SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Money is the usual means of compensation in courts.

Money is not the only means of providing compensation.

Recovery requires just compensation. Recovery terms cannot

be settle in a court.

The WW/WH cannot un fuck their AP. This should require the

WS to do some heavy lifting to provide just compensation.

Having a WW agreeing to stop fucking her OM and go NC

with the OM is not just compensation. That is the WW

just stopping her PA.

Thank you HFSSC! I was trying to figure out how to say this. Compensation is used mostly for monetary means and turns R into a transaction which will never be satisfied because theres just nothing "fair" in infidelity.

I'll assume all of this is in the context of R, otherwise, there is no need for the compensation discussion at all. Forgiveness, just like in a monetary debt, means you actually let go of any and all expectations of compensation. It is a settled debt, otherwise, you have not yet forgiven. I believe forgiveness sometimes has to be reaffirmed in one's heart as the past emotions reassert themselves.

So you now have a marriage with a WS who is forgiven, but the past is not forgotten, nor is the damage to the marriage and the BS immediately healed. A BS may feel disrespected, have an understandable lack trust in the WS, feel like a secondary sexual choice, and may not feel the loyalty of friendship. Does the WS care about about the BS enough to want to show the BS that they are respected, that they are deserving of trust, that the BS is a highly desired sexual choice, and that their loyalty and confidence as the most important friend in life is being honored?

I don't see why people are conflating the normal responsibility in a healthy marriage to care in demonstrable ways to actively love (as a verb) their partner with this idea of compensation for past wrongs. It seems to go one step further: since past wrongs can't be compensated, the responsibility to care for one's husband/wife is now an unreasonable demand and a coerced requirement. I call bull. WS need to care about their BS willingly and actively if they want to restore the marriage to something healthy. If they don't, then fine, sit on the strawman argument that choosing to show caring is oppression.

Well then i ask in relation to the thread title when is the compensation enough?

When can a ww be allowed to let the rigors of time and age show on her body without her BH claiming shes letting herself go, she doesnt care about his worth, isnt giving him all she gave the AP?

I could be reading oldtruck wrong, and I hope he corrects me if I am, but my take on his premise is not focused on the specific outcome, it seems focused on the effort. I don't think his focus is on some duration, specifically, or some qualified result of the effort I think he wants her to demonstrate the same efforts for him as she did for A, in the way that he needs. It seems to be more an effort thing than a quantifiable results thing. I am sure oldtruck will clear that up if I am wrong.

[This message edited by DIFM at 9:00 AM, February 25th, 2021 (Thursday)]

Fellas please ! Caring about someones health just means caring about what they eat and how much they exercise . What the womans body looked like for the AP has zero to do with concern for her health and everything to do with her status as a sex object . And more importantly your status

Thats the point of all these threads and while its ok to have these selfish thoughts “ i want my spouse to act like the best sex object out there because its a reflection of who i am on the sexual totem pole” please dont dress up your coarse ( albeit relatable ) thoughts as if you are driven by altruism - at that point this is just you bullshitting yourself while we watch . Lets keep it honest .

What I’m saying is that if you are a person who requires “fair compensation” for every wrong done to you, then reconciliation is not for you. You will never be fairly compensated for the betrayal and you will spend the rest of your life in this revolving door of expectations leading to resentments.

Ding ding ding! Yes exactly.

How is this different, and I have read this countless times that women put in effort to look good in front of other women.

How is showing off healthy?

Ummm, I think that was exactly my point. "Showing off" as in doing something to 'get' something (notice, kibbles, etc) from someone else is NOT healthy IMHO.

Wanting a WW to do drugs because she did them with the OM is asking a WW to do something that is unhealthy.

Wanting a WW to go to the gym, eat healthy, lose weight, get toned is no way the same as asking WW to do drugs.

You are right that doing drugs is unhealthy and losing weight is "healthy". But if a ww is just losing weight and getting toned to make someone else happy with her (whether an ap or her BH) and not doing that for her own self, then it stems from the same unhealthy mental place as a drug addiction. Ergo, not healthy.

OT, I am trying to understand this "just compensation" you keep reiterating. As you said, a ww can't 'unfuck' her ap. Sooooo. Just my thought here (and I've said it more than once on this thread) - how can a WS ever "justly compensate" their BS? I still hold to it that they cannot. There is simply NO "just compensation" for a BS in infidelity.

