I think you're right that what we see here on this site isn't typical. But it could be. If more troubled marriages had the benefit of the MB program, then I think the recovery rate could become much higher.

Of course, ever story is different, so it's difficult to make generalizations. In my specific case, I actually was walking away from a long-time adulterous man. I also did my best, in the 6 months prior to my A, to communicate to my H that I was feeling very lonely and disconnected from him. I didn't know anything about MB back then, so I can't say that I did it in the best possible way, but I did it the best way I knew how. Those were pretty much the exact words I used. And my H did in fact brush aside my concerns and make light of them. He didn't really seem particularly interested in listening to what I was saying or making any changes. I don't think this was malicious on his part. I think he was just fairly clueless about how very low I was feeling. From his side, he had ended his A (finally) and cut off all contact with the OW, like I had been asking him to. He had decided he was finally done with her and committed to the marriage, so from his side of things, everything was fine. But everything wasn't fine for me. To protect myself, I had distanced myself from him as much as possible, and I was starting to recognize that disconnect and the subsequent loneliness that followed.

If we had known about MB, perhaps we could have found a way to deal with the situation before it spiraled into the horrible abyss that it eventually landed in. Maybe I would have realized that having an A would not solve my loneliness but only increase it a hundred-fold. I can say that I have never felt as alone as I did during my A. I felt utterly cut-off from everything I thought I had once known about myself. I didn't feel close to anyone - not my H, or the OM, or even myself. It was the darkest, most horrible time of my life, because I completely lost sight of who I was. It was far worse that anything my H had ever done to me. There is nothing worse than losing one's sense of identity. During my H's A, at least I had the security of knowing who I was and that I was basically an okay person and that whatever he was doing was about HIM and not about me. I did not have even that small amount of comfort during my own A. I had no idea who I was during that time. I didn't even recognize my own reflection in the mirror (literally). Everything about myself seemed foreign to me during that time. It's so hard to explain to someone who has never experienced it before.

I guess my perspective is different from most, since I have seen first-hand both sides of this issue. All I can say is, neither side is fun. A's destroy everyone, even the people who willingly participate in them.

Mine did. Repeatedly. He honestly thought if he just ignored it it would go away. He knew exactly what I needed. That being said.....I wasn't meeting all his needs like gangbusters either....and he didn't cheat.

If a WS isn't going to end the A, be O&H, have remmorse, create EP's, and meet EN's, then that WS really just needs to free the BS of her skanky self. And if - after real and true work on the part of the WS (and I mean more than some obssessed over act here - I mean the big whole picture) - a BS cannot or will not begin to see the "F" of the FWS and create a new M, then the best thing for them to do is move on also.

The sad cases are the ones in which A) the spouses stay together in perpetual misery or B) they divorce, but one of the other is still stuck in perpetual misery because even after the M is over they cannot stop clinging to the anger/bitterness/hate/hurt/etc. Then, when this same person meets someone new and bring their leftover suspicion and issues onto the new person's head......

sad.

I have yet for someone to explain to me that I can understand as to why sex acts (excluding 3somes) are wonderful and exciting with an OP but dirty with the husband.

Respectability blah blah and endorphins blah blah. Seriously. Why is it okay one minute and not the next.

Someone told me trying to understand the wayward mind is like trying to understand the mind of a (I forget the exact words) murderer or rapist...a mindset which we haven't experienced and don't understand. I can kinda buy that.

I've heard "well, they're like a crack head needing their fix and are out of control" Ummmm...okay. I was a crack user and a meth user. I quit. Many don't because they don't want to bad enough. They know what they're doign is wrong and choose to keep at it or not. Everyone has willpower if they want to exercise it.

For one thing....it takes longer than a minute to become wayward.

Maybe we're looking at this wrong. We seem to all be asking, "If it was right with the OM, why is it wrong with the BH?" I am taking "bizarre" acts here. But maybe that's backwards. maybe the truth it that those acts - just like everything else in an A - were WRONG with the OM. And once a WS comes out of that fog, they want to be RIGHT. And trying to make something WRONG into RIGHT just doesn't work.

If it comes to enthusiasm or something that doesn't cross legal, safety, or general moral lines....I feel a bit differently. In that case, I think the WS needs to think long and hard before saying "no."

I think part of it goes to BS motive as well. If a BH has always longed for his wife to wear a blong wig and go-go boots but she was too shy, then she did it with the OM.....I can understand why the BH would feel hurt. And at some point the WS should probably consider that....if it truly is about meeting a loving need. However, if the BH wants her to do it so he can rub in her face what she did during the A and get some sort of vindication in her discomfort.....sorry, that BH is wrong.

KT: I can't really answer this, because I didn't really do anything with the OM that I had never done with my H. I mean, my H and I have been married for 17 years, so really, there's not much that we haven't tried. Other than the truly bizarre (and this includes threesomes) which it never would have occurred to me to do, not with the OM or anyone else.

An addiction is like taking a long walk in the sewer and doing things that one would normally find revolting. For example, alcoholics do horrendous things in the pursuit of alcohol that they would never do unless they were under the spell of booze. It is the same with most affairs.

A WS will look back on their behavior and often feel utter disgust at the things they did while in an addiction.

Now don't get me wrong, I know that a great sex life does not have to be disgusting. So the solution is to create a GREAT sex that pleases BOTH without disgusting either.

Frankly, I can't imagine why a BS would ever WANT his WS to bring those sex acts into his bed, knowing it would trigger them BOTH about the affair. Why bring such putrid associations into a marriage?

I fully get this. I can't say I didn't do something things that I'm not so proud of when using. I also know many of the women I was around did really disgusting things to get their speed fix.


