SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I'm not going to jump into the whole battle of the sexes thing that erupts here from time to time because, like politics, that's not really a discussion that leads to a lot of changed minds at the end.

On "settling", I think that contentment is found in the very act of settling and too many people treat it like "the S-word". Life's a push and pull, right? The desire to do better, have better, be better, balanced with the fundamental need for stability, security, and familiarity. The former motivates us to act toward some kind of change, the latter keeps us planted firmly in the stability of status quo. Balance is key. If I'm always looking for the next job, I won't have time to build connections in my current job nor effectively gain the skills associated with it. If I'm always looking for a better partner, I will never be satisfied with the woman in front of me. At the same time, none of us wants to recommend to anyone that they stay in a shitty job that underpays them, or a shitty marriage with a person who undervalues them. This is the dance, and most people are shit at it.

From a marital standpoint, the primary problem we face today, as I've said many times, is that we've no compelling, and external, reason to remain with our spouse. That's fine and good when things are on the up and up, but what about when your spouse loses their job? Or gains weight? Or stops having sex? Or becomes irritable? Or doesn't focus on your needs to the degree that you desire? When marital unhappiness is encountered in the modern day, without the limitations of religious doctrine or legal repercussions or overbearing familial expectations, people remain in relationships based on whatever internal code they can muster and stick to. Unfortunately, people are inherently shit at sticking to internal codes without external reasons to do so. This is why we have laws. And regulations. And traditions. And codes of conduct. And contracts. And countless other checks in place to mitigate selfish human behavior. You know why it's so easy to cheat on your spouse? Because nobody gives a shit about the marriage pact. There are few if any *real* repercussions enforced by society at large for your shitty behavior, and the advent of No Fault Divorce (aka "who gives a shit who did what, just sign the damn papers" divorce) exacerbated that.

A close second root cause is that these days, people have too many options and they're too quick to seize them if given an opportunity. Endless options sounds good on paper, but it drives us crazy. It makes us lazy. It incentivizes us to burn the bridge and move onto the next bridge rather than try to rebuild the bridge we're standing on. You can find countless studies confirming just how frazzled and disgruntled people can become when presented with all options and no structure within which to think or act. A perfect example is the concept of "creative limitation". When we have a path to follow, we can drown out a lot of noise, focus on the target, and really get down to business. You know who might want to put the work into saving their marriage? Someone who thinks this is their best or only option. With today's lax relationship between men and women in the workplace, why would someone want to put any effort into rebuilding a marriage that's all fucked up if Chuck in the office next door is giving her attention and, wouldn't you know, doesn't seem to have the same baggage as Mr. Wrong (formerly Mr. Right Now)? With today's the-world-at-your-fingertips networking environment, why would someone attempt to reignite his sexual desire for his wife when Carmen from the EU office, while an ocean away, is down to bump uglies at the next global management soiree?

So, I don't think settling is necessarily bad, but we're being programmed to think it's the worst thing ever. "Programmed" not as some insidious plan, but as a side effect of the technological, consumer-driven, instant gratification society we find ourselves in. Don't fall victim to this crap. Pursue the things you want, but learn to appreciate the things you have. Set boundaries so you're not getting walked on, but don't chase after the easy option like a dog with a bone.

The men that Rideitout knows are so cute the way they talk such a good game with each other, all bravado and banging on their chests. But it's bs, Rideitout. Guys lie to each other to impress.

That could be true, I obviously cannot refute it. I never cared, as stated above, but I was rather alone in that. When we were at a bar and I saw I girl who was attractive and I wanted to talk to (warning, this is about to get vulgar), I'd start getting my nerve up to go "give it a shot" and sometimes a guy might say "You know she's a slut right" and then start to recount some sexual thing they heard about her (which, if I got lucky, seemed to be true about 50% of the time). At the end of this, I'd often say "Good, that'll make things much easier for me". I liked/wanted to find the girls who were "easy" and the best place to look for them was girls who who had lots of partners (at least in my experience).

