This is a very interesting and thought provoking response, Pippen.
There are a ton of unstated norms here, as in any community, some of which are generally beneficial to most waywards and some of which I think are appalling and destructive
I can see what you are saying here, but I do look at this a bit differently. I feel like whatever "norms" there are can be very subjective and open for interpretation - so we could in essence look at the same norm and have very opposing views on whether it exists, whether it is helpful, whether it's destructive. We simply have different people in their journey of healing, and you have people from a lot of different backgrounds here with different cultural influences, different levels of maturity, age, experiences in relationships. I think that you are always going to have people project their situation to some degree as well.
So, some of it can come to a matter of simple organization - but I don't know we ever have enough members here at any given time to lend itself to sorting that. I don't know what it would look like - separating cake eaters from exit from SA/Serial - or going by first year, second year, and one for beyond? Gender? Age? Some of those things can provide clarity and true patterns that each of those groups have separately in terms of infidelity, but the amount of participation would cause conversations to become even more limited, when you think about how few new posts hit the WS forum by the week.
If you feel like a member of the community, it's probably because the norms are working for you, you've organized your participation more or less around them, your situation lends themselves to them, or you've got the internal fortitude to ignore or defy them. And if someone doesn't feel like a member of the community, it's probably because they are inadvertently running afoul of them.
Probably true, I never considered that before. It's definitely food for thought. But, I would also maybe say this site isn't for everyone, it would be impossible for any site to be that way. Either you believe the overall logic of it or you don't.
For me, it's helped me clarify some extremely huge things, and even the times when I found myself running against the norms, it still taught me a lot about myself and what makes me tick. Sometimes when we feel defensive, it's helpful to take time to reflect on that. I don't think everyone is capable of that, instead may let those things fester and resentments build. The more empathy you have for where someone else is coming from even if it feels to be an attack on you personally can be an enlightening experience. However, I think there is sometimes lack of understanding that not everything is true for every situation, or what this person experienced is not what happened in another person's situation.
I think probably the one that is most prevalent as a pet peeve of mine is is that there are WS who are here (who should still not have cheated) but their affair was a drop in the bucket of all the traumas in their marriage. It should be not assumed that all WS want to reconcile or should even want to reconcile. Or that they put the only break or trauma in the marriage. It's almost always assumed that the BS is good and right and the WS is the one who just disregarded that and did shitty things. I think that's commonly the story though - in my case my BS was good and I was the one who did the shitty things. But, in some cases, the WS doesn't even know if they want the marriage, and I don't think it's healthy to assume they should want the marriage. I don't think it was right they cheated at all, or that they had more of a license to do so. Those situations press my buttons, but it's so hard because so many WS show up here after DDAY and haven't yet taken any stock and have likely rewritten the marriage. We also lie. So, you almost always have to cookie cutter someone to not enable really bad and destructive behaviors.
For me, it's not about norms to have a community. I simply connect with the posters here I relate to and they are my community. I may learn things from others I connect with less, but that too can be community. Just like we have more in common with some of our neighbors in our neighborhoods than others. It's a collective of many levels of experiences, and while we have posters who fail to see that (not you, I mean those who can't see their situations as different from anothers), we have a whole bunch who do see it. I guess that was a long winded thing where you concentrate on the sub-community you want to be in rather that the community as a whole. Just like if you were at a party and you gravitate to certain people and avoid others.
And fair enough, in the other critical friends/courageous conversations types of groups I'm in, there's a clear leader of the group, the norms are explicit and organized to address the likely difficulties in the group, there are strong personal relationships, and we have fun together to balance the seriousness and difficulty
I do think that we have leaders here (guides, moderators, etc), and guidelines for posting. So, I am curious about the difference in experience. This is a free site with the express goal being one thing and one thing only: getting out of infidelity, so the posting and moderation is geared for that to be the case. There are no mental health professionals leading it, and it is free. Are the sites you reference free, is it for a group that has largely been recently traumatized in some way, and is it ran by mental health professionals? Is the subject matter less broad or more broad? I would say that's a different thing than a peer community that's why I am asking.
I think the fact that we have the perpetrators and victims in the same place is a blessing and a curse, but probably more blessings come from it than anything else. I just think sometimes the lightness/fun doesn't really belong in the WS forum where many people are losing their marriage or hanging by a string, but there are forums here that you can visit and participate in that are off topic and just for fun.
I am honestly not challenging you, I am asking to understand. In fact, I have thought about exploring some self help type groups in addition to this one. So, your experience is interesting to me.