And I get this thinking. But in response to this and the few other posts before yours, let's say WW has never given BH oral sex before (I consider this not to be a crazy act at all and a pretty standard part of a sex life). But she's more than willing to go down on OM enthusiastically. I find it hard to understand that now it's dirty and refuses to do for BH anymore than the actual act of sex itself would now be dirty because she engaged in sex with the OM.

And I know everyone has a different standard of sex. But I'm not talking about 3somes, or the husband wanting to dress up in fish nets and be spanked or something a bit more on the different side. I like Luri's idea of the wig and the go go boots. Meet up in a bar or seedy motel and pretend you're different people. Wait. What?

This whole thing is starting to remind me of a Barry Manilow song now.

She did WHAT?? Lou!! You naughty!!

This is the best sentence in this entire thread. Hate to see it go to waste.

Even so-called FWWs occasionally use this thought years later. I see it in this thread even, though in different words.

Look, some of us were simply never going to get over the sex part, especially not us virgins on our wedding night - as Mr W puts it.

Did not in the end matter what she is willing to do or not willing to do now. It was simply too much for me. Took me four years to realize it is all. My time on MB would have been better spent getting the proper help deciding this early on instead of running after recovery rainbows.


Oh, and this is completely bogus:

�NO MATTER WHAT SHE SAYS...

SHE DID NOT LOVE THE OM.

SHE WAS IN LOVE WITH A FANTASY THAT WAS NOT REAL AND COULD NOT EVER BE HERS BECAUSE IT DID NOT EXIST.�

It offends me to hear this trap. She did love him a great deal. The VLTA, all ten years of it, were as real to her as my marriage was to me during that period. Actually, that was said to me by an MB trained coach.

Adultery and all its feelings and all its actions is very real. All this talk about fantasy is whistling past the graveyard. Fantasy applies to marriage, to any romantic love whatsoever exactly as much as it does to adultery.

It�s all just brain chemicals, right? For what it is worth, the MB recovery approach tries to generate most of those brain chemicals inside the marriage is all. Which is no longer possible for me. But that�s just me.

I think this is a key too. When someone is convinced that their spouse (along with every other FWS on earth) is never going to be anything but a perpetual WS, then let's face it, NO act is going to fix anything.

And no, I have never met DH at a bar or seedy hotel or pretended I was someone else. Everything else is between me and DH. Don't want to make anyone jealous.

Good Lord, did I just type that? I think it's time for my lithium.

Want some of mine?

You lost me here EE. In general, I have found that most men ignore or dismiss their wives who have repeatedly made efforts to solve a problem in the marriage. Of course there comes a point where the LBs begin...when you are talking to a wall it happens...even the good doctor has said as much. One non-MB book that I read, Good Husband, Great Marriage was dead on from what I have seen IRL. If the H is also a WH then you have a W that is even more inclined to think "why bother" and off to A-land she goes.

The girls soccer team threw a bunch of their bags into the trunk of my car one day. I had forgotten that my daughter had left her blond wig from Halloween back there along with a pair of high heels and fish nets.

The girls pulled them out, giggled, and started makign jokes about finding out about my second job. A year ago this happened and I still haven't lived it down.

Yeah, sure. So, that's your story and you're sticking to it?

This is for kiltedthrower. My crazy uncle from OKC is sending this around suggesting donations be sent to him for the "earthquake" in Oklahoma.

hahahaha! Half of us didn't even know it happened.

Aphelion,

I can't speak for YOUR WW...

but Mrs.Flint has a different opinion...

and she is a FWW.

She was NEVER in love with the OM...

She used him like toilet paper...

what she wanted...

when she wanted.

It was ALL about her...

HE had NOTHING to do with it.

As long as he barked when she said to he fulfilled his purpose.

There was nothing to love...

just to be USED.

You say it's bogus.

I don't.

I have a W that loves me the way I have always dreamed of.

That wouldn't be the case if she had lost something.

She didn't.

Sorry you didn't pick a winner...

But go ahead...

Ask away, Aphelion.

Ask the FWW's here if they "loved the OM".

I am sorry for you...

That you never saw the love in someone's eyes that told you that you DID make the right choice to recover what always should have been...

A second chance.

God bless.

Jim

Then you get divorced, or you decide you can live with it.

Markos gave me an idea. Lets say the wifey really does not have chemistry with her husband of 20 years. She submits to sex at least once a month. For his sake. And so she could become pregnant twice and obtain the children she wanted.

Then she meets the other man and all of a sudden she tries oral, has wild orgasms, tries bondage and even a few times, anal. She becomes "an animal" in bed... even enjoying sex with him and his friends.

Then she gives up the other man. Or he dumps her. Sending her back to her husband.

Back to her husband of 20 years.....Back to her old "school marm" restricted sex life that she hates. She feels sex is B-O-R-I-N-G. She does not orgasm and never has with him.

So, why can't her husband change? Become wild like the OM. Offer her the best orgasms of her life? I know he is hurt to the bone by her affair. But if he could continue to awaken her awakened sexuality, maybe some good could come of things.

Why could she not go wild with her husband. Fake it till you make it type of thing. She could give him wild oral sex! She could tie him up! He could tie her up! She could initiate and get on top! She could ask for oral sex from him! She could blindfold him! Use ice! He could have sex standing up! New and different things they never tried!

What would stop thier sex life from becoming a sex life that both married people would like very much??? I know he would have to get over the hurt. And she would have to be willing to experiment in bed with the husband of 20 years trying new things.

Why can't thier sex life be as exciting or nearly so...as her affair sex with the OM? It would not have to involve anal or threesomes. But some new things could be incorporated.

If they could get thier sex life to something both were happy with it might prevent another affair...or might make for a happy healing marriage. Who knows....