SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

This thread is for Betrayed Spouses to ask questions of Wayward Spouses. Betrayed Spouses are not to answer on this thread.

Anxious avoidant—-

Yikes. I will tell you what it sounds like, he sought you for the release of the "tension". And yes, I understand the disgust. My husband had unprotected sex during the day with her and at night with me

He hasn't been able to give me a clear answer there still, and it's either bc it's something along these lines or he genuinely didn't consider it. He kind of seemed dumbfounded when I brought it up. Assuming they are both being honest (i confronted AP), they only made out a handful of times and once hand over the clothes feeling up. Daily long, emotional hugs, and some "necking" along with hickeys once.

I'm still really emotional about the PA stuff because at the time DD1 it was only an EA. WP didn't in fact go NC after DD1 as requested and agreed, and then it turned PA. The only reason I KNOW it didn't go to a PA inclusive of sex, is due to APs religion - and oddly enough I do trust what the AP told me when I confronted her. She disclosed far more than I asked/wanted to know, presumably because she was learning at the same time as I that she had also been lied to.

EDIT: missed a word, needed clarity

[This message edited by AnxiousAvoidant at 6:58 PM, Wednesday, June 3rd]

Deeper answers can come slowly. Also I think most ws’s will try and avoid answering certain things because they are trying to protect themselves and get the outcome they want. It took a while for me to dig into and fully admit how awful I was in what I was doing. However, progress towards all those whys and hows must be strived for and looked at for the benefit of both partners. I would recommend he attend therapy, it’s hard to make all the dot connections and work on changing the things about ourselves that made this all possible. It’s hard to do that without help.

Do you think your BS has some qualities or traits that made you more comfortable in cheating on them?

If you had other relationships before them, do you notice a difference? Were you always prone to cheat on your partners or did that happen only with your Bs?

If yes, then did you think if there might be (and what) something in your BS that made you feel more secure about exploring infidelity when compared to other relationships with past partners?

BackFromTheStorm

Simply put, at the end of the day it wouldn’t have mattered who my wife was or what traits she had, I always had shitty boundaries. While I never went actively looking for an affair, I did nothing to shut it down in its infancy.

One of the hardest points for a BS to come to terms with is the decision to cheat had nothing to do with them. There were a lot of "reasons" I created in my head that made it ok to cheat. Of course they all blamed my wife. Didn’t care about me, only loved me for the lifestyle I provided, wouldn’t care if I cheated, she was a cold fish etc.

While I suppose I could argue correctly that my wife was standoffish and a bit cold. It wasn’t until much later that I realized that it wasn’t because that’s who she was. It was her just reacting to my behavior. I turned my back on the marriage, not her.

Just to emphasize, there was nothing you did/didn’t do or had/didnt have, that caused your wife to cheat. That’s all on her.

Thanks ff415,

Let me expand on what I was curious about. Not responsibility’s of the Bs, the responsibility is always on the person making a choice if that choice is taken in isolation.

I am asking about the psychological facets:

Usually affairs, encounters and this kind of stuff is strongly driven and associated with chasing validation.

Usually validation is fulfilled when you achieve something, not for something you have already achieved (in the broken sense, secure people with no self worth issues have nourished validation for what they have, not what they miss, so asking from that perspective, common in WS ).

This seems to play out in the affair addiction, it’s "great" when is unstable, the moment it loses its spice (secrecy, deception, limitation of availability, uncertainty), the high fades.

I observed this pattern often when 2 affair partners get together officially, it won’t be long until one or both will seek out another affair to soothe the excitement and validation need.

The same I observes in cheaters who I know personally: when they are in a relationship with a safe partner they cheat. When they are with a partner that is keeping them on the edge, they become obsessed, terrified of,losing them, almost addicted (obviously they don’t cheat).

And somehow the same people also crave stability with a safe partner, but when they get it, they run away for infidelity.

I know this sounds like cognitive dissonance and I don’t think it is responsibility of the partner.
I wonder if you observed something along the lines in your same behaviors, needs, unfillment, and how the people you interact with play a role in this if it’s there (or was hopefully since most of you healed those issues)

What do WS and OP often do, think and plan, when they both divorce their BS.

This is probably not what you wanted to hear, and I wasn't married when my H's FBW divorced him, but I don't know of anyone else here who's current marriage started as an affair itself... But I think he was unhappy for a really long time, and wasn't capable of having empathy for her. I think he thought they would divorce and split up the marital assets and child custody fairly, and he would keep seeing me, and she and the children would be temporarily very upset, but okay eventually, and then he and I would go on to have a happy family and a wonderful life together.

Suffices to say, that is not how it went. But we are still together 10 years later, so sometimes they APs do end up together long term, even if most affair relationships crash and burn.

Thanks for the reply! I'm wondering what happened to the FBW and her children?

