I find that to this day, I am embarrassed that my WS had an affair. While I understand that, as a BS, I was not given a choice, but still I often feel that I was somehow inadequate and am now somewhat deminished as a person.

I have told only very few friends about my situation and my only reason for doing even that was because their own S's were engaging in A's and I wanted to share with them my experience and tell them about MB.

I know that my FWH is ashamed because he hurt me. I also know that he is also embarrassed because I have met OW and know how desparate he must have been given how unattractive and needy she is.

I have always prided myself on being a strong, level headed woman and I find that my inability to deal with being a victim of infidelity in a more detached manner somehow reflects negatively on me personally.

This feeling prevails and is continuing to eat away at what little self esteem I still have.

Are there any other BS's here who feel that kind of shame for someones elses actions? It dosn't make sense, but I still feel it.

Hi,

I didn't really feel any type of shame over my wife's affair other than that of feeling like a cuckold. Feeling like I wasn't man enough etc etc. To this day I'm not ashamed of my wife's actions. I'm not ashamed that I am still with her. I'm actually proud of her.

It wasn't until I ended up having a ONS that I felt the real shame. I could never understand how a WS pain could exceed the pain of a BS until I put myself in that situation. That is the real pain, putting yourself in it, creating it, not getting put in it by your spouse. I wish I could have been a better person and just stayed the BS.

I should have listened to what people told me. I listen a lot more now and am very humble.

I don't really care what other people think of me. I spent too much time in the past worrying about that and that is one reason I had to search for a website like this.

The A wasn't about you. Would it have mattered if she was a centerfold?

I don't feel shame, and I certainly don't want my FWH to feel shame either.

Shame is a really big word.

Who are you afraid of appearing shamed to?

I've never felt shame, or embarrassed, or humiliated. I felt sad. I felt that H and I let our M down.

All that was important when we started recovery was our M. Building a stronger one, a better one, a happier one.

If you really really read, and understand how A's start, you realize that the ingredients exposing your M to an A, existed prior to the actual A.

I see my FWH A, as a symptom. And I treat it as such. It's not the diagnosis of my M, it's not what defines who we are. It was a symptom of a marriage taken for granted. Two people who just stopped trying.

So no....shame is not an issue for me.

WM

The shame of the cuckold - the man who couldn't prevent his wife having sex with other men.

Yes its a real one. Strange though, EVERYONE who knows me and who knows our sitch think I am a HERO and not in any way shameful.

There is nobility in wearing a negative brand with dignity WM.

Yes I am a cuckold - but one who used all moral tools in courage to smash the affair and rebuild several lives.

That overwhelms any shame IME. I'm Proud.

I know how you feel but I implore you to find ways to reexamine what you have been through. As another BS, I read your post that you are still taking responsibility for part of the A. Your WH owns the A and is responsible for his actions. He should have shame over those actions, you should not. You both are responsible for the events that created the environment in the M prior to the A but your WH choices and only his are responsible for the A.

I believe that all BS struggle with some issues that I lump into insecurity issues. Among them embarrassment, resentment, anger, etc. The way that you get past these issues is to find ways to take back control of your relationship and to come to the point where you can take responsibility for only what you had control over, not the things that you did not have control over i.e. your WH poor choice to seek fulfillment of his EN's outside of the marriage.

I have included an excerpt from one of my other posts that talks a little about how that I was able to move past some of these issues. I am over everything, not even a chance. But I do have some renewed self esteem if for no other reason than I know I made some good choices in how that I handled the issues.


Keep your head up. Concentrate on fixing the things that you can fix about yourself. Your self esteem and dignity will come back on it's own. You will be proud of the person you are instead of focusing on the person you were. If your WH does the same things, your marriage is not only salvagable but could be much better than it was Pre-A and he can regain his dignity and your respect. Anything short of that is on his shoulders, not yours.

Good luck.

I understand how you feel. I have been told that I am very attractive and look like I'm in my late 20's. I wish OW had been younger and prettier, but instead she is fat, bleached blond, and looks old (smoker). The thought often crosses my mind that I must be a really horrible person for WH to pick that over me. I think part of it was that he didn't think he deserved any better. I'm ashamed that my actions helped destroy his self esteem. My WH tells me I am so strong, but I know it is just a facade. It's evident when the facade comes down and I break out in hysterics. I feel like a horrible wife, mother, and person.

I deserve better. I don't mean that as some justification to leave or treat WH wrong. He deserves better. I have to believe that I deserve better so that I can know that my marriage is worth working on and accept better from my WH. You deserve better too. Believe in yourself and your marriage.

It is my xh loss.

The only shame is that of a WS. Or an OP.

I REFUSE TO FEEL SHAME FOR ANYTHING I HAVE DONE!

