SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Isurvived,

I know it is hard to accept that we have to protect ourselves from the very person we thought had our back and partnered with us in life. But now we know they are capable of not having our back. So it is good for us to recognize it and take the steps we need.

This is exactly it. I'm lucky in that the separation has shown me I'm perfectly capable of coping by myself and independent financially. I'm fiercely driven by my desire for the children to have close family unit and a full time present father (this was my dream when I had them and I won't give up on it) BUT my over arching priority is that of the emotional safety of my children and of myself. You're right that my focus needs to continue to be on achieving that. Luckily, because of the separation much of that is in place.

But I do love my WH very much and I'm not going to pretend I don't, even though I feel stupid for saying it because of what he's done, and I hope that he will continue to work as hard and convince me that he can come home one day.

[This message edited by Dragonfly123 at 8:24 AM, January 14th (Tuesday)]

I skipped a lot of posts because I didn't want to forget my response to this. I'll go back and read after.

A psychiatrist gave a seminar about this. He said black and white thinking is how these people live.

If this is referring to people with depression, and not cheaters, I disagree. I'm the BS and I have chronic clinical depression. I will have to take medication for the rest of my life so that I can function. My fch is the black and white thinker. He's always been all or nothing. I am the grey area thinker. I have been forever trying to get him to see all the options in between all or nothing.

Depression is a very serious mental illness as it can lead to suicide. However, unless one has a complete psychotic break, which depression can cause, I believe depression can't be blamed for cheating. Personally, I believe there are very few mental illnesses that can be blamed for cheating. Maybe someone with bipolar in a manic state. Basically, again, only someone experiencing a complete psychotic break who has no sense of reality, like someone with schizophrenia.

I have suffered from psychosis due to my depression. I dissociate. I hallucinate. I've taken some serious meds for it. I have never thought cheating was the thing to do. So, again, I will say there have to other character flaws that lead someone with mental illness to cheating. It's almost never just the mental illness.

TISL, what side effects from the meds would preclude your H from his work? I've taken lots of meds over the years. None of the antidepressants have impaired me to the point that I couldn't operate heavy, dangerous machinery, or anything like that. Unless maybe it's the military or police where maybe anyone on psychotropic drugs might be excluded. However, in that case, I would assume that anyone with a mental illness, especially untreated, would be excluded. I'll have to ask my fch about that.

Also, there is the ADA that protects people from mental illness being discriminated against in their jobs. So, I'm really curious how that works at your H's job.

It's okay to love him Dragonfly. It is perfectly okay. The important part in healing is to detach from feeling his pain...to love him enough and yourself enough to allow him to figure this out and to do the work necessary to be safe for you and your children again. Please don't forget about you and your value. The more you show that to him, the more he will show that to you too.

I'm fiercely driven by my desire for the children to have close family unit and a full time present father (this was my dream when I had them and I won't give up on it)

Yes I totally understand this. Remember (and I say this as much for myself as for you) that your children need to see you standing up for you so they will do it for themselves too. Showing him grace is a great model as well as long as it doesn't cross your boundaries.

As you said, you are watching. You are separated and are showing yourself and him that you can be independent and will stay that way if necessary. Children deserve peace. I think that is the lesson from infidelity particularly poignant when we thrash about due to extreme emotions in the A's aftermath. Peace can mean being together or it can mean being apart. It can also mean we love our partners but cannot live with them.

(((Dragonfly)))

Through intense work with her therapist we learned that my wife was having a mental health crisis when she cheated. She wasn’t in a good place psychologically when it happened as she was depressed from the sudden death of her father whom she idolized. Not long afterward she was sexually assaulted (not raped, but almost) by someone she trusted.

On top of this she had a lot of emotional baggage from unaddressed sexual abuse she suffered when she was younger, grieving a child we’d lost, and a lifetime of feeling out of place and rejected (due to being mixed race and also having Asperger’s/high functioning autism). And we were somewhat at a stagnant place in our marriage where sex had become monotonous due to our work schedules and the demands of parenting a child with disabilities.

Plus she had shit for boundaries. So when her shark of a “best friend” smelled blood in the water and went in for the kill, she folded like a stack of cards. Didn’t even resist and fucked him.