And again, just my opinion here, but how is it healthy within the marriage to make everything transactional - ie "you did A for ap so you OWE me A". I GET that feeling, I really do and I get the unfairness in that. But I just don't see that tit-for-tat as a healthy dynamic within a relationship, you know?

hikingout, should a WW think that her BH needs his ego

stroked after D day. That he would want to see his WW not

let herself go but rather her make the effort to go to the gym?

I do think wooing him or her is important (as long as it’s sincere and not a manipulation) but I do not think I would have made the correlation that I needed to lose weight or go to the gym. I just don’t think in those terms. I am sure that some BS do feel that way and am not trying to take away from that. I just would not have made the correlation. I think this would have to be pretty spelled out to me rather than it being a purposeful slight. I will be honest, I think it would have been something that may have impeded our progress together because if the vastly different attitude I have about it.

These threads frustrate the crap out of me. I am empathetic to what the women in this thread are saying. Everybody has the right to be comfortable in their marriage and should not have to do things they don't want to do. I think that maybe the topic needs to shift to "why it is that wayward spouses (regardless of gender) feel uncomfortable opening up to their own spouses when they had no problem doing this for their AP?" Are people marrying people that they aren't that attracted too? Do people feel that marriage isn't a place where they can open up to their partners? Because right now, something is amiss. And frankly based off of the responses I have seen, I can't recommend people reconcile in these types of situations. So pretty much, if you are in one of the situations where your spouse opened up more (in whatever avenue) with their AP, and not with you, then you need to leave.

If the premise - BS need to see similar effort as shown for the A - remained the same, but what need to be shown was different, would the concerns be the same?

If, for instance, the WS had a job wherein they normally traveled often. BS never really asked where they were going because BS knew it was the norm for their job and trusted them. Now, WS meets their new shmoozie unicorn, who happens to tell them the absolute most best thing in the world the love to do is travel and AP so wishes they could experience the wonderfulness of travel together, you know, because they have such a special thing. So, oldtruck's wife spends her days and evenings planning (scheming) various trips to satisfy her new wanderlust bf, and tells oldtruck that each of those "work related" trips are nothing but boring, stay in a motel, retched business trip.

Now, oldtruck himself loves the idea of travel. Would love to have had his wife plan jaunts here and there and everywhere to be with him on terrific romantic outings....just the two of them. But, alas, life such as it is, he understands that to expect this is not so reasonable. And she travels so much already for these often boring business trips. He knows, life is what it is. And lives with he rare week vacation to wherever.

Until.......dday! In which what oldtruck finds out is that WW has spent much of her so called work time on her computer instead, planning dreamy dream unicorn travels with her new AP. Cutting to the chase, the gig is up, she WS has been outed, the days and weeks and months pass over the trauma of the infidelity..........and then......oldtruck realizes what he really needs from his WW is that she spends as much time and energy and interest in planning travel and jaunts and trips with him as often as she did with her feel good AP oldtruck needs his WW to demonstrate the same kind of "how I wish I could run off to Topeka for the weekend with you" as she did with Mr Shmoozie pants.

If this was not about "effort" towards looking great for BS as she did for her AP and her A, but was rather her doing the serious effort to plan and arrange and figure out how to make happen regular trips with oldtruck.........but wait, she determines, they've been married for 30 years and love each other so much that that kind of often romantic trip is just a waste of money and not necessary............would the view of this "effort" from her be the same.

He wants from her what she did for herself, for her AP, and for the A.......the effort to do the same. If her effort had been arranging travel for the benefit of her A, would we think it unreasonable if he expected the same time, energy, interest in planning travel for him, even if travel was no longer of that much interest to her and she had "reasonable" issues that led her to the limited effort?

Is this mostly because what oldtruck needs from his fWW unfortunately has to do with her personal extra effort to look as good as she looked for her A, and and this "looks" effort thing is the trigger?

I think this is the most simple and basic of all post-infidelity concepts that exists, muddied by unnecessary complexities. The simple question seems to me to be, does a BS have a reasonable basis to ask of their self-proclaimed remorseful, contrite, empathetic WS to extend the same effort towards their BS and the R as they extended to themselves, their AP, and their A? It does not seem a reasonable premise that to extend the same effort in romance or sex or care or attention or travel, or whatever to their BS is inherently tied to some sense that to do these thing would be to ask the WS to continue with their unhealthy ways.

It is healthy for a WS to show remorse and empathy and deference and contrition and effort, that builds trust in the way the BS does. None of this would be encouraging bad habits or unhealthy ways that got the WW to where they ended up. I think there is much more going in responses than reaction to the concept of effort needed by the BS, as a means to determine if trust and vulnerability is safe.