I can clearly see that low count or high count has not actually impacted anyone's chances for partnering well in a committed relationship. It has literally not mattered at all, even though my mom promised me it would.

While my personal experience certainly mirrors yours (my wife was "low count" and cheated), the statistics do not back our experience; lower partner count does, for some reason, seem to lead to more lasting marriages. I can only guess why, but there's clearly an effect on partner count and marital "success" (if we define success quite narrowly as "not divorced").

Do I think guys are silly for "nexting" girls because of high count? Sure I do, and their loss was my gain, but it's also not up to me to tell them what they should either want or purport to want.

On a somewhat related note, my goodness, how much lying does your average person do a day?! When I talk about my friends and their conversations, it almost always turns into "they are lying". I've always been pretty cynical, but it seems we're getting to "lips moving" = lying. IDK, maybe they are, maybe they are lying about everything, who knows?! It's stuff like this that make me more and more convinced that the further I get from society and other people, they happier I will be.

And countless other checks in place to mitigate selfish human behavior. You know why it's so easy to cheat on your spouse? Because nobody gives a shit about the marriage pact. There are few if any *real* repercussions enforced by society at large for your shitty behavior, and the advent of No Fault Divorce (aka "who gives a shit who did what, just sign the damn papers" divorce) exacerbated that.

Man are you dead on with this. And it actually goes further, instead of rewarding and holding up good behavior, we tend to glamorize the awful. Not only are there no sanctions for it anymore, you can find a legion of guys (I used to be one) who will laugh as you chat the girl up at the bar (while married), and a legion of women who will "You deserve it; Eat Pray Love" while you happily bang your AP in the backseat of the car your husband bought for you as a wedding present. It's disgusting, we've gone from a world of strict codes of conduct and moral basis to a world that's basically a recreation of S&G from the Bible. You want to do it and it feels good.. Go right ahead, it must be right if it's fun. <sigh>

I can tell you, my grandparents roll in their graves when they see the world we built. We stood on their shoulders and instead of taking the important lessons from them, we chucked them in the dumpster and captured on and amplified the negative behaviors. Yes, the "Mad Men" era really did happen, and from what my grandfather told me, it really was a lot of drinking and "whoring". But goodness, I think Don Draper himself would blush at where we've gone with it, it's like we skipped over the parts where he was brilliant at work, and just went right to the "whoring" parts and put them on repeat.

[This message edited by Rideitout at 9:14 PM, August 17th (Monday)]

you can find a legion of guys (I used to be one) who will laugh as you chat the girl up at the bar (while married),

RIO, it's truly sad to watch. I don't think people understand where that road ends (it's not a pot of gold beside a rainbow). Instead of focusing on egalitarian solutions and positive behavior, it's a race to the bottom to see who can be a more awful person. Nobody over the age of 15 should be allowed to make the argument, "Well they did [the shitty thing], so I should be able to do it, too!" What's baffling to me is I didn't grow up particularly conservative or religious or traditionalist, and I've been a staunch "more freedom for the people, not less" proponent for years, but it's quite clear to me that we're observing just how selfish and destructive people can be when you take away those kinds of social structures and most if not all consequences of [certain] behavior.

I also agree 100% with you that the institution of mariage is on the decline and the male/female dynamic is in a bad place, with a gradual increase in men and women who fortify themselves behind anti-other-sex battlements and fling shit to spread their unhappiness and lack of fulfillment. I don't necessarily think that leads to a future of complete disocciation (the Sex Robot Dystopia) because men and women are inexorably linked, but I think it will lead to less empathy, communication, and cooperation and more resentment, cheating, and less than ideal parenting. Who knows, in a hundred years, they might be calling the concept of marriage "sexist" while still implementing some kind of marriage contract in all but name, likely with much of the emotion (i.e. human) elements taken out of it.

I agree with you AG... I think a big part of the reason people cheat is because things get tough and they just don't want to deal with anything "difficult." Real life gets in the way of the fantasy life of leisure and perfection they believe they deserve.

