SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Maybe my time away from the forum here did me some good. I have had absolutely no one. So... loneliness became more just... a fact of life. Like rainy days. Loneliness has become humdrum. I am accommodating it "better" now.

I read over at "Just Found Out" a new post by ouchythishurts:

...real love is being scared to hurt someone, not just scared to lose someone. And I know he’s scared to lose me, but it doesn’t feel like he’s scared to hurt me.

Not all of what ouchythishurts wrote applies to me, but enough of it did that it got me thinking about those two sentences I just quoted. Something about the 1st sentence feels not quite right to me. Like: there are times when the loving thing to do toward a spouse indeed will cause hurt. Potentially... calling a spouse out on alcoholism or such. But that's ultimately tangential because my W isn't an alcoholic. There's still something in that expression that caught my attention. So... when I ask myself: do I love my W enough to be scared to hurt her--my honest answer is: no. And, yes, that bothers me.

Certain folks here have encouraged me to find what would stop me from ever pursuing infidelity again--under any circumstances. As nearly as I can tell, my final answer is: loving my W sooooooooo much that she could treat me like dirt and I would still want never to hurt her again. But am I "there" yet? Nope.

Now... does she treat me like dirt? Well... maybe not that badly. But mostly, I just hardly see her. We live in the same house. In 24 h, I have seen her for less than 5 minutes. That's not unusual. She got up and got up the kids and got them ready for school. I worked on getting ready for clinic, showered, and went off to clinic. On my way out the door, I called "Have a good day! I love you!" out to her as I bustled out the door to my car on my way to work from across the house. I got home to an effectively empty house at 6 PM. I took care of the family dog. I reheated some dinner that my W had cooked. I skimmed the site as I ate. Then I chatted with ChatGPT again. It asked me if fear that loving my W enough might make me less inclined to reconnect with my OW was holding me back from loving my W to the extent captured in the two lines I've quoted. Interesting question. Um... maybe? I mean... I've constructed this whole rational underpinning according to which all arguments lead to the conclusion that accepting my W's suffering for the sake of my authenticity (read as: recalling my OW to friendship) is morally imperative, albeit an "unpleasantry." But... can marital love properly be so anemic that I just... accept that outcome? Don't I want a M filled with passionate--even mad--love?

I began to think what I will merrily allude to only as "dark thoughts." So... I went to sleep early--before my W & kids got home--rather than ponder... methods.

I woke up with the memory that I had promised my W that, during the current period of NC with my OW, I wouldn't organize my life around my OW or R with her. In fairness to my W and alignment with that sincerely offered commitment, I realized that--my platonic love for my OW notwithstanding--I have to be willing--maybe even... eager--to love my W enough that--logic be damned--I might find it necessary to forego R with my OW to spare my W pain. That was quite a gut punch, I can faithfully report.

So... that begs the questions: if I don't feel that mad passion for my W spontaneously, can I cultivate it--and, if so, how?

Now those are questions to which I don't have answers. It seems a taller lift than I know how to manage to fall in love with a distant memory of the woman I fell in love with back when we had time for each other. Mostly, that's all I have of my W. We live together, yes. But we hardly see each other. My W's schedule is hard, with the kids. My schedule is hard, with the work.

To be clear: I still insist my OW is a wonderful and good woman. A blessing to the world at-large. I still treasure the time God afforded me with her. I can still carry forward from that time the happy memories and value of having been made--through contact with my OW--to feel lovable again. My OW will always have my gratitude and respect and even--I hope--my platonic love. She is irreplaceable. I still hope that God somehow finds a way to reunite the two of us--as friends. But maybe I have to accept that hope as existing like the hope of someone buying a lottery ticket? A wish... but not a likelihood and not an outcome that my own determination and/or effort can materialize? It's increasingly the case that I don't see how I can resurrect that friendship--invaluable as it was to me. If my W wasn't so adamantly opposed to my OW and me reconciling, maybe. If my OW was willing to friend me "on the down low," maybe. But their positions are increasingly looking irreconcilable and I'm only already married to one of the two women. It hurts, though, to be so disempowered by others "vetoing" what I just know could be a beautiful--and even healthy--friendship for me (surely, one of the dearest of my lifetime). (Side note: I initially wrote there that my W was vetoing the friendship, but my OW's insistence on friendship being on top of the table means that she, too, has contributed to the "veto" I'm facing, although more passively.) Y'all have been right that I have had to trust in God to look after my OW during at least this period of NC--so why not indefinitely? I owe it to my W to place on the line the possibility that I might some day love my W so much that the thought of harming my W by bringing my OW back into my life might even some day seem abhorrent if it would still hurt my W. I emphasize: I'm not "there" currently.

