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Question... Is a one night seen in the same light as an affair?

BACKGROUND:

My wife and I dated for 1 year, were engaged for 1 year before we were married. She was a virgin when we met and I was a wildling in the Marines. After I got out we were already engaged, but when we moved in together our relationship became toxic. We fought all the time, broke up and made up.

WHEN I CHEATED:

After a fight one time she became a litte violent, I left ended up at a party and I cheated on her. I was 22, tired of fighting and somebody filled the role of "comfort and respect"....this is no excuse though - I was wrong, I felt bad afterwards and confessed the next day. She had an emotional breakdown and went into a depressive state. She did not get out of the bed for 5 days, wouldn't eat, a total mess. I took care of her, we patched things up and ended up getting married a few months later. I gave her clamidia (sorry for spelling) and we had to get treated during this time.

We married, and we became a Christians. I stopped drinking and smoking and became a better person. We tried for 5 years to have a child but no success. We bought a house and were building a life together. I began to neglect her emotionally, she was very needy because of the lack of a child and we were kind of just there. I worked 3rd shift and she worked 9-5, we really only saw each other on the weekends. She met someone at work and they had an affair for about 3 months. I saw signs but ignored them, eventually I knew. I called her mother and expressed my concern and she said she would talk to her. About two weeks later she came to me crying, saying she has something to tell me. I told her not to say it, that I already knew and forgave her (I prayed alot during those days).

A year later we did fertility treatment, and conceived our first child. Two years later, another one came along. We eventually ended up with 3 boys and a girl. A couple of months ago, all of these thoughts flooded me about her having an affair 15 years ago (I had suppressed the memory and never thought about it before). So I asked her about it. At first she played dumb, then she brought up when I cheated and wanted details that I never gave. Then when I continued to ask her, she told me about the affair.

The AFFAIR:

She said at the time, I did not spend alot of time with her. And a guy was being really nice to her at work. She said that she only let him do oral on her in the back of his car. I did not believe the story, so I asked again the next day. She told me that she had sex three times with him in the back of his car, I didn't believe that one either. So I took what details I had and told her the story didn't add up. So she told me they had sex in the house while I was at work at night. They did it without protection, and she could have gotten pregnant - after 5 years of us trying. She said the sex wasn't great, but that she was going to leave me for him. The only reason she didn't is he was just in it for the sex. So she broke it off with him. I asked where in the house, and she said in the back room. He would be there when I called her some nights. I asked for more details, but the more I got the more my heart was breaking. I asked her why she didn't tell me the truth when I first asked and she said she didn't want to hurt me. She said he couldn't get it up half of the time (I don't believe that), and that she never had an orgasm. I still feel as if she didn't tell me everything, but am trying to move on. We have talked, cried, and made passionate love for 8 weeks (almost everyday, sometimes two times). But multiple times a day I think about her affair. Sometimes I can shake it, and sometimes I find myself looking through forums to relate to people, as I don't feel comfortable talking to anyone about it. Can anyone answer these for me?

Is cheating in the marriage any worse than cheating before marriage?

Is cheating inside the home supposed to hurt worse?

She says he "couldn't keep it up" is this a common excuse that should not be trusted?

Does this pain go away?

Do these thoughts of my wife and another man in my house ease up?

I want to know the whole truth, but how do I know when I have it?

Thanks for listening, I think I feel better.

Everybody’s experience of cheating is different but one thing that is the same is it hurts. The details don’t matter, being betrayed by the person you love, the person you thought you could rely on sucks.

I know for me there is always an element of if only.... For me, my WH had 4 nights away with her. Two in a local hotel during really dark points of our marriage (due to him being in the affair and how he behaved at that point) and a weekend away during a point when we had reached out to each other and agreed to fix the marriage. I was working hard, taking a lot of blame for our marriage and how he felt and he was, I know now, still screwing her. That weekend sucks and I hate it, it is the bit that upsets me the most BUT if he hadn’t done that there would be something else that would hurt the most and I would wish hadn’t happened.

On the flip side there are always things I’m glad he didn’t do and having sex in our house/our bed was one of them. He did have phone/video sex from our bathrooms but luckily as expats we move frequently so not long after dday we moved anyway.

A couple of my thoughts on your situation

I don’t think we ever get the whole truth to be honest. Truths change over time. I do believe you can get the whole truth on details such as where, when, how often. However if I have read right you wife had her affair 15 years ago so even these details may be forgotten. You will never get the whole truth because even if you read every message, heard every word people interpret things differently.

