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If there is an exhausted discussion about this, please bump.

I’m curious about this behavior. It seems to be a common occurrence that wayward wives really go bananas sexually with their APs but were and are not willing to be like this with their H/BH. Are/were you one of these and why do you think it was this way for you?

FTR, I am one of these.

[This message edited by AntiHero at 4:49 AM, August 8th (Thursday)]

I am not in this category, however, I will say this. The best crazy nympho sex I had was not with my BH. We have really great sex, but he is nowhere near as adventurous as the man I was with prior to him. Each and every couple has a chemistry unique to them. For whatever reason you have, and likely will never admit to, you don't have the hot monkey sex with your BH. You can try to change that, but realize that after however many years you've been together, it might be really hard to do. Remember that sex takes two, so even if you really want to go crazy hot monkey sex, your H has to want the same and be willing to let loose. This is why I don't have hot monkey sex with my BH. He is not willing to go there. If yours is willing to go there and it's you holding back, do some soul searching to figure out that reason.

There is. Check other pages.

I am, I was, I always will be, nympho-like in the bedroom. I honestly thought everyone (women included) was like me and felt maybe not as enthusiastic about sex but relatively alike. It wasn’t until after the affair that I learned I’m actually hyper sexual. This was a surprise to me. My gosh I don’t think I knew very much anything about myself at all pre A. Anyhow, I went bananas with my AP but no more bananas than with anyone else the first time. My AP though... that was a different caliber. The most intense sex I had in a very very long time, if ever. Ive also realized since my awakening though that I don’t realky think about sex like other people. Sometimes I want animalistic sex that is more like feeding my healthy appetite for sex. Sometimes, I want intimate, soft, love. This type of sex has always been reserved for someone I really want to experience that level of intimacy. Including BS. In our marriage if I didn’t feel like we were connecting as people during everyday life, then If we did have sex, that was just f*cking. I am just having this aha moment so I need to think more on this but my goodness... maybe BS lost interest in sex with me bc I made him feel like a piece of meat. Wow, even my pre-M sexual behavior now with others was like this. I wonder if I’m more like a man in this way? And if not, maybe I’m sexually abusive. 🤔 There were men that I would lay with that I just wanted to leave after... like I got what I wanted so Why are you still here??? Bc love making was never in the agenda if I didn’t love or feel that level of connection. I can have sex with no strings attached and use it as a release just for myself. I’m thinking now about my relationship with sex as a whole in my life now... I think it was the lack of sex in my M and how badly I wanted it subconsciously since I’ve always been so sexual maybe the excitement was of its return... not so much AP. I don’t know. Sometimes I wonder if it’s our subconscious mind making the sex so good that it helps to silence wrong we know we are doing.

Thank you for posting this... it certainly has made me reflect and really look inside my brain... I really do love learning about myself and seeing things in reflection. I am glad to be mindful of them going into the future. Crawling into my subconscious it exhausting but boy is it awakening.

I came in to get my messages this morning as I have a couple of ongoing private discussions that I wanted to finish up. I saw this because I am also still reading in wayward, and there is something I want to ask, but I will give my answer first. And this specific topic directly speaks to why I am going back to therapy.

Like FR, I think I probably fall on the scale for a woman as a bit hypersexual in comparison to what I know about the other women in my life. And, as she describes I did have relationships prior to marriage where I did my thing and moved on. Being physical (sexual, affectionate, etc) is a love language for me, and I would say that like FR sometimes I want to make love, but rarely have I ever felt this way in relationships prior to marriage.

As for whether I went crazy on the AP, no, I don't think so. It was exciting because it was new, but, because I can be very introverted at times I don't always do well with a new partner. I get in my head, I am not sure what they want, I am trying to express what I want, and in all that it's more stressful than relaxing....or maybe best said inhibits my ability to really let go in the situation. It's always been that way when I had a new partner, unless it was set up as a completely ONS situation in which I could have cared less what he wanted and I just directed him to do what I wanted. So outside of the fact I hadn't been with anyone else in decades and that in itself was novelty, there really wasn't anything better about it. I wasn't different in any way than normal other than the being in my head more.