Can I get "there"? If so... how--when I hardly see my W?

[This message edited by Unconventional at 12:22 PM, Wednesday, November 11th]

Potentially... calling a spouse out on alcoholism or such. But that's ultimately tangential because my W isn't an alcoholic. There's still something in that expression that caught my attention. So... when I ask myself: do I love my W enough to be scared to hurt her--my honest answer is: no. And, yes, that bothers me.

There is a difference between temporary "hurts" that are intended to help someone in the long run, and something that only hurts them. Infidelity belongs in the latter category (and any roundabout, long term positive outcome that you might try to associate with the infidelity can be gotten without it. See the health-improving-after-cancer analogy)

As nearly as I can tell, my final answer is: loving my W sooooooooo much that she could treat me like dirt and I would still want never to hurt her again.

It needs to be something inside you, not something external. Marriages are not sunshines and rainbows all the time. There will be times you and your spouse are distant, unhappy, fighting, stressed, struggling, unwell, etc. (this is why the traditional marital vows go "for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health...") You have to make it so that you are unwilling to cheat even if conditions are poor. Because it hurts your spouse, yes, but also because it's a debasement and betrayal of one's self... Most recovering WS work on their self-esteem self-love, and self-worth, their trauma, their habits, their attachment patterns, the structure of their lives, etc... Safe partners make their minds solid and their lives fulfilling, so that they get their needs met in healthy, faithful ways. They are pleased to take infidelity off the table.

I've constructed this whole rational underpinning according to which all arguments lead to the conclusion that accepting my W's suffering for the sake of my authenticity might be imperative morally, albeit an "unpleasantry." But... can marital love properly be so anemic that I just... accept that outcome? Don't I want a M filled with passionate--even mad--love?

I think that you're conflating two different things again. Ideally, you are not meant to suffer with unmet needs or an unfulfilling marriage because you just love your spouse enough to suffer. You're meant address the unmet needs above board in the marriage, find moral ways to meet them yourself or through other people, or, if things don't improve despite your best efforts for as long as you can stand it, exit the marriage. Similarly, your wife is not meant to suffer with the pain, fear, anger, and suffering of experiencing infidelity and having an unsafe, untrustworthy partner... Love means that sometimes you put your partner first, and that you are not selfish, but you should not end up constantly miserable or psychologically unwell because of the relationship.

You're stuck in a tough spot because your marital conditions were poor prior to your unhealthy attachment to OW, and that relationship with OW has only further damaged your relationship with your wife. Now it will take quite a long time to rebuild that trust and to repair the relationship back to ground zero, let alone to improve it substantially. To untangle this knot, you may need to be a bit lonely for a while longer while you fix yourself, so that you don't develop unhealthy attachments anymore, and while the trust rebuilds within your marriage. Right now you have this community, AI, and your therapist for emotional support. Once you are solid, you can work on developing safe friendships to help meet your social and emotional needs to an extent, and the marriage can begin to improve so that it fulfills your romantic and sexual needs.

Do you still love your wife for who she is, as a person, independently of what she provides for you?

As nearly as I can tell, my final answer is: loving my W sooooooooo much that she could treat me like dirt and I would still want never to hurt her again.

It needs to be something inside you, not something external.

Love for someone else is within me.

Ideally, you are not meant to suffer with unmet needs or an unfulfilling marriage because you just love your spouse enough to suffer. You're meant address the unmet needs above board in the marriage, find moral ways to meet them yourself or through other people, or, if things don't improve despite your best efforts for as long as you can stand it, exit the marriage. Similarly, your wife is not meant to suffer with the pain, fear, anger, and suffering of experiencing infidelity and having an unsafe, untrustworthy partner... Love means that sometimes you put your partner first, and that you are not selfish, but you should not end up constantly miserable or psychologically unwell because of the relationship.

You're still analyzing my marriage from a fundamentally non-Catholic perspective. In fact, it's technically not even a Protestant perspective. Believe what you want to believe for yourself, but even if one focuses (as many Protestants do) on the exceptions to the indissolubility of M introduced by Matthew 19:9 and 1 Corinthians 7:15--sexual immorality/adultery and abandonment/desertion by an unbelieving spouse--marital dissatisfaction is not a Biblically sanctified reason for divorce (see Matthew 19:3-10, Mark 10:2-12, Luke 16:18, and 1 Corinthians 7:10-15). It's perfectly valid to respond that marital dissatisfaction is also not grounds for infidelity, either. I am, after all, a sinner, not a saint--which, critically, is not an identification I raise to defend or rationalize my waywardness, but to acknowledge my own shame. But my own infidelity didn't happen as a single bold choice, despite your past efforts to pinpoint a moment when I became unfaithful. It happened by 1000 choices--each of them small and many of them individually quite defensible. As I often am prone to doing, I got caught up in the trees and failed to recognize the forest. Quitting the marriage, though... that'd conceptually require me overtly to swear allegiance to infidelity.