What then is a reasonable effort need and what isn't? If a WS spent once a month eating out at a fancy restaurant with their AP, was then outed, then made justifications to their BS for how going out to fancy restaurants with their BS in R was just not needed, that hey only did it with AP because they needed to to keep up the kibbles......would the too be seen as an unreasonable effort need by the BS. Where is the line drawn?

Is this mostly because what oldtruck needs from his fWW unfortunately has to do with her personal extra effort to look as good as she looked for her A, and and this "looks" effort thing is the trigger?

I have zero argument with the EFFORT part. Totally get that.

I also DO get the rub with a ww duding herself up for the AP and then not doing so for her BH. I get it.

The trigger part for ME, as a woman, is the idea that a woman ever for any circumstance OWES her body to a man. That she is looked down upon for wanting to have rights to her own bodily agency. And honestly, that's a REALLY hard thing to explain to men IME because men's bodies are NOT viewed the same as women's bodies on a societal level.

I am not saying it is fair. I am not saying I don't get why a BH would feel grossly insulted at the 'she got pretty for him and not for me' thing. I get it, I really do. I am in NO way saying cheating is okay, EVER.

But a woman has a right to own her own body. She has a right to decide who gets it and who doesn't, what is done with it or not, whether she wants to put on makeup or not, how she wants to dress it. And IMHO, a woman who is using her body to make other people happy or to get kibbles or whatever is NOT in a healthy mental place.

The issue with this thread for me is the thought that a woman must DO (weight, sex, body, clothing, whatever) for a man so HE can feel a way. That I owe my husband porny sex so HE can feel studly.

After dday, I absolutely get that a BH would want better than the AP got. But to me, if a BH is saying "well he got a, b, or c off the menu, so now you have to give me that too"... Like YES - I understand how that can help balm the wound a bit. But if ww in this scenario is just doing that to "justly compensate" and not because she actually WANTS to... to ME that is just not healthy, and not a whole lot different than doing it for the kibbles - both of those stem from the same unhealthy mental place. That's not addressing the ROOT cause of WHY ww cheated in the first place - that's putting a band aid on a bullet wound.

Note, I am not saying that I think a BH is "forcing" or anything. They absolutely have a right to ask for whatever they want/need for R, every BS has that right. I also believe that sex is a necessary (that's the wrong word but I can't find a right one) and enjoyable thing in a healthy adult relationship. And frankly if you are not sexually compatible with one another, that to me is just not a recipe for lasting success IMHO.

[This message edited by EllieKMAS at 10:58 AM, February 25th (Thursday)]

The idea of "compensation" in a marriage is gross. Marriage isn't a business arrangement; it's supposed to be a love match.

If you're scorekeeping, it's already over, you just haven't called it yet. You see teenagers doing that in their first crushes. It's not how adults should be treating each other.

Here's a thought from the poly community that I think people might find helpful.

Lots of newly opened poly people get distressed when they see their partner putting on a full face of makeup or getting dressed up for a date or shaving their legs at a time when maybe they wouldn't.

They ask themselves, why is my partner putting in more effort for someone else than for me? Does that mean he/she doesn't love me or isn't attracted to me anymore?

Not at all. It's because they don't trust the new person to see them without the bells and whistles, and I think this is doubly true in affairs since you know the person doesn't love you for yourself anyway. The WS knows that it's all a facade, so they shine themselves up as much as possible.

It's not real. I sure wouldn't dress up like date night every time I saw my spouse- I don't do that for my boyfriend anymore either. I trust them to see the real me and love the real me. Guess what? I've gained almost 40lbs during the Quarantimes. I even asked my boyfriend if he was less attracted to me (I know my husband doesn't even see it and I trust him). My boyfriend laughed and tapped my forehead and says he loves my sexy brain.

There is no feeling better than knowing you are loved and accepted for yourself. If your partner is so focused on exterior appearances- they're perfectly permitted to want whatever they want- but part of me just doesn't believe they actually love you for yourself if the package is that important. Blah blah blah attraction etc but one day we'll be old and have wrinkles and saggy balls and breasts... if you don't love the person who's inside the package, what do you have left? And maybe old people sex isn't "sexy" but I sure hope to be doing the nasty when I'm old and gray.

