SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Agree with heartbreaker.

For me there was no detailed cost analysis - it was the opposite. I went deep into denial about what was happening, I told myself stories, anything to let me go through with it. I was so unhappy I just wanted to escape so badly as things bubbled up I just pushed it down and gave myself these justifications and stories. Reality was too much of a buzz kill to deal with it. I was coping with my unhappiness by having an affair, there is no logic in that - but I was coping with my affair by not really addressing anything reality-based about it. Cognitive dissonance was deep.

I don’t know if you have ever known an alcoholic or a drug addict or simply a person who will continue to smoke cigarettes while they use oxygen every day. The compelling reason I had an affair was to avoid pain so whatever it was killing or whatever it was doing was secondary to that. The feeling better over feeling shitty was what I was chasing. So no very very little evaluation went into it.

Sometimes I wish there were more WSes posting here who up and left the BS, just so I have a better idea of what the hell was specifically going through my ex-wife's head. Obviously, given the nature of this forum, there will be way more WSes who are trying to save their marriage than those who simply up and left without a second thought. Part of me is just curious what flavor of self-delusion she went through, but I'm sure part of me wants to take stock of the success rate of such a destructive life choice.

@abandondd guy

You and me both, brother.

My WS up and left me, exit affair style, to get back with her abusive ex boyfriend of ten years past.

Not many people relate to exit affairs on here.

Would greatly love more WS’s to weigh on that thought process as well.

Sometimes I wish there were more WSes posting here who up and left the BS, just so I have a better idea of what the hell was specifically going through my ex-wife's head. Obviously, given the nature of this forum, there will be way more WSes who are trying to save their marriage than those who simply up and left without a second thought. Part of me is just curious what flavor of self-delusion she went through, but I'm sure part of me wants to take stock of the success rate of such a destructive life choice.

^^This!!

I can armchair psychology the shit out of my XH. I know him pretty damn well, so I could list off a whole bunch of reasons why he did it.

IMO exit affairs have a completely different level of delusion - they must, in order to go through with it to that level.

Sometimes I wish there were more WSes posting here who up and left the BS, just so I have a better idea of what the hell was specifically going through my ex-wife's head.

I can't speak for your XWW, but I am guessing that WS that choose to leave the marriage and continue with the AP are still in the affair mindset.

I'm guessing she used similar justifications for her affair that myself and many WS use:

-The marriage was falling apart

-She was unhappy/unsatisfied and found a way to blame you for her feelings

-She was feeling a lack of self confidence and was looking for attention from her AP

When the A comes to light, the WS is either ready to accept responsibility and try to fix the marriage, or is not. If not, the WS will continue with the justifications, and blaming and decide to end the marriage rather than do some serious soul searching and moral inventory.

My WS up and left me, exit affair style, to get back with her abusive ex boyfriend of ten years past.

This is horribly sad.

Again, I can't speak for your XWW.

I do have a history of being in abusive relationships prior to meeting my husband.

Getting out of that abuse cycle is HARD.

Most women go back to their abusers at least once if not multiple times.

One of my exs who was physically and emotionally abusive towards me is the father of my daughter. We legally HAVE to have contact, as he sees our daughter every other weekend.

We broke up when my daughter was a baby.

I met my current husband when my daughter was 2 (she is 10 now).

My ex continued to be emotionally abusive to me even after we broke up.

It took many years of therapy to recognize the patterns he and I would get into and to get off of that ride.

Was your XWW in contact with him throughout your marriage?

If so, I am going to speak from experience and say:

-He was emotionally abusing her while you two were married. The abuse cycles between the two of them never ended.

-Your XWW has extremely low self confidence. She has been convinced, for years, that she is nothing and absolutely worthless.

-Your XWW never felt like she was good enough for you and was constantly self sabotaging. It's a self fulfilling prophecy.

-It's entirely possible that your XWW is addicted to the "honeymoon" phase of the abuse cycle.

-It's also entirely possible (and likely) that she struggles with co-dependency issues.

From what I’ve learned, everything and anything but the BS. I get it—the hardest thing to accept is the affair had NOTHING TO DO WITH US. That realization blows. I’d rather be hated than be the object of indifference. That’s why it’s so hard.

But in that, maybe, just maybe, we can find empathy for the brokenness of the individual. That’s the grace that’s needed on the path towards reconciliation.

I’d venture to say they cannot comprehend what they really did! I think if someone’s been loyal the entire marriage no one can really get the mass destruction and loss of the marriage. I said to my fWH he killed us and our marriage. He was like but we can go back to where we or better. I’m looking at him

Like dude you’re out of your mind... this thing blew up like an atomic bomb 💣 there’s no putting it back.

