SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

To be clear, I'm not discrediting what Hiking has said. She is speaking from her experience, and I respect that. I am speaking from mine. And that is equally respected. By me,anyway. Lol

With that said @hikingout, I do appreciate what you said about developing integrity and everything else in your post. And about being sympathetic to where you think I am coming from (I am male straight and to the best of my knowledge no NPD. But the affair she had was an exit one apparently.) I am explaining how I see and feel things.

Yeah..I can't do that, IH. If you can, that's fine. I see it completely different.

And that's ok.

We’ve disagreed over much bigger things than this, I think we’ll pull thru

@InkHulk

Had a thought while driving this morning: I said in the wake of D-day 2 that my wife had read that thread and called you all my "affair partner". I wonder if she felt a similarity in that we all have a "fake" relationship in some of the ways we are discussing here. We certainly aren’t sharing chores and mortgages. We have the mask of internet anonymity and can choose to put forward a persona that we like.

Your wife's affair was horrible indeed, but it had nothing to do with AP being "real" or "fake" (whatever *that* means--really I have no idea), it was instead that your WW was giving to AP and his family, what was for YOU and YOUR family.

Your WW, I would hope, now sees your participation on here as, instead, yet another consequence of her awful decisions. You needed this community for support and to confide in, just as you needed your 'in-person' friends to confide in as well.

[This message edited by WontBeFooledAgai at 10:36 PM, Thursday, December 14th]

Your wife's affair was horrible indeed, but it had nothing to do with AP being "real" or "fake" (whatever *that* means--really I have no idea)

Come on, man, you are on page 5 of discussing exactly that. I said we should say long hand what we mean, 80 posts should cover it, don’t you think?

Your WW, I would hope, now sees your participation on here as instead, yet another consequence of her awful decisions. You needed this community for support and to confide in, just as you needed your 'in-person' friends to confide in as well.

Not quite sure what you mean by a "consequence". My joining of this community has benefited me tremendously, for as much as I wish I’d never met you all.

@InkHulk, I really do not know what you are getting at here. An affair is awful period. And so you needed to come here for support. If your wife does not appreciate you being online getting support, I would hope that she would understand it as something that had to come to be due to her devastating actions. That is really all I am saying.

[This message edited by WontBeFooledAgai at 10:48 PM, Thursday, December 14th]

HellFire... My take on the question you posed is that once the WS breaks the pair bond by giving their, love, body, intimate thoughts and loyalty to the AP there no longer exists any marriage, regardless of what type of vows were made. or what pantomime performance of " normalcy" is maintained...Which is why IMO it is such A Herculean task to reestablish A pair bond in reconciliation. This is the very crux of the issue for me.

When it comes to attempting to understand the human condition, black-and-white thinking is a handicap, IMO. Humans are complicated and messy.

Anyway it is extremely hard for me to see an affair as a lack of self-love.

I do not disagree that having an affair is an inherently selfish act. It absolutely is. Zero disagreement there.

But I think you are conflating self love/high-self-esteem with selfishness or self-centeredness. I see how you might make the connection, but they aren't the same thing. Just like a lack of self-love/low self-esteem is not the same as being selfless. I can have solid, healthy, self-esteem and still act selflessly, just like many waywards have low self-esteem/self love and act selfishly.

The most classically selfish/self-centered people out there are narcissists - they brag and boast and have virtually no capacity for empathy or the feelings of others and certainly they are overrepresented in the cheating department., But despite all the bravado, virtually all the literature about narcissists will tell you that they are some of the MOST insecure people out there, with the most fragile egos and sense of self. They may over-rely on things like looks, materialistic things, and rely on validation from others because their own sense of self-esteem is so weak.

On the flipside, although 'selflessness' is often thought off as a 'good' trait, not all selflessness comes from a healthy/good place. Sometimes selflessness comes from a place of fear/insecurity and a lack of self-confidence. Someone with poor self-esteem might not feel entitled to their own (reasonable) wants/needs and may spend all their energy serving other at their own expense. They may end up feeling burnt out, exploited, unfulfilled, and resentful in the marriages and jobs. Because of their unhealthy selflessness (which is often a form of people pleasing - ie. seeking validation from others), they may be bad at drawing boundaries with co-workers or the cute guy at the Farmers Market. These people may have midlife crisis affairs where they justify doing a particularly selfish and out of character thing, because after a lifetime of selflessness they feel unseen, unappreciated, and "deserve something for themselves for once in their lives".

We see both of these dynamics in discussions of Waywards here all the time here in different degrees - often in combination. I agree with HikingOut that lack of self-love tends to be a common trait amongst Waywards. It presents differently in different people. In my own scenario, while my husband certainly has the odd tendency towards selfishness, but I wouldn't describe him as selfish in any general way (and I think you would be hard pressed to find someone else in his life who would). Obviously his behaviour in the A was incredibly selfish however I don't think the A happened DUE TO to some overarching selfish streak that has remained static throughout our relationship and that he merely hid previously. We have spent a lot of time thinking about this and digging into it all and I really do think that his A arose mostly out of a way to self-soothe his weak sense of self-esteem (which was very much tied to external factors that had come crashing down beforehand). Rather than straight-up opportunity and entitlement, he was using his A as a way to escape negative feelings/stress and to prop himself up and make himself feel better about himself during a period where he was experiencing a lot of negative feelings.

Hellfire, I agree with you that we probably see more stories here (from the BS) where the BS describes a marriage where they gave and gave and the WS took and took (and their career was prioritized while the BS took care of the family), but I think that part of that is that the demographics of most posters here skew female and there is a bit of a gendered social dynamic at play. Most women are socialized either explicitly or implicitly to serve their husband/families in a way that men are not. In families with children, the man is often paid more so it often makes sense to prioritize the higher paying job. People pleasing/selflessness is expected in women and there can be social consequences for women who do not fit the mold or who deem to appear confident (which can be misconstrued as selfish). That said, despite these gender roles, we also know that plenty of women (including SAH parents) end up having affairs. InkHulk's wife sounds to be a good example of this. I would hope by now that we should know him well enough to take him at his word when he says that his wife is not generally a selfish person.

Healthy people, who are able to self-validate, who do not rely on the approval of others for their self-esteem, are able to stake out a healthy balance of selfishness/selflessness. They do not let themselves get taken advantage of and do not build up unhealthy resentments that may lead to feelings of entitlement. They are honest with themselves and others about their wants and needs. They draw boundaries, and feel comfortable being 'selfish' enough to take care of themselves FIRST. They do not rely on others for their sense of self worth. They can cope and self-validate when something doesn't go well at work, or when the youngest child stops needing them so much, instead of seeking out external validation to soothe their insecurities or in order to escape from reality.

Edits: for clarity.

[This message edited by emergent8 at 5:20 PM, Friday, December 15th]

Emergent covered what I would have said well.

People who do not have self love do not really know fully how to love someone else. I don’t disagree that affairs are selfish and full of entitlement. In fact, I agree with that whole heartedly.

Truth is I was very selfless prior to my affair. Or so I thought. Turns out my people pleasing was in fact selfish. I wanted to be loved and didn’t think I deserved it without giving myself to death. Then turning and resenting it. My entitlement came from being fed up from never being enough. But that was all me. I was always good enough, more than enough for him. But I saw it all through my own skewed lens and projected that on him.

And I agree hellfire, we have all earned our perspectives. I think you have mentioned your husband is NPD, and I think that has a lot to do with yours, and understandably so.

Sorry wise old fool, I am not here enough to know the newer members all that well. And even if you don’t like what I am saying or think I am giving smoke and mirrors perhaps what I am saying is still helpful to someone. You have earned your perspectives too.

A very long time ago, I sat across the table from some fellow SI members at a get together discussing infidelity and healing. At this point, we had met up with these members in multiple occasions and considered them friends. The conversation was casual. I can’t remember what exactly led up to this but we were discussing reconciliation on some level. One of the members with a somber tone leaned in and told me "but I never even had the choice to reconcile." I had to stop in my tracks. He didn’t have the choice. so not only did he go through the pain of infidelity of losing his agency in his marriage, he did not have the choice to save it either. It was a learning moment for me and my heart ached for him.

I realized at that dinner that not every WS is remorseful, not every WS wants to be a better person, not every WS wants to be an authentic version of themselves, and not every WS wants to reconcile.

WBFA, whether or not you wanted to, I am sorry that you did not have that choice either.

I believe it is why you have such black and white thinking about the act of reconciliation. You can not possibly understand the nuances of it without having experienced it. The lens in which you view infidelity only sees one path when in fact, people have and can choose different ones for a variety of reasons…including loving their wayward spouse.

I am not posting here to change your mind about your WW. I am here only to hope you recognize that not every wayward is like your ex. Some even go through great lengths to be better people and work towards a better marriage. I hope you are able to respect those that are trying to take a different path than you have or would.

I know this is long winded. Maybe you’re not listening anymore, but I’m gonna keep hoping that you will be able to have a much more open mind when it comes to those that try to reconcile.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 5:16 AM, Sunday, December 17th]

A couple of additional thoughts....

I think just about everybody in the 1st world is bombarded with ads again and again that tell us, in essence, that we are Not OK unless we own specific products. We go to school where one of the things we learn is that we don't know things that we need to or should know. Our parents are forever limiting our choices. In today's politics (at least in the US), everybody is told by one politician or another that they are threats to the well-being of our society.

It's very difficult to grow up today and learn to love oneself. We are raised, in this consumer society, to think we are not good enough, and it's very difficult to build self-love/self-esteem while thinking one is not good enough.

OTOH, I believe:

We all have a core of belief in ourselves, and that core can exert itself.
IMO, it's that core that tells us we deserve to treat ourselves better than we do.
It's that core that loves themself.
It's that core that enables alcoholics and other addicts to decide to get sober, even if it means starting and restarting over and over.
It's that core that kept me from cheating and enabled my W to decide to end her A, whatever the consequences were going to be.

Some sources of my thinking are Eric Berne, Claude Steiner, Muriel James, Jean Illsley Clarke, Fanita English, all of whom (I believe) have books in print, some of which are in the public domain.

*****

Up to now, my posts have been from the perspective of an observer. That is, I usually write about fantasy when the BS is wrapped up in self-blame. I use 'fantasy' in the hope of helping a BS see the As(s) as the WSes' failures, not the BSes'.

It has finally dawned on me that some BSes have heard 'fantasy' as an excuse.

A WS who says 'Hey, it was a fantasy(, and therefore you should take me back)' is using the term as an excuse. A WS may start with excuses and move eventually to remorse, but making an excuse is ipso facto proof that the WS isn't at remorse yet.

Their are no excuses for cheating. At the same time, it's important to understand there are differences between excuses and reasons, and healing will go better for BSes who perceive those dfferences.

It is all so very confusing…

I am confused because I have love letters written to me by my college boyfriend. Should I have saved them? I don’t know because I wasn’t married so I thought that was okay. So they are in a box, and I thought that meant nothing…

But now, it is the first night my husband and I have slept apart since this horrible revelation. And all I can think about is the sand. There was a small bottle of sand from a beach she held dear because she went there with her family (I presume that included her husband?) anyway she gave that small bottle of sand to my husband before she kissed him. And he kept it. By accident? So he says. But it sat in the attic for seven years? Why? Is it worse because we were married when he got this sand? Or is it no worse than my old love letters from my boyfriend in college before we were married?

And if its very late and he has to be up at 5am and I need to talk about the sand and its almost midnight…who is right? And he says the sand just sat there under some stuff, and it meant nothing, and it didn’t matter. And truthfully he didn’t need to tell me about the sand last year, last summer when it all came crashing down. But I asked, did she give you anything? Because I heard that if they gave gifts then it meant something…

Or maybe its just like a trophy. Like they say serial killers keep, like a lock of hair. Why was the sand still there last year when we moved all our belongings to move to a new house? Was it an accident? After all there were four bike pumps, and candles from HomeGoods and a wiffle ball. Surely those things don’t matter?

It seems so strange that we keep talking about what was real. I wonder if you guys remember the Velveteen Rabbit.

The Velvetten Rabbit was beautiful and plush with bright eyes and pert ears. But when they were perfect and beautiful they weren’t real. Only later, after they were loved, and became worn and threadbare. They were left behind and put in the trash to be burned when they were lost sight of. And then in the woods with the living breathing rabbits they became real.

Were we the real love or were the APs real? Why keep the sand? Or the love letters? I don’t know. I think I could be right that this very specific story I am telling myself about my husband’s A (or is it just cheating?) is just a story to convince myself it wasn’t real…but the sand was real, and it stayed there in the attic for a very long time

[This message edited by Stillconfused2022 at 4:46 AM, Monday, December 18th]

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit. "Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

I owe a few others on here responses.

@WalkingOnEggShelz, thank you for your response. I do apologize if what I had said in the other thread a couple weeks ago had come across as insulting. It was never my intention to criticize your walk. God only knows I got my own shit to deal with! I respect how you put in the work to become a better person and I am happy to hear that you and your husband are happy and doing well and everything.

But, I do hope going forward, you would reconsider how dismissive and nonsensical 'the affair is not real life' sounds to some of us. Here is the thing: When we get together with someone, we hear the other person tell us how much they love us and make future plans with us. We believe them. But then, in the process of the affair, they go say those very same words to someone else. We must believe them too, there is absolutely no reason for us not to believe that what they said to that other person is any less real than what they said to us. Those words uttered by you to AP were ABSOLUTELY 'real life'. No one was body-snatched or had a lobotomy or anything.

