, the only thing i lost was the money she took when she cleaned us out right after she was caught. I kept the kids, and literally EVERYTHING else that wasn't specifically hers.

I don't feel you have healed, GoldenR. If you won so much and are happy in your new life, why such bitterness? P.S. I feel you have confused OIN's post and mine's. OIN posted nothing about generalization, I did.

[This message edited by SisterMilkshake at 11:51 AM, March 24th (Sunday)]

Having a strong opinion does not equal bitterness.

And youre right about mixing you guys up. I will correct.

Yeah, I understand that having strong opinions can confuse people on who you really are. However, I will stand by my opinion that I feel that you are not healed. And, that there is bitterness within you. I am not saying this to be snarky towards you. I am just posting what I feel in my gut about you and that maybe you have some more healing that needs to be done. Bitterness isn't a good thing to have festering within oneself. My concern is for you.

[This message edited by SisterMilkshake at 11:59 AM, March 24th (Sunday)]

And that's fine.

I will add that my example of how a BS would have to convince themselves, I don't feel that way. It was an example used to illustrate the opposite generalization of what OIN posted.

As far as sexual plan A/B, the BS is always plan B.

It may be about reasons other than sex, but the WS is investing more time, effort & energy into having sex with their AP. The AP is their priority. Plan A.

Maybe another way to view this is that for the WS, THEY are Plan A for themselves, which always relegates the betrayed spouse to Plan B. It was ALWAYS about them, and had nothing to do with the betrayed spouse or the AP...the AP could have been anyone really. Just another viewpoint, but in the end, the BS is still Plan B.

Hoo boy.

The "who's jealous of whom" debate reminds me of the days when I was a SAHM of small children, and I'd read these really aggressive fights on Facebook between mothers who stayed home and mothers with full time careers. Everyone seemed to regard it as a zero sum game. Mothers who were engaged in the mind-numbing day to day routine of entertaining toddlers and keeping up a home had to feel like it mattered that it was THEM doing it, otherwise why were they giving up professional respect and an attractive paycheck for something that a babysitter could do? Mothers who went out to work had to feel like their kids could be beautifully cared for by the people they chose to do it, because otherwise what did that say about them as parents, that they valued that paycheck and their own fulfillment more than they valued their children?

It was rare for anyone to be able to hear that everyone's situation is different. Everyone's circumstances, needs and challenges are different. Even as a SAHM, I had my doubts about whether I was really doing the job as well as a nanny would. After all, a nanny would be trained, experienced, fully "on" with my kids, instead of hiding in the bathroom for an extra five minutes to keep from losing my shit. My kids grew up knowing they were loved. My high-powered businesswoman friend's kids also grew up knowing they were loved. I've seen some pretty dramatic mistakes in parenting, but they were sprinkled all across the spectrum of parents who worked outside and parents who stayed home.

Everyone here has something they're jealous of and something they're glad they didn't have to face. I know I do. I've read about reconciliations that inspire me and reconciliations that made me privately wince. And for every BS here, the betrayal they experienced is the worst (or very close to the worst) thing they've ever experienced. The road out of it is a road that none of us wanted to have to take. I've very rarely felt like anyone was posting from a position of having "won" or "lost" compared to others on SI. If anything, I think the trickiest emotions come from people wanting to help people, not keep them down. The cry of "Just D now, before you get your heart broken again" is driven by people's desire to spare new arrivals even more pain and regret. It's often erroneously applied as a one-size-fits-all approach, but that doesn't mean the emotions behind the advice are malevolent or manipulative.

I've sometimes found GoldenR's posts to be pretty harsh, but actually, if you read his profile, he may be the biggest closet optimist of anyone on here. To go through multiple infidelities with different women and still have faith in love, and trust in marriage, is breathtaking, IMO.

[This message edited by BraveSirRobin at 12:23 PM, March 24th, 2019 (Sunday)]

he may be the biggest closet optimist of anyone on here.

Yeah...no!

[This message edited by SisterMilkshake at 12:20 PM, March 24th (Sunday)]

My reply to SMS came before she edited, and made me sound all cold.

SMS, I appreciate your concern. Thanks.