You're stuck in a tough spot because your marital conditions were poor prior to your unhealthy attachment to OW, and that relationship with OW has only further damaged your relationship with your wife. Now it will take quite a long time to rebuild that trust and to repair the relationship back to ground zero, let alone to improve it substantially.

I brought to my last MC session a list of topics I wanted to cover: An invitation to my W to unload cathartically on me over how I harmed her, a plea to increase our together time, a request that we define together the kind of M we are working to R, an ask that we consciously show more appreciation and love for one another, and a demand that we pursue sexual healing within our M. In actuality, although I presented the list in-session, we actually addressed none of those topics. My W responded that we keep things light between us until whenever she feels ready to deepen the relationship again--and who can say when that might be? So... the biggest "hurts" I am carrying have no outlet through her. Out MC seemed to find my W's stance very acceptable, which quite left me hanging--still out in the cold.

To untangle this knot, you may need to be a bit lonely for a while longer while you fix yourself, so that you don't develop unhealthy attachments anymore, and while the trust rebuilds within your marriage... Right now you have this community, AI, and your therapist for emotional support.

I haven't got "this community." "This community" has been quite clarifying toward that, of late. There is no room for friendships here. There is no possibility of camaraderie here. I am too prone to overvaluing relationships. I can't and won't allow myself to get excited for replies here anymore. They come or they don't. This forum is just a place for me to blog about how pathetic I am. Whether or not my posts even get read is... incidental.

I find my thoughts just stew and become pressurized with AI. In some ways, processing through AI is worse than not processing at all. My thoughts just agitate and boomerang back to me without relief. And then I become obsessive over them. I can pass many unavailable hours with an AI LLM just "shooting the shit." At the end of the conversation, neither the AI nor I are better as people from having had the exchange. I don't change the AI LLM. I am... erasable. Real friends are not erasable to one another.

My IC is available by appointment only. What I have there can fix side issues. Like some of my quirks. Maybe some of my long-term issues. But not day-to-day concerns.

"A bit lonely" isn't my experience. But... I am more accepting about that now... more settled the more distant I get from my OW and after time away from this forum--the more "human connection" feels proper only for others. I have to get better at just bottling or ignoring my feelings.

Do you still love your wife for who she is, as a person, independently of what she provides for you?

Anyone who "loves" someone else for what that person provides for them isn't experiencing "love" as I understand that word. That's a business relationship. A transactional relationship.

Do I still have some positive feelings for my wife? Yes. Not spontaneously "eros" (ἔρως)--although I want very much to rekindle that. Right now, what I feel toward my W is probably better described as "affection." Coincidentally, I wrote a short self-assigned declaration of "love" for my W that I was going to share in the MC session I referenced previously in this post. Since I didn't get to share it there, I may as well share it here:

****, I love your eyes, your fire, your humor, and your determination. I love your protective impulse, especially how fiercely you look after our daughters. I love your intelligence and competence, and how you keep our complicated family life organized. I love watching you light up when you talk about your favorite shows or the Christmas craft show you love to visit. I love your fascination with mysteries and your sentimental side. I still smile to think about "Television for ***" (my first name in real life begins with a "T")--the way you saw and appreciated my sappy side. And I cherish the times you trusted me with your worries and fears and let me close to you in that way. I miss that closeness. Those are things I love about you, not merely things you do for me. I want us to delight in each other again.

[This message edited by Unconventional at 3:01 PM, Wednesday, November 11th]

Love for someone else is within me.

That's a feeling about someone else, and it's not entirely within your control. The amount, quality, or intensity of love you feel for your partner can change and fluctuate; it's not a wise thing to which to anchor your fidelity. You should be aiming for unwillingness to be unfaithful even if your wife was the worst spouse in the world and you felt zero love for her... because YOU feel that infidelity is inherently wrong, and you don't choose it for yourself.

Whether you're unsatisfied enough to divorce is entirely up to you. I don't think the contingency planned "marriage" you proposed on your last post-- where you declare it over and start seeing other people without actually divorcing-- fits into the Catholic definition of marriage either. And you yourself have questioned whether the marriage is even valid if you don't share "communion of the body and soul" through sex... So I feel it would be intellectually dishonest to speak as if divorce were not an option. (Please don't bring up the tribunal nonsense again, either.) I am suspicious of "I can't divorce because I am Catholic" is a convenient way to avoid acknowledging the possibility of divorce because it scares you. (Correct me if I'm wrong.)