I've speculated up and down how my ex felt before and during the affair, but it's never as good as actually *knowing* what was going through her head. It's just a shame that she and I will never have that mature adult sitdown to discuss this whole situation, since it's doubtful we'll ever see each other again. Not that I need it, and not that it would do either of us any good...I just feel that it's a sad day when two people in their 30s can't have a frank and mature conversation to clear the air, especially when they've shared so much history. I feel this way about *any* kind of relationship, romantic or otherwise.

I guess I get frustrated with people whose brokenness rubs up against my life but who lack the requisite communication skills to resolve negative outcomes. People who "just don't get it, and never will". I'm painfully far from "perfect", whatever that means, but I feel like I spent a great deal of my adult life reflecting on my behavior and trying to be less of a negative influence in the world. I guess I expect that out of others...but for some that's just too much to ask.

He was like but we can go back to where we or better. I’m looking at him

Like dude you’re out of your mind... this thing blew up like an atomic bomb 💣 there’s no putting it back.

I can completely relate to this discussion you had with your WH as it was one we had. Hello!! We will never be the same, I will never be the same, he will never be the same. How can you ever go back? Besides, like effin hell I would ever go back to that. Once this smacked me across the face, I realized immediately how I was the only one holding up my end of the M. NO MORE.

My XWW...Lol...she was the worst of the worst. Actually thought that by telling me that she only was going to be with him for a year and then stop with him and dedicate herself to me and the family...

"So you see?! I picked you from the beginning!"

And then i unpicked her.

As someone whose ex-wife also had an exit affair and married her AP, I can only speculate as to her reasons. While we were still married and she was having her affair, I knew something was very wrong and I tried my best to get her to talk to me so we could figure it out and get back to a good place, but she simply wasn't willing. Like so many other WSs, she was absolutely terrible at communicating. She'd bottle up her resentments and insist everything was fine and secretly fume at me for not living up to the expectations she refused to make known. When she finally told me she wanted a divorce, she had a whole laundry list of things she unloaded on me that she was upset or resentful about, most of which were completely absurd.

Even though we have to co-parent I still don't talk to her about it because I'm not interested anymore. Unless it's about our daughter, she can keep it to herself. I had to just accept that she's a defective human being who I made a poor choice in marrying and focus on learning from that poor choice so that I don't make one like it at some point in the future.

To be honest, the only circumstance under which I can even imagine being open to a conversation with her about it is if she were to quite literally prostrate herself at my feet, acknowledge that she's a piece of trash, apologize for all the damage she did to me and our daughter, and beg the privilege of having a moment of my personal time. I couldn't settle for anything less than utter capitulation at this point. But I know that'll never happen.

IMO exit affairs have a completely different level of delusion - they must, in order to go through with it to that level.

I'm possibly a super confused minority, as my WS planned his A completely, as an exit affair. Once going well, he told me he thought we should separate, as it (our relationship) wasn't working. Didn't admit to anyone else being involved, didn't give any particular reasons. So he really didn't care about any consequences, as there weren't going to be any.

Unfortunately, he changed his mind and stayed. So an exit affair that was aborted at the last minute. Wth was he thinking? If he hadn't have told me he was leaving then, I'd never have found out about the A, 20 years later. He never saw that coming, that's for sure.

"I never thought you'd find out" is the mantra for many WS and for me it fits with the "fantasy" mindset.

Therefore I can believe those that say that no evaluation goes into it, because to evaluate would be for it to start being "real". Could my wife honestly believe that AP was worth a good M, three kids, financial security, the lovely life we had? He wasn't worth 1% of that, and he lives a long way away so there could have been no "practical" exit.

Better instead to wrap it up in a fantasy and put walls up around that.

I suspect discovery is incredibly shocking to WS, because it never occurred to them it was going to happen. And suddenly reality and fantasy come crashing together and they also have to completely re-evaluate everything. One of the most obvious manifestations of that is how many WS/AP go from soulmates to throwing each other under the bus in a nano-second. Reality vs fantasy at it's finest!

I'd be interested to hear from WS on how they felt at that moment.

And to answer the original question, no I don't believe the WS truly realise what they had and the fact that they have lost it forever, regardless of how well the future M continues. My WW will never have me 100% again. Maybe she never should have - it's a harsh lesson for all us BS.

Had this very same conversation with Husband for the millionth time last evening.

The context of the conversation is refining over time. That much is changing; unsure yet if the further refinement of the conversation is helping anything.