I stood up for my marriage....I was not anybody's warden or policeman...nobody is.

You can't prevent anybody from doing anything they do not want to do.

There is shame in being a WS.

I don't mind it when people say "why on earth did he leave her? He must be insane"..I love it in fact. It justifies to me that my xh is wacked out...

It is all how you look at things.

You choose to either be the hero, victim, or villain. I chose hero. Spin it your way.

But your WW had a choice. She could have said NO. It was nobody's fault but your WW.

I feel no shame anymore. Before I would feel just like you do, but then I realized that the OW could never even begin to compete with me, she is 10 years older than me, has a terrible education (doesn't even know which countries border the US, go figure!), or being able to find a respectable well paying job.

She is nearly 40, single, and with no prospects at all.

I realized it wasnt a choice of who was better, had more class, more education. It was a choice of who was easier, and slimier. Fortunately for my FWH he realized very soon that he was downgrading and going for the very bottom of the barrel and finished the A inmediately. It took him way longer to confess and start to treat me correctly, but he says he just feels ashamed of himself.

I have no shame, I never want to win a competition to sink the lowest.

My shame isn't that she chose to have the affair, I wasn't meeting her needs.

My shame is that after I got the message, she continued the affair, sought and was granted a divorce, and none of my education, improvements, listening, etc did a damn thing to build our marriage.

She chose a man who she knew lied to his wife over one who was humble enough to admit he was wrong and seek help.

T

I felt shame at first mostly because of who my WW chose. There were two men that I can pinpoint that I felt consistently intimidated by. One of these men is now fallen from his level of stature in his work as he has been stripped of his job and was on suicide watch in the hospital. He was a control freak who gained huge "success" quickly by walking on people.
The other... someone who was confident and had no trouble consistently putting me down in public. I felt, at the time, that I would look worse if I tried to defend myself... because he was just joking after all and treated all his "friends" like this. My shame was that this is the person that my W chose to have an A with... even though she knew how I felt about him.

I no longer have the same shame... I am not intimidated any more by him... I just feel pity and disgust. My wife admits that she thinks he acts the way he does to cover up his own low self-esteem.

I still feel some shame and humiliation in that my W chose to be with someone else. I hope to eventually get past this. I know that it is WS's choice and shame... but it is hard to not feel it as well... especially when I thought I had been working very hard to give everything I could to my W... it just wasn't what she needed.

Shaden

I read a book several years ago about shame, that may actually have been titled "Shame", that talked about the function of shame. Shame is the emotion that makes us maintain boundaries. We feel ashamed when a boundary is transgressed. Being capable of feeling shame is what makes us respect other people's boundaries. (I once heard someone cite a saying that we'd all like to be guiltless, but few of us would want to be shameless.)

Anyway, when I read that, it finally became clear to me why victims of crimes feel shame. Their boundaries have been violated, and while one can argue logically that it is the predator who should feel ashamed, not the victim, shame isn't logical. Shame exists to make us protect boundaries and it works because shame is such a yucky feeling that we do anything to avoid it, but unfortunately, that often leads to feeling inappropriate shame.

Your boundaries have been violated. The person who was supposed to love and be faithful to you let another person into your marriage. You aren't the one who violated the boundary, and I'm sure in your head you know you didn't so anything to be ashamed of, but what the shamed feeling is telling you is that something very wrong happened. That much is true-something very wrong happened. You aren't the one who made it happen, and if our emotions were fair and logical, you wouldn't be feeling any shame.

I felt embarressed about my husband's EA. I had a hard time talking to the employees where o/w worked and mil lived. I hated not knowing if people were talking about me and feeling sorry for me. I hated being felt sorry for. But if truth be known, his shame must have been a hundred times what I felt. Maybe its good that the b/s can feel shame. It gives them the ability to have empathy for the w/s feelings that they have to endure.

WM, thanks for the thread. It has me thinking about how I feel about this.

My WH works with OW at my S9's school.

So, yes, when I go pick up my son, I feel very uncomfortable and do wonder what the staff thinks about my situation, and I can't wait to get out of the building. It somehow feels like 'hostile territory' to me.

My WH says he is not ashamed of his relationship with OW (which I don't believe, by the way, I just think he is trying to convince himself of that), and as he reminded me several times, at least he didn't leave for a pack of cigarettes and never came back!

I am very uncomfortable when meeting friends and acquaintances and having to be the one to announce to them that we are separated, because many have known us before A happened and cannot believe it! And sometimes, instead of them consoling me, I need to console them and explain what is unexplainable to me.

Sometimes, I don't know whether it's shame or guilt, but I do feel responsible for what has happened, even if I did not choose to have an A.

My self-worth got shot down - I basically feel like I got dumped! It feels like, thanks for the good times, you are now 'old news' and I feel like moving on to something NEW!!