Caring about someones health just means caring about what they eat and how much they exercise . What the womans body looked like for the AP has zero to do with concern for her health and everything to do with her status as a sex object. And more importantly your status

Thats the point of all these threads and while its ok to have these selfish thoughts “ i want my spouse to act like the best sex object out there because its a reflection of who i am on the sexual totem pole” please dont dress up your coarse (albeit relatable) thoughts as if you are driven by altruism - at that point this is just you bullshitting yourself while we watch . Lets keep it honest.

Thank you. I always get irritable when health is cited as the reason a WW needs to lose weight. There are many other risky choices -- smoking, drug use, high stress occupations, extreme sports -- that increase the chance that a spouse won't be there for their partner in their golden years. Somehow, those never seem to generate threads. You don't find frequent posts saying that a WW should quit smoking because it will prove that she cares about living a long and healthy life. But we often hear that she should starve herself and hit the gym to get back to her 20 year old weight "for her health." Right.

Well then i ask in relation to the thread title when is the compensation enough?

When can a ww be allowed to let the rigors of time and age show on her body without her BH claiming shes letting herself go, she doesnt care about his worth, isnt giving him all she gave the AP?

And this. Weight loss programs are incredibly difficult to maintain. There are failures and regressions everywhere, including in happily married couples of long duration where no cheating occurred. Bodies that have lost a lot of weight try hard to get it back, because up until the last few seconds of human evolution when industrialized farming became the norm, every pound was hard earned in a hunter/gatherer lifestyle. Many women's bodies are metabolically predisposed to panic when they lose a significant amount of weight, especially in a short time frame.

There have been two periods in my life when I ate close to nothing for several weeks. One was after my sons died, when it literally didn't occur to me to eat, and one was after a bowel perforation. Both times, I probably consumed a total of 3,000 calories in a ten day time span, and I did not lose an ounce. It wasn't water retention, either. My metabolism literally just stopped requiring food. I'm not someone who will ever lose weight through starvation, no matter what I do. I never get endorphins from exercise. Ever. I have lost in excess of 75 pounds twice, and each time, it took just over a year of absolute and single minded focus. In both cases, when something else happened in my life that I had to think about with substantial intensity, the weight came back on. There is no way, no way at all, that I could have been the kind of remorseful WS that is required for R and also devoted that kind of brainpower to weight loss. No way.

The kinds of reform that bode well for permanent success in reconciliation are the ones that focus on the mind, not the body. I have spent 2.5 years rewiring my thinking, digging out my FOO, facing my selfishness and hypocrisy, and supporting my BH's need for transparent remorse. That's where my mental energy went -- unlike during the A, when my mind was on me and how gorgeous and desirable I felt. I could rebuild trust, or I could rebuild abs. Some lucky people find that exercise helps them focus the mind. I wish that was me, but it isn't, and never has been, no matter how gamely I have tried.

Does that mean that I'll never get to where I can focus on weight loss and healthy eating again? No. And it doesn't make weight loss a bad goal. But if you're going to say, with total justification, that WS are weak, broken people with a mountain of work to do on their toxic thoughts, then it's unrealistic to expect they can also get/stay in shape at a very stressful time in their marriage. Do you want your spouse to focus their energy on maintaining an empty, attractive shell, the kind you were married to during the affair? Or do you want someone who is rebuilding themselves on the inside, fighting cultural messages that their marital value is tied to how much they weigh?

There's one good outcome of these kinds of threads. I always go find my BH and hug him for seeing me as an actual person who is trying my best, not a walking debt who is worthless if I don't look the way I did when I was an AP.

Fellas please ! Caring about someones health just means caring about what they eat and how much they exercise . What the womans body looked like for the AP has zero to do with concern for her health and everything to do with her status as a sex object . And more importantly your status

Thats the point of all these threads and while its ok to have these selfish thoughts “ i want my spouse to act like the best sex object out there because its a reflection of who i am on the sexual totem pole” please dont dress up your coarse ( albeit relatable ) thoughts as if you are driven by altruism - at that point this is just you bullshitting yourself while we watch . Lets keep it honest.

Indeed.

[This message edited by HellFire at 12:21 PM, February 25th (Thursday)]

This thread is making me hungry

What "rights" does an OM have for whispering sweet nothings, that a hard working husband not have?

That’s the crux of this whole argument to me, 66. The OM *doesn’t* have any “rights” either. It’s not that the affair partner “has the right” to experience X, Y, or Z from the WS and the BS does NOT have “the right” to....it’s that NO ONE, male or female, BS or WS, has any rights to anything regarding another person unless those rights are granted to them by that person.