But my own infidelity didn't happen as a single bold choice, despite your past efforts to pinpoint a moment when I became unfaithful. It happened by 1000 choices--each of them small and many of them individually quite defensible. As I often am prone to doing, I got caught up in the trees and failed to recognize the forest.

It is one thing to acknowledge and define the line that you ought not cross. It's another to keep a safe and respectful distance away from said line so that you're not tempted to cross it, nor cross it without realizing... I find it's difficult to defend behavior that draws one closer to the line unnecessarily.

My W responded that we keep things light between us until whenever she feels ready to deepen the relationship again--and who can say when that might be?

Right, that's a perfectly reasonable response after somebody damages your trust. It's hard to want to get close to them because you fear them hurting you again. This is a consequence of what happened between you and OW. You need to give her time and space, and allow the trust to rebuild before she'll be comfortable working on the marriage. In the meantime, you can tell her about the ways you're working on yourself (beyond remaining NC with OW), and continue trying to understand her feelings, if she'll allow you.

I haven't got "this community." "This community" has been quite clarifying toward that, of late. There is no room for friendships here. There is no possibility of camaraderie here. I am too prone to overvaluing relationships. I can't and won't allow myself to get excited for replies here anymore. They come or they don't. This forum is just a place for me to blog about how pathetic I am. Whether or not my posts even get read is... incidental.

We are here for support and to help you sort out your feelings as you recover. To help you figure out what you need to be happier and healthier. We may not agree with you all the time, but you're not alone in your situation, and I think that can be comforting. This is also, I think, a particularly safe place to speak with people because it is very anti-infidelity and site members are exceptionally mindful of it.

I find my thoughts just stew under pressure with AI. In some ways, processing through AI is worse than not processing at all. My thoughts just agitate and boomerang back to me without relief. And then I become obsessive over them. I can pass many unavailable hours with an AI LLM just "shooting the shit." At the end of the conversation, neither the AI nor I am a better person from having had the exchange

With AI, I think it's important to tell it what you want to happen. You can explain your feelings and it will affirm them because it's programmed to be pleasing to users. But if you tell it you don't want to feel this way, it will try to help you feel differently. If you tell it you're looking to change your perspective, it will attempt to help you with that. If you tell it to point out inconsistencies in logic or provide counterarguments, it will definitely do that. If you tell it you want to explore your own identity, and find out what's good about you, it may ask helpful questions. It just needs some direction. It's like a codependent, people-pleasing friend that's doing its best to make you happy, except it doesn't suffer from the pathology.

You can share your declaration with your W any time you want. Email it to her, if you have to. Even if she is not affectionate in return, it's still good to be able to express it.

Something I also learned recently is that "rejection sensitivity" is a thing that is common for people with ADHD. It has been helpful to stop and think about whether other's behavior is actually a rejection of me, or if I just feel rejected "unreasonably."

I noticed you reported that your wife said to the MC "Let's keep things light for now." I think the fact that she's there in MC at all and that she specified "for now" is encouraging. It says to me that she wants to come back together again eventually, even if she doesn't feel able or ready to presently. In other words, it's not a permanent distance or rejection.

I am suspicious of "I can't divorce because I am Catholic" is a convenient way to avoid acknowledging the possibility of divorce because it scares you. (Correct me if I'm wrong.)

Yes, divorce at 50+ years old would be scary.

You're right that what I proposed maybe a few posts ago--where I might declare a M over and start seeing other women without actually divorcing--would still technically constitute infidelity as Catholics understand it. However, if I do so on grounds of not merely marital dissatisfaction, but gross spousal abandonment, then I might still be admitted back into sacramental participation in the Church, according to Amoris Laetitia (2016) and its confirmation (in 2023) by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. Whether I would qualify under that provision is unclear. I might. I might also qualify for an annulment--for a different reason. However, it's interesting to me that such grounds are not overtly Biblically founded, and that matters to me, too.

[This message edited by Unconventional at 9:14 PM, Wednesday, November 11th]

I guess maybe I, as someone with a less rigid relationship with religion, am having trouble understanding why you wouldn't evaluate the Catholic beliefs as no longer holding up as realistic to real life or feasible in practice and convert to a different Christian denomination, if it came to that. What does Catholicism offer you that another denom could not? Is it a matter of identity, or that which you believe is True and Right...? If it's the latter, how does that reconcile with trying to find exceptions for your situation?

