SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Again, by continuing to advocate for using the term 'adultery' you are using a term that does not encompass all As.

I think this is a distinction without a difference and use of euphemisms merely clouds clear thinking on the matter.

-Confirmation of the punching analogy that started this thread.(In fact, the authors state that the therapeutic industry has taken to treating cases of infidelity with the attitude of "we can’t stop you from being punched so we will teach you how to take a punch"

OMFG I bet they're referring to the whole "You can never trust them fully again, but it's okay to R without that trust because you know that you can handle it if it happens again".

Now I'm going to remove whatever's left of my halo and say that I don't really care that he felt abused given the enormity of what he put me through, but that doesn't negate the reality of it.

Right there with you D. In fact, a big reason I didn't have an RA has little/nothing to do with her and more me and the hypothetical OW. I didn't want to lower myself to her level (keep the high ground) and I didn't want to pull an innocent party into the mess by gaming her into bed. It's different for women, you could be totally honest "Yup, just want to F you to get back at my H", for me, not so much. I'd have to lie/game an AP into bed, and, well, she doesn't deserve that, even though my W does. And I didn't want to live with it, either personally or the thought of another person living with it because of my actions.

But, if I'd done it, of course it would be abusing my W, even if she deserves it. If you punch the school bully in the face, you still assaulted him, even if everyone totally understands "why", it's still assault!

OMFG I bet they're referring to the whole "You can never trust them fully again, but it's okay to R without that trust because you know that you can handle it if it happens again".

Yep, pretty close to that.

It's a great book.

In many ways, using the term 'adultery' muddies thinking.

Terms like "wayward" and "affair" have a fluffy cotton candy quality to them that are actually really off putting if one puts some thought into it.

"Wayward" conjures images of someone lost in the woods instead of someone willfully prowling the woods.

"Affair" has a breezy "summer wind" quality to it. It sounds as if the adultery was just an "incident" that "just happened" in a season, and a relatively harmless incident at that. Think of Whitney Houston singing the soaring ballad "I'm Saving All My Love for You."

It strikes me that perhaps you don't like the term 'adultery' because it still possesses the quality of a cold splash of water.

Yes, I do advocate for more blunt language. I would suggest "unfaithful spouse" as opposed to wayward (though I've bowed down to conventions here at SI). Indeed, this is what Linda McDonald recommends in her book.

I would suggest "adultery" instead of "infidelty"

I would suggest "commit adultery" Instead of "affair"

[This message edited by Thumos at 11:28 AM, October 7th (Wednesday)]

27. "The question a victim of cheating must face is whether they have suffered and incompensable loss and whether some leveling will ever be possible ... Their promise not to do it again is ... hot air. A promise not to do what they already promised not to is meaningless."

Hot air or not, making the promise again is certainly more reassuring than refusing to because they failed to keep it before. I speak from experience.

28. "In the beginning people trick themselves into thinking they can push the rock because they have just started pushing. But after months and years all they can think is "Why am I pushing this rock?""

"The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy." -Camus

A commonly used quote here by me on and off. :)

Must we take our cues from the French existentialists though? They didn't seem like very happy people with rewarding lives. In fact, wasn't Camus a serial adulterer? Seems to me we should take his observations with more than an ounce of skepticism.

Why "must" we imagine Sisyphus happy? On what basis? doesn't seem like an argument and more of a command based on Camus' own inherent biases. Wasn't the traditional understanding of Sisyphus as having been cursed in a sense and quite unhappy? Wasn't Sisyphus taken to be a dishonest broker?

[This message edited by Thumos at 11:37 AM, October 7th (Wednesday)]

Hot air or not, making the promise again is certainly more reassuring than refusing to because they failed to keep it before. I speak from experience.

Actually my WW did refuse as well. She said "I can't guarantee I won't do this again."

Much later, she now insists this was a result of 'the fog' but I think she was just being honest in a moment of refreshing candor.

And that is ok but infidelity is STILL abuse

Call it what you want, but there are different behaviors, and to blanket label all of them as abuse loses you the ability to discriminate between them and respond differently.

I'll give an example, close to adultery but not quite. Lots of scientific surveys have shown that married people fantasize about sex with people other than their partners. The one I just read has 80% of women did so in the last two months. Extend to a year or so, you get close to 100%. Numbers higher for guys.

From the article,"Women tend to fantasize sexually about known individuals, such as past boyfriends, coworkers, friends, or others."