She got the house, $4K a month in alimony, and another $4k in child support until the kids turned 18. I assume she went through the same emotional process she did as BS do here. She tried her hardest to smear H's reputstion and succeeded in costing him several friends, in addition to attempting to alienate their children from their dad. Eventually she met someone else, and theyre getting married on Father's Day.

The kids were the biggest victims, as not only did they have to process their parents separation, but they lost a ton of time and a good relationship with their dad in addition to having our relationship thrust upon them. Their mother's new husband's family has been thrust upon them as well. One is handling that better than the other. It took about a decade, but I finally developed a good relationship with them, and they seem to really ove their littlest sister (my daughter) a lot.

I got invited to my step daughter's graduation recently, and just did my best to stay far away from FBW, though I could feel her energy from about 30 feet away, and it was super weird because her dad came over to hang out with us for a while to "show unity." That can't have felt good.

Thanks for sharing your experiences. I can understand why the children wouldn't want to have anything to do with the AP. New partners after divorce are different. Children are sensitive in that way. It's not always the BS's intention.

Of course

When WS decided to divorce BS to go with the AP, after a short lived reconciliation, will WS be thinking, 'what ifs'? What if I did ..., then may be possible ro recover the marriage?

Or is it more like, cut the loss, to restart is easier?

Will WS ever feel guilty, or loss? Or will WS just feel relieved and believe the fake history they recreated?

What are your expectations from your partner when you are trying to reconcile?
What do you fear and what sign make you feel that you are doing a good/ bad work?

Honestly I didn’t have expectations of my husband when we were trying to reconcile. I truly understood pretty early on that having expectations of him wasn’t fair.

I had a lot of wishes though. I spent a long time just trying to navigate how to get things back to normal. For a long time all I wanted was to be loved again. I had fears it wasn’t possible.

Eventually I realized that there was no going back, I had to accept the old normal was gone forever. I had to find a balance in which I could stop berating myself for the position I put us in, and turn the energy around to building things up again. It took a long time to get between those two points.

I had a lot of epiphanies after that. And I knew I was in the right track when I didn’t just sit and feel miserable about everything, but when I felt proactive. When I could accept that I did awful things and good things and everything in between. It took a while for the balance between the shame and self compassion and self belief started to shift and when the latter things were stronger than the former. I could see that the scales were tipping towards a more positive life even if it was slowly unfolding. I started to lean into recognizing the dark and changing it to light instead of letting every self confession feel like a life long conviction.

Probably the thing that was the biggest catalyst as I look back is through therapy and more transparency in my relationship. I learned to say a lot of things out loud now that I didn’t before. Unexamined thoughts were probably one of the biggest issues that led to the unhealthy sleep walking I was doing in the years just prior to the affair. So probably the biggest way I knew I was on the right track was when I stopped believing everything I think and learned to communicate like a grown up. And to me that means I say a wide range of stuff now and 99 percent of it doesn’t create the conflict I thought it would. I no longer fear hard discussions because I know how to conduct them now.

The major reason I point at that is because I now take up more space, I don’t self abandon for fears of not being worthy of love anymore. It took learning to communicate boundaries for me to feel like I was finally taking accountability and responsibility for myself. It gave me confidence.

What are your expectations from your partner when you are trying to reconcile?
What do you fear and what sign make you feel that you are doing a good/ bad work?

I just want my husband to talk to me about it. To let me back in emotionally. Sometimes I think that he is having a bad day and maybe thinking about it, because his reactions to minor annoyances and inconveniences are disproportionately angry and severe, and I'm just in the dark trying to figure out what's actually bothering him in the moment and how I can make it better for him. I worry that he's stuffing his feelings deep down instead of processing them. My fear is that he never does process them fully, and one day there's just a straw that breaks the camel's back-- one too many dishes in the sink or a load of laundry that goes undone a day too long or one particularly bad argument-- and they all come rushing up from the depths to convince him that living with me is unbearable, and that he'll leave me.

I hope that he's actively working on his healing and strengthening his self-respect. I hope he can try to look at the way we're interacting more objectively to try to fight the inaccurate, negative associations he's formed. (For example, he told me he's reluctant to share his feeling because we "always" fight a lot right after. That's not true; what does happen is that we fight sometimes, and THEN he might share his feelings when we're making up afterwards. I think it takes a lot of positive experiences to counteract a negative association, but I think sometimes he forgets to count those times when we do talk about it and it goes well and we get a little more emotionally intimate with one another again...)