She is still responsible for betraying our marriage. Nothing excuses that. Cheating is wrong, period, even if she had a lot of psychological issues that made her more susceptible. But over time as she has done the hard work to dig into her “whys” and started to recognize that she had deeply ingrained feelings of inadequacy, unworthiness, and fear, she began to address the years-old wounds that had not healed and were poisoning our marriage. It took a lot of therapy (and EMDR, and medication, and changing her thought patterns and her habits). She’s still in therapy now. But she has come a long way.

Ok, a few other things. First, let me say that all the assumptions and misinformation about depression are really bothering me. As someone who has lived with chronic clinical depression for 35+ years now, I'm having a hard time reading this thread. Even educated, experienced mental health professionals can't truly understand unless they have felt it themselves. I will try not to get too worked up.

First, unless you are dealing with a sociopath or psychopath, every cheater is in crisis. Obviously, there's something seriously wrong with someone who cheats and lies and harms the very people, their own children, that they have vowed to protect, even the socio- and psychopath (Their problem is that they just don't care.). Everyone goes through at least one major crisis in their life. Not everyone cheats. While you absolutely need to take the cheater's mental health into account when deciding whether or not to R, it is not (usually) the cause of the cheating.

Cooley, you described me to a T. Again, I am the BP, not the CP. My fch, who is the supposed picture of mental health from an idyllic FOO, is the one who cheated and lied. I'm the one who came from the chaotic childhood. I think, in a lot of ways, that gave me more tools to deal with the crises of life than my fch. He had this fantasy that everything just worked if you loved each other. He didn't think there was any work involved in maintaining a LTR. He certainly didn't think there was anything he needed to work on or change. All the problems were mine because of my mental illness. Initially, his cheating was a response to my mental illness, in his mind.

I wasn't laying on the couch doing nothing all day, I wasn't trying to kill myself. That is what I thought depression was.

Depression has many manifestations. It can present much differently in men than women. Anger can be a big symptom of depression. Men tend to turn things outward while women tend to turn them inward.

It is also VERY minute to minute thinking. Long term be damned.

Even if you are an educated, trained mental health professional, you can't fix your CP's mental illness. You're too close to the situation, too emotionally invested. We all need separate, objective, professional help.

You can't control your feelings and emotions - they are yours. You can and should control your actions - they are a choice.

I'm going to disagree here slightly. Yes, we can control our actions, and should strive to do the right thing. Whil we may not be able to control our immediate emotional reaction, we can control our subsequent emotions. Our emotions can change our thinking, and our thinking can change our emotions. If I make I mistake, my depressed brain may immediately say, "You suck! You are a failure. You always fuck things up. You're worthless, and useless, and everyone is better of without you." I can change that by telling myself that is not true. I made one mistake. It does not define me or my life. I can make amends, if needed, and do better next time. So, we can control our emotions. I can control how I feel simply with my breathing. If I feel anxiety or a panic attack coming on, I can sit and breathe slowly and deeply. That can soothe me. I can exercise. That will dissipate the energy. I am in control of all facets of myself.

I love everything isurvived has said (I think. I haven't gone back and read every word.) Every cheat has emotional and/or mental health issues that they need to address. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter so much what those are. What matters is whether or not the CP recognizes and accepts that and does something healthy about it for himself. If he doesn't, for whatever reason, he is not R material. BPs need to protect themselves and their children first before they can consider the safety of the CP.

Self-soothing, we all do it. Some of us do it in healthy ways. Some of us in not so healthy ways. Healthy self-soothing is a skill we all need. Sometimes, escaping for a bit is ok, whether it's in a book or a video game or exercise or meditation or arts and crafts, etc. The trick is to keep it on a healthy level.

ETA: And, now, I feel a panic attack coming on from posting all of that. Off to self-soothe.

