SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

In hindsight, I should've tried to go with HB.

Fenderguy, I think you're missing the point here. It's hysterical, and not in a funny way. The desperate 'need' to bond with a WS is a royal mind-fuck and only adds to a few new twists, turns and drops to the already insane rollercoaster. I suppose there's a "choice" aspect to it, but that never occurred my unhinged butt.

HB hits some people harder than it does others. Some people never experience it. I'm not sure whether or not it helps a BS or not. That, I suppose, also depends upon the WS.

HB was denying my need for safety actual love and intimacy by exchanging sex for love and comittment to our marriage that never came. We never made it past this. Perhaps we never had it to begin with.

I deeply regret HB. I would have welcomed intimacy. While it may have helped the trauma and terror of abandonment and rejection, because he lied to me, HB unfortunately served to bond me even more to a man who did not love me.

For me HB and marital intimacy were one in the same. I could not separate sex from love because I had never stopped loving this man. For him, though, had already left me in so many ways and so long ago that the HB was NOT marital lovemaking. It was like him masturbating but with me as the object instead of the online pics, chats and hotel hookup of the OW.

He maybe substituted HB with me for these other things for a short time maybe because I discovered things (long protracted tt that never resulted in the full truth).

But we never got to or back to intimacy from HB because that would have required him to tell the fullTRUTH and make a re committment to the marriage and neither ever happened.

My situation is genuinely dark and aweful and involved a lot of terrible things including a whole group of people who were crossing sexual and emotional boundaries online and in person with each other regularly. So during the whole False R and HB I was actually being ridiculed and talked about by him/them as a not good enough spouse who deserved to be cheated on and lied to.

HB is not real love. We never made it to or back to "real love".

It was as much of a lie to me as the A. He went back to groups (if he ever even left them) even after I suggested committing to intimacy at least twice a day (to address the lie he told her that I was sexually withholding frigid and cold...pathetic on my part I know but being a deeply sensual and sexual woman that allegation stabbed me in the heart and left me deeply wounded and feeling very inadequate). HB was wounded fear based intimacy.

I traded a quick divorce on the basis of adultry for more abuse, blame, shame, bullying and abuse by proxy by the members of this group, and threats from him that if I did not give him escalatingly darker soulless sexual things he wanted then he would get them somewhere else....like the women in this group he was in would give him....

HB was not the truth of healthy safe consensual intimacy. He lied that it was just a PA online thing so I was exposed to the prospect of STDS that may show up even years later (HPV for example). We had been married for over 32 and neither of us had STDs so we were in very safe territory there.

HB was transient. When I set a hard boundary that he chose between his marriage to me with healthy frequently marital intimacy or the high of the porn, masturbation and the women in the group he chose them.

[This message edited by Shehawk at 2:13 PM, June 28th (Friday)]

My H and I did HB for about 18 months after dday. Which at the time I didn’t know that’s what it was. He wanted to have sex a lot. 5-6 times a week. After 18 months it was about 3-4 times a week. Now it’s about once a week. Which don’t seem to bother us it’s once a week. We are a lot more connected in other ways so I would say we are back to our normal sex life. I didn’t learn what it was until I joined SI. I didn’t really question it at the time why he wanted to have sex a lot. Maybe this was his way to re-connect with me.

HB was wounded fear based intimacy.

Shehawk, thank you for sharing your experiences. I can only imagine how those blocks of salt felt on already painful wounds. Your WH's behavior is "good" example of why HB can be dangerous for the BS.

[This message edited by Unhinged at 11:48 AM, June 28th (Friday)]

I deeply regret HB.

HB is literally the ONLY thing I'm happy about from the A. Yes, I learned more about myself and my W. But the cost was way too high. But our sex life has done a complete 180. It's wonderful, it's what I always wanted from our relationship and it's a lot of fun. Yes, the intimacy aspect of it has been impacted negatively (not because of HB, because of the A), but the sexual side is pretty darn wonderful.

No, I wouldn't have paid the price (being a BS) to get to HB level sex. It wasn't/isn't worth it. But it's as close to "worth it" as I can possibly imagine for a BS who's into/enjoys sex. It's a salve to the wounds, that's for sure. And there's no way our M was going to continue without it, not after the sexual details of the A came out (porn star sex, as many times a day as he could manage, not unexpected, but totally 180 from our sex life before the A). Nope, not gonna happen. The "new normal" was set by the A behavior; I'd seen how she acted when she was "really into" someone, and I was either going to have that for myself and for us, or D, simple as that.

HB is how I know that you can have really great sex and still feel horrible about it in hindsight. I feel physically ill thinking of it now. So sexually desperate for someone who had betrayed me so profoundly. That's pathetic and I don't like being pathetic. It still wounds my pride.

Loved, “I hysterically bonded the stuffing out of my WW near daily for months after DDay...”. 😂. Can totally relate. We’re only 2+ months post dday, and there has definitely been an uptick in frequency and intensity. Married 21 years, sex had become pretty mundane. I’m sure it will taper off, but have just decided to enjoy it in the meantime. Why not?

Rio-agree it was literally the only good thing that came out of it. It freaked me out at first because I didn’t understand it but as soon as I got my answers I felt good about it. We had decided to try to r so I saw it as a good thing.

I don’t feel the need to question what it says about me as it seems to be something that most of us experience and appears to be a primal instinct. I didn’t need to nice him back or do a pick me dance. I gave him one second to decide and he chose me immediately and never contacted it again. If he had to think about his decision, I would have made it for him. Scary yes but I would have done it. I’m no second fiddle to anyone and never will be. My mindset has never been how do I keep him so I don’t see any need to evaluate why it happens. It was amazing sex and I went with it.