I don't think I get very much feedback on what I'm doing well/poorly. He asks me frequently if I'm still going to therapy, and I feel... I guess relieved? to tell him I am. But he just nods and doesn't say anything in response. A while ago, I tried checking in with him about how he's doing with all of this, and he said it's good that I'm thinking about it (Good news, I guess, cuz I think about it just about every other thought.) I had asked him if he thought I "got it," and understood, and he said yes. Tonight he told me his mood has been volatile lately (well, that's not how he put it, but you get the gist) because I'm supposed to be traveling with our daughter for our annual camping trip like, within the next couple of days, and I haven't made any reservations or half the plans yet and they've changed a few times, and it's (understandably) giving him anxiety. (Honestly it's giving me anxiety too!) So at least that's one thing I can definitively solve. I asked him if there was anything else I could do to make him feel better about the trip and he said he didn't know. So that's where we're at right now.

I know there are kind of two camps here: there's those that know what they need and they're willing to share that with their WS, and then there are those (like a certain user I won't name, who always seems so gleeful and triumphant when recounting it) who think it's best to sit back and have their WS put in the effort to figure it out. And I can see both sides of it, but I know one I prefer as the WS in the situation. Like, clue me in please!!!

I can’t answer here because is question only. But thank you.

I sense this is important because no matter the communication this is about rebuilding bridges and it’s somewhat to be done in the dark.

I would love to hear from WS on something that has been eating at me lately.

What made it so difficult to seek what you felt you were getting from the AP from your BS? The excitement, the passion, the validation, the ego boosts... Was there something you felt was missing but you felt you couldn't go to your BS and seek?

As the BS I felt the same discomfort in our relationship, I didn't feel seen, I didn't feel desired, I didn't feel excitement and trust me, I wanted to so badly. I was so clear though and communicated those needs to WH. In the midst of my dissatisfaction I found myself still leaning into him, wanting those feelings again with him.

I wonder why, I could have easily fulfilled those needs outside of us but I never wanted them with anyone else because I knew in my heart it would be pretend when what I wanted was real.

So why do WS settle for something fake and fleeting vs communicating and trying to fulfill those needs with their BS? Is it a matter of not knowing oneself? Is it a matter of rewriting history to make it so it's easier to think BS would never be able to give what an AP would? Did you find yourself craving the things AP was providing from your BS and just figured you would take what you can get? Where does that urgency come from?

I tried. I read your other comment on Gemmy's post, and I felt it so deeply. You could have taken the words right out of my mouth.

I don't know if that will be helpful to you as a BS or not. Maybe your WS did try to ask you for what they were seeking. Maybe they didn't. But what I'm learning now is that I'm supposed to be giving what I was getting from my AP to myself, not seeking it from anyone else. I was so desperate to feel interesting, desirable, loved by that point, that when it came around in the form of a pseudo-relationship borne of betrayal, the fantasy and fakeness felt better than nothing.

I regret telling this metaphor to my BH so shortly after DDay, because he received it as blame shifting (and maybe it kind of was, though I never meant it to be.) But I told him to imagine if you're dependent on someone else to feed you. And you start out with just the right amount of nourishing calories for you. Let's say that's 2000, just to put a number on it. But maybe every day, or week, or whatever period of time that makes the math make sense, you start receiving just 1 calorie fewer. And it continues like that for years, so slowly that you don't even notice it, until you end up getting, say, 1200 calories per day-- the bare minimum for you to not starve to death, and enough to meet your micronutrient needs, though your weight has dropped significantly and your body is absolutely craving calorically dense food... But you're used to it, so you don't really consciously feel hunger.

One day a stranger comes along and whispers, "Hey, follow me!" and he leads you to a secret room with a buffet full of fried foods and sugary deserts, like a scene straight out of Biggest Loser. [temptation] Maybe at first you only have a small helping of your favorite food, because you're really not supposed to be fed by anyone else. Then you come back the next day for a little more, because you realize you're actually really, really hungry. [slippery slope] Maybe you even tell your original food provider that you're hungry, but he just brushes it off. Maybe you start to convince yourself that he can't possibly care about you if he's feeding you so little. [narrative construction and confirmation bias] Well, eventually you start smuggling treats out of that room to keep under your bed and eat in the middle of the night while your original food provider is asleep. [secrecy] You rationalize about why you deserve or need them. After all, if your original feeder doesn't find out about it, he can't be hurt by it. [jusifications] Then one day you visit that room and you just have a full on binge [full disregard of boundaries], downing plate after plate of that junk food that you know isn't real food, and you know you're gonna be sick afterwards [guilt], but you can't stop because it tastes so good in the moment... [limerence]

My affair felt like that to me, where I was dependent on my BH to make me feel all the things I desperately wanted to feel. And you might be thinking, "Uh, Morbs? Isn't it kind of red flag to be entirely dependentt on someone else to procure something as important as food for you?" Yes, it absolutely is. "Can't you find real, nutritious food and feed yourself?" I'm just now realizing that's a possibility, and trying to learn how to do that.

[This message edited by GotTheMorbs at 5:56 PM, Monday, June 15th]