[This message edited by cocoplus5nuts at 9:32 AM, January 14th (Tuesday)]

The psychiatrist was not talking about depression or bipolar. He was talking about someone who lives with overwhelming anxiety which is so debilitating that it presents often as depression because you never relax. Anxiety about the next thing coming is so difficult for children. Childhood is so simple if it’s done right. You need a stable, dependable caregiver. You need unconditional love. You need a few simple rules to live by. Food, clothing, shelter and nurturing. Just basic stuff and so many children are deprived of that. That anxiety comes into adulthood where you are constantly waiting for the ax to fall. It’s exhausting and depressing. That’s what he was talking about. You comes into adulthood as someone who feels totally out of control. The terms hopeless and helpless fit. How do you deal with that, because it’s exhausting and depressing and you look for something to give you a minute away from it. Lots of people drink, lots of people do drugs and lots of people cheat. None of it works.

All or nothing thinking.

[This message edited by Cooley2here at 4:28 PM, January 14th (Tuesday)]

I think the difference would be between a BS understanding all aspects of it, versus a WS trying to use those things as a form of scapegoating.

Absolutely. My gut said 'sickness.' My W never said she was sick. She just took responsibility for her actions and started working to 'get well.'

A WS can't heal without taking responsibility for the A(s).

“Surely the craziest and most destructive form of infidelity is the temporary insanity of falling in love. You do this, not when you meet somebody wonderful (wonderful people don't screw around with married people) but when you are going through a crisis in your own life, can't continue living your life, and aren't quite ready for suicide yet. An affair with someone grossly inappropriate—someone decades younger or older, someone dependent or dominating, someone with problems even bigger than your own—is so crazily stimulating that it's like a drug that can lift you out of your depression and enable you to feel things again. Of course, between moments of ecstasy, you are more depressed, increasingly alone and alienated in your life, and increasingly hooked on the affair partner.” Frank Pittman

Thanks for this quote. It describes my W's internal state during the A.

...I know I’ll never forgive him....

Ah, Dragonfly, don't waste energy predicting the future.You may surprise yourself and forgive him. BTDT. Shocked myself....

[This message edited by sisoon at 5:21 PM, January 14th (Tuesday)]

I have suffered from psychosis due to my depression. I dissociate. I hallucinate. I've taken some serious meds for it. I have never thought cheating was the thing to do. So, again, I will say there have to other character flaws that lead someone with mental illness to cheating. It's almost never just the mental illness.

I agree with this quote. My FWH was diagnosed bipolar, (unfortunately after my DDay), although some of the ICs he saw tried to completely pass off his wayward behavior on the bipolar mania, neither I, nor my FWH have chose to. He does believe some of what he did, he never would have done, if he wasn't manic, but he also sees that he set himself up to act out in that particular way when he was manic: being conflict avoidant, entitlement issues, choosing to deceive me about his long term porn addiction/daily use, blaming me for everything that was wrong in our marriage (sound familiar?), and unresolved FOO issues.

So, as you can see, he has a lot in common with what I've read about most WS. So,even though he does have a mental illness, he and I don't believe he acted out in the particular way he did, just because of it.

The description in the Frank Pittman article on romantic infidelity makes the link clear.

I just looked up this article, and it's eerie how precisely he described my WH's circumstances - both the characteristics of the OW, which fit her to a T, and the life circumstances he was experiencing at the time.

Not related to the point of this thread, but I think one of the things that's helped him get over the affair and the OW has been having to face just how UNunique his experience was. In his head, he had built it into something where he felt like his circumstances were so special, and personalized, and different that it had to be "real." It was a pretty hard dose of reality for him when he started to see, from different perspectives, how many articles were written that sounded like someone was talking DIRECTLY TO HIM, but were in fact describing the broadly typical experience. It's hard to maintain the fantasy that you're unique when someone has you pegged without ever having met you or heard your story.

“Surely the craziest and most destructive form of infidelity is the temporary insanity of falling in love. You do this, not when you meet somebody wonderful (wonderful people don't screw around with married people) but when you are going through a crisis in your own life, can't continue living your life, and aren't quite ready for suicide yet. An affair with someone grossly inappropriate—someone decades younger or older, someone dependent or dominating, someone with problems even bigger than your own—is so crazily stimulating that it's like a drug that can lift you out of your depression and enable you to feel things again. Of course, between moments of ecstasy, you are more depressed, increasingly alone and alienated in your life, and increasingly hooked on the affair partner.” Frank Pittman

I am always astounded as to how much Dr. Pittman says that resonates with me deeply. This was me too, for sure.

