This thread is such a stark example of a WW who literally created a secret, one-sided open marriage, simply because she wanted to.
The fundamental issue is that if your wedding vows were any version of traditional vows, this is something she specifically promised you she would not do, while looking you in the eye, in front of family and friends.
I know it goes without saying, but please take this part very seriously. Your future happiness is at stake. This is your life, and like me, you have taken more trips around the sun than you are likely to take in the future.
Your pain is going to linger as your God-given amazing brain starts to process the complexity of what has happened. As your abilities to think rationally become more clear over time, you will begin to puzzle this through logically and you will come to some inescapable conclusions.
In my own experience and likely the experience of many other BH’s, we learn that our wives actually have a conditional and contextual view of marital vows. They look at them as a rote recitation in a ritual ceremony rather than a binding pact. This can’t be elided or rug-swept. It can’t be something the WW explains away.
This is a fundamental difference in world views, and why I warned the OP earlier to proceed with caution and consider his desire to reconcile or not very carefully. If you have two people with such fundamentally different world views, they may love each other but the idea of reconciling is logically incoherent in the face of this.
Now, look, I know that there are many WH’s who don’t take their vows seriously. But if you pin most men down, they will admit they broke their vows, while most WW’s have great difficulty admitting to this, developing empathy or even bringing themselves to deliver a genuine contrite apology (indeed, it seems common in marriages for women to have difficulty saying “sorry” on even typically small matters). Why? Because men seem to have — whether because of social conditioning or an actual inborn gender difference, or a combination of the two in which social conditioning grew out of a physical gender difference in worldview — a stronger and clearer conception of the idea of honor.
Honor is a more foreign concept for women, particularly WW’s. I’m not saying women don’t understand honor at all, lest I be accused of misogyny. They understand it conceptually, but not in the visceral way men do. There are root differences in gender carried out on the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual planes.
I’m saying that the notion of honor seems to hold a much stronger presence in the minds of men across most human cultures. One can see a through line from samurai Japan to ancient Romans to modern-day American valorization of military service (a phenomenon I hail). It doesn’t seem accidental that male culture in most of the world has developed this idea. It seems to be both a strong longing and strong “check” on men.
I believe this is why many WW’s are so easily able to cast aside marital vows and continue to view them blithely after D-Day. Their words are essentially meaningless here, even if they say otherwise. The numbers don’t lie: If 50 percent of marriages end in divorce and 70 percent of divorces are initiated by women, and women have reached parity in committing adultery, then which gender likely has the greater propensity for breaking vows? And why is this? Because we view the import of the vows differently. For men, it is literally a blood oath. I think for many, many women, it is seen as something conditional, a pact made for transactional and utilitarian purposes only. Such a pact is a “living document” in their minds which they can change and amend over time if they need to.
This was my experience. My wife told me on several occasions that I had a black and white, sanctimonious view on marital vows. (By the way, this has been one of the stumbling blocks for any reconciliation and a reason I remain in limbo nearly three years later).
[This message edited by Thumos at 7:42 AM, September 9th (Monday)]
