SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

First thanks to admin for letting me post on these forums.

I am a 39 year old male and like many others my wife of 14 years had an p/a, I will go into details in a later thread.

We i found out she was full of sorry/regret/remorse, please forgive me i don't want our marriage to end blah blah blah.

For about a week i dealt with my emotions and i the end i decided this wasn't on and I was going to give her the same treatment.

This is where i get to my point, many on here say that makes you has bad as the WS i call BS on this because i would ask if you were mugged and a later date you get a chance to kick the crap out of the mugger would you consider you and the mugger to be "just as bad".

My attitude is that a revenge or as i prefer to call it a "rebalancing" affair.

Think of it as a set of scales with the WS on one side and the BS on the other now all the regret in the world IMO anyway cannot fully rebalance the scales, the RA brings the scales back into balance as the WS can have some of the betrayal the BS had.

The other good thing about the RA in my case it overwrote the mind movies.

How is a Revenge Affair supposed to help?

I would have to disagree with your points. What this brings to mind is "Two wrongs don't make a right". You are still married and have betrayed your vows, regardless of whether your spouse did the same thing. No, I don't think that a RA makes you "as bad as the WS" only because your motivations are vastly different, not because it is the right thing to do.

Not sure how this rebalances the scales, again, because your motivations are different than the WS. Your only intention was to get back at the WS and make them feel as bad as you did. That, also, will never happen, because, yes I'm going to reiterate, your motivations are different than the WS.

Maybe I'm missing something because it never seems to be a good idea to bring a third person (or a fourth) into a troubled marriage.

A revenge affair will backfire on you. It doesn't do anything but bring about additional hurt, anxiety and will backfire on you.

Honestly, if having an RA to "rebalance" the marriage worked, I would be all over this site promoting it. I lost it and had an RA with a stranger on DDay. It would be awesome if that had lessened the pain of knowing that my XWH had cheated on me. It would be fantastic if that brought him any comprehension of how awful his actions had been. Best ever if it just null and voided his betrayals and like magic, it was as if none of it ever happened.

That isn't how it goes. You can't sleep with enough people to make you feel better about your wife's betrayal. That just isn't how this works. All you would be doing is handing your wife some pain and losing the moral highground in her eyes, if not in mine. I think once a person cheats, there isn't any marriage for the BS to violate. The cheater already killed it. I am not eaten alive with guilt for my DDay reaction because it is awfully hard to look at what I did as a trauma reaction and say that was "just as bad" as my XWH sleeping with lord alone knows how many prostitutes.

So no, I won't give you the line of "it makes you just as bad" because I don't think that it does. It just doesn't fix anything.

I don’t think it “rebalances” things in a positive way. I think more often than not it gives the original WS ammunition to “call it even” and say “see, you’re just as bad!” and gives both BS/WS spouses an excuse to not do any work on themselves or the marriage. If you want your WS to point the finger right back at you and tell you to STFU about her affair because you cheated too, then go for it.

Please accept that i will not disagree with people for the sake ot it and these are just my honest opinions.

No once she strayed the marriage contract was damaged if not fully broken which meant i was not fully bound by the contract.

Two wrongs may not make a right but it can even things up.

We may have had different motivations but believe me she was very hurt and the difference was that i did not go behind her back, i told her when and where it would happen (but not who).

And as i said it wiped out most of the mind movies.

One caveat, though...you are right about it helping the mind movies, but not in a healthy way. I'd picture him with other women, and to combat that, I'd imagine the guy I cheated with. But hey, that wasn't exactly sexy. That was anger and sickness and pain and didn't actually improve any part of the relationship or improve my opinion of myself. I feel sick thinking about it.

She would not have dared to tell me to STFU about her affair, she was beyond desperate for R and I was ambivalent at that point.

It doesn’t even things up, it just adds more trash to the heap of things to dig through.

If you’re leaning towards the idea that you’re no longer bound by your vows, why not simply divorce, washing your hands clean f this infidelity garbage?

If by "evened things up" you mean that you're BOTH capable of USING PEOPLE to spackle up the holes in your life... then yeah, well done.

I love when people bring up, 2 wrongs don't make a right. Then you go read on the Wayward forum and half the WS don't understand, they wish their BS would have a RA to make them feel better and deal with their guilt. Instead they dance around how they feel guilt in shame the whole time and wish the BS would fix things.