With all that said...I have a theory that often sexual abuse plays into the dynamic in which you speaking of. My hypersexuality was because I was introduced to sexual stuff at a young age, so I literally have no memory whatsoever of being innocent about sex. As a kid, I remember talking about sex a bunch at ages where that is weird. I masturbated early, and frequently. When in highschool, that's when you may actually have traction as a girl to talk to your friends more about their experiences, and honestly they were never like me. Some of them claimed (and maybe were truthful) they hadn't masturbated at all.

So I bring this up because that is one way the abuse effected me. Another is that I led with my sexuality in relationships as a young woman, and I do think I had learned at an early age that guys will be nice or like you for it. I honestly still hold the belief that men feeling desired often plays into their ideals about love.

It effected my marriage because I think my self worth was low as a result of a lot of this and I wanted to be a "cool wife", and in our early relationship we had an open relationship, and even after we closed it I went to strip clubs with him, and allowed him to do all sorts of things that I don't think most wives would have condoned or thought they were fine with.

To this day, he is still open in ways that I now question post-infidelity. The other day he was driving on this remote rode in which he encountered a man and a woman. The woman for whatever reason raised her dress and showed everything. He came home and told me about it and added "she looked pretty good". I don't think that's a normal dynamic, but we have been this way for so long. I know he's not trying to insult me in any way, he's just very in the open on things. I am still puzzling through that because I don't want to change a dynamic that has never been a problem and make it seem like I am punishing him or trying to close off the open communication that up until these recent years we considered an asset in our marriage.

So, to sum up - I think there was a mental training from sexual abuse that formed my sexuality in a way that has served me well in some forms- I take charge of getting what I want, I value sex, I remain curious and enthusiastic. BUT, there are lots of questions I have now regarding how do you excise some of the things that probably aren't healthy and were taught to you through being sexually abused? Sexual abuse can teach you a form of outside validation that can be very powerful in a negative way. It's very hard because I don't want to give up that hypersexuality in many ways, it's part of me and I really like it. But, how do you temper that with being turned on by more normal things? Or how do you know it's normal or not normal?

So, for the OP - I imagine that you could just not have chemistry with your husband, or that part of that died because of the dynamics of your relationship. If I remember correctly the situation has been verbally abusive and there is a matter of you believing his friendship with another woman is an EA. In your case, from what I have read from you - your entire relationship died a long time ago. You had an exit affair. So, would it not stand to reason that you had a lot of pent up sexual energy? And without the complex dynamics of the abusiveness of the relationship maybe it just felt good to trust someone?

And, then for everyone who is participating, is there sexual abuse in your history and do you attribute that at all to your hypersexuality? Or in what ways do you feel it formed your sexuality? How did that play out in the dynamic that antihero is talking about?

[This message edited by hikingout at 8:54 AM, August 8th (Thursday)]

I've said before, I was a sex addict.

I was. It had a lot to do with my abuse as hikingout said. I believe there was a spiritual component to it and I was delivered from that, all at once. I know when it happened.

huge relief.

That doesn't mean I didn't still need to sort through things, I did. Just the compulsion to act out was gone.

I’m not ready to pull this apart or further elaborate because I’m not there yet but yes, like HIO, I believe there is sexual violation/abuse in my youth by a person I should have been able to trust. This person is still in my life and I’m not quite ready to face this at the present time. If I have rugswept anything in my life, it would be this relationship I had/have with my abuser.

FR - I totally understand where you are coming from. It's really odd, but I was about 3 months into counseling the first time before the counselor stumbled across the fact I had been sexually abused. The emotional abuse from my mom was something I always knew effected me and I was up front with her about that. But, when we stumbled across the sexual abuse, it was as if it had been dormant within me in even thinking about it. It was like I surprised myself in bringing it up. It seemed forgotten (pushed down?)