If you’re talking that it’s unfair and unreasonable in the context of a marriage for a WS to be giving those things (time, energy, sex, sweet words, flowers, a gym-rat body, a full face of makeup, WHATEVER) to a person other than their spouse, I can understand that. And if you’re talking it being understandable that the BS wants those things because THEY are the ones married to the WS and not the interloper, I can understand that too.

Where the wheels fall off for me is when the BS starts talking about how they have a “right” to it (whatever “it” is) or are “owed” it. No, you’re (general “you’re”) not. No, you don’t. That’s freedom. That’s living in the modern western world. I TOTALLY GET the BS then saying that’s not good enough and terminating the relationship. I *don’t* get saying, “You owe me this” and staying stuck when you don’t get it. And by “stuck” I don’t mean staying married—lots of us are stuck staying married. I mean staying married and actually expecting to have a marital relationship. Staying married and not detaching, expecting to get what (you think) you’re “owed” and then the relationship will be restored.

Sometimes it will be. Sometimes the WS will make satisfactory efforts and reconciliation might be possible. But you (again, general “you”) aren’t going to get what you want unless the other partner truly wants to give it. It’s just not possible otherwise.

Edited to add: certainly this goes the other way, too. The WS does not have the right to behave any old way and expect the BS to be interested in reconciliation. The WS also does not have the right to expect the BS to be interested in reconciliation even if they’re being a “model WS.” Hell, the WS does not have the right to “expect” ANYTHING. Just like the converse, they get what the BS is willing to give. And that’s either acceptable to them or it’s not.

[This message edited by Darkness Falls at 12:59 PM, February 25th (Thursday)]

The trigger part for ME, as a woman, is the idea that a woman ever for any circumstance OWES her body to a man.

I understand it. I agree and empathize with it. I respect it. But I don' think this is what the OP has suggested. Maybe through the triggers of others that have responded, it has been interjected into the conversation. I think oldtruck has stated, his issue is the show or demonstrated level of effort, not the suggestion of ownership of his wife's body or of her choices. More the disappointment of her lack of effort in the way that he needs it.

Perhaps I have interpreted his position or read things incorrectly.

The trigger part for ME, as a woman, is the idea that a woman ever for any circumstance OWES her body to a man.

But I don't think this is what the OP has suggested.

DIFM, this is the clarification I have been pushing for this entire long thread. And IMHO, this is exactly what he's saying and has continued to say - if ww did THAT with AP, then she owes her BH THAT for 'just compensation'.

THAT being... weight loss, making herself up, sex acts, etc.

Do I agree that a WS *should* put 1000000% more effort into their spouse after dday than they put into their affair? Yes, I absolutely agree with that. And yes, said 'effort' can include many different things up to and including weight loss and sexual things.

But I just have a gut-level disagreement that a WS 'owes' their BS anything with their body. If those types of things are not done from the right place inside (ie a woman fully and freely giving herself to a man because SHE wants to/enjoys it, or a woman losing weight because SHE wants to for herself) but instead because they feel like they 'have to' (ie a woman giving the 'full menu' because it's a 'requirement for R' or a woman losing weight so her H will be happy with her), then the changes A) likely aren't lasting and B) are not done in a healthy way.

If those things aren't addressed and done from a place of SELF-improvement or SELF-exploration, then I am really struggling to see why 'doing it for the AP' or 'doing it for your BS' are really any different when those essentially stem from the same unhealthy place in the mind of needing external validation or needing to make someone else happy.

Hope that makes sense. It would be better in person cus you could see my hand gestures

I don't think his focus is on some duration, specifically, or some qualified result of the effort I think he wants her to demonstrate the same efforts for him as she did for A, in the way that he needs. It seems to be more an effort thing than a quantifiable results thing.

It's a wayward "effort", a cheating "effort", an insecure "effort", a sick "effort", a FALSE "effort". It's unsustainable... because it's done to please someone else. The same WW who loses 100 lbs. and runs off with her OM is going to put that weight back on when she's secure and comfortable again. The only way that doesn't happen is when/if she's doing it for herself and not as a means to achieving another goal.

For the life of me, I don't understand why anyone would want the sick, wayward version of their WS back.

When can a ww be allowed to let the rigors of time and age show on her body without her BH claiming shes letting herself go, she doesnt care about his worth, isnt giving him all she gave the AP?

A wife that goes to the gym at 60 can not look as good as when

she was 20 years old.

Though she will look a lot better at 60 by going to the gym

then not going to the gym.