I pointed out that when Husband's indiscretion occurred, it was a big red flag that the two of us were in very different places emotionally and psychologically re: the marriage.

I would have literally not done anything remotely like what Husband did- step across that line, period, much less step across it for a casual, anonymous physical encounter.

Back at the time, immediately after DDay1, it was easy for me to rug sweep because Husband "confessed" so ambiguously (left out a lot of detail that spoke to his own involvement, facilitation, participation, perpetuation) that I had an impression of the thing that was incomplete and inaccurate.

Now, several months following DDay2, I struggle with Husband's mindset not only in the moments immediately preceding his overt decision to step across that line, I struggle with *everything* I was ignoring at that time, *all* of the red flags that said that my husband wasn't nearly as married as I was.

I rug swept a LOT of other incidents that weren't sexual/physical infidelities back then. I treated each incident like he treated each incident: unrelated to anything else. Each incident was its own little universe, and he had rationalizations out his wazoo for each and every one of them.

It was, largely, a maturity issue. He's grown out of most of the acting out that was going on at the time.

He's only now facing how abjectly selfish he's been for big chunks of our marriage, and in major decisions that impacted both of us, and why he was so selfish. Surprise! It has little to nothing to do with me- or whatever love or loyalty he has for me. It's about self-esteem issues and servicing anxiety issues.

But back to that moment, right before he overtly, physically crossed that bright line; there was absolutely no ambiguity in that moment, there was no way to call what was about to happen anything but cheating- and he did it anyway.

What was happening between his ears in that moment?

As of now, I'm left with two ways of seeing it and him in that moment:

1. What this other woman had going on physically, either her attributes or how she presented them or both, were so appealing to him that it was worth it to break his vows and compromise himself and us, or

2. She wasn't all that, but we weren't all that either. Breaking the vow was no big deal because he wasn't all that invested anyway.

3. Or, actually, a third possibility: She was what she was, this opportunity was what it was, he weighed out the cost benefit analysis for what it was, and decided that (regardless of how hot she was, or not) he'd never get caught. All of the weight of the situation then shifts to basic deception: no matter how hot she was (or not,) no matter how turned on he was (or not,) no matter how invested he was in the marriage (or not) the point was, he could get away with it. I'd never find out. In which case, the entire weight of breaking the vow is not resting on temptation, or on lack of commitment, but on a willingness to lie to me- a willingness to lie to me for a cheap, tawdry interlude with a stranger.

None of these three looks is good on Husband.

I honestly do not understand, as in, "This does not compute!" how Husband could go from being so fucking nonchalant about breaking our vows to put his hands on another woman, enjoy the hell out of it when it was happening, perpetuate it, and mere minutes later, when it was over, THEN he feels overwhelming guilt and shame.

How do you go from "so aroused that I forgot I was married/being married suddenly didn't seem to matter all that much in the moment" to "GUILT AND SHAME!" mere minutes later- AFTER IT WAS OVER? How does that even happen?

The difference between the moment before, when his mental math blew our vows all to hell, and the moment after, when GUILT AND SHAME, was... what?

Husband was the same man, in the same place (actually, standing on the sidewalk outside of the place) with a little less cash in his pocket and a busted marriage vow.

How in the hell can you care so much about busting a vow *after* you've busted it, when you obviously didn't give a shit about busting it in the moment before it happened?

As close as I can get to understanding this is that Husband didn't know how it would feel to be a cheat and a liar until he was one.

And I don't even trust this, I don't feel like I can lean on this as any assurance about the future- although I should, really- because, ultimately, It's All About Husband.

He didn't like the way he felt about himself in the aftermath.

On one hand I feel like I still don't factor into the equation all that much. His feelings of remorse and regret have to do with dirtying himself up, not with screwing me over. I didn't matter before it happened, and the only reason I matter after it happened was because my name is on the legal contract that he broke. I could be anybody, or nobody at all to him.

On the other hand, to whatever degree, every human being on this planet has some component of mercenary narcissism going on. This basic self-interest is the premise behind the idea that real change happens when people want to change themselves, for themselves, not for anyone else.

My best protection against any future/further infidelity is not Husband's loyalty toward me. My best protection lies with Husband's loyalty toward himself, and toward his own integrity.

And this may play back into the selfishness, and the self-esteem issues, and the servicing of anxieties as well.

Husband is going to do whatever in the moment Husband decides to do to alleviate/service those stresses.

He can either cope with those stresses in unhealthy ways: impulsively chase validation and distraction, or put pressure on me to "fix it" so his anxiety subsides...