Unfortunately, the other aspect to this for me was after the A was over I went back to not being able to feel things again. It was maddening, and even more painful than prior to the affair. I had lost all sense of my own humanity.

Cocoplus, you asked:

TISL, what side effects from the meds would preclude your H from his work?

As an aside, my WH has a very strange, and very specialized job that I have not named as I really can't on a public forum. It requires an immense amount of focus and requires split second decisions that if made incorrectly have very serious life-threatening ramifications. It requires one of the highest security clearances the US Govt issues and although he is a civilian, he is contracted to do govt work. So, it sounds odd, and like bullshit, because the job itself is very unusual...but the issue regarding the meds are very very real.

Honestly, I don't know the specifics of the side effects as it would depend on what drug he was taking - what I do know is that there is a list of precluded medications and it is over 50 pages long (I've read all the regulations, and the contract that governs their work so this is not some made up excuse by my WH not to take meds - in fact I think that part of his feelings of hopelessness stem precisely from the fact that he cannot w/out putting his career in permanent jeopardy).

In his world, "precluded" means different things regarding different meds. For example, he will not lose his job if he takes Benadryl, but he must let his work know, and there is a MANDATORY (as in you simply cannot work doing his normal job) for 14 days! (Yes, you've read that correct).

In the case of meds used for mental health/severe depression (which he has been diagnosed with), every SINGLE one that is used is on the list. Granted some of them are automatic dis qualifiers, meaning you take them and you are forced to take a medical retirement - period - there is no "retraining for another position" and no waiting period. Assuming you elect to take one of the non-auto dis-qualifiers how it works is:

- You get diagnosed and prescribed whatever meds are on the list

- You are immediately suspended medically from working, and can take sick leave/whatever other leave you have, to help cover the 6 months that you must be off

- During that 6 months you take your meds, get them sorted out (as you might change them). 6 months is all you have to figure out your mental health issue AND find a suitable cocktail of drugs that work for you

- At the end of 6 months you have several medical exams, your medical records are poured over, and you sit in front of a formal medical review board which tests you to see if the meds are affecting your cognitive abilities negatively or too negatively

- If you pass the board and exams and any side effects do not effect your performance too much you are able to go back to work and undergo 6 month reviews for the rest of your career or until you discontinue meds or whatever

- If you don't pass, you are forced to retire (or if you have not yet worked long enough to accrue retirement, then you are just forced to leave, period).

Another person with the same position recently went through this process due to anti-anxiety meds and he did not pass the boards and was forced to medically retire at 37. It's legit and causes my WH a lot of anxiety and frustration. Not so funny but clearly ironic is that my WH's job is very high-anxiety at times, so not being able to take anti-anxiety meds is doubly crappy.

Also, there is the ADA that protects people from mental illness being discriminated against in their jobs. So, I'm really curious how that works at your H's job.

Trust me, as I said, I am a lawyer and this was my first thought too...but it's completely contractual and completely legal. Ultimately an employer can and are allowed to discriminate in the name of safety for others (e.g. you CAN refuse to hire someone as an airline pilot who utilizes certain meds or who has imperfect vision). While the ADA sets these requirements, if the discrimination exists to further a legitimate governmental interest, such as the safety of the public, then they can (and will) do so. This is one of those cases.

To get back to the original post, all of this regarding my WH and his lack of being able to take meds for his depression has not helped him in his day to day life at all...and this has been going on for a lot longer than I've known him. He read me a journal entry he wrote over 20 years ago and it is so filled with the same hopelessness and emotional numbness as one he could have written last week.

And no, this is not en excuse to cheat - none of it is. I think my WH wants it to be the excuse, so that he doesn't have to accept that he has been a very shitty person to me and to one of his former best friends the OBS.

Also, in my WH's case, I don't think he's just severely depressed - I personally believe that he suffers from a personality disorder, which is a whole other ball of wax. Black and white thinking is very common in certain disorders, so I think in his case depression is just one of his issues.

[This message edited by ThisIsSoLonely at 10:01 AM, January 15th (Wednesday)]

Unfortunately, the other aspect to this for me was after the A was over I went back to not being able to feel things again.

Can I ask whether you managed to find your way out of that? And if so, how long did it take, and what did it take?