I think a lot of this comes from the type of people who view themselves as victims. The "woe is me," "how did this happen?" type. Instead of facing difficult things in life and recognizing their own culpability in some of it, they would rather cut and run. They're the kind of people who don't water their grass, but complain when it turns brown. Then, they go buy a new house with lush, green grass, continue refusing to water it, and bitch and moan when that grass also turns brown.

My XH was one of those. He would often lament all of the money he had made in his lifetime, how hard he had worked for it, but how he had nothing to show for it because of all of these "circumstances" that "just happened" to him. It didn't matter that he made more money than me, he always had some excuse for why I always had money and he never did. Never focused on the real issue which was that any money he ever got was just burning a hole in his pocket. Not to mention his hidden escort and meth habits.

I liked that we were two imperfect people trying to make it work. Like you, I don't even like the word "settling," it feels like an excuse to hold resentments. I made a series of choices - to date him, live with him, marry him. I stood by those choices.

Funny, he would often say how much I had "settled" for him, that I was just blind to it. I resented it at the time. I would tell him that I had taken in everything I knew and made a choice to commit, and that I stood by that choice. I said it's offensive for you to question those choices.

I also told him it was frustrating because it put me in a position of needing to validate him - like he was fishing for compliments.

Now I know there was a lot hidden, so his questioning of my choices was actually due to how much he was withholding. He was trying to tell me he was a terrible person without having to actually reveal the hurtful choices he was making behind my back.

The escorts, drugs and AP were all just crappy, dollar-store band-aids he was using to try to cover up the 12-gauge-shotgun-sized bullet-holes in his self esteem.

I am hard wired to stick things out, try to figure out a solution. He would rather throw things away and start over. I do absolutely think that has something to do with the instant gratification so many people are used to. It is the sole reason that I will never online date. I would rather be single than reduce people to a few photos and a swipe left or right. It feels like window shopping for a mate, and I hate it. Not to mention that almost every woman I know has caught an SO using a dating app to get some strange on the side.

He was trying to tell me he was a terrible person without having to actually reveal the hurtful choices he was making behind my back.

I know there are some people in this world who are oblivious to their bad actions, but I think most people are painfully aware of them, on some level, and their buried guilt will seep out from time to time. You kick yourself for not picking up on those moments, but how can you know what they are when you're trying to think the best of this person, whom you love?

I'm also one of the (unlucky?) people who values loyalty. I don't know if it's necessarily a plus in today's environment, but it's who I am and I'm stuck with it. Despite feeling now like my wife leaving was the best move, I would've stuck it out and done whatever it took to R. I'd like to think that I still would've done the same amount of self-improvement work that I did in the past two years, except more motivated by saving my marriage than anything else. Some people might think that I'd be doing it for the wrong reasons, but I don't know if you can really judge that accurately without seeing the outcome.

This whole instant gratification environment really bums me out. I'm the type of person who would rather have a deep connection with a handful of people rather than a cavalcade of loose acquaintances. For me, it's all about a deep connection on a personal level, so I have a hard time accepting relationships as the calculated "numbers game" that they appear to be based on the state of modern dating. Maybe if I were in my early 20s, the meat market appeal of the apps would be fantastic, but now it's just depressing. And even if I felt that way as a twentysomething, I'd still be wrong. Yeah, love is just oxytocin release and you now have the tools to MAYBE maximize your overlap of interests and yadda yadda, but where's the fun in that? Where's the personal growth that comes with overcoming interpersonal differences? Where's the magic that comes from meeting someone who maybe disagrees with you on some things? It seems like on this front, the Internet has connected us in the most superficial way imaginable.

The superficiality of the times sickens and depresses me as well.

I am primarily a parent to a 7 yo girl. I secondarily am a person who works to make money to provide for my family. Thirdly I am a person who is a fantastic guuitar player, is well-read, loves to play games and discuss politics, and is the life of the party.