I’m 20 months out I think the pain will never go to be honest. I think whenever I think about my WH and his affair I will hurt. Hopefully in time the frequency will lessen and I will learn to live alongside it. Much like a bereavement, you never forget them, it still hurts but life goes on and for the most part you live alongside that pain.

I’m going to be honest and say I think you both need to do a lot of work on yourselves. You cheated on her first from what you have said. And reading what you have wrote I think you have minimised it and justified it in your heard ie it was before marriage so not as bad and your line about why and needing “comfort and respect”. Whilst it is admirable that you confessed you behaved appallingly and treated her with a complete lack of respect. You were selfish and unkind and you need to work on your whys and look at the effect on her.

You gave her chlamydia and she ended up needing fertility treatment because of it. That’s horrific. Do you discuss your affair with her? Maybe she thinks about it everyday too.

No affair is better than another, no affair is justified at all. She was wrong to have her affair and needs to work on her whys, transparency and honesty too.

Have either of you had IC?

thoughtful reply amethyst0323...

Every instance of infidelity is so individual - but for me - No - a one night stand is nothing like an affair (a short (weeks/months) or long term (months/years) affair with one person as opposed to a one time sexual encounter with one (or many different persons). Again there are so many variables but it all boils down to pure selfishness - of varying degrees (blame-shifting to outright abuse, cowardliness, putting your partner's health at risk....all those negative factors weigh in with either a ONS or a LTA but to be lied to day in and day out for months and years takes a special kind of ugly.

One night stand and affair are both cheating . However in my opinion an affair is worse as usually feelings get involve and you are making a clear choice to continue the cheating , continue having sex, continue to have conversation . In a ONS you are making a choice but there are times when someone may get drunk and it just happens. In a ONS it’s mostly lust with no emotional feelings.

Is cheating in the marriage any worse than cheating before marriage? Most people may say in marriage. But my wife cheated on me before marriage and it hurts just as bad because we are together now and I think it about it al the time .

Is cheating inside the home supposed to hurt worse? Cheating sucks anywhere but in the home and same bed is worse due to the complete disrespect and not caring to do it somewhere else . Having unprotected sex is another thing where your spouse doesn’t care .

She says he "couldn't keep it up" is this a common excuse that should not be trusted?

This is common as I was told same thing - sex wasn’t good , he was small, didn’t last long, etc

I was told trickle truth and now still wanting to know all details .

Does this pain go away? Pain is still there but It’ gets a little easier. There are a lot of triggers . My gf cheated for similar reasons - not around as much and lack of attention.

Do these thoughts of my wife and another man in my house ease up?

Again it Will was up but never forgotten - I would recommend moving to a different house . To think of a man intimate with your wife and in your home is awful. For the other man I am sure it’s an ego booster .

I want to know the whole truth, but how do I know when I have it? The only way is a polygraph test .

There really shouldn't be any comparison. Some people can move past an emotional affair or a one night stand because they think it's better than if their wayward had a long-term affair. Other people are just as devastated from an emotional affair as they would be from a long-term affair. Having survived all of them, I'd say they all suck.

What it boils down to is that any type of cheating is an act of betrayal, and it's that betrayal of trust that causes the damage.

And for the record, yeah, imo, your one night stand is just as bad. Did you truly work through the devastation you caused your wife, or did you just sweep everything under the rug and not really deal with it? Unfortunately, it seems like your actions had long-term effects on your marriage. Because if you rug-swept and expected her to be okay with your cheating just because you said you were sorry, than you're the one that introduced the concept that cheating in your relationship was okay.

My WH has had dozens of ONS's (if you can call them that), several hookups with a few different people, and one person he said he fell in love with. None of them are any better to me than another. They are all betrayals. The ONS's make me ask "what was the point, we were having sex". The "love" one makes me ask "I thought you loved me, do you even know what love is". All painful, all different, all traumatic. You can't compare your infidelity to hers, they are both painful and possibly in different ways. It sounds like it's time to dig them up and deal with them now though.

My WH had both, kind of. His first one was a ONS then he felt so terrible about throwing a 15 year marriage away over a ONS he tried to make it more then it was. I lived in a different state so it wasn’t that hard. It lasted a couple weeks before he threw in the towel with her and realized what he had done. He was still in a self destructive mode with PTSD he decided he was best off alone and was trying to force me to leave him so he had an A. It lasted seven months, she was at his apartment every other weekend, sleeping in my place, in my bed with my husband. For me the A hurts the most, far more then the ONS. Fucking her in our bed, playing house with her with my belongings, no protection of any kind used at all. It’s all a giant slap in the face. Either way, no matter how you look at it they are both huge betrayals and both incredibly painful.