Buzzy - I bet your WS was in the fog. Lots of WS are in the fog and the RA wakes them up. My wife needed the threat of a RA to get out of the fog. It is the main thing that scared her enough to do the work.

I could see an RA fixing some people. People are just worried about BS jumping right to that action and causing themselves damage.

In my WW case spot on the AP was married. In my case the AP knew I was married and was at one point a friend of my wife whom she ghosted as in my WW opinion she was getting far to close to me (typical male i never even noticed) my AP was divorced and knew the score.

Two wrongs may not make a right but it can even things up.

It evens nothing up. Revenge is certainly a strong motive for further destroying your marriage and what at one time may have been your good character.

Sorry but I don't agree with you. You are responsible for your actions, no matter the motivation. In your mugger scenario, would the mugger deserve to be beaten up by you? Sure. Does it make it right? No. You're still wrong. An RA is not a healthy coping mechanism to the pain that was inflicted upon you. It adds to the troubles you are already experiencing. Not to mention, it is using another person for your revenge. Someone who may also be married. Even if they were willing, I would not want to be someone interfering in another person's marriage.

Of course I think an RA crosses every BS's mind. For me, it's just not an option. I am no one's skank. My son does not have a skank for a mother. I have self-respect. I have integrity. I handle difficulties in my life with my head held high, to the best of my abilities. I don't knowingly cause pain to other people. That being said, we all handle this in our own way. Please think about how an RA would affect your future and how you see yourself.

In what seems like 1000 years ago, I cheated on my BF and he found out and cheated on me. This is what happened:

I think more often than not it gives the original WS ammunition to “call it even” and say “see, you’re just as bad!” and gives both BS/WS spouses an excuse to not do any work on themselves or the [relationship].

In fact, that is what we actually said: "You did it too so let's just leave it alone and never talk about either one again." And, in fact, we did not ever speak of my or his actions in that regard, and ended up breaking up our 5+ year relationship about a year later - and by then our relationship was in such shambles due to rug sweeping and general malaise about the whole thing that it became impossible to repair and we went our separate ways, filled with anger and resentment, and never saw each other again after knowing each other since I was a small child.

No, it wasn't a marriage, but it was a real-committed long term relationship where marriage had been on the table for a time, and yes, I learned a lot about myself in the process (and have never done such a thing again) and so in that way, after I looked at my own behavior and what drove it and tried to change myself, I did actually think about it (a lot) later on, but the relationship itself was demolished.

[This message edited by ThisIsSoLonely at 9:57 AM, November 4th (Monday)]

BTA.

I did not use anyone and my AP was not married.

I felt great during my affair, my WW was aware of it and when she objected it told her "you know where the door is"

Anyway I will be back later as my wife is due home shortly and I am making dinner.

I love when people bring up, 2 wrongs don't make a right. Then you go read on the Wayward forum and half the WS don't understand, they wish their BS would have a RA to make them feel better and deal with their guilt. Instead they dance around how they feel guilt in shame the whole time and wish the BS would fix things.

I read in the WW forum almost every day. I don't read every single post, but I have never seen a wayward say they wish their BS would have a revenge affair. I am not saying you haven't seen this, but maybe it was a misguided WS who is in the throws of shame just after DDAY and haven't worked on themselves yet.

As a WS, I would have understood a revenge affair to a certain extent, but knowing what I know about affairs, I would want my H to go through the same processes I have because our marriage didn't make me cheat, I cheated for my own misguided reasons. He would need to come to terms with his as well.

I think for a couple early out, I agree with DF - all you are doing is making the WS able to use it as an excuse not to work on themselves. This is not helpful for your marriage going forward if you want to R, because they will not fix what it is about them that isn't safe.

Also, it might make you feel better temporarily, but as the WS I can tell you that cheating did nothing but destroy me for a period of time. The shame, guilt, regret, remorse...nothing was worth that for what it brought me. I will add that watching my husband go through it was even worse in many ways, but I don't think that part might be true in your case. Cheating solves nothing, and it is wrong no matter what the circumstances are. I think you are misguided and should seek IC.

Well, congratulations, then. You're wonderful and an inspiration to all.

If using your mugging analogy correctly, wouldn't you yourself then mug somebody not beat up the mugger?

Did the person you had an affair with know you were using them to rebalance an affair?

How can using another person ever make you feel good? Married or not.