I never made any bones about what I wanted out of life and my stbxw professed to want the same things (and really never strove to get them for the majority of our marriage)

Now I see that she really is a person that-

Values her career over her family

Wants her relationships to be based around work so that she can leverage being the "boss" all the time in any situation

Wants the mansion, new car, nice purse and clothes

Sees anyone who does not want those things as a "loser" and a "user"

Will sacrifice her family and her relationship with her daughter to get these things.

I would have NEVER married this person who showed up suddenly 5 years ago.

I intensely dislike people like that and always talked about my dislike for them.

So having said all that, I think that she now thinks she "settled" for me.

I think I got screwed over royally. I'd never settle for such a shallow materialistic and quite frankly, boring person. Yawn.

Just got caught up on this thread as I sleep during the day and work nights.

This thread really didn't go the way I thought it would.

My two cents....

It's not about the body count in these cases, it's the type of guys the body count was with.

AbandonedGuy & Idiotmcstupid

Well said Gentlemen!

Much better than I could have written.

A lot of people are running their life like an addiction - Tinder/Facebook/Twitter/Instagram and now mindless video TikTok -

I see people in a restaurant constantly on their phone (and not checking the weather) and I wonder to myself why such an attraction to a little mini-tablet with a phone function?

Wonder how many people really have a true life long friend?

It's not about the body count in these cases, it's the type of guys the body count was with.

GoldenR - I understood that from the beginning. I agree with you. I often think that our young dating life and self esteem sets a tone for years to come. We learn early what we think love is supposed to feel like. Some women think that it's that push and pull agony with a bad boy. Some men think that they should find the most attractive woman and they don't look past that to find that the woman herself is not at all a quality person. We all know men and women who set on that pattern and stayed there for a long time, obliviating their self-esteem and worth in the process.

It's why when we get new WS here we encourage them to re-evaluate what love is to them. 100 percent of the time the high feelings and the how it makes us feel is a commonality of all WS. I have noticed that more faithful BS have always had a healthier picture of love. Maybe because they were willing to settle in the way AG is talking about. I do think he's right....settling and contentment is pretty much the same thing. Learning to want what you have and to appreciate it, and fight for it when things are hard. The way he put it made what I was trying to say come so much more into focus.

Yep....

Unfortunately the "settling" usually only happens in one direction. Meaning, it's never the female saying "Well I tried and tried and tried to find the right guy that was totally responsible, great with kids and can do calculus in his head. Eventually I learned my lesson and went for the beefcake."

The "settled" question I feel is difficult to answer.

When I entered my marriage I felt that I was the less sure of my feelings. Yet my ex left the marriage for another man. What does that tell you? Was my ex lying all of the time? Or did she get bored, her feelings faded, and she wasn't willing to put in the work on the relationship? I think it was more the latter, honestly. So in that case, the "settled" question doesn't apply, because the person changed.

Our relationship/sexual pasts do matter. When I was dating, I definitely "nexted" women with multiple relationships of 5-7 years duration, where I felt that some of the relationships ended on superficial terms. I do not thing I'm going to be the guy to make you commit long term. I am sure in the short term I will be "all that" to you. And that will change as time goes on.

I also have a past and expect that it should matter to the women I date.

No one partner is going to provide you with every superficial quality. Skinny versus more robust women, those are two different forms of attraction to me. I can find either attractive for different reasons. Different hair color, skin tone, facial features... you are either one or the other.

Relationships can have different things they're based on. Looks, sex (not the same as looks), friendship, shared activities, shared values. There are relationships that can be great on the looks and sex front but the friendship isn't there, and someone has an affair with a co-worker or an old lover, some connection that is missing in the marriage.

I will say that when things are really good in a relationship, your partner can provide more variety to you due to your connection. It's a richer source of connection, connection to your past, unknown desires. Role play, this is the person you are going through life with, but you are playing many different roles with them. You are each other's leading man or leading lady as you play many roles, many parts through your time together. But you need to put in the work and the trust to commit at least part of yourself.

Striver,

I think everything you said is very true and rational.