I don't know how to describe it, but to say I can understand there is a lot of burying that happens when it surrounds that. Tracing it with a professional can help. I did that some, but I realized through recent interactions here that I still have a lot of feelings about some of the aftermath of the abuse, the ways it made me weird or different, or some of the promiscuous ways I acted in my late teens and early twenties and some of the negative sexual shaming that occurred as a result.

I don't really relate it completely to the affair other than the ways it effected my self esteem and my coping mechanisms that had me mismanaging my life. It definitely effects way I view sex. And, maybe there is a hint as to why I would pick someone a lot older than me. But it doesn't explain why I would not be creeped out by it but instead feeling emotionally drawn in.

So, in many ways, I still see it pretty separate but something that I have to unwind and try and heal in efforts to kind of get rid of that underlying sense of shame that's just there enough to keep me from being as healthy as I could be.

Anyway, I don't want to deter too far off Anti-hero's original question. Most of my post was spurred by your response, FR. Anti-hero, It's great you are asking the question because I know part of the plan was you were going to give it your all for six months. And, one of the talking points was initiating intimacy more often. I imagine this spurs from you maybe wanting to do that but maybe not being able? Can you elaborate for us why you think that you were one way with the AP and another with your H? Maybe that can help get the conversation going in a more productive way for you specifically.

Ok, finally getting a chance to come back to his post. Sorry I abandoned my own thread for a while, but thanks for all the really insightful responses. To be honest, I initially posted this after reading a new member’s story in the JFO forum that describes how he read his wife’s sext messages over her shoulder and was shocked to see how she behaved in such a way with AP but never with him. And it reminded me of an article that I maybe read on here a while back with statistics on what percentage of women having affairs behaved in really risky behaviors with their APs. It broke it down by behavior, such as x% had unprotected sex and wanted their APs to ejaculate inside of them. Sorry to be so graphic, but to have specific behavior identified was really fascinating to me because I was surprised to see how high the numbers were for things that I thought only my perverted self was engaging in.

I think for me, there are two explanations. 1) I am probably hypersexual. I remember having sexual thoughts and wanting to engage in sexual behavior at an incredibly young age. But 2) I think this behavior became a coping mechanism starting in my teens. My explanation for it is not about sexual abuse. My mom was also emotionally abusive and my father loved me unconditionally but was emotionally absent. He didn’t know how to intervene when my mom was abusive, other than the one time he threatened her when she physically abused me. I have a brother 8 years older than me who, for some reason, took it upon himself to protect me from our parents. By no means was my family dynamic such that CPS would need to be called, but as with all FOO, there were lasting impacts. In any case, my brother was always emotionally present but in ways, he loved me conditionally. I not so long ago realized that in all those years that I kept him on a pedestal for protecting me and pushing me to work harder and be better at whatever I was trying to do, that he also played a big part in me viewing myself as never good enough, which is how my perfectionist tendencies led to the demise of my own marriage. When I was 10, my brother left for college, so just like that — poof — my shield and support were gone. Shortly after that I was at an age when kids started dating and I embarked on this quest to find a replacement for my brother, another boy to rescue me. When I realized that I could use my sexuality to hook them, it became my weapon and vice of choice. It was validating but of course, as soon as they were hooked, I was no longer that interested. I was good enough and that wasn’t something I understood about myself. The best sex I’ve had were with men who were not committed to me. They would stay in the relationship for the sex, but were having affairs or looking for the next best thing. My AP was also married, so there was always the element of him not being attainable (i.e. me never being good enough) that had me doing moves I only used to watch online. At one point, he wanted us to make a plan to leave our spouses and start a life together, and it was right about that time that the sex started to lose its fire.