My WH, even as he was saying that he was over the OW, has intermittently said that he's going back to feeling "numb," which he doesn't find entirely bad, and just has to accept that that's good enough. It's not good enough for me, though.

He tried one anti-depressant over the summer, very reluctantly, and couldn't cope with the side-effects. I know that it can take some people years to find the right medication (or combination), but he's unwilling to consider that again at this time.

First, unless you are dealing with a sociopath or psychopath, every cheater is in crisis. Obviously, there's something seriously wrong with someone who cheats and lies and harms the very people, their own children, that they have vowed to protect, even the socio- and psychopath (Their problem is that they just don't care.). Everyone goes through at least one major crisis in their life. Not everyone cheats. While you absolutely need to take the cheater's mental health into account when deciding whether or not to R, it is not (usually) the cause of the cheating.

I agree with this. I'd say I had a mental health crisis when I cheated back. It was on DDay hours after discovery, I remember it like I'm looking at someone else through a haze, and the timeline seems all funny. Disassociation, I'm sure. I had a break with reality. Now, I could have done other things. I could have killed myself. I could have killed him. I could have broken everything in the house. I could have just driven at 100mph screaming, right? But no, I went and found a stranger to have sex with. I believe I get why I did it. Among other reasons (sexual trauma and such), there's a "no you don't get to treat me like this" attitude at my core. I wasn't thinking rationally or clearly enough for me to pinpoint anything that drove me in particular. It was like being an automaton. But why was it doing the same thing back to him that was done to me? I think that's part of who I genuinely am. This pride, this "you don't get to one-up me" thing. I think that's why I went in that direction.

What I don't think is that my XWH can use the same excuse and make what we did equal. I came back to myself on the way home and screamed and cried in the car. I went home, couldn't even look at him and went to bed and lay there shaking for hours. I could not believe I had done that. It was like waking up from a nightmare. Now, when my XWH used his depression and addictive nature to excuse his sleeping with who knows how many prostitutes and possibly other women for likely years, I couldn't empathize. He would have sex with others and come home to me like everything was fine. He'd tell me he loved me, cuddle me in bed, lie lie lie lie about where he had been or why he didn't have money. Have me cover for him financially sometimes when he was short on stuff, knowing full well in his mind that he was broke because he paid Angel and Princess for a threesome. No shame. Told me he was depressed and took every nice thing I'd do for him to try and lift his spirits in stride. He made a fool out of me. I lost my shit. There is a difference and I don't think that your average cheater with depression issues can use that as a get-out-of-jail free card for cruelty and deception. I'm sure he had his reasons for coping that way too. Where we differ is that I could not have done the lying and decieving because I didn't lack empathy in the ways that he did. I saw him as a person, he saw me as an appliance to be utilized.

It's funny how you can 100% relate to some things that someone says and completely not relate to others. For me, this is so true.

I didn't lack empathy in the ways that he did. I saw him as a person, he saw me as an appliance to be utilized.

Yet this is 100% not:

I went and found a stranger to have sex with. I believe I get why I did it. Among other reasons (sexual trauma and such), there's a "no you don't get to treat me like this" attitude at my core.

As to the revenge A, you could never have gotten me to do that. I would like to say, like to think, it is because I am fundamentally better than that at my core, but the reality is it's not that cut and dry. While the thought of anyone else after d-day (or honestly, now, sigh) repulsed me, I HAD TO HAVE the moral high ground. You would have had to threaten me with imminent grave harm to get me to give that up, but if I'm honest with myself it's not solely because I have such "high morals" and yeah, there have been times where I've gotten so wrapped up in the "unfairnes" of it all that the idea of a revenge A...IF IT WOULD HURT HIM appealed to me, but I wasn't willing to do anything that would compromise my moral "superiority" in respect to him, which likely makes me a bit fucked up.

In relation to being treated like an appliance - to straight up USING me, yeah, my WH did that over and over and over again, daily. It's something that when I was invited to meet with his IC for one appointment, I stated that WH had used me and the IC started to want me to back off (feeling that name calling was about to start) and my WH interrupted him and said in no uncertain terms "Yeah, I did use her [me] all the time with no regard for her feelings. I even used to get mad about things she didn't do for us while I was using that same time to communicate with AP."