Our relationship/sexual pasts do matter. When I was dating, I definitely "nexted" women with multiple relationships of 5-7 years duration, where I felt that some of the relationships ended on superficial terms. I do not thing I'm going to be the guy to make you commit long term. I am sure in the short term I will be "all that" to you. And that will change as time goes on.

What you are saying here makes complete sense, that history can be a good predictor of behavior. I also think it depends on what the woman had to say about the situation. For example if she just gave you the superficial reason and that was all. Or if it was evident she had done more self reflection and said "In hindsight I can see that was a superficial reason to do that but I was much younger at the time and hadn't learned X,Y, or Z yet. Showing growth over that time means they likely have evolved from those past experiences and learned valuable lessons of them.

I think what is being discussed here more is just a superficial number of sexual partners. It just seems to me that there are human complexities in all of that where we never rely on one piece of data or a characteristic to choose a spouse. It's much more complex than that. Generalities do not work when trying to describe how a spouse is chosen.

Put in GoldenR's context, if the person did evolve past the bad boys of their past, knowing why those choices were made and it provided clarity over why they might choose someone more stable and who has a quieter way about them...then it's good. But, often, and I say this even about myself: when chaos has been a long time theme in their life, when push comes to shove they will revert to looking to create it to cope. Again, I believe I can recognize this enough to stop myself from it in the future. But it is human nature to distract ourselves from our real problems.

[This message edited by hikingout at 10:14 AM, August 18th (Tuesday)]

You've misread the article(s). The study indicated women with 'exactly 2' faced the highest risk of D, as defined by the authors of the study.

The diff between "0 other partners" and "1 other partner" on divorce is huge. Then it's a slow/stable decline up until double digits, where it worsens greatly.

Again, you're misrepresenting the study. It's not a slow stable decline. There's a peak in D for women who had 2 partners.

And it's one study.

I don;t know much about what is in your mind, but misrepresenting the findings of a singles tudy multiple times says something not totally ??? is going on.

If there are in fact scads of studies showing that women with a high count are more likely to divorce....

I haven't been able to find studies in which men's numbers are tested.

The focus on women's sexual behavior seems, frankly, sexist.

This post has made me think a lot about what GoldenR was asking and how that applied to my situation.

I do not feel that either my husband or I settled for each other. It's interesting to think that I did create that narrative within the affair. That he chose me because he didn't want to be on his own with two daughters and I was the one who stayed. I remember when we were dating/early married I would ask him what he liked about me and he would say things like "you love me so much" "you take good care of us" or "you are generous and put others first".

I realize that reinforced a lot of my inauthentic behaviors from the get go, which in the end were really what I resented. By twenty years in I had gone too much into that service and proving department that I was deeply unhappy and unfulfilled. Humans all need things that are just for them and to take care of our own souls.

If I look at the AP, I knew from the beginning he was a player. In my youth I would take that as a challenge, and I think I wanted someone to see me other than the way I had begun to view myself. I saw myself as a servant to my husband and family, I had lost touch with the woman inside of me. I did not find her in an affair either because I was too busy creating a new role of who I was to be to this other person. After the affair, I had to figure out who the hell I was and what I wanted and I wondered around lost for a long painful time doing that.

I am typing this out to say, all of those things are about ME. Not my husband. Not even my marriage. Maybe who I was in that marriage, because I was always acting in the way of how I "should" rather than how I wanted to. I think a lot of WS are like this. Not all, but I have met enough here in our little corner of the internet to know that there are many, many of us.

In the end, the settling was about settling for less than I deserved...from myself. Not from him.

Who our spouse is and what our perception is can be two separate things. This makes me think that part of reconciliation is trying to balance that perception with reality and it's happening both for the WS and the BS. The realignment of that is the independent decision of both parties.

If you get the sense that your were settled for based on the infidelity alone, I don't think that's reality. Infidelity is complex and I do believe that it's 100 percent about the WS and how they are managing their own life. But, the history of the marriage and how you were treated and how the WS proceeds after the infidelity are bigger indicators of whether or not they are there for the wrong reasons or capable of being someone worthy who is offering something worthy of the pain it is to go through such a terrible process in staying together.