I am surely repeating what you know already: Now after the affair, if you want to R, we have NO idea which way is truly up. Which is 'real life'. You gave us your vows with all your sincerity before, but then you said those very same words to someone else. How the hell can we possibly believe you now. This, from my vantage, becomes even harder to believe if:

(a) We are a much better long-term prospect than AP e.g., higher income everyone likes us i.e., you want to be with uS because we are the Safe Choice.

(b) The AP turns out to not want a relationShip after DDay after all (which wouldn't that make the BS the 2nd choice--it looks even more that you'd really be with AP had he wanted to).

I mean, I DO believe people can grow and change and become better, and maybe it is possible to regain trust....but it is extremely hard for me to imagine how. So a bar set so high that no mortal could possibly reach? Yeah, you better believe it.

I probably do have a lot more to write, but this is my 2 cents for now...

[This message edited by WontBeFooledAgai at 9:07 PM, Monday, December 18th]

WBFA, I respect how you feel about this and given those specifics of an affair you gave, perhaps you’re on to something. However, not all affairs, share promises between the affair partners that were also promised to the spouse. Yes, the promise of sexual fidelity was broken, but it certainly wasn’t promised to affair partner nor was a future, shared goals, etc. Those were only promised to me and other than the fucking another the goals were and never failed to be a priority. She got a cup of cofffee and a quick romp. The marriage got everything else, so for me, that was the real life. The other was just bullshit. Perhaps had he ever entertained the idea of leaving the marriage I’d feel differently, but that just wasn’t the case. This isn’t to say what he did do didn’t completely shatter me, but I knew as he was confessing she meant nothing and never did. He was just so calloused about it and her. There was just no reality or depth to the relationship anymore than there would have been if he’d hired a prostitute. She was just cheaper attention. 🤷‍♀️

I think that both can be true.
A person whose spouse is an actor might play a role and kiss and fool around as part of an act in a movie or play. It doesn’t make the act something that didn’t occur. I could never understand "that" scene in brown bunny (Iykyk)
I think for a WS spouse like hiking out said. She was putting on an act to keep her AP interested. I think a lot of people looking for a hookup will fake interest in certain topics to hopefully get in someone’s pants.
That doesn’t make the hurt a BS feels any less though.
It can be seen as a form of minimizing to a BS. I think a WS spouse has to understand that a BS encounters both facets of the WS and struggles to understand which spouse was the "real" spouse and which was the "fake".
I am not sure how we as a BS can take the "not real" comment without it feeling like a spit in the face.
I am not sure how a remorseful WS can see that an affair is real either.
Both situations are messed up. I think WS should (and I’m sure many have) prove that the life with BS is real since everything they thought was true has been shattered by the hammer of infidelity

I do hope going forward, you would reconsider how dismissive and nonsensical 'the affair is not real life' sounds to some of us

I have taken this into consideration and admitted as much on that thread.

I will be using the word authentic going forward and I would be happy to elaborate in future posts vs using short hand.

From your vantage point, we had an impossible hill to climb. Yet, here we are. We did not rug sweep. Nothing has been minimized. It took years to process. We went through Hell and came back out stronger.

So perhaps we can come to an accord. I will be more thoughtful about word choice. I hope for you to be more thoughtful and open minded about those that are trying to reconcile.

Were we the real love or were the APs real? Why keep the sand? Or the love letters? I don’t know. I think I could be right that this very specific story I am telling myself about my husband’s A (or is it just cheating?) is just a story to convince myself it wasn’t real…but the sand was real, and it stayed there in the attic for a very long time

Good Lord, that broke my heart, I’ve been thinking about it all day. My wife brought AP into my kids’ life, like I was not only being replaced as a husband but as a father too. So why am I the real one and him the imposter? Wars have been fought and faiths split over such questions. But here I know, well enough. I was in the light the whole time, he only crept in shadows, even in her heart and mind (I’m checking with myself if I really believe that, I think I 93% do). She did real horrendous things with him, but it’s like the difference between a thief and an entrepreneur. One builds, one destroys. Both get money, but that is all they have in common. I know what I was.

From your vantage point, we had an impossible hill to climb. Yet, here we are. We did not rug sweep. Nothing has been minimized. It took years to process. We went through Hell and came back out stronger.

Same.

I was in the light the whole time, he only crept in shadows, even in her heart and mind… She did real horrendous things with him, but it’s like the difference between a thief and an entrepreneur. One builds, one destroys. Both get money, but that is all they have in common. I know what I was.

Beautifully said. If this doesn’t bridge the gap, nothing will.

Stillconfused, was the sand buried in a box of other stuff or did it have to be picked up and moved itself? That it was there at all carries the emotional weight of a cursed monkey paw, but I’m curious if it got moved consciously or because it had been tossed in a box and forgotten.