A great example was a time when the apartment building (small multi family) that HE owns (pre-marital asset, he's had it for years before we met) had plumbing problems. I am pretty handy and he is not, and my schedule allows me some freedom to stop by the place when his does not. I was supposed to go by the place after work on a Monday and honestly forgot, got home, and decided I would go the following day. The next day, I had to leave work early (which means I finish my work from home later that night) so I could meet the tenants and get in. I then spend about 3 hours cutting a hole in drywall, removing and replacing a water pipe, and cutting, redoing the drywall so I could sand/paint the next time I was able to stop by. As I was there, at HIS income property, doing shitty, dirty work, and taking time off from my own to do so, he had gotten home about an hour into it, and instead of coming to help me, he sat in our house on my couches talking and later sexting with her, AND complaining about how I hadn't gone by the place the day before to her. He was a bit of a jerk to me about it later when I was done and was working on my own job stuff that evening at home, making a comment that I had "finally gotten it partially done" and was a bit pissed that he apparently had promised the tenants it would be done and painted and completed already and I still had to go back again and finish. Gratefulness - none. Appreciation - none. Realization that I had taken time out of my day to make his life easier (and cheaper) - none. Irritation, anger, and disdain - in spades. And all this while he himself could have been doing the work but instead spent the time talking to his AP and bitching to her about me. The amount of entitlement is astounding, even now, to remember.

So to bring this back to the mental health issue...

That type of attitude isn't a function of depression. It's called being an using, ungrateful asshole. I have no doubt that depression played a part in allowing my WH to be enticed by the attention he was given by her pre and post-A. None. I believe that the A "made him feel alive again" and that the depression made it hard to get excited/feel happiness over "normal" things such as the plumbing work getting done. The comfort someone may feel from that whole "team" environment a long term relationship or marriage creates is immensely comforting and joyful to me - for my WH it didn't/doesn't create that kind of excitement that he associates with feeling like life is worth living. So in that way, depression and his associated issues did contribute to ending up in an A. The lack of empathy and ability to compartmentalize guilt away and the complete failure to recognize or address what you are doing - what kind of mind game you are playing with yourself?!?! That's not depression or another mood disorder - that's something more sinister and scary IMO - it's personality issues/disorders/whatever you want to call it. That aspect of the A has nothing to do with depression and I think what DevistatedDee is talking about - the difference between her revenge A and her WS's consistent pattern of use and abuse.

[This message edited by ThisIsSoLonely at 10:58 AM, January 16th (Thursday)]

My husband was in the middle of a mental breakdown, and we were actually separated bc of his anger control issues - or lack thereof, when his AP made her move.

I say she made her move bc she actively pursued my H and begged me to let him go to her. BEGGED me.

There is more to the whole story but basically his mental breakdown led to him having a PA with his coworker...

The lack of empathy and ability to compartmentalize guilt away and the complete failure to recognize or address what you are doing - what kind of mind game you are playing with yourself?!?! That's not depression or another mood disorder - that's something more sinister and scary IMO - it's personality issues/disorders/whatever you want to call it. That aspect of the A has nothing to do with depression and I think what DevistatedDee is talking about - the difference between her revenge A and her WS's consistent pattern of use and abuse.

Yes, you nailed it. That's what I'm talking about.

My fwh was in the midst of a mental health crisis when the A happened. It is one aspect of it, not a full explanation but something to consider when looking at the overall picture. It left him vulnerable in certain ways, as did his FOO, his codependency, his inability to handle difficult emotions, and a whole heap of other things. I do feel empathy but I don’t let it stop me from holding him accountable. Neither does he.

I spend time talking to some very poorly people about their mental health struggles, and it has taught me a great deal. There is so much disorder out there. Sometimes we can’t protect ourselves from it, and that is hard to accept.

I've been thinking about this more and I have a few theories. I wanted to add that to me, there is a fundamental difference in the mindset of a person who cheats in the moment, but the guilt and pain they will cause their partner/spouse eats them alive, and the person who can just shove that shit aside and actually believe, long term, in the bullshit they have sold themselves. IMO, if you find yourself in a false-R situation, you are dealing with someone who is much more fundamentally flawed than the person who has a ONS or even a LTA, who has a total mental breakdown when caught - when forced to look in the mirror at themselves and who they have been and want to change.