(Asking as a matter of personal curiosity rather than as a means of advisory/leading questioning)

Do you not have interests that you feel good about?

A web forum on infidelity helps solve problems. It's not generally fun. It doesn't feed one's heart. There are, however, numerous fora for widely varied interests. The dialog is sometimes - often - pretty unsatisfactory, but I've found ones that are well-moderated (necessary for keeping the conversations in good order), informative, and fun. AI bots are all over, but real people do post.

If nothing else, I'd bet a lot their are online groups discussing Catholicism....

Annulments are uphill — even in the modern Church.

My mother was granted one, but it was ten years after the divorce, and it took additional testimony from her ex before it was accepted.

And I still think most unmet needs are due to lack of connection, or healthy connection.

I never cheated with a pile of unmet needs, it doesn’t make me better, it just means I didn’t think the damage of an A would HELP make our connection stronger.

My wife’s A did offer a full reset, and in the restart we each gave more and connected more and all the lists of unmet expectations vanished. A lot of hard work involved with a reset, but we each let go of the "what do I get out of this M?" And changed it to "what can I bring of myself to this M?"

My wife was certain nothing should could ever do would balance the injustice of her infidelity, but she kept trying anyway. That was the start of our R.

It really took several years to build back ‘real love’.

I had to see and focus on the good in her and she had to really believe that my heart could open again.

A long-healed R doesn’t always make sense in the early days (months, years sometimes) of pain, but for me, it started with ditching expectations.

It doesn’t mean ditching boundaries, or being safe, I mean, not putting the responsibility of my healing on my wife.

It is the healing of the connections, the M, that’s the team sport.

Already there is much more that I would like to respond to than I can respond to today.

Morbs’s latest question is perhaps the easiest one for me to address, so I will tackle that as I drive home from a meeting.

I think there’s really two layers to my response. The most basic is that I do not identify with a specific religion because it serves me. That’d would be like picking someone I love based upon what they do for me. I am Catholic by choice—despite many many failings over the centuries by the Institution of the Church—because Roman Catholicism is the mother church of all Christianity. All other Christian churches are branches that formed from schisms instigated by criticisms of the mother Church. Even when those criticisms had some validity (e.g. the sale of indulgences), some stuck with the mother Church. Some worked within the system to better the system. Indulgences are no longer sold. Some chose to leave the system entirely. I’m sticky; I’m loyal. I try to work within systems to better them. It’s who I am—not what the system can or does do for me. In a way, that’s what made my infidelity perhaps the most uncharacteristic action of my life. But my core attributes are also why I have found my OW so hard to release—having formed with her the bond that we had.

Second, from a very practical perspective, Catholicism is old enough to have an answer—indeed, often multiple answers—to almost any question. That means there’s a rich body of theology on which Catholics can draw for guidance in times of confusion. Wanting guidance on the proper limits of friendship, for instance, I can read the works of St. Aelred of Rievalux, St. Augustine of Hippo, St. Thomas Aquinas, and others for their guidance—secure in the knowledge that none would be biased against or for my own self interest. I’ve always believed in choosing one’s ethics, and then applying them to situations rather than letting situations dictate my ethics. Catholics are sometimes accused of theological laziness because we don’t always have to "discern" what the right path is for us in isolation, but I actually find others’ thoughts to be a treasure to inhabit.

Catholicism’s rigidity can make for difficult situations. For instance, my W has Celiac disease. She cannot consume any wheat gluten without risk of cramping, bloating, gas, and diarrhea in the short term and cancer in the long term. But the Church says the Eucharist *must* be made from gluten-containing bread. It would be a whole lot easier for her and her family to switch to a church willing to bless gluten-free bread—but then we wouldn’t be keeping faith with God as we understand Him; we’d be choosing to fashion our own God. The easy path. Not the right one. (BTW, I’m not forcing my W to stay Catholic; she’s chosen to remain Catholic of her own accord.)

If you were Catholic, you’d be obligated to forego certain privileges that you presently enjoy. But if you believed—as I do—in the God of the mother Church, then you’d view certain of what you presently see as freedoms as adultery. It’d of course be possible for you to turn your back on Catholicism and go become a whatever-you-call-yourself-now. (I don’t mean to belittle your current religion; I just don’t know what to call it.) But if you did so despite believing in Catholicism, then you’d be picking a religion based upon what feels good/easy instead of what you know to be right. The New Testament is full of tales of people who heard Jesus’s message, found His demands to be intolerably harsh, and turned their backs on Him and His word in favor of more accommodating faiths. But those people can’t rightly call themselves Christians in the narrowest sense.

