I don't think this is totally correct. The spouse helped to create the conditions which had an unfavorable outcome. The specific choice made by the WS was to cheat and that was totally their doing, but the other spouse needs to be honest about what state the marriage was in. Rarely is it the case that the BS was a total angel and did everything possible.

One possibility is that the BS ignored the needs of their spouse. This would be like never doing maintenance on your house. Eventually something bad happens like the roof leaks. Did the homeowner cause the leak? No, but their inattention to the situation meant that eventually something bad would happen.

Another possibility is that the BS actively did something to emotionally hurt the other spouse. This would be like cutting in front of someone at the motorcycle rally. The specific choice of how the person behind responds is up to them (yell, punch, etc), but the person cutting in line had a part in creating the situation.

So while the choice to cheat is up to the WS, the BS had some role in creating the conditions that led to the bad situation. Other outcomes could be anger, divorce, counseling, etc.

How many of us, as BS's had ALL of our ENs being met during our marriage? How many of us made the choice to have an A? That is why I agree that ENs not being met, can NOT be the reason that a WS makes the decision to have an A. Having poor boundaries around members of the opposite sex is the single most reason why WSs have an A. If you have strong boundaries around the opposite sex, then even when your ENs are not met, you still won't have an A. At least that's what happened in my sitch. I wasn't exactly feeling the EN meeting in my marriage as well, but I had, and still have STRONG boundaries. No A for this girl.

Not necessarily. All the need meeting in the world cannot compensate for poor boundaries because someone can always come along and meet needs BETTER than the spouse. Even in marriages where needs are being met, there are affairs when the WS has poor boundaries. It is important to understand that an affair is NEVER the fault of the victim. It is always the fault of the WS. The BS may or may not be partly responsible for an unstable marriage. And of course, the WS is also responsible for the state of the marriage.

Many, many people in our culture think nothing of having opposite sex friendships or securing traveling jobs, which is usually how affairs begin. They say it "can't happen" to them. Affairs even happen in marriages where the BS does a GREAT job of meeting the WS' needs. My current marriage is one example. [in my last marriage, I will say honestly say that my refusal to meet my H's needs made him vulnerable to the first skank who was willing]

What Scotty and Mel just said is absolutely correct

You can be Christ on a cracker and be crucified because of selfish behavior of a wayward minded spouse
The main purpose on this forum is to help those so hurt or have become so imbalanced that they have turned upon themselves and make the situation worse for recovery of themselves and Thier marrige

NG your killin me lol
Yeah you can do everything right and still get screwed royally it's still the right things though

You are missing a vital point concerning the EN's of a marriage. It is called reality!!!

Falling on love always takes the same pattern. An affair is the same process. One need is met and due to the wayward's poor boundaries more needs are met because more courting takes place, i.e. emotional affair first.

Most go into the marriage have no clue what an EN is and how to fill it because courting usually begins with a connection to one EN (physical or conversation). The dating cycle usually starts out by getting one need met, and then as you continue to get to know each other more needs get met until you are in love. As the marriage continues the couple fall into their own places with each other. Add some kids to the picture and your marriage gets put on the backseat. Who has time to look hot and sexy when you haven't slept in months, spit-up is in your hair, and your only conversation for the day is with a two year old and newborn baby.

F'ing waywards I just want to kick their a$$e$!!!

Give me one marriage especially when kids are involved that is perfect all the time. Marriage and emotions are cyclical and change depending on life. Marriage is more than love it is also committment, devotion, and hard work.

Give me one married couple who hasn't hated their spouse one time or another during their marriage? It is nature, and God even tells us how all these emotions will take place throughout life and throughout the marriage.

When you are up night after night breastfeeding your new born, pulling the hair back so your three year old can vomit and the next night it is the five year olds turn, and your spouse is out of the country for work at the time, well let's just say being in love with my husband at that time wasn't happening.

Just because I was pizzed off (actually utterly exhausted) by my reality of being a mom, it still didn't make me want to go out and have an affair.

I also think there is more to an affair and that is the addiction part. I think for some they have temporary addiction (usually is broken at exposure or shortly after the affair goes physical) but for others the affair feeds a deep rooted addiction that takes longer to break or it is never broken. I.E. the forever wayward.

Case after case on this forum shows waywards coming here for help deep rooted in their fog, but along with that fog is also serious depression, anxiety, fear, hopefully shame, and guilt.

You can see all the signs of the addiction and the vets go about helping them as if they are helping a drunk who just got to treatment.

I firmly believe my husband's porn use over the years contributed to the his boinking and shacking up with his (Porn look-a-like) colleague, aka POSOW. She used the DiD on him to be her boyfriend while deployed, and the attention lit up his chemicals and he was hooked. You can see it in all the evidence. My intuition burns with the knowledge she used him for her needs only and could care less his life has literally burnt to the ground. My WH still sees POSOW everday because they work together and are still deployed. His addiction is getting worse and worse.

In the past three months you can see his demeanour change and his depression and anger skyrocket. He is so unrecognizable. He is feeling something and it doesn't look like it is a good feeling.

There you go - DiD and Affirmation and poor boundaries got the two of them into bed, but the addiction has made it explode, and now you can see the awful effects of this affair.

It starts as a fantasy reality and has now turned to reality depression.

F'ing waywards just suck!!!

In my case, the first OW was a DID (of her own making). She WAS wealthy, had been married for years, and they had a couple of kids. She was definitely a pampered wife-- member of the country club, world travel, the best of the best. Then she decided to cheat and tossed it all away.

She thought her BH would roll over and give her what she wanted, she didn't expect him to fight back. He was a powerful sophisticated corporate guy and had the resources to fight back. She was terrified of him and told my H that he would hurt her if he found out what she was doing (straight out of the wayward manual). I could kick myself for missing the perfect opportunity to expose her when I saw him at the courthouse. I didn't know about MB back then and I listened to my H who begged me not to say anything.

Living on her own, she went nuts and her reputation went in toliet. She was getting over $6000/month in support and she blew it all-- botox, drinking, partying, drugs, whatever she wanted. People in her social circle began to snub her and she eventually fell so far down that she ended up in jail for DWI and then finally lost custody of her children. She used to ask my H to buy wine for her because she couldn't risk being seen buying it herself.

She met my H in the middle of her craziness at a bar one night. She had my H (and other men) falling all over themselves to rescue her. She had no boundaries and her behavior was outrageous. It was pathetic to see this middle-aged woman acting like a 20 yr-old. I felt really bad for her children who got to witness a lot of it.

So she was a different breed of DID who thought she deserved whatever she wanted. Instead she ended up getting what she deserved and not what she wanted.

Sorry --- that's what I feel for those posters who claim little/no control over their marriages' futures. Evidently more folks than I would have expected have decided to just be "passengers" on the journey, instead of helping steer the course.

I know EXACTLY which EN's I failed to meet in the several years leading up to my wife's EA. I mean to say, I know them NOW. I gained that information here. I had no idea that my lack of attention to those needs of hers would result in her looking elsewhere for them. Had I the knowledge THEN that I have NOW, I would have moved heaven and Earth to attend to those EN's, and not sit around hoping her "boundaries" would be adequate.

Like I said, I could not live comfortably if I believed that I did NOT have substantial ability to reduce the chances of another such affair. To those of you who feel that there is no point in attending to those ENs, and choose to sit back and blame "poor boundaries", when the preferable goal would be to have the boundaries never approached.......well, the roulette wheel you're playing will someday stop on "busted".

I have mentioned before that I "left" another site when my observations that virtually every thread became an OW-bashing pity-party at the BW sorority house rendered me persona non grata. Accordingly, I'll leave this thread before the same thing occurs. To those who disagreed with my take on things, I'll wish, "Good Luck". To those who agreed with me, I'll wish, "A favorable result from your efforts."

WOW this is exactly what happened with my husband.

the other woman in my marriage was a gold digger, her husband told me that she used to tell him that she deserved better in this life and he could sit back and watch her get that........
what she didn't realize is that 1/2 of what he had would go to me........
but they are thick as a brick sometimes.......
in the end all her plans fell through, my husband has actually admitted that it might be true that she was looking for a better life for herself and her children.
he was sucked in by the biggest trick in the book...........
he was no angel himself he could have said no...........adultery is so hurtful .......it changes who we all are.............
OW/OM hardly ever win, I think they deserve everything they get and all the pain they feel. sorry if that sounds mean...............
my husband is to blame because he made the promises to me, but we all are responsible for living an honest life.........
It is so sad that a little attention turns them into idiots............
neverguessed is right, my side of the fence did need cleaning up and I am making sure I am not ignoring things now.........I have learned from my mistakes, I only hope the OW/OM can learn from their mistakes and of course the Waywards need to work on their weaknesses as well.............

Well thank goodness that doesn't happen here -- "virtually every thread became an OW-bashing pity-party at the BW sorority house".

I've said it before and I'll say it again, I was not meeting my DH's ENs and he wasn't meeting mine when all this went down for us. But regardