SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I was going to make a similar comment about intent; I can't think of any other area where it is given as much weight as infidelity. And importantly, we can't ever know another person's intent for certain.

I know from admission from her own mouth that she knew for a fact that this was always a redline for me. She knew I would never marry her if I knew. She knew I would not have children with her and that is the exact reason she did not tell me. That is intent by her own admission. I feel "rapist" has a popular preconception that it is a forced physical action and the classic rapist type masked man is in our minds for this.

Webster definition: sexual activity and usually sexual intercourse carried out forcibly or under threat of injury against a person's will or with a person who is beneath a certain age or incapable of valid consent because of - mental illness, mental deficiency, intoxication, unconsciousness, or deception

Notice the last word, deception. I am not trying to make anyone uncomfortable or triggered, and I believe anyone can feel what was done to them in any term possible. The uncomfortable truth is, it meets the definition to a tee.

I think if my spouse came to me and compared me to a rapist, both of us having been victims of SA, then that would potentially signal that this marriage wasn't going to work out. I struggle to see how I could be married to someone who thinks of me as equivalent to a rapist.

My poor WW has now had to contend with the comparison to prostitution and now this. I wish I didn't think or feel this way but I can only be radically truthful, the way I am asking her to be. But in fairness, I struggle with the same.

[This message edited by Gemmy at 7:22 PM, Wednesday, November 4th]

While I agree with your point—and also find it puzzling why someone would stay with a partner they view that way—it doesn't actually counter what Gemmy said.

"Rape" is obviously a heavy, inflammatory word, and rightly so, but the logic behind the comparison holds up.

Technically, I could define myself as a victim of sexual assault (specifically what the UK would define legally as - Forced to penetrate, given the archaic legal definition of rape here requiring a male perpetrator which they were not). In reality, I hold no trauma from it, never bring it up, and even attended her wedding last year and wish her happiness. I feel embarrassed even brining this story up to make my point because it's so light in comparison to the acts, trauma, hell and misery other people have endured.

The point is I could have pursued legal action, but I never would have. It was a mix of miscommunication, a complicated history, and too much alcohol.

I choose not to label her that way because that isn't how I view what happened, but strictly speaking, the act occurred and I did not consent.

All this to say: irrespective of your partner's view of it, Gemmys points stand.

I am not saying "your poor wife," Gemmy (though also as someone who has done sex work I feel much more comfortable with the comparison of a WS having extramarital sex for the purpose of cheap validation to a prostitute.) But I do think the rapist comparison is a bit far fetched, and I understand her reaction to it. I don't necessarily think it's an indicator of a lack of remorse to take offense to such a thing. It's one thing to acknowledge the robbery of autonomy and informed consent, as happens with infidelity. It's quite another to physically and sexually violate someone, as is the connotation of "rape."

ETA: I take issue with consent being retroactively withdrawn and then labelling the sex as "rape." It's just not the same kind of physical violation as not consenting to sex or being unable to consent to sex (as in, being under the influence or too young) and having sexual acts done to you anyway.

2ndE: I would call it "sexual coercion," or "reproductive coercion," if you were deceived into having children.

[This message edited by GotTheMorbs at 9:38 PM, Wednesday, November 4th]

I’ll respond, and hopefully I can do it without triggering or upsetting anyone also. I in no way intend to gainsay anyone’s perceptions of what happened to them.

Webster definition: sexual activity and usually sexual intercourse carried out forcibly or under threat of injury against a person's will or with a person who is beneath a certain age or incapable of valid consent because of - mental illness, mental deficiency, intoxication, unconsciousness, or deception

Notice the last word, deception. I am not trying to make anyone uncomfortable or triggered, and I believe anyone can feel what was done to them in any term possible. The uncomfortable truth is, it meets the definition to a tee.

I saw that, too, and actually googled rape by deception to see if there were good explications of it. Because on the plain language of that definition, it means any deception that invalidates consent. It picks up every lie that matters to the victim.

I see no problem with the idea that infidelity is a consent-invalidator. But surely other deceptions are too. I gave some examples that were implausible because I thought it’d illustrate the issue I’m seeing. So here’s an example that I’ll proffer that I saw once on a website that rhymes with credit. It’s at least plausible, and probably even true.

A man (OP) was seeking advice on how to co-habitate/parent with his wife (OPW) for the next 15 years. He did not want to divorce for financial reasons and because he didn’t want to lose time with his children, the youngest of which was 3. He had been happily married. But what happened was that he discovered that OPW had lied to him about her sexual history. He had been very explicit about wanting a chaste bride. I can’t find the post, but from memory, she’d told him she had 2 partners before him, when in reality it was more like 22. To make matters worse, some of the men were people he knew and hated. She admitted to lying to him because she knew he would have considered her promiscuous, and that given his views on promiscuity, she knew that he would not have married her had he be in possession of the truth.

For OP, this was a complete deal-breaker. Would never have married her had he known. Would never have slept with her had he known, and was vowing to never do so again.

Are we comfortable calling OPW a rapist, of all the labels available to us for what she did? It fits the definition to a tee as well. As long as we could establish that the deception was sufficient to make his consent invalid, she’s a rapist.

That would be very incongruous to how I think of rape. I just cannot imagine a prosecutor bringing that case, and I would be very troubled to see her get jail time for it.

I see no way to distinguish OPW’s deception from a WS’s deception, or really any other kind of deception provided we were certain that it was sufficiently consent-invalidating.

I recognize that the right answer might just be, "yes, Frank, they’re both rape." Maybe they are and I need to adjust my thinking. I’ll noodle on it, but I have to say it feels like the wrong answer intellectually to me.

Anyway, notwithstanding anything I just wrote, I fully endorse and adopt this statement: "I am not trying to make anyone uncomfortable or triggered, and I believe anyone can feel what was done to them in any term possible."

[This message edited by Letmebefrank at 9:23 PM, Wednesday, November 4th]

I don’t think it’s critical to equate infidelity to rape, though by some definition apparently it falls in the category.

When I answered to that, I pointed out it’s sexual abuse (sexual emotional) like many others (including rape), and the trauma ALL this class of abuses causes is similar in the victims.

The circumstances are different because some abuses come from the outside world and other from the inside world, closest people and family.

The thing of having a traumatic experience in your inner world is that your system reacts erratically for there is nowhere to hide, while you can hide from the outside threats a threat for, within short circuit your defense mechanisms, so the reactions to it are all over the place.

Some may distance themselves from the abuser, others ,at respond with fawning or dependence, other dissociate. Is a mess, that’s why the anxiety post trauma is hard to parse and recover.

Reconnecting to the op, the whole point was it is not "a beautiful vacation" dream like and fantasy driven.

Is the stuff of horror painted as such.

[This message edited by BackfromtheStorm at 12:25 AM, Thursday, November 5th]

While (apparently?) GTM sees no evidence of a lack of remorse in Gemma’s XWW,

She immediately got defensive, joked about hunting down registered sex offenders and joining groups with them, then listed off all the things I have said to her since DDay

I see evidence right here she lacks remorse.

While I’m certain those who’ve committed adultery squirm at the idea of being called a rapist, there’s simply no question their actions constitute an absolute violation of sexual consent of their betrayed spouses, by way of deliberate deception. It’s about time society stops laughing away adultery. And sadly no, I don’t believe that will ever change. It’s the way of the fallen world.

If there's anything I've read on this site that made me suspect some BSes of exaggeration and overdramatization, its this gross misapplication of commonly understood language, calling infidelity LITERAL rape.

A WS can own up to what they did and have remorse for that without having to agree to extreme representations of the same behavior.

I think the important part is not that it be classified in any specific bucket. It is more important to acknowledge that is just as destructive to the psyche.

In a 2026 study "Evaluating the association between potentially morally injurious events (PMIEs) and types of psychological distress. A systematic review"

The conclusion reads...

PMIE [potentially morally injurious events] subtypes showed overlapping but potentially different patterns of associations with psychological distress. Across the available literature, betrayal-related PMIEs emerge as the most prominent and consistent correlate of PTSD, depression, and anxiety, while commission-related events were also linked with distress, particularly suicidality, and omission-related findings were less consistent. These findings support considering PMIE subtypes separately in assessment and future research.

Thing is simple:

There is abuse and there is abused.

We all sometimes abuse or are abused often in lives. To abuse is simply to intentionally violate someone’s else boundaries

There is no unintentional abuse, it’s an active decision.

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There might be abuse language or behavior other than directly abusive actions.

And the abuse might be warranted or unwarranted.

If you punch someone in the face because they assaulted you, it is abuse.
If you berate verbally someone who did you wrong, it’s abuse.

but it is a warranted response.

A reaction to their wrong doing.

It’s not always the ideal line of action because you are responding in kind to a wrong , but it is understandable and sometimes the only choice left (eg. responding with violence to a physical assault).

Often the best cost effective response to abuse is to remove the abuser from your proximity, cutting off the contact and chances to keep abusing.

—-

Different story is if you begin abusing someone unwarrantedly. In this case you are the villain, you are in always the wrong.