I honestly never thought even in my infidelity that I settled when I married my husband. I wanted that with all my heart. Instead, I told myself he settled for me. I created a narrative in which I was the victim. I think the reason I have been so active in the thread is I see it as when these threads come up that the BS "being settled for" is a narrative that is not helpful to the BS at all.

Stronger narratives - "I settled for someone who didn't see my immense value". Or "why am I fighting for someone not fighting for me?" Or even "I know my WS didn't settle for me, and now they know it too". I don't know, anything that is empowering rather than tearing the person further down by thinking they were not enough or good enough for the WS. I do not think that is the case - that you were not good enough for an unfaithful, unappreciative partner.

I haven't been able to find studies in which men's numbers are tested.

The focus on women's sexual behavior seems, frankly, sexist.

Agreed one thousand percent. These types of things always seem to focus on what the women are doing with their sexualities.

I didn't feel that I settled in either marriage nor did I feel that I was settled for. I had this crazy idea both times that you fall in love with one another and then have a partner to ride the roller coaster of life with, accepting that we are both flawed and enjoying getting to know one another better all the time. Growing old together, going through all of the challenges of life and supporting one another, etc.

I still think that's the ideal. I don't have any plans to seek that out for a good long while (if ever). My sexual history isn't what harms me for future relationships. My relationships are what cause me challenges in future relationships. Both of my serious relationships turned to marriage and both failed due to no fault or expectations of my own. No ONS or FWB has damaged my ability to trust and commit to another person. Both of my marriages did that, the second far worse than the first. I'm not healing from having a sexually adventurous life. I'm healing from the times when I didn't have that carefree life.

The diff between "0 other partners" and "1 other partner" on divorce is huge. Then it's a slow/stable decline up until double digits, where it worsens greatly.

Again, you're misrepresenting the study. It's not a slow stable decline. There's a peak in D for women who had 2 partners.

Man, this is where posting a link would be really nice.

The most current data in the IFS study (2000's) here are the numbers (D risk):

0 partners: 5%

1 partner: 21%

2 partners: 30%

3 partner: 25%

4-5 partners: 25%

6-9 partners: 26%

10+ partners: 33%

The "slow stable decline" is between 2 and 9, then it worsens significantly over 10 partners. Note that this is only for 2000+, this was not true in other time periods. The thing that was consistent (across all time periods) is that "2" is always a high risk number and the "0" is dramatically less risky, followed by "1" as lower risk. Beyond that, things diverge between the years studied.

Agreed one thousand percent. These types of things always seem to focus on what the women are doing with their sexualities.

The data does exist for men too. "More is bad" for them too, although less so than for women.

The highest five-year divorce rate in the research—33% during the 2000s—was associated with women having more than 10 sexual partners, and perhaps that’s not unexpected. But Wolfinger points out that the bigger surprise is that prior to recent years, women who had only two partners prior to marriage actually had the highest rate of divorce. (The study didn’t assess the number of men’s premarital sexual partners, or link that number to divorce rates, but this should be studied as well.)

There you go, at least Psychology Today calls it out Dee.

Kind of interesting aside, but I found this while digging out the actual numbers for above:

5 Professions with highest divorce rate:

Dancers – 43

Bartenders- 38.4

Massage Therapists – 38.2

Gaming Cage Workers – 34.6

Gaming Service Workers – 31.327.

5 Professions with lowest divorce rate:

Farmers – 7.63

Podiatrists – 6.81

Clergy – 5.61

Optomitrists – 4.01

Agricultural Engineers – 1.78

Kind of amazing how big that difference is, right?!

Well so far, my personal divorce rate is 100%, ha ha ha. To be fair, though I initiated both divorces, I do not take the blame for either marriage failing.

I had 2 other partners pre-marriage and I'm at 100% divorce rate lol.

I fail to see what my sweet college boyfriend and the ill-advised rebound bartender have to do with my ex's narcissism and serial cheating though? 🤔

[This message edited by JanaGreen at 11:24 AM, August 18th (Tuesday)]