Having children and EITHER parent staying home without a prenup is taking a gun, loading it, putting it to your head and trusting the other person to NEVER pull the trigger, no matter how mad they are, what some OM/OW tell them, or what way the wind blows. It's crazy, and, no, I would never recommend anyone do it. And remember, a prenup can only protect you against alimony, CS is derived by formula, and.. If you make a lot of money and your partner stays home, well.. Your CS payments could be shocking. It's knowable though, at least that's not at the court's discretion, you can look it up ahead of time.

Sadly, the current legal environment has made having children a landmine of financial pain for lots of people (men and women, but, by and large, mostly men).

What an unbelievably bleak and negative view of children. It is premised on the notion that children are nothing but little financial burdens who inject no benefit into the relationship with the parents. In fact, many parents, possibly most, find that their most profound joys come from their relationship with their children. This includes divorced parents who co-parent.

CS is premised on the notion that there are two possible sources of support for a child – parents or taxpayers – and of those two, the parents are the logical first look. In addition, there is the notion that a child ought to be supported at a level concomitant with the parent’s income. This, ultimately, benefits society as a whole.

The amounts awarded for CS are fair and based on the real costs associated with children. If anything, in general the awards are on the low side. If there is unfairness, it is because historically courts tended to award custody to mothers over fathers, even where fathers were able and willing to provide physical care. That is changing somewhat as chauvinistic older judges retire.

As to a SAH parent, anybody who has actually raised a kid can tell you that there are intangible benefits to children who have a SAH parent, especially in the younger years. You can’t put a price tag on this, but it manifests itself in confidence and achievement in later years. This is why so many parents opt to do this if possible. Further, in most urban metros, if a parent’s wage-earning potential is about $75,000 or less pre-tax, it’s cheaper to have that parent stay home and care for the kids full time.

No fault D is a good idea, but, coupled with the rest of D law.. Well, it's wildly unfair. There are a lot of men paying alimony to a wife, who's happily shacked up with another man and will never again work a day in her life (and the same in reverse, only far less common). And there are a lot of women and some men collecting CS payments that allow them to never work again, or at least not until the child is 18 years old. The system is broken badly, the concept that I could be paying tons of money to my cheating wife is just.. Well, it's so wrong that it hardly requires explanation.

The system isn’t badly broken. The ability of a former spouse to live with a new boyfriend or girlfriend (rather than marry) and still collect full spousal support is a loophole that exists in many states that ought to be closed, but otherwise the calculation of spousal support in most states is pretty common sense. The premise behind no-fault divorce is that the law should not concern itself with investigating why people divorce. Rather, it should concern itself with allocating resources in a way that minimizes the expense to taxpayers. There are many forms of infidelity that lead to divorce. A spouse who is a spendthrift (financial infidelity), or who abuses drugs or alcohol. A spouse who beats up the other spouse. Etc. In the end, most divorces occur because one spouse does not feel the other spouse is fulfilling his or her wedding vows – some version of infidelity. The court system should not be burdened with this level of inter-personal dispute. The support-paying spouse should do the vetting before getting married.

Well, it's a pretty deep closet, I admit!

Yeah...no!

Thanks for having my back, SMS! I got a reputation to protect!

[This message edited by GoldenR at 12:49 PM, March 24th (Sunday)]

GoldenR, anytime.

Very well said, BFTG.

I don't think I was plan b anything, at least not wrt the OW. My fCH wasn't on the hunt for someone to replace me. He didn't come back to me because the OW dumped him.

BTW, RIO, do you realize that, statistically, mothers, and by extension the innocent children, are more likely to live in poverty after a D, even with CS?

BTW, RIO, do you realize that, statistically, mothers, and by extension the innocent children, are more likely to live in poverty after a D, even with CS?

I did for a while. It sucked. And i never got a dime in CS.

Thinking about Plan A vs Plan B.

In my mind, the cheaters Plan A is above all, themselves. What they want. How they feel. Self centered. Basically Solipsism.

Everyone else, the BS, the AP, the kids are all Plan B, C, and D. They just change position in the pecking order based on the desires of the cheater at that moment.