... or he can cope in healthy ways that primarily nurture himself but ultimately will nurture both of us: invest in protecting his integrity and the image of himself that he wishes to see. Make better choices. Think beyond the moment. Pay attention to something besides the pain, or at least pay attention to something beyond that shiny new stimulus that is, for the moment, drowning out the pain.

There's a bit of "put the oxygen mask on yourself first" going on here- but that's a hell of a lot healthier than "put the cyanide mask on yourself first," which is what was happening back then, if that makes any sense at all.

I'm rambling. This is all a swirl in my head at this moment. But I am beginning to get a glimmer of a clue that one of the factors that is possibly informing some WS to do what they do, to make bad choices, to throw away something of great and precious value with both hands, is that their "currency calibration" is off. They don't recognize "great and precious value" in large part because they don't value themselves enough to make the tough call and do the right thing.

If they valued themselves and their own integrity enough, they wouldn't do this thing that's beneath them, and the marriage would be protected as an extension of the value they place in themselves. There would be no valuing or devaluing of the marriage as an entity separate from their Id in the moment before blowing it up to chase some carnal or venal pleasure.

I've speculated up and down how my ex felt before and during the affair, but it's never as good as actually *knowing* what was going through her head. It's just a shame that she and I will never have that mature adult sitdown to discuss this whole situation, since it's doubtful we'll ever see each other again. Not that I need it, and not that it would do either of us any good...I just feel that it's a sad day when two people in their 30s can't have a frank and mature conversation to clear the air, especially when they've shared so much history. I feel this way about *any* kind of relationship, romantic or otherwise.

I guess I get frustrated with people whose brokenness rubs up against my life but who lack the requisite communication skills to resolve negative outcomes. People who "just don't get it, and never will". I'm painfully far from "perfect", whatever that means, but I feel like I spent a great deal of my adult life reflecting on my behavior and trying to be less of a negative influence in the world. I guess I expect that out of others...but for some that's just too much to ask.

I can very much relate to what AbandonedGuy has said above. The difference is that I know at some point I will be able to have this conversation with my XW. We have remained in contact, albeit occasional. A couple of months ago I actually got a very brief 'sorry' in an unrelated email for what she did to our marriage. We are both midlife and have an adult son.

However I'm angry and upset with myself that I still actually care that I want to know her 'truth'. And as BS's we all know on here that whatever she says will never be good enough to justify the way she not only managed to blow up a 25 year relationship but didn't want to make any effort to try and save it (whether it was salvageable or not?). Does it matter whether as far as she was concerned it was an exit affair or whether she wanted to continue being securely married whilst enjoying a bit on the side? The end result was the same.

It all comes down to a toxic cocktail of shitty coping and communication skills, shame, avoidance and downright selfishness. The best I can hope for is that we both come out of this horrific experience wiser and better people, but again I really wish I didn't give a flying F%@k about how she might have changed! I suspect her issues are far too ingrained for her to be able to have the necessary introspection and desire to change at this relatively late stage in her life.

Apologies to the OP as my previous rambling clearly doesn't answer the question, but as soon as I find out y'all will be the first to know!

Bet you can't wait huh?

((crazyblindsided)) That is so sad. There certainly are some horrible monsters in this world. I hope you're doing better.

I also crave total prostration and admission that she made the biggest mistake of her life. For as much as I bitch about not being able to have a discussion with her, deep down I'm relieved that I never have to see her again...I know she wouldn't even give me a "woops" let alone an apology of some kind. Better when they just blink out of existence and you never cross paths with them again, especially if they're somewhat narcy.

If you’re going to party, you’re not going to think about that hang over the next day. It’s a total buzz kill, and if you were concerned with it you probably wouldn’t be pounding drinks down in the first place.

No and yes. I really knew it would hurt if she found out. Not to that extent and I thought it was a "it isn't that bad I chose you get over it" type of thing. I really think most cake eating waywards think that. Like some magic pill that makes everything okay because our egos are inflated and the BS won a prize and "everything is forgivable because we chose them and will never do it again after our one time of having our chance to have our hand in the cookie jar". I hoped she didn't find out. I never looked at her as a human being with rights. I looked at her as an object to fulfill my wants and needs. I calculated how far I could take it banking on her unconditional love. I knew I was hurting her and didn't care. I had put her in a parent role which let me take her for granted and took advantage of her love. I did really think I could control the whole situation and stop when I took things too far. It never was supposed to go past flirting and teasing, but soon that wasn't enough and I knew I would take whatever to get the attention monster fed.