How much of the truth do you want? Careful what you wish for. My WH is remorseful and we are working on things. One of our discussions after D-day he asked me if I wanted to know about the sex. I hadn’t thought about it and I said yes. He asked what I wanted to know, I told him to just start talking and I’d tell him to stop. That was a huge mistake. You should really have a plan before walking into conversations like that and to be prepared for the worst possible outcome. He was so brutally honest there is absolutely no doubt in my mind wheather he was telling the truth or not.

Welcome to SI, Cash.

Cheating is cheating, brother. It doesn't matter how far or for how long one has crossed that line. It's a betrayal of the worst kind. There is no justification for infidelity.

(I had suppressed the memory and never thought about it before).

I think you both need to figure out why either of you did what you did. These aren't the type of the memories that stay suppressed. Rather, they fester and rot, corrupting the soul.

Does this pain go away?

Do these thoughts of my wife and another man in my house ease up?

I want to know the whole truth, but how do I know when I have it?

The pain will ebb, but it doesn't go away on it's own. It has to faced with brutal honesty, clarity of purpose and scrupulous introspection. That pain has to be processed out of your body, your mind, spirit, whatever. Embrace that pain, brother, until it no longer has power over you.

Will the thoughts of your WW (wayward wife) and the OM (other man) ease up? Yes, they will. They're often referred to as mind-movies, btw. Mind-movies suck. They just suck all around. That's what helped me the most, recognizing that mind-movies suck. The writing, the direction, sound, dialogue, and the fucking folley artists were all shit. And the acting...? Ha! More than worthy of a "Raspberry Award."

The truth? The truth is that you never know everything. What I think is truly important is that your WW (and you) is committed to the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It's the willingness to be honest and authentic, regardless of the fear that such vulnerability creates within us, that belies a true heart.

...I don't feel comfortable talking to anyone about it.

Does this include your wife? Family? Friends? I didn't tell my family and only spoke to one friend a couple of times about it. I saw a therapist once a months for a few months (lots of homework).

It's long and difficult journey and there's really no finish line (except for the grave). The journey itself is its own reward.

Peace, brother. Happy new year.

Cheating is cheating, married or pre-marriage doesn't matter, you were in a committed relationship.

The thing is you don't get to decide how important your ONS is to your wife. That's solely her decision and the fact you gave her an STI could increase the hurt by a large a amount.

It would seem she had a revenge affair, something some people think is justified behavior.

IMHO you both need to do a lot of work to find out your whys and TBH the time to do it should have been before you had 4 children together.

My husband had two one night stands and a 3 week long affair 13 years later. There’s no difference.

He wasn’t emotionally attached to any of them and it doesn’t matter...he had sex with women other than me while we were married and seemingly happily at that.

The worst kind of cheating is the one that's happening to you. Don't minimize a ONS, it's still a betrayal.

Thanks everyone for your help. You guys actually helped me out with my thought pattern. Some of thou have tougher love than others, but your point is valid about cheating. Cheating is cheating period. So to answer the question based on logic and feelings, there is no difference between a ONS and an A.

I respectfully disagree that a ONS, though extremely devastating, is the same as an affair.

To take it further, I would say that the first time some kind of sexual encounter happens, a huge line is crossed. But almost as big a line is crossed the second time it happens. After that, it doesn’t matter if it was a hundred more times or once. This is an affair

If for example, my EX somehow made the biggest mistake of her life, slept with him, but realized what she did and confessed, we would be married today. Heck, even if she didn’t confess and I found out, we would still be married.

But she didn’t. After the first time she went back. You can chalk up the first time as fueled by latent anger, alcohol, wrong place wrong time, got swept away. None good excuses, but all fly out the window when they go back.

Again, my EX said she had a red line she let get crossed when he got her the first time. She used the swept away in the moment excuse from above. She said she felt extreme guilt after the first time and swore it was a one time mistake. But the second time there was no mystery if it was going to happen. There was no it was awful, as it couldn’t have been if she went back. This was a conscious decision to crap all over me and our marriage. It also, among other things she did, was a big nail in the coffin of our marriage

Again, I don’t want to minimize the devastation of a ONS, but The decision to keep in contact, or cheat again is a devastation multiplier

Welcome to SI. I hope and expect you'll find us useful to you. I'm sorry you qualify for membership here.

I strongly recommend the Healing Library to you. The link is in the yellow box in the upper left corner of SI pages, just above the photo of Dr. Phil's book.