I think with my BH, it’s exactly what you said, hikingout. I don’t trust him. I’ve already shared some of our history, in which he had been abusive and I unable to defend myself. That alone is why I don’t trust him. But when we first started dating, I was being my hyper sexual self, and he started to reject me. He said he was turned off by my sexuality, and didn’t like when I took control in bed. Then over the course of about three months he basically stopped having sex with me. Once when I asked him why he wouldn’t have sex with me anymore, he said it was because “you’re so fucking ugly both on the inside and the outside.” It’s kind of hard to want to have sex with someone after they say that to you, even as accustomed to rejection and abandonment I had become. But the boyfriend before him was one that couldn’t commit, so I rebounded and decided that I should be with someone who wasn’t in it for the sex and wanted ro get married and start a family (How? I don’t know. I guess we hadn’t thought through the logistics of making babies!). I believed my H (then boyfriend) that the sex would get better and I think it was the constant rejection that had me hooked. Talk about broken!

To answer your question about abuse, I think abuse, sexual or otherwise, defines to some degree how our sexuality is shaped. Whether we blame it on the media or something else, sex is indeed a form of power, and for many people who experience abuse, it’s one way to take their power back. For me, whether that was to regain it from my mom or my husband, or the general feelings of abandonment, I know I found a lot of strength and validation in it.

I know someone who doesn’t have specific memories about being sexually abused. She doesn’t know who her abuser is and can’t tell you what happened, but she’s certain that it happened. She says she has body memories of it. I used to think she was a little cooky, but I the more work I do in IC, I think I may Be uncovering them as well. This person I know is also someone who uses sex to hook a partner then goes cold as soon as she locks them in. Her previous behaviors were pretty astonishing, which included very public acts with multiple men and bartering sex for drugs. But about a year into her marriage, she completely withheld sex from her now XH. It’s just all so fascinating to me and I’m really glad that people have participated in this thread. Has anyone else experienced something similar to “body memories?” I keep thinking about how deep below the surface those wounds lie, even for the people who do the hard work to access them.

I don’t have body memories. An the sexual abuse in my situation was not violent. It was mostly a gradual grooming until it seemed consensual.

The thing you brought up here that was interesting and I had never considered before is my mom and dad had a similar dynamic. I always knew my dad loved me but he didn’t know how to be there for me emotionally. He was a functioning alcoholic. My mom Was a force to be reckoned with—full of rage and emotional abuse. I hadn’t considered the was that might effect my sexuality. But some of what you are saying makes sense - feeling you are in control of that might feel like the first taste of control. I will have to think about this more.

Anyway - I think this post shows great introspection. It’s difficult to understand how either of you are still in this marriage but I respect that you are trying.

✋🏻 Body memories.

I can see the hands on my body. I can see a penis that isn’t circumcised and my hand on it. I’m in my bed, in my childhood room. I can remember thinking about these memories from early on in my childhood...so much so that the first time I saw a penis that was circ’d, I thought how wrong I was in my imagination of what they looked like.

It wasn’t until I was in my mid 20’s when I dated a guy that was not circ’d that I put it together that my idea of penis’ were uncut. Not wrong just less common. Randomly, years later, I found out that the persons hands i thought I remembered on me, is not circ’d. Ugh.

I do not want to look further in on this bc I do not want anymore memories.

I’m not sure how I feel about this post now that I’m putting this all together. I may never grow and recover if I don’t address this abuse and honestly, I’m not ready.

How does one ready thenself for this?

Can totally understand the whole "sexuality as power" dynamic. It was an early way for me to feel acceptance and even get positive attention from guys. Growing up I was abused by my sister who was abused in turn by my mom.

No sexual abuse in my history, but I can see how the feeling of powerlessness as a child to obtain positive attention can drive one as an adolescent/ young adult to more promiscuity than is healthy.

That said, yes, it makes it easier sometimes to have crazier sex (or even participate in risky behavior in general) with an AP as they're not an authority figure in your life... easier to trust an "expendable" person with your crazy than the one you're trying to hide it from and actually keep in your life.

I'm so glad I found this thread.

It is only in the last year, decades after the abuse, that I am starting to unpack how much it warped my view of sexuality and contributed to the toxic impulses of my A. I was a kid who totally blocked the memories for a time, and it is very, very strange how they come back to the surface. On rare occasions, details return suddenly, but usually it's this weird sensation of both knowing and not knowing that a memory has been gradually emerging. Like I'm in green, murky water that is gradually getting clear, and I think, "Watch out, don't trip, there's a big rock there!" And my brain says, "Um, yeah, not only did you put that rock there yourself years ago, but you swam over and sat on it three times last week."