Is it abusive to the husband when the woman does this? It is happening almost certainly for all marriages.

How about if she sits him down and looks him in the eye and says, "I fantasized last night about having sex with your brother/our neighbor/my boss at work. I orgasmed from it."

Any difference between those two scenarios?

With infidelity, one must - IMO - weigh years of love and support + the possibility of even more years - maybe decades - of love and support against the abuse of an A.

. There are people on here who have truly reconciled with their spouses. That is wonderful, if that is what they wanted. I also think that most people on here agree that cheating is abuse.

Here is what I find really confusing. In no other context of abuse would anyone talk about

one must - IMO - weigh years of love and support + the possibility of even more years

.

I know that this approach has worked for people on here and they are happily married. But at the same time this approach doesn't align with the "adultery is abuse" thinking. If a guy was a great husband for 25 years and then raped his wife, there would be no talk of the wondeeful years. Same if he punched her once after 30 years of content. If a cpuple was married for 15 years and then the wofe starts telling her husband all the ways he is a subpar person, again, people would not talk about the possiple upcoming good years.

I DO 1,000,000% believe that there are people here who are happily reconciled with their spouse. I just don't understand how we can talk about abuse and the possibility of reconciliation.

Also. I do agree that "affair" is not a good substitute for "adultery." Why on EARTH not just say "cheating"? Adultery literally means sex with someone not their spouse. It does nkt encompass cheating on a long term partner or a fiance/ee. Affair does not necessarily mean cheating.

Why not say cheating? And why use the term "wayward spouse"? They did not lose their way. They cheated.

Must we take our cues from the French existentialists though? They didn't seem like very happy people with rewarding lives. In fact, wasn't Camus a serial adulterer? Seems to me we should take his observations with more than an ounce of skepticism.

We can take cues from whatever or whomever we want. We can be moral absolutists using the bible, and we can be evolutionary psychologists that trace our emotional reactions back to biological programming. We can be no better than a beast, and we can be far too cerebral and idea driven. We can believe there is a divine plan, or that everything is temporary chaos ending in the heat death of the universe. It's really an unlimited set of options.

I've stated that my WW actually sleeping with another man is an absolute dealbreaker for me. It's hard to say that's ACTUALLY true because I haven't been forced to take such an action. I thought I was on the road to divorce (maybe I still am but on a different schedule that I'm not setting). I see people on here that struggle with responding to a PA as hard as I struggle with my WW's EA. People that say from the outset that cheating is a dealbreaker, but then end up willing to attempt R. I know that betrayal isn't a competition.

Happy and rewarding lives are an interesting question here. If we can be generally happy and rewarded while being abused is that better than living a broken, unhappy, and unrewarding life that is free of abuse? Purely hypothetical. We could "have it all", but life is inevitably a multi-factor optimization. I think somewhere you talked about "is this something where recompense is possible?" That is ultimately an individual determination. If you WANT to stay with your WS, that's up to you, and it doesn't matter. If you stay out of a sense of obligation, fear, hate it, and don't want it. That, I think is a very bad idea.

Camus was a womanizer and serial adulterer, yes. We can always criticize the lives of philosophers. There isn't really any reason we can't just stick to the bible and stone adulterers twice. Once for coveting the neighbor (my WW) and once for committing adultery (many BSs deal with this as well). Surely those living in biblical times live happy and fulfilling lives!

Ultimately, what I'm getting at here, is that we are not bound to make a moral decision, a rational decision, a decision inside some framework. We can just do whatever it is that we want to do, that will derive the best chances of a future life that we want. It could be R (with our abuser), it could be D. It can even be a third (rail) option here which some people do which is accepting adultery ad-infinitum because ultimately they decide faithfulness just isn't that important to them. You don't have to be justified in your decision.

Relationships are a matter of the heart, and if you want what you have, great. If you don't, get out.

[This message edited by This0is0Fine at 12:10 PM, October 7th (Wednesday)]

I do not think fantasies are abuse HouseofPlane and I do realize that most if not all people have sexual fantasies.

How about if she sits him down and looks him in the eye and says, "I fantasized last night about having sex with your brother/our neighbor/my boss at work. I orgasmed from it."

I'm not sure about this. I would rather a person keep this thought to themselves as it would be upsetting, at least for me, to hear something like that. Like why do I care if you orgasmed from your dream?

Difference between fantasy & infidelity is one doesn't materialize and the other does.