Is cheating in the marriage any worse than cheating before marriage?

I don't compare ways of cheating, ordinarily. At one point in our pre-M relationship, W2b and I realized/decided we were on the road to M, and we wanted to stay on that road. After that discussion, if I had done anything with another woman that I didn't want my W2b to see or hear, it would have been cheating IMO.

I believe the period during the A presents a different or separate recovery challenge than the post-d-day period. In general, I suspect the shorter the betrayal, the easier it is to recover from the pain that came in during the A.

But easier doesn't mean easy. ONS, 4.5 months, 15 years - recovery is hard work no matter what the A consisted of.

Is cheating inside the home supposed to hurt worse?

You get to decide that. I think it might have been more painful if my W had even invited ow to our apartment for coffee, with no sex involved.

She says he "couldn't keep it up" is this a common excuse that should not be trusted?

It's believable to me, but does it really make a difference? Your W was willing to fuck him. If the only reason she didn't is that he couldn't get it up, she still betrayed you.

Does this pain go away?

If you feel it and let it flow through your body - at least that's my belief.

Do these thoughts of my wife and another man in my house ease up?

This thread may help: https://www.survivinginfidelity.com/forums.asp?tid=574286&AP=141. I used to let them play to the end. A mind movie might cause me to stop what I was doing, which was a PITA, but I figured every movie was pain flowing through and out of my body, which was healing.

I want to know the whole truth, but how do I know when I have it?

As has been pointed out, it's reasonable for your W to have forgotten many details after 15 years, but I expect she has remembered a lot of important stuff.

All you can do is ask your questions and respond to the answers. You might want an objective observer around while you ask.

Also, this thread (For those who found out years later) may be helpful: https://www.survivinginfidelity.com/forums.asp?tid=349697

[This message edited by sisoon at 11:21 AM, January 1st (Wednesday)]

My H did both ONS’s and an A. They both are cheating and I think both are to escape or fill a void in the cheater that cannot he blamed on anyone else. Both are mistakes. Both hurt. Both have gross elements about them when you think about it. My point since I have had the pleasure of thinning of both and being hurt by both is..::it is b like comparing 2 things that both should have never happened. Both are wrong. I do agree that an A can carry feelings, but a ONS with a stranger means you can do that with anyone? my point again is that you can do this all day long with no concussion. Do you think it helps your M to rank them?

Something else to think on.:::you started the infidelity in your relationship. I’m sure that hurt her and could have haunted her: It didn’t set a good precedent. I am not sure you should worry about pre M or lost M. I think focusing on the healing from both is the key.

Time and healing can help with the strength of some is your feelings. However, there maybe be some things you just can’t get past like at your house she a change may need to be made to get past it

Since her story has already changed I doubt you yet know the whole truth. I think you will feel more settled in your gut when you have. Excuses like he couldn’t get it up or keep it up are common. You have to keep pushing for the truth sadly until you are satisfied. For my H it took a lie detector test, sadly. He lied so much . I don’t think you can truly save a M or heal until you have that painful truth and can turn the page.

So my opinion is to stop comparing, own your own cheating, seek the truth, work on yourself and the M of that is your goal, and ultimately I pray healing for you both/

[This message edited by Jesusismyanchor at 11:46 AM, January 1st (Wednesday)]

This surely is open to lots of interpretation. Drawing an analogy to someone killing someone. The end result is the same (someone has taken someone's life) however the manner in which this is carried out and the resulting punishment is varied (1st degree, 2nd degree, manslaughter etc). So some might view ONS vs. A differently.

IMHO opinion the act is similar (there is a betrayal) however the severity and recovery can be very different. It's a bit like a WS being completely open about an A vs. TT all along. The recovery (if there is one) is likely to have a better change if the truth is out there and nothing is hidden vs TT over days, months years. The longer the situation took to happen, the longer it will take to un-happen. So from that stand point I believe they are different. Of course what is most important are the people involved and how they accept responsibility and subsequent actions.

I wouldn't stay in any case, but for me, I view the ONS as more difficult to understand, and worse in the sense that it shows such egregious recklessness, and complete lack of self control and self awareness.

The vase was shattering by you. She crushed it again after it was mostly put back together. Only she knows how much of it was ever reassembled, it depends on her anger, her forgiveness, her ability to trust. It was never the marriage of could have been before your affair. It will never be the marriage it was before hers.

Who hit first, who hit harder, where they hit, how many times they hit, it doesn’t really matter. Focusing on that is only playing the pain Olympics and there are no medals.