Very often people who abuse others without a reason are reacting to deep unresolved issues and character flaws.

Being the abuser gives them a sense of power, is primitive as they place themselves above the victim by stepping on them, they are dehumanizing them makes their void of self worth full.

These are the literal abusers: intentional, unwarranted.

And there are layers about the victim response, it might be fighting back (fight), avoidance (flight) or submission, shock or fawning (freeze).

The abuser feels fulfilled the most with the third response because it validates their primitive power.
That’s what you see in the extreme with narcissists and other dark triads flaws.

If you had to deal with people who express those flaws you see how they have a tendency to belittle or abuse in any way others to make themselves "look better", and I am sure everyone experienced seeing someone belittling somebody to look better.

And because the goal of an abuser is dominance(as in self elevation), they pick someone who will likely freeze so they aren’t risking to be confronted and defeated, it’s cowardice.

—-

So there is levels on the kind of abuse an abuser might inflict to get this response.

Depending on the vulnerability of the victim the abuser will try to hit them where it hurts.

Verbal abuse with some random person will likely result in getting yourself a "fuck you" or being belittle yourself.
Abusers are Cowards, so they don’t pick this often , usually they Cather to a crowd and people please to build up a "facade" that reduces the risk of being themselves picked on and confronted.

This might happen when they have already established a "tribe" so they can safely insult and abuse someone else because they feels they are backed by their group, validation is quintessential for them.

Or you will see an abuser doing it to individuals who are unlikely to fight back in kind, like children, often their children as there is next to no chance of retaliation.

Verbal abuse is usually the least scarring to the victim, it might piss you off or mine your self esteem, but is not terribly traumatizing unless is protracted and consolidated for protracted periods of time (then it can very well traumatize as mines your self worth).

—-

Physical abuse is even rarer, because everyone instinctively knows that a physical confrontation is likely to cause harm to both, the victim but also the abuser, because it’s the most likely to cause a "fight" reaction from the victim, and those in the surrounding.

So the abuser chooses this most likely when the victim is weaker than themselves, like an adult picking on a kid or a man picking on a woman.

And is more likely to happen when they are helpless and alone.

Physical abuse is more hurtful in the moment, but unless is protracted in time like the above trauma only occur if the victim is already very fragile or the injuries are serious or life threatening.

You would be shocked by a slap, but you would not likely be traumatized.

—-

Then there is psychological abuse, this is subtle and deliberately planned eroding at someone’s psyche or their support circle constantly and in a way they can’t immediately call out, little by little escalating it until the victim is undermined at an extent that they submit to the abuser dominance.

This is less direct than the others but it is usually traumatizing because it’s by definition protracted in time and repeated. Unless the victim support circle is strong enough, this can easily devastate an individual.

—-

A child of this is emotional abuse, where the abuser manipulates the victim into bonding with the abuser and becoming succubus, codependent on the abuser who will lie, trick, deceive and gaslight the victim to keep them managed and exactly where they want them.

Also less direct as it’s based on manipulation and deception, this is often traumatizing because the abuser messed with the emotions of the victim and the victim is likely to have their agency completely destroyed over time, for their feelings are honest towards a dishonest person.

—-

Lastly there’s sexual abuse, which is the ultimate intimate violation of a person. The most dehumanizing of them all because it hits the core of the victim’s inner world: mind, heart and body.
It preys upon all the things that are targeted by the other abuses but it hits the victim where it can’t be ignored, in the sacred places of a human being.

This is the most traumatizing of all wether through force, deception or coercion, the victim doesn’t walk away unscathed.

It is not by chance that every historical horror of human tragedy had the side who wanted to crush the enemy, sexually abusing the victim (which was the enemy, but a defeated one, so this is not done tactically, is an unnecessary evil intentionally inflicted to dehumanize and destroy people), wether by mass rapes, public sexual humiliation or manipulation, propaganda, and so on.

Because it universally break the spirit of the victim it is a sure way to kill a victim inside, even if their heart is still beating they are now broken.

It can take many forms, often is a mix of all the above kind of abuses, the effect is the same.

Trauma is a given, unless the person is exceptionally strong this will break you in the deepest of your self.

—-

There is no "better or worse" sexual abuse. Violent sexual abuse traumatizes. Manipulate and coercive sexual abuse traumatizes. Emotional sexual abuse traumatizes.

From the victim’s trauma perspective They are all the same.

Rape in the common acception is the forceful violation of someone’s intimacy (the coercive ways to force against consent qualify in the definition but this is the most obvious and recognizable form).

This one is easy: someone violates your body with force or by incapacitation (eg loss of consciousness substances) on their terms. Terms you would not consent to. Dehumanizing trauma.