I tell you all this because you asked. Not because it is my place or purpose to change your faith.

I’m not trying to find exceptions for my specific situation. On the contrary, I’m trying to find what’s authentically true and apply it to my situation!

I’ve actually gone to considerable lengths to avoid seeking a loophole.

You can always find fault with my conclusions, but if you were in my head from day one as I came to discover that—indeed—I actually was embroiled in infidelity, you’d know that I began as close to first principles as I could and worked out from there to determine what was right in my situation.

I wouldn’t have clung to the pain and anguish of losing my OW for so long if I wasn’t trying to do the right thing. Against my wishes, I've lost touch with a lot of that over the last month, to my dismay. I'm genuinely afraid the loss--if it proves unrecoverable--may legitimately cost me any chance I ever had to seek my OW's return to my life.

If your comment about my looking for exceptions was targeted at my objection to common MC advice that R demands the total and permanent renunciation and forsaking of an AP, the impulse motivating that fight against convention has been my core loyalty (to my OW and to myself) plus maybe a little touch of "Pathological Demand Avoidance" (sometime alternatively called "Persistent Drive for Autonomy"). (I don't see a lot of myself in descriptions of "Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria.") I don't really know where I stand on that issue anymore. I know I still love my OW platonically--if it's even a valid use of terms to say that I "love" her when she declared our relationship over. I know I would give up almost anything to have her back in my life as a friend. I don't know anymore if that list includes my M's health.

[This message edited by Unconventional at 7:42 PM, Wednesday, November 11th]

You cannot find love if you are constantly running from it.

Thanks for answering. I will probably need to read it again and digest a little bit further later.

Not to steer your thread too off topic or make it about me, but I feel like my relationship with God is a little more "personal" than institionalized. Like, the theological literature that's available is awesome guidance, but I also know that it's man's interpretation, and that can hardly be relied on to be perfect, you know? And what makes anyone else's interpretation of God's will any better than mine? So I just kind of feel it out with the Big Man Upstairs while remaining open to the written Word and human interpretation. (For example, I don't feel that a creator would give so many people a desire for multiple partners if we were only meant to have one in a lifetime. I believe that He wants us to avoid harming His children, and if those others need monogamy to be well, then we owe it to those we enter into a relationship with. But if we can be non-monogamous without hurting others... I just don't hear His voice in my ear warning me against ENM when I engage in it, the way I do with certain other undertakings.) I just loosely describe myself as Christian.

It's always good to understand why we believe what we believe.

I really must redirect my focus to paid work, but quickly...

Oldwounds --

My wife’s A did offer a full reset, and in the restart we each gave more and connected more and all the lists of unmet expectations vanished. A lot of hard work involved with a reset, but we each let go of the "what do I get out of this M?" And changed it to "what can I bring of myself to this M?"

Genuinely: I respect that soooooo much and hope our R goes as well as perhaps yours did. But let me ask you: was there a stage when your W or you insisted on "keeping things light between us"--and, if so, how did the other spouse bear that? Because.... I feel like my W is resetting us to... like... first few dates territory in terms of the conversations. She doesn't want to hear from me about my vulnerabilities and she doesn't want to share hers with me. But: I don't have limerence for her any more to lift me through all that "light conversation" crap until we can get to the deeper issues--and we've got kids with extracurriculars and a mortgage together!

LittleMonk --

I appreciate you posting, but I must be awful dense or something because I didn't at all register any message from your "fortune cookie terse" advice. But I will add: if I truly was constantly running from love, I'd probably lose my Dad-bod from the calorie burn. So... it might not necessarily be all bad!

GotTheMorbs --

I feel like my relationship with God is a little more "personal" than institionalized [sic]. Like, the theological literature that's available is awesome guidance, but I also know that it's man's interpretation, and that can hardly be relied on to be perfect, you know? And what makes anyone else's interpretation of God's will any better than mine?

My relationship with God is also personal. Mine is just also supported by an Institution. A very human--hence, very imperfect--Institution, but one that I believe God actively influences.