I feel totally inadequate, feel like a failure.

Like a used appliance, car, whatever, that needs to be replaced.

Not to mention what it does to my trust in people now! That's a whole other thread.

How to value oneself even though the most important person in your life seems to basically be saying that you are no longer of value to them.

This thread has definitely hit a spot for me. It really hurts.

I was proud of my family, about having two beautiful boys, about having a 'home' to come home to.

My WH having had an A, and having left me, has definitely 'tarnished' what took 20 years to accomplish. But, unlike other things that do the same like accidents and sickness, this was due to a family member's CHOICE to have an A.

If life was a challenge before, these feelings are making it for me an even bigger challenge, besides feelings of lonileness, sadness, etc. etc.

An A is a big BLOW to someone's life.

Anyway, I somehow know I should not be feeling some of these feelings seeing that I have no control over what WH choose to do, but don't really know how to 'move on', to what, I don't know.

I definitely feel like I have been 'kicked' and am down, and I am trying to figure out how to stand back up and hold my head up high. Tough gig.

Anyway, hoping sharing helps, because we can do a lot it here. Well, anyway, it can't hurt!

I better stop here. This posting is way to long. Sorry folks.

Luna,

Wonderful post , I think you said it all for so many of us. I have felt and still do in some ways exactly what you are saying.

Take Care

Hurting

I was very ashamed at the beginning. I felt like I had "Unfulfilling Wife" tattoed on my forehead. I was embarrassed checking out recovery books at the library. I cringed every time my WH mentioned it to someone.

But now, I tell everyone that asks. Someone comes to look to buy a car, I tell them I am selling because my WH ran off with a married woman. If I have a yard sale, the sign will say "WH ran off with a married woman, everything must go!"

I don't know when things changed in my head. Maybe listening to him justify it made me realize how ridiculous he sounds. I know that in the future (with WH or without), I need to listen better. But right now, WH has nothing productive to say.

I will accept blame for helping to create the atmosphere, when he can logically tell me what I did. AT one point he said I looked depressed, that is what made him have the A. (That certainly perked me right up!) I have learned alot about my relationship style, but he won't be around to benefit from it. I have no shame because I am learning from the mistakes I made. He has his shame (I guess) from not learning from his mistakes.

Whenever someone hears that somebody is cheating in their marraige, the *first* thing they say is something like, "Huh, he/she must notta been gettin' what they needed at home so they HAD to go look elsewhere!"

Nobody ever says, "Gee, what an idiot. Didn't they think to try to improve their marriage before going outside of it?"

The BS is always blamed when a WS cheats. Always. Look at celebrity marriages. Everybody blamed Hilary when Bill cheated. Everybody blamed Diana when Charles cheated. Everbody blamed Jennifer when Brad cheated.

It's always, "No wonder he cheats. She's a raving b*tch."

It's never, "No wonder she's a raving b*tch. He cheats."

The BS totally loses face in public. That is how I feel, especially when I had to be around my WH's co-workers (I never go around them anymore.) Unknown to me, he had simply stopped talking about me at work because he didn't want the girls there to think of him as part of a couple. I had no presence. I had no face. He simply let them all think I was a crazy cold b*tch who made his life miserable. It's a great way to get sympathy from stupid skanks who will believe any crap a cheating married man lays on them.

I sure wish that people in general understood affair dynamics. The BS is *always* blamed when the WS cheats. That's where the BS shame comes from. Show me one incident where they are not.
Mulan

Mulan,

Very valid points.

I also believe now after so much reading that infidelity is more times the norm instead of the abnorm, and the ones not yet affected by it(or know it's going on in their life) are the ones you are describing more times than not.

Sometimes it seems almost everyone I know is either getting their heart broken or breaking someone else's.

Thanks everyone for the input. I've been off MB for the past week visiting my 88 year old mum and she doesn't have internet access.

I guess that my shame is really more focused on my FWH. Because of his actions, I lost respect for him as a person. When I learned of his A, and who it was with, I knew immediately that it didn't really have anything to do with feelings of love for OW. I have said it before, and I will say it again. His only criteria for the OW was willingness. He needed an ego boost, and she, being needy and generally unattractive and available, met his substantial need to be totally adored and worshiped.

He very quickly learned what a terrible burden it was having someone constantly telling him how wonderful he was, how much she needed him to be happy, how she needed him in her life, bla, bla, bla.

No matter what she told him, he didn't feel at all wonderful or special. He felt like the unfaithful spouse he was, and instead of feeling better about himself, he felt worse.

Maybe my expression or use of the word shame was not completely accurate here. Maybe a better word is embarrasement. Kind of like when you see someone with toilet paper stuck on their shoe. They didn't do anything wrong, but they still look stupid for not noticing.

Does that make better sense?