The part that feels abusive to me from a betrayal is the outright lying and gaslighting. Putting your complete trust in your spouse and then they turn around and stab you in the back. The feelings of abandonment and rejection from the person you trusted the most. My STBX was very critical and cold to me during his A and that I considered emotional abuse. Then of course there is sexually abusive aspect if one is given an STD from the affair or if the WS is outright comparing the sex between the BS and AP & their looks. That is abusive. My STBX also used his A to be sexually coercive. The whole "well if you would have had more sex with me I wouldn't have had the A." At that point we were having sex 3 times a week, hardly a dead bedroom.

The trauma that I have had to deal with and still deal with from my STBX's A's has taken me so much longer to work through than my past abuses. I'm not sure why that is.

Ultimately, what I'm getting at here, is that we are not bound to make a moral decision, a rational decision, a decision inside some framework. We can just do whatever it is that we want to do, that will derive the best chances of a future life that we want. It could be R (with our abuser), it could be D. It can even be a third (rail) option here which some people do which is accepting adultery ad-infinitum because ultimately they decide faithfulness just isn't that important to them. You don't have to be justified in your decision

.

This I agree with. I dont think theres a "one size fits all" solution here.

Happy and rewarding lives are an interesting question here. If we can be generally happy and rewarded while being abused is that better than living a broken, unhappy, and unrewarding life that is free of abuse?

I might need you to expand on that a bit. Is that like "you can stay with a cheater and deal with adultery or you can be tortured with hot irons for the rest of your life"? This is not generally a true choice. Free of abuse is kind of step one on the road to a happy and rewarding life. No one's life is always happy and rewarding anyway, but I dare say it not including abuse is kind of a bare minimum. There are SO many paths one can take in life that lead to varying degrees of happiness and satisfaction. We have a lot of power in which paths to walk down. It isn't "be abused or be utterly broken and miserable".

I mean, I am no longer dealing with the abuse of infidelity and I am not remotely broken and miserable. I'm pretty happy and content.

[This message edited by DevastatedDee at 12:36 PM, October 7th (Wednesday)]

I'm not sure about this. I would rather a person keep this thought to themselves as it would be upsetting, at least for me, to hear something like that. Like why do I care if you orgasmed from your dream?

There are plenty of scenarios where those words can have been spoken to hurt, to stick a dagger right in the heart. That'd be abusive.

There are other reasons to say them too, like they are consumed with guilt over having had the fantasy and needed to offload their story. That would hurt A LOT to hear. But still abusive?

The trauma that I have had to deal with and still deal with from my STBX's A's has taken me so much longer to work through than my past abuses. I'm not sure why that is.

Again, I'm agnostic on the word "abuse", and it probably would help in a conversation with a WS to call it that, but the fact that this is so much different from getting punched in the face suggests lumping them into the same bin won't necessarily help solve the problem.

I mean, I am no longer dealing with the abuse of infidelity and I am not remotely broken and miserable. I'm pretty happy and content.

And I know couples, personally, who walked the path of R and feel the same way.

From the article,"Women tend to fantasize sexually about known individuals, such as past boyfriends, coworkers, friends, or others."

Is it abusive to the husband when the woman does this? It is happening almost certainly for all marriages.

How about if she sits him down and looks him in the eye and says, "I fantasized last night about having sex with your brother/our neighbor/my boss at work. I orgasmed from it."

Any difference between those two scenarios?

Yes, there's a difference. One is an indication that one is in possession of a sex drive + imagination. Fantasizing is fantasizing.

Telling him about that is emotionally abusive, unless hearing about this stuff is something that the guy gets off on.

Both are a far cry in severity from her sleeping with his brother/neighbor/boss at work.

Call it what you want, but there are different behaviors, and to blanket label all of them as abuse loses you the ability to discriminate between them and respond differently.

Can I just point out how absolutely absurd this argument is when applied to any other form of categorization out there? "Call a fork what you want but to blanket label all of the utensils as kitchenware loses you the ability to discriminate between how to use them." That's not how categorization and identification works. People know instinctively that abuse is not just ONE kind of action. They know it's an umbrella term the same way they understand that furniture or fish or produce are all blanket terms for a group of specific things. They know that a fork is not a kind of fish even if they can't name every fish out there. Calling your chair a piece of furniture has no baring on how you can correctly sit down in one and if it did, dinner time would be a lot stranger and more interesting with us all balancing precariously while eating. Nothing about the ability to identify and utilize correctly changes just because we're talking about abuse and not furniture.