I encourage you to consider taking a course on historical Christianity. I took such a course in college: The Quest for the Historical Jesus. The class--which was taught from a scholarly perspective rather than a religious one--was fascinating. I remember learning for the first time a little about how the Bible got assembled. We also read from a text that laid out the Synoptics Gospels according to parallel content. All of us have played the game "telephone" at one point or another in our lives--the game where people in a line whisper a message from one person to the next and then the last to receive the message publicly compares the message he or she recalls receiving against the original text as read by the first in the chain. We all know that message drift can happen. So... what did Jesus actually teach--when the story of his life and messages weren't actually set into writing--at least not that we know of today--until decades (or longer) after Jesus's death? Ultimately, it takes a small leap of faith even to believe that there was a "Jesus"--let alone what He actually taught. But it does seem most plausible that He existed--and that at least some of what He taught survives today in the modern Bible. Scholars today find it most plausible that Jesus actually taught what multiple reasonably-independent lines of provenance claim He taught. Interestingly, scholars generally agree that all four passages I cited above deliver a consistent core message about marriage: Jesus taught the permanence of marriage and viewed divorce leading to remarriage as adultery, with Matthew alone preserving a limited exception clause.

Granted, merely the accessibility of the writings of saints is not a guarantee of the saints' religious beliefs being "more accurate" than your own or my own--although the miracles achieved through the intercession of the saints suggests that they have earned God's ear and are probably... well... at least more often more right than me. The saints were people who often devoted much of their lives to communion with God. While it may seem here that my only interests are philosophy/theology/Catholicism and my OW, my actual range of interests is much broader than that--although admittedly probably considerably narrower than most neurotypical minds' interests. (For instance, I couldn't care less about small talk or sports and I know very little about music, media, or celebrities these days, but I read about topics in my medical field with gusto.) I also have to be a little careful here because politics and public policies are among my interests--but those topics are strictly verboten at this forum. (In fact, in general, my politics are prone to be contentious anywhere I might correspond over them--because my opinions don't all neatly belong to either "camp" of U.S. politics. Like... I didn't decide my position on global warming or abortion or gun control or the death penalty or tax policy or healthcare reform or international trade or immigration policy by picking a political identity or presidential candidate and then adopting wholesale the platform of that party. It may surprise you that my Catholic identity has also played scant role in my political opinions. Moreover, I'm just as inclined to tangle with those who agree with my position, but for entirely the wrong reasons, as I am to argue with those whose conclusions diverge from my own. Which basically means I'm exactly the sort of person that this country needs running the show here--and also precisely one sort of person who will never win any elected office. Well... not since high school, anyhow. I was elected to my local school board back then.

Anyhow, the Catholic Church doesn't teach that the writings of the saints are infallible. But... their recorded thoughts are often a healthy starting point. Because--just being fair--I want my OW in my life & I want to be an open book to her, I am not an unbiased participant in reasoning over the morality of those wants. But the saints I named before "have no dog in my fights" (a horrible expression; I apologize for its use). Nor are they anti-friendship. Indeed, they taught that Catholic M is compatible with very close extramarital friendships--even between people of opposite genders. But, there are limits. Saints Aelred, Augustine, and Aquinas agreed that extramarital friendships between men and women must remain strictly chaste, subordinate to the primary loyalty of marriage, and guarded by practical boundaries against romantic temptation--and I crossed at least one of those and won't again.

I'm tempted also to reply to your ENM comment, but reluctant to do so without your direct consent. After all, it could be that you're not interested in reconsidering your view.

[This message edited by Unconventional at 2:48 AM, Thursday, November 12th]

But let me ask you: was there a stage when your W or you insisted on "keeping things light between us"--and, if so, how did the other spouse bear that?

When someone is on the betrayed side of things — there are definitely times I needed space, or to slow things down over the first YEAR or TWO.

Trust takes time to reset.

It took a massive amount of patience from my wife.

Her giving me the room I needed helped us.

Those notes aside, I have always done the emotional heavy lifting for our M. My wife’s family (to this day) never goes deeper than today’s weather — they never talked about anything, much less vulnerabilities. That inability to communicate her feelings was a factor in her spiral towards her A.

Eventually, our reset did have some days that were me trying to help her understand I needed more on the communication side of things.

She’ll never be great at it, but she tries so much harder than ever, and effort counts (for me).

I can’t know how your house runs from here, but it becomes about what you really want.

If you both still want the M, the reaching out toward each other (even little baby steps at a time) can restart that connection.

Your reply is interesting to me because I do the "emotional heavy lifting" for our M and my W's distancing and closing off was a major factor in my infidelity. I was starving for an emotional connection. I still am, unfortunately.

Your reply is illuminating to me because it gives me maybe a more realistic timeframe on which I might be able to hope for healing. I just don't know if I can hang on for that long.

Whether you stay and continue trying is entirely up to you. But if you do stay and keep working at it, you really gotta lock in, y'know? Because you can't half-ass reconciliation, as hard and lengthy as it is. And no matter what happens within your marriage, it would still benefit you to work on yourself.

