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1. I was selfish and felt entitled.

2. I had an unacknowledged pattern, rooted in unprocessed childhood sexual abuse, of seeking validation through attracting sexual interest.

3. Instead of addressing problems in my relationship directly and in a healthy way, I used them to justify self-soothing with OM.

4. I overestimated my own integrity and allowed weak boundaries on a classic "Not Just Friends" slippery slope.

5. I was an accomplished liar, so good that I lied to myself and refused to look at the consequences of my actions.

6. I felt powerful and in charge instead of insufficient and vulnerable.

None of these are good reasons, but they are true reasons.

Sir Robin - thank you! You are correct, there is no good reason. But for me as a BS, I do have respect for honest answers even if they hurt. Your list of reasons seems very thought out.

How long did it take you post DDay to start coming to terms with it?

I would have to agree. These are not reasons, they are excuses. I think my STBXWW's reasons would be a basic shallowness of character and deep feelings of insecurity. She has always defined he4self physically and as she is aging, as we all do, she is subconsciously terrified of he diminishing val7e as a commodity. She essentially sees the world as transactional and for her to get whatever she wants or need a, she must enter the relationship with something of value. Whereas most fully formed humans are multidimensional she is very flat.

So why did she have an affair? Her AP made her feel young, Purdy, and smart, things she was not or did not feel she was. The more I read on SI the more I suspect cheater's as more shallow people, deriving their sense of self worth extrinsically. It's cheap and easy and requires no real work.

Ellie, in my case, it's hard to say because we rugswept after the A. I came clean voluntarily about the basics on D-Day 1 but lied and minimized the scope. We processed for about six months and then decided to "put it behind us." I didn't know that my BH periodically struggled with his subconscious knowledge that my story didn't add up. 30 years later, he decided he needed therapy and started asking me questions again. I panicked and TTd for about six weeks before telling him everything. I'm still digging for whys, but I'd say it took about three months to get the bulk of the list. But that's with a long, long time in between the A and D-Day 2 to develop perspective.

There is only one reason people cheat: because they want to.

All the stuff listed in the OP, those are justifications and mental gymnastics cheaters tell themselves to justify their decision.

[This message edited by Butforthegrace at 5:39 PM, August 21st (Wednesday)]

Butforthegrace -- where does that leave you, though? There's a difference between a justification and an explanation. The former doesn't exist and the latter is a useful tool for self improvement. If I only cheated because I wanted to, then how can I make myself a safer partner? Do I tell my BH that all we can do is hope that I'll never want to cheat again? Or is it better to work on figuring out what is fucked up inside me that made me believe I had the right to cheat, and fix that?

Plenty of people want to cheat and don't. Wanting to is obviously a key component, but it isn't the only reason people do.

Thank you, BraveSirRobin.

I think when my WW was committing adultery she felt powerful and in charge. I've never seen her so confident in her life and it continued right up until after the DDays.

I thought it was because she was doing so well at work and she was. She was knocking it out of the park and I kept telling her so. Still I had a nagging gut.

I don't believe people cheat because they want to. There has to be more to it than that.

I think it is a combination of several things:

Desire

Lack of boundaries

Opportunity

Risk taker

Lack of good Character

Lack of morals

Selfishness

Addictive personality

I deserve this

No one will ever know

What could it possibly hurt

Hanging out with the wrong people

Psychopath

Sociopath

Lack of empathy

Me first

Revenge

I owe it to myself to find out

Predatory nature

Easily victimized

Enjoys the attention

and so on...

I don't believe people cheat because they want to.

Everybody who cheats chooses to cheat. They make a decision. In many cases, perhaps most, they actually make a long string of many decisions, but my point is that for each cheater, there comes a point in time where he or she decides: I'm going to engage in sex with somebody who is not my spouse.

I've been married about 25 years. Reasonably good looking guy. Travel for work. Marriage, like most, has had its ebbs and flow. I've had situations where sex with a pretty woman was possible, offered, available. A hotel on the road. A party while away from family. Alcohol under the belt to reduce inhibitions. Yet each time that devil on my shoulder has tried to get my attention, the angel on the other one reminds me of the promise I made my wife.

In other words, I did not want to cheat. I could easily have cheated had I wanted to.

I don't believe people cheat because they want to.

Let me rephrase that: I don't believe the only reason people cheat is because they want to.

I wanted to.

I didn’t care enough about my marriage not to.

I didn’t take marriage seriously.

Yet, paradoxically, I was afraid to divorce first instead of cheating.

I was entitled.

I didn’t know how to have a healthy relationship so instead of figuring it out and working at it I just did whatever I wanted.

If you are a BS, did your WS give you a reason for their affair?

He thought I might not be "The One" anymore.

If you are a WS, what reason did you give your spouse or yourself for having an affair?

Revenge, validation from someone else, shitty coping skills

[This message edited by crazyblindsided at 6:56 PM, August 21st (Wednesday)]

I assume the responses are from waywards who have NOT had a dday.