Is it abusive to the husband when the woman does this? It is happening almost certainly for all marriages.

No because according to the agreed upon definition of abuse that is readily available in books, websites, and general information regarding abuse, it does not involve controlling the other spouse in some way nor does it change the power dynamic in the relationship. That can only happen if the fantasies are acted upon.

Seriously, there's nothing wrong with having thoughts about other people. We all do it. Some times it happens without our control which is called "intrusive thoughts" and is completely normal. Like hearing your grandmother mentioning her underwear and then picturing it instinctively without wanting to. I'm sure these types of thoughts are included in this study because people choose to count it as fantasizing even if it was fleeting.

If you struggle to correctly identify abuse, and since you posed a question that was obviously not abuse I'm assuming you might, you can do a Google search for one of many websites, books, articles, videos, TEDtalks, podcasts, and basically any form of media that you can think of created by experts that will assist you in knowing the difference. Some of them have been named in this thread. Particularly "Why Does He Do That?" by Lundy Bancroft which gives a very thorough breakdown of the different kinds of behaviors abusive people exhibit and categorizes the types of dangerous and abusive people you might be in a relationship with. Just like if you can't tell whether an animal on sight is a fish or not based on some basic facts you know about fish, you can take a biology class and get educated.

I might need you to expand on that a bit. Is that like "you can stay with a cheater and deal with adultery or you can be tortured with hot irons for the rest of your life"? This is not generally a true choice. Free of abuse is kind of step one on the road to a happy and rewarding life. No one's life is always happy and rewarding anyway, but I dare say it not including abuse is kind of a bare minimum. There are SO many paths one can take in life that lead to varying degrees of happiness and satisfaction. We have a lot of power in which paths to walk down. It isn't "be abused or be utterly broken and miserable".

I was not trying to create a real or false dichotomy between choosing to stay or leave. I wasn't trying to say that leaving would make you broken and unhappy. I was using it as a purely hypothetical difference between lives you might live. One that is mostly happy and fulfilling, but that you live with some level of abuse. Another where you are depressed and unhappy, but at least no one is abusing you. Is one really better than another?

At the end of my post, I tried to make it clear I'm not speaking in generalities. I'm speaking of understanding that infidelity is abuse, and that accepting and recovering a relationship with a person that has abused you means living with abuse. Some people can do this. Some people cannot. I'm not saying it is right or wrong to stay or go.

If it is like living with hot irons pressed to you everyday, you should leave, because you will not be happy and fulfilled. If it is like getting flicked in the the ear every once and a while, that's still assault, but maybe you can live with it as an annoyance in your otherwise fulfilled and happy life. It depends on how it feels to you.

Now, moving on to real life dichotomies and decisions. Let's say you choose to leave, there are repercussions. You only get half time with your kids. Maybe you have to move out of your dream house. You still have to see the parent of your child, they will never be out of your life completely. You might have shared assets you have to split. This is the "reality" of making that choice. That's why when someone shows up, young, no kids, no house, no business, no shared assets, almost universally we tell that person to run. Their real dichotomy is not preserving a mostly happy life with an abuser weighed against destroying that life and starting anew. It's preserving what is essentially only a romantic relationship with an abuser against breaking a lease.

The real life dichotomies can be anywhere in between. Those making the decision can also be wrong and misinformed about the severity of one option or the other, and learning from people that have made either sort of decision is valuable (and what is provided on this forum).

I think that listening to yourself is the most important part though. It isn't whether I would divorce in your situation, whether the bible would have your partner stoned twice, whether someone else could forgive and make it work, whether someone else has it much worse and made it work. It's about what you want to live with, whatever decision you make.

I understand that many members here would find it more honest and satisfying to see the Wayward Side labeled the "Cheater Forum" or "Abuser Forum," and I've encountered more than one BS here who would like to see it eliminated altogether. I get why, I do. But for those of us reformed WS who are trying to get new arrivals to listen to us, "Wayward" is a useful term. How likely is a freshly caught WS to click on the "Cheater Forum" and trust the advice there? In an ideal world, they'd see the justice of it, but in an ideal world, they wouldn't have cheated in the first place. My personal priority is to get their ear and have an opportunity to impact their potential growth. I can bear up under people calling me a cheater and an abuser now, but when I was trying to face myself in the earliest stages, that would have made me run for the hills.

Given that many BS would rather have the option of reconciling with a genuinely remorseful spouse, I'd argue the public relations spin of "Wayward" helps to achieve that goal.