Anything worth doing is worth doing right, Morbs. There won't be any namby-pambyism from me. But it is hard to roll ahead full steam when time is so tight for us. Motivation is not the limitation. The limitation's practical: a need for simultaneous presence of two people who hardly see each other!

Show me the man who has no need to work on himself and I'll show you a corpse. I am in IC. I'm working on myself. TBH, though, I'm beginning to think the actual specific project you've assigned me is a fool's errand.

I mean: if you asked me if I would kill someone, my instinctive reaction would be "Absolutely not!" But if you asked me if I would kill someone to prevent grave and otherwise certain harm to my wife or kids... boy, I'm at least a whole lot less confident I could genuinely earnestly answer that question in the same way.

One of the Commandments demands that we all keep the Sabbath day Holy. That's usually understood to mean a day of rest and service to God. As a general practice, I endorse that course! However, religious and healthcare workers routinely do work on our Sabbath days. In fact--Jesus did, too!

As plenty of posts at SurvivingInfidelity.com have attested, infidelity can happen to any M. So, the notion that I

should be aiming for unwillingness to be unfaithful even if your [my] wife was the worst spouse in the world and you [I] felt zero love for her... because YOU [I] feel that infidelity is inherently wrong, and you [I] don't choose it for yourself [myself]

is--with all due respect--actually beginning to feel like a hunt for a "left-handed smoke shifter" (a fictitious item). And I am a gullible AuDHD Eagle Scout. I have been sent on quite enough snipe hunts in my lifetime already.

The only remaining escape hatch I can fathom is the notion of civil divorce with annulment rather than infidelity, but a declaration of nullification isn't proactively guaranteed for anyone. One doesn't merely complete and sign a form and await its prompt rubber stamping! Could I commit prospectively to trying for that approach in preference to future infidelity? Hmmm.... maybe. Honestly, I probably ought actually to consult with a Canon lawyer over the chance my M could--if it were actually prosecuted--qualify me for an annulment. Because: if the Canon lawyer says my M wouldn't qualify for nullification, then even a completed act of civil divorce would never preclude any further sex for me (unless with my by-then-legally-ex-W) from constituting an affair. So then, strict compliance with the terms of your injunction to me would oblige me to suffer for the rest of my life within my M or to suffer monk-like celibacy for the rest of my life as I live completely apart from my W (while still supporting her financially). And... I'm sorry, but both of those two options look awfully intolerably bleak to me. I mean... in all fairness... put yourself in my shoes? Would you honestly disagree with my reticence toward a henceforth utterly sexless lifetime?

Ah! But what of the Amoris laetitia pathway that I mentioned, you might ask? Yes, that path exists. I haven't forgotten it. But, for a Catholic, that path wouldn't render sex beyond a first M non-adulterous--while you've stated that the standard upon which you insist is "no infidelity." Change your standard... change my response. No "changey"... no "changey."

[This message edited by Unconventional at 4:29 AM, Friday, November 13th]

I mean: if you asked me if I would kill someone, my instinctive reaction would be "Absolutely not!" But if you asked me if I would kill someone to prevent grave and otherwise certain harm to my wife or kids... boy, I'm at least a whole lot less confident I could genuinely earnestly answer that question in the same way.

You're still comparing infidelity -- which is always, inherently bad, and with which any gain you associate with it can be gotten without infidelity-- with morally justifiable behavior which produces good (or, in this case, prevents bad via the protection of your family.) There is no good that comes from infidelity. There is no bad prevented.

Infidelity can happen in any marriage, and part of that is because people don't understand what causes it. They also tend to categorize themselves as people who are capable, or people who are not, when it so often turns out that people who thought themselves incapable of cheating end up doing so. The belief that one is incapable, I think, is a vulnerability in and of itself. I think that with the right combination of internal and external conditions (some of which I have started calling "sleeper issues" because people are often not aware of them until after they've cheated) anyone could cheat if their personal "perfect storm" combination came along... Fortunately, we were gifted with free will and control of our physical bodies, so ultimately whether one does or doesn't commit infidelity comes down to willingness to do so.

You control your body. You control how your life and time are structured. You have limited control over your marital conditions (approximately 50% control over it, as it takes two participants to make it healthy and fulfilling). You have control of how you respond to those conditions. You have control of whether you're willing to respond with infidelity or not, though it can take some work to get to unwillingness.

But if you choose to remain willing... Your marriage will never be as safe as it could be. And your W will likely sense that and remain distant from you, because she does not want to be hurt again.

You also have a tendency to catastrophize your way into terrible false binaries of alternatives so that you can better justify the choices you prefer.