If you are a BS who has a WS that had multiple As - why do you stay in the M? Is it love, fear, finances?

GG

add stupidity and masochism to your list as options.

<-- stupidity and masochism and I'm just ONE time through the gate.

No you aren't stupid.

Also add kids and religion.

gg,

I was going to try to answer this one. Maybe you could get some answers from my thread. After reading this "add stupidity and masochism to your list as options" my stomach lurched and I am not feeling much like trying to explain anything. Sorry.

H had an A (and moments of inappropraite flirting) about 10 yrs ago, but it never got to the point of having sex. So while it hurt I was young and dumb enough to think it wasn't as bad because there was no sex. We never really addressed the situation properly and I was naive enough to think that he had learned his lesson. Finances or fear was never a factor for me. If anything I felt I must have been a failure as a wife to have given H reason to seek out OW....double

After Dday of the recent A, I can honestly say that I never forgave my H for the A he had years ago. I'm sure on some subconscience level I was punishing him over the years when I'd get upset with him for one reason or another. I held on to all the old A evidence for 10 YEARS! On Dday, I felt guilty for not addressing his previous A and then being stupid enough to add children to the mix. So in essence I felt like I had to suck it up for my kids because I helped create the situation by ignoring the problem and to some extent could see how some of my behavior throughout the years had created distance between myself and H.

Being a little older and wiser now and thanks to MB, I know what my mistakes were that helped create the situation. I blame H 100% for his A but I could have done many things different. I don't think it would have necessarily changed H's decision to cheat but I'll never know so I can't dwell on that. It happened.

If H ever cheats again, I will wash my hands of him. There will not be another chance and we will not be friends. Even if he doesn't cheat, if he becomes wayward in thinking and disrespects me or our M in other ways, I'm gone. I'd be divorced before I put up with his crap again. And more importantly, I'd be ok.

Good reply, Raven. We aren't born knowing everything, sometimes life evolves in such a way that others would have to see the evolution of events to understand how we end up there. The important thing is learning and growing in the process, and it seems you have done both tremendously, I applaud you!

I don't think BS's come to MB with the notion that I'll fight for my WS "WHEN" they deserve it.

Truth is, "no" WS deserves recovery!

It takes courage, fortitude, prayer, strength, cunning, heart, and a flack jacket strong enough to withstand the barrage of shrapnel that spews from the WS's mouth.

The only time "stupidity and masochism " enters into the fray is when the BS has NO PLAN and is willing to live in a state of confusion with the abuse continuing/unchanging.

The logical conclusion to that statement then is if the WS has multiple affairs, it is all the BS's fault because the BS didn't do something different to change the situation. Typical wayward POV.

I therefore cannot agree with your conjecture.

Waywards have multiple affairs because they choose to - not because of something the BS did or didn't do.

It's all about entitlement.

The WS swears on all she/he holds holy that it will never happen again. The BS accepts this and is later shown it was a lie. Even worse, this cycle repeats multiple times and the BS accepts the lie each time. Put your own name on that. Stupidity works for me.

I would say stupidity.

I would say I just simply honor my marriage vows. I didn't know it was muliple A until way after D-day, now maybe if it were to happen again after recovery and my kids were all grown up and gone, I might feel differently.

Stupid for letting G-d do his thing? I personally don't think so. But maybe being an alcoholic who has her own checkered past puts me in a place where I believe people can change if they really want to.

-- stupidity and masochism - such kind words to those who have chosen to stay.

I stayed because I had 25+ years and four children invested with this man, and because he was TRULY repentent and remorseful. I wouldn't stay if it happened again and he knows this. His choice and mine. It's been almost six years since all of that and he's still a wonderful husband.

I read tst's stmt to mean why BS's put up with WS's multiple A's not why they have them. That was the original question after all.... I'm jus sayin....

I think there are two or three lines to bring into focus on this.

First is a case of multiple affairs that all come out at once or over a period of time in short order after discovery of the most recent affair, recovery begins and the marriage is actually rebuilt into one that can no longer sustain that kind of lifestyle. I think this really comes down to a single D-day type event, though the unknown affairs might come to light at separate times after the latest affair is known and during the process of dealing with that affair.

I think there have been many here who have been through this type of scenario, including some who have discovered that years of cheating took place. The fact that part of recovery, using Marriage Builders methods and techniques as part of that recovery includes implementing the Policy of Radical Honesty, means I don't find this surprising. In some cases additional discoveries of past affairs have brought recovery to a halt and ended the marriage.

I think the second case is when the BS realizes that they too have had issues within the marriage and that they themselves have not been the best possible marriage partners, though that does not excuse any affair let alone multiple affairs, but some might decide, for the kids, for the long history together or for any number of other possible reasons to forgive yet another affair and try to rebuld. I am describing here a case of past affairs (single time or multiple) and where MB was found during the latest round of betrayal and a decision was made to attempt real recovery with a real plan in order to try to make the marriage more fulfilling for both the BS and the WS.

In these cases I would say that future infidelity would almost certainly be the death blow for what was left of the marriage. I am speaking for a situation that I myself have lived through, so this kind of recovery from multiple affairs does not shock me. Discovery was years after the fact and at a time when the marriage was actually going pretty well. We just hadn't ever really fixed the real problems.

Had I known of MB years ago, perhaps there would have been no affair in 2005/2006 and I might not be a poster here now, but neither of us had any idea of what real recovery looked like and both naively thought that not actively cheating was the way to identify a person as being formerly wayward. We relied not on making our marriage better but on stronger commitment and a stronger will to move forward. Our lives changed, for the better in many aspects, but the underlying lack of meeting each others ENs and Love Busting each other continued for the most part unabated.

I can tell you that now that we both know what it takes to make a marriage better, there can be no further recoveries from affairs, since there are now no excuses to have any. We still ain't perfect, but we now have a common vocabulary and common tools to fix what's amiss rather than to simply allow withdrawal into separate lives that do not interact the way marriage partners should act.

The third type of situation I think is when an affair is discovered, the work of recovery begins and then another affair takes place. This is not just a new D-day situation, but an entirely new affair, begun after the work of recovery has been attempted for a while. There have been some here that have fallen into this category and I think that in every case I can think of, it resulted in the end of the relationship, with one possible exception, which we might never know for sure about unless the BS or WS comes back to let us know.

I think that in any case where the conditions that allowed the affair to be possible are not dealt with, future affairs become much more likely, whether people post on MB forums or not. The fact is that some of us begin doing a great Plan A and the affair ends but then we fall back into our old lazy habits and before long the marriage is in the same shape as it was before. This requires nothing more than an act of will by the once wayward spouse to remain faithful.

I think many revenge affairs can result from this as well. Recovery seems to start but when the conflict goes away the old way of being married returns and before long the one time BS begins to feel entitled, having harbored resentment from the past affair and never really learning to get his/her own ENs met properly or to deal with underlying issues that we might call Love Busters.

What I think surprises most people is that they even stay after one affair and try to put the marriage back together. Marriage has become a disposable commodity in our society and cheating stories among those in the public limelight fill the news broadcasts almost daily. Folks are expected to simply move on to the next relationship without ever figuring out what went wrong. The next marriage turns out no better than the previous and the whole process repeats itself until somebody fixes the real problems. We seem to be destined to repeat the mistakes of our past.

Men will marry the best looking girl in the bar and then be stunned when other guys keep coming on to her on the nights she goes to that same bar where they met with the same friends she was with back then. Women marry a guy they meet that has a sort of "bad boy" image that they just know will change for the right woman only to learn that more than his image is tainted. When the marriage ends, the men go back to the bar and are at once attracted to the most flirtatious and outgoing beauty in the place, just coming off of a nasty divorce herself and the women find the same arrogant, abusive, demanding type of guy irresistible. Love remains something that just happens and nobody ever stops to consider any other way of doing things.

We keep doing the same things over and over again while expecting the results to improve. Albert was right in what that describes...

I say that unless and until the problems that caused the affair come out and are dealt with, even years of not cheating can have a way of falling into an affair. Recovery from an affair requires a lot of changes, not just in the WS, but in the BS as well if the marriage is to become the type that is not conducive to having an affair. And even then it only remains immune as long as both marriage partners are doing what it takes to keep love, romantic love, alive in the relationship. It is finding a way to work together at building the marriage to continue making it stronger and better that prevents an affair.

JMO

Mark

Dog gone it. I have MISSED you Mark..

I don't know.

Well now you have something to put you to sleep.

LOL or give me something to ponder.. Which you are always so GOOD at.