Just reading this thread triggered something like that. I've been saying for years that I was very small when the abuse happened, like 4 or 5. But as I was working on my rock analogy, and reading Foenix's body memory of a hand on a penis, I remember something that happened in the abuser's swimming pool. My earliest masturbatory memory was of hanging out next to the edge of that pool when I was swimming alone, and realizing that it was pleasurable when the filter jet hit me between my legs. I remember the abuser noticing this once and making some kind of smirky comment about it, and him following it up by exposing his erection to me the next time we were alone in the pool. But wait, I thought to myself. You wouldn't have had that experience at age 4 or 5. You couldn't have orgasmed from a water jet at that age. "Well, of course," my brain responded. "You knew that. Your mother wasn't going to let a 4 or 5 year old walk over to that house alone either, or swim alone. You were much older." WTF?? I scream back. I didn't know this!! "Yes, you knew," comes the quiet reply. "You always knew."

And this is a significant discovery, because I've always treated the sexual validation issues as if they happened at a different time in my life than the body image issues. I started gaining weight with the onset of puberty and have struggled with it ever since. I thought that the validation I felt through inappropriate sexual interest happened before the negative feedback from my peers about my weight. But it looks like they were happening at the same time. And to add to that, that also means it happened while my parents were very preoccupied with problems they were having with my brother, when they were more or less parenting me on autopilot (I don't reproach them for this, they were totally overwhelmed, and as far as they knew, I was fine). But if the only positive feedback and attention I was getting at all came from that sick bastard? Jesus, does this FOO make even more sense.

And the worst part? Memories of the A operate the same way. Things come up that both surprise me and don't surprise me at all. There have also been a few real shockers, things of which I still have zero memory but have emerged from letters and documents. But most of the memories come back like this: Yeah, you knew. You always knew.

I'm not a WW, I am a Mad Hatter which means I was cheated on and then cheated. I realize that you are looking for support from WW's and while I'm a Wayward I am not female. I only want to offer that there are a couple of threads in general about the effect this behavior has on a BH. If you are interested in that side.

I feel this describes me. There’s no question that my history and association with sex and my sexuality is f*cked up. Until dday I had a million excuses except the A wasn’t one of them. I didn’t even acknowledge the A. I question if I considered to believed it to be an A. I can’t explain that.

It took me months to realize and say that I was a serial cheater. The gratification I got from sex, my sexuality being noticed, appreciate and wanted was so paramount to me that all morals and rational thought went straight out the window. There were no real boundaries with AP’s and sexual partners before I met BH.

I was so unfair to BH. Once married I was so embarrassed to be as sexual or open with BH. Not only would he have been entirely open to it but the whole time he was BEGGING for it. He couldn’t understand why I was behaving like such a prude when he knew I had a sexual history before him. He was expecting so much more and he couldn’t make heads or tails of my behavior with him especially when it came to sex and expressing love/affection in general.he was aware of some FOO shit but would never ever think it was related to an A...and not just one.

BH and many others we have spoken with suggest possible childhood sexual abuse. I don’t discount that it’s a possibility but I don’t know who what when or where- this is something we are talking about exploring with IC and hypnotherapy. It’s also something I’m not looking at as excuse but it may explain a lot.

Candyman, thanks for the reference. I will look up those threads, as I’m really struggling to open up sexually with BH right now.

I think one of the most difficult things about any kind of abuse is that the victim often fails to see themselves at such. We use the word “abuse” in such a way that it clearly delineates a generally accepted right from wrong. For example, in situations of domestic abuse, when it’s physical, you can pretty much count on the majority to call it “abuse.” In cases of sexual abuse, my sense is that most people will initially think of horrible situations of pedophilia. There’s a tv series that even brought this behavior mainstream, in such a way that highlighted the worst offenses. These examples are non-debatable.