My WH never gave me "reasons" but the excuses were that he was having a bad year. Now, that's ONLY the year it went from EA to PA. He sure as shit has not provided "reasons" as to why he continued it for 10 years (exception: he did say that the last time they f*cked was bc he wanted to "feel like a man" in light of his ED and a pretty dead bedroom - of course in his effed up mind the ED and dead bedroom had NOTHING to do with him or the fact that he was having an A.... funny how our sex life got pretty darned good after dday).

He never managed to find a "reason" for keeping his POSOW a secret (ie had an EA) for more than a decade before the PA started... he did ultimately come to agree with my hypothesis that he wanted to f*ck her. He remains steadfast in his belief that there was zero emotional connection (yeah, right..... you regularly contact another woman for 15 years and THEN sleep with her for a decade bc you had zero "feelings" for her) .

I don't understand how an A could ever be "exciting".... all I can think of would be the total consumption by my own guilt. I'm also a pretty bad liar.

Ibonnie and BSR pretty well nailed it. But I'm also in the people cheat bc they want to camp.

So - I think the REASON they cheat is bc they want to AND they just don't give a shit about the consequences.

But as BSR mentions, then what? I think the next level is the reasons why they wanted to and HOW they were able to convince themselves that it was an acceptable choice. HOW they were able to see themselves as "good" people while simultaneously harming their families? Obviously, all of this must be addressed or the WS will never be "safe" for any partner - whether it be their BS or someone new.

[This message edited by gmc94 at 7:34 PM, August 21st, 2019 (Wednesday)]

These types of threads (started by a BS) always break my heart. You are trying to apply some kind of logic to an illogical situation. We humans have a need to come to an understanding when faced with a traumatic situation. People need to assign some kind of reason to a horrific event that makes sense to us.

IMO there isn’t one that will ever be satisfactory from a BS perspective.

In the simplest of terms, I think the majority of WS cheat for two reasons; because we want to and because we only cared about ourselves. Naturally, selfishness, entitlement etc all play into that but I believe the first two are at the core of it all.

What truly sucks for the BS is I don’t believe any answer will ever satisfy the question of “why”. I had a shifty childhood with loads of physical and mental abuse. I was poor and homeless for a time. I had a bad attitude, anger issues and mental illness.

Big deal. So did a lot of other people and they didn’t cheat.

Let’s suppose your WS was truly remorseful, dug deep and uncovered the real reason(s) behind their why. Is it ever going to erase the pain that you went through and still have to endure at some level for the rest of your lives? That’s something that really tears at me. In the court of infidelity, there’s no real justice for a BS. No matter the consequence for the WS, the BS also has to serve their own sentence.

I do agree that it is incumbent on the WS to figure out their why, I just don’t know how much peace it will ever give to a BS.

ETA - I’m in no way trying to be dismissive of a BS need to know the why and I apologize if it came across that way.

[This message edited by ff4152 at 8:01 PM, August 21st (Wednesday)]

In the court of infidelity, there’s no real justice for a BS. No matter the consequence for the WS, the BS also has to serve their own sentence.

Is this a "reason" for not telling your BS?

Or there is the reason my husband gave after approx. 10 visits to "massage parlors" over six months. "I don't know".

I didn't think you loved me anymore.

How many times have I heard this? I’ve lost count. I did a NOTHING to give her this falsehood and everything to tell her otherwise.

During her affair she even cruelly told me that “I love you” after a phone conversation was a meaningless pleasantry. I told her I meant it every time and I would never want to risk having a potential last conversation when I didn’t tell her otherwise. She hung up the phone. Just remembering that right now. Why am I still with this person?

Let’s suppose your WS was truly remorseful, dug deep and uncovered the real reason(s) behind their why. Is it ever going to erase the pain that you went through and still have to endure at some level for the rest of your lives? That’s something that really tears at me. In the court of infidelity, there’s no real justice for a BS. No matter the consequence for the WS, the BS also has to serve their own sentence.

So true. The WS absolutely needs to do the work to better understand why/how they are so messed up, and to fix themselves, but that is completely separate from the pain a BS goes through. It doesn’t help. And at some level, you hav to come to terms with it. Nothing will balance the scales and nothing will erase the pain. You learn to live with it and actually it can dampen and lessen over time, and you can be truly happy with your WS (assuming a remorseful WS) again. But don’t look for the uncovering of why’s to be some magic potion that will cure all. Well said.

You are trying to apply some kind of logic to an illogical situation.

ff4152, I have seen this comment frequently on SI and it baffles me. While cheating is abusive and selfish, it is not illogical.

When BSs talk about logic and making sense, I guess they usually mean a logic that will exonerate the WS, or make it seem less immoral.

But the logic behind is very simple. WSs did not respect their marriage. They had an opportunity to cheat and did not want to resist. What is illogical about that?

Ephimera

What is illogical about that?

I was speaking in terms of a BS trying to understand how someone, who was suppose to value and protect them above all others, could do something like this. IMO, there really is no logical explanation for cheating. From my perspective, applying logic to this would mean that there was some sort of acceptable reason for the cheating. It would be akin to the WS saying, I cheated because you/I blah blah blah and the BS saying, well since you explained it that way, it all makes perfect sense.

IMO, there is no justifiable reason for cheating. While some of the alternatives may be harder, they're certainly better than betrayal.

[This message edited by ff4152 at 7:41 AM, August 22nd (Thursday)]