It’s "honest" in It’s horror, because is in the open. It happens in the moment. It leaves traces. It is easier to prove.

Manipulative and coercive sexual abuse is the same horror show (in fact it can fall under the definition of rape) for the abuser leads the victim into sexual submission, but it is prolonged in time so the victim is manipulated to become sort of a "sexual slave" at the mercy of the abuser. Dehumanizing trauma

Deception as in sexual and emotional abuse is a variant of the above, where you lead the victim to concede their consent to a sexual relationship that they would never consent to if they knew what the reality is. You deceive the victim into forming or maintaining a sexual and emotional bond with you while you’re deceiving and crossing the boundaries that such bond implies.

If the victim knew what the rules of this sexual and emotional connection were, they would never consent to bond with the abuser. They are simply lied and deceived into accepting and maintaining the sexual and emotional connection with the abuser. bold]Dehumanizing trauma

Betrayal and infidelity is the poster child of this last sexual and emotional abuse.

It is not rape or coercive sexual manipulation, it adds an emotional layer (to the victim, the abuser might very well be detached), that binds the victim to invest energy and be managed by the abuser at their leisure.

The historical details of the traumatizing process all differs in the sexual / emotional abuses above, but the wound they cause at the core is the same.

A gunshot is a gunshot no matter the caliber of the bullet.

The trauma from other abuses has a footprint, the trauma from sexual abuse has a very specific one.

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There is no extreme representation of sexual abuses, sexual anbuses are already the extreme representation of Abuse.

Ranking them is only a way to prioritize or minimize their impact in a way that for whatever reason, we feel comfortable with.

Truth is that the abusers have a tendency to indulge in the abuse if they have the opportunity, availability and chance to get away with it without consequences.

If there were the same consequences for rape as there are for infidelity (next to none), you would see a lot more rapes everyday (as you can observe in those places / situations where is not punished).
because the same character flaws that allow for the other sexual and emotional abuses can be found in those who rape another human being.

It’s only the fear of consequences (punishment) that makes them abstain from indulging in that particular behavior of dominance and ego boost for low self worth.

Limiting "rape is bad, other Sexual abuse kind of okay" shows clearly a lack of empathy and accountability towards one of the worst violations that a human can ever do to another human.

It’s an apology to the abuse.

And the ego will gladly accept anything that excuses its choices when they feel good and provided validation. It’s the "good German" syndrome: I have been there, choose it, done that. But I am a good person I would never think in a million years that was causing harm, otherwise I would never chose to do it.

No you did choose to do it.
You knew exactly what you were doing.
You put effort in doing it.
And you did because you were sure you would get away with it, no harm coming your way.

You chose.
And you took that choice away from someone else.

Nobody is ever easily accepting they became the villain.

Rapists think they are good people. Narcissists think they are good people. Pedophiles think they are good people.

It’s not as wrong when I am choosing to do that.

And when I choose to do some evil shit, I can be sure that I can minimize my wrong doing by simply convincing myself "it’s not as bad as [insert here quote], I am a Good person. It’s the victim who is overreacting."

This will calm the ego. And unless you are truly capable to own your own shitshow this is all that matters to you.
And you are likely to continue choosing the same.

Empathy is kryptonite for the ego.

Owning wrong choices when they harmed somebody is very difficult for a weak character.

When you can own your evil choices that’s when true remorse comes. And that’s when you truly can become the good person you tell yourself you want to be.

You can’t undo the past, but you can forsake it.
And that’s even more powerful in many ways.

—-

@Frank, Monk, others:

The thread was sidetracked a lot by the definition of what is sexual abuse.
I hope it is clearer now by everyone contributing with their thoughts feelings and personal experiences.

Rape is often used as a "unicum" standard of sexual abuse because it works perfectly as a shield for more ambiguous and subtle sexual abuses we might have been guilty of or have an unspoken tendency towards to. Recognition of a standard makes minimization of poor choices easier to digest.

It’s but one of many, and they are all as ugly.

I know both sexual abuse and sexual and emotional abuse.
They are the same kind of trauma. Only one kept you in submission to the abuser, and in constant need to explain justify your suffering.

Which truly suck, because it is the same.

The article is good, but describing the affair bubble as "a nice vacation which is so rewarding because it’s fantasy and not real life" makes me cringe.

It’s not a vacation, it’s the narrative you tell yourself to allow yourself to become a sexual abuser towards a dehumanized human being.

Unless the article was talking of those sexual vacations where people go to enjoy minor prostitutes, I think the parallel with a vacation is truly off the mark.