When the impact is less tangible, the term “abuse” seems to be a bit more malleable, and victims may question themselves because the violations they experience are not so obvious. And to say they were a victim of abuse may feel terribly accusatory to them, especially if it’s against someone they love or rely on. So the actions and feelings get swept under the rug, but the long term impact is still the same. This is especially true if this is all they have known, such as in relationships like mine with my parents. To me, emotional neglect is what I equate with love, so why would I call it abuse? And then I married someone who was emotionally abusive because it was what I knew. It took me years (just within the last two) to finally admit to myself that I was in an abusive marriage, and that my primary caretaker was an abusive parent. To even use the word “abuse” in all its forms. The combination of pain and liberation that came with this discovery is emotionally devastating but it’s giving me a chance to heal from it.

Story: My 5 yo daughter wears her hair in her face. It doesn’t bother her, but it bothers my mother-in-law. Recently, my MIL kept trying to tuck my daughter’s hair behind her ears and it was annoying the hell out of my kid. And out of no where, a burst of rage overcame me and I totally snapped at my MIL. I was so surprised at myself. Where did that come from?!? It took a few minutes but I recalled an uncle of mine doing this to me when I was about 5. I hated it. It made me terribly uncomfortable. The part where I mix up the facts is having the thought tied to it that I hated that this was an uncle by marriage. I don’t know if I thought that when I was 5 or associated it later. There was nothing definitively sexual about this hair tuck, but what it came down to was that my boundaries were crossed. Why didn’t he do this to my other cousins? Why didn’t he stop when I clearly became agitated. He’s been dead 20 years, and the sick feeling in my gut is how I remember him. I have been suppressing these emotions for 40 years. And emotions over what? Because he didn’t like my hair in my face and did something about it? It’s not like he did this privately either. To everyone else it was completely benign. But it totally crossed my boundaries and I felt utterly powerless against it. And it always resonates with me as predatory behavior. I have a few other stories like this, but as they layer on top of each other, I think it gives me further insight into my own behaviors.

Not to derail this thread even further, but I feel the same can be said about people in abusive relationships. To someone who isn’t in one, it’s either pretty obvious what’s happening and what should be done about it, or what the victim describes as abuse can seem benign from the outside. Any type of abuse is the worst kind of mind fuck. Not only is the victim dealing with the impacts of another person’s awful behavior, but they are also reconciling their own inability to do something about it. And at the same time, struggling with calling themselves a victim because it would be acknowledging their shame and powerlessness in it all.

Sorry to post such long responses here, but I have been finding this thread to be particularly empowering. I’ve shared way more about myself in this thread than I have throughout this entire forum, but it’s incredibly liberating to put this out there. Part of it is the safety of anonymity, but at the same time, I feel a particular kinship with the people who have chosen to respond to this post. I feel safe telling you all my story, even though I know that probably 10 times more people may read it and not say a thing.

I think this is akin to owning up to my affair. For how long did I live in shame, and try to manipulate the story inside my head so it wouldn’t be so uncomfortable? In reading each of our posts again, I’m probably projecting, but I get an overarching sense of internal chaos, confusion at a minimum. It feels not that different than realizing how fucked up I am for choosing an affair. But I feel like owning my stories of abuse and putting it out into the universe is going to set me on yet another path towards emotional freedom. I’ve talked a bit about this in IC, but for some reason right now, I feel like in sharing this with the 7-8 of you, or however many other people who chime in, there’s a stronger sense of accountability for me to face these really deep set pains.

(ETA: I just wanted to clarify that I’m not dumping being a victim of sexual abuse and making a choice of infidelity into the same bucket, but how we carry those traumas can live inside our minds and bodies the same way. The onus will always be on the individual to rid themselves of these pains, and IMHO, we can’t do that until we accept these stories as part of who we are.)

So, it is with absolute gratitude that I share my million-word posts with you.

[This message edited by AntiHero at 12:44 PM, August 20th (Tuesday)]