With false R - the person who is forced at d-day to look at themselves in the mirror and look head on at the aftermath of pain they have caused their partner in life, and do it again...that level of compartmentalizing and total disrespect is evidence of a severe mental health problem, not just depression. To me, the ability to fuck up is inherent in all of us - but the ability to recognize what we have done, put ourselves aside, attempt to make amends, and then look at ourselves and want to change...that is where the rubber hits the road so to speak. That is where the people who have fucked up, maybe due to depression or some other issue they have not addressed, parts ways from those who are mentally unwell in a myriad of ways, depression just being a part of it. This will be unpopular, but I think that those cheaters who leave their BS either for the AP or not, are still attempting to make a change. Maybe, regardless of the cheating, the M was not working for them. Maybe they feel they need to start over and fix themselves and stop hurting their BS anymore. Maybe they are just playing a mental game with themselves that the AP/the M was bad in an attempt to avoid dealing with their own actions. Either way, leaving is change, which is some attempt at doing something. Sticking around in limbo-land, doing nothing but bullshitting your BS and yourself....scary scary shit.

The lack of LONG TERM EMPATHY is a major tell that you have a problem that is bigger than major depression. We all can be un-empathetic in the moment, say things designed to hurt, be cruel, or unsympathetic, but in the long term, this is the biggest tell - and False R indicates an astounding lack of empathy and so does long term rugsweeping.

Let me put it this way:

I can understand how a depressed person could find excitement again via an A - via the attention, the boosting of their own self worth that they have not been able to find themselves. That depression and anxiety may assist someone in making decisions they otherwise would not make, because it makes them feel better in the moment, in a way nothing else has.

But it's complicated isn't it - my WH has said (and his texts/conversations with the AP over 2 years seems to back it up) that he got less and less from the A. He felt guilty about me and the OBS who was his good friend, and tried to end it over and over again. He was not without conscience about it completely, and the guilt was eating away at him, making him "enjoy it in the moments when it was happening and simultaneously making the non-A time more and more miserable" so he took the easy way and continued the A because everything else seemed even worse. He did this even though the A itself was becoming less and less enjoyable and it was failing to create the same spark in him that he felt before, and felt more like "work" to keep it going. It made his day to day life when he could not simply avoid everything more miserable, making him more depressed, and making him think that he needed to extricate himself from that which cause him misery: me and the guilt associated with me being here with him. He actually convinced himself that if he could get me out of the way, and set me free..."unharmed" or as painlessly as possible, he would feel better. When the shit hit the fan, however, he did not look at himself and what caused him to behave in ways that led him down this path - he continued to evaluate our relationship as a major player in what caused him to behave this way...and he acted accordingly by continuing the A even after discovery.

Where does depression play into that type of thinking? IMO it plays into the "positive momentary feelings" he got when participating in the A - that he was not the KISA - the A was the KISA, coming to save him from his unhappiness. I mean, in his mind, the A made him feel good and everything else made him feel nothing at best and terrible at worst, so of course the A and her must be the solution to the problem. In the moment he couldn't change his job and he couldn't up and move and he couldn't be with her in any way that was acceptable to him long term, so at some point the A wasn't the solution to his issues either - the solution was to rid himself of the person who was making him face himself AND who was the cause of his unhappiness to begin with - me. There was no self-awareness, and a year of therapy barely made a dent in that for him.

That's where the depression ends IMO. Upon d-day, where you cannot run and hide from that anymore, you have choices to make. If the A is so great, why cling to me/us like a drowning rat to the only log in the river? Is it the stark realization that all this shit that is making you so miserable isn't so bad after all? Is it "rock bottom" or "ground zero" that seems to facilitate change in humans more than anything else? Or is it about control and manipulation and the desire to self-preserve and have whatever else it is that you want? Is there any regard for the lives of the people you have helped to harm or is it all about you still?

And at that moment, that juncture, is when you find out if you are dealing with someone who is depressed and trying to find their way out, or if you are dealing with someone who is flawed in much more serious ways. If they turn inward, and say "what the fuck have I done and who is this person I have become" and who wants that shit to end at all costs, you maybe are dealing with a depressed person who fucked up, and who is unhappy with themselves. Does that mean it will be all roses going forward? Does that mean they will no longer want to gaslight themselves into believing what they have done isn't that bad? Does it mean they won't want to rugsweep? Nope - it doesn't. What it should mean is that they will not want to perpetrate the same hurts any longer - they should realize that the solution is not to continue to lie and deceive by continuing the SAME behavior that got them to where they are.

If you have someone that moves to lie and deceive immediately or shortly thereafter, you are dealing with someone to whom all bets are off in future dealings. My WH said to me after d-day2 when some TT had been revealed (he wasn't much for TT so I didn't have to deal with that very often) that he was afraid he was becoming "more and more numbed to my pain." If I could have erased him from my life at that moment I should have, because he was telling me that there was something so wrong with him that when he made my pain worse, it seemed like less and less of an issue. That isn't depression - that's mentally fucked up.

All of these things are the signs people are talking about when watching your WS's behavior post-dday. It seems hard at the time, but in hindsight, there were flags everywhere that my WH is mentally ill in that personality disordered way that takes years of therapy to work through with oftentimes little success. The fact is depression, clinical "major" depression is one of the co-symptoms of other disorders that are bigger and uglier such as NPD, BPD, ASPD, histrionic all usually come with depression...apparently because being that way IS depressing.

So, most people who cheat are in the midst of some mental health crisis - but which one is the issue. It would be interesting to know the true success stories based on the mental health of the cheating spouse...but unfortunately that isn't available. I suspect that depression (situational or long standing) runs though most of them regardless of success or not.

[This message edited by ThisIsSoLonely at 11:48 AM, January 16th (Thursday)]

7 plus years now, I read a lot on SI but rarely comment or share. However, this thread caught my attention. My WW definitely had dealt with depression most of her life. Abusive mother, docile father that allowed mother to abuse him and the 4 kids mentally, physically, emotionally for years. WW says she remembers being depressed at age 6. Being the only daughter, WW would get accused of being a slut, whore, etc in Junior HS and beyond. Her brothers would be accused of being gay, feminine, etc. Sick woman for sure and equally sick father for accepting this as normal.

Irony that in HS, she was on a date w/ a boy that forced her to perform oral sex on him. She never told anyone for fear that her mother would be right... And knew her dad would not defend her. She also had sex with multiple other boys in HS. This included the OP that she cheated on me with 20+ years later. Post DD, she broke all contact with her parents for her Mental Health, spent 4+ years in therapy and now claims that she is much better at coping, strong enough to stand up for herself and is mentally stronger than she's ever been in her life.

The problem is that is took her cheating before she reached a point to start getting healthier. I gave her normalcy, a loving place to live and an absolutely amazing family that loves her and that didn't help her get healthy and help her develop good boundaries. She know I would have defended her, killed for her, if she was sexually assaulted. But this was not a case of her being assaulted and not knowing how to stop an assault. She actively pursued the relationship, initiated the sex. She even "claims" that he stopped to go to his bag and get a condom so she could have stopped it at any time. (no, I don't believe a condom was used) There was NO threat that she could identify that would have led her to feel in danger. It was all on her, she WANTED it to occur and made it happen.

So knowing all of what I know about her actions, HOW IN THE WORLD CAN SHE OR ANYONE CHALK UP HER CHEATING TO HER FOO OR MENTAL HEALTH? I could much more understand and probably even forgive much easier if he had cornered her, intimidated her and had forced himself on her. I could see how her FOO issues and mental health would have come in to play and left her feeling like she didn't have any choice but allow him to have sex with her. But when you are the one pursuing?

My WW proclaims that she is in a much better place now, and has strong boundaries so I don't have anything to worry about now. I hope that is true.

I am a WS and I don't think chaulking up cheating to FOO is valid either. We all have Foo.

But, in order to understand how you have come to be who you are - in terms of beliefs, thoughts, actions, etc. You have to go back and look at the source, often in a therapy type environment. You can't change what you don't understand, and you can't heal those things without gaining self compassion over yourself.

FOO helps us establish patterns in our life and knowing those patterns exist and why is helpful for changing them.

So, in other words foo is not the reason for cheating. Understanding foo (and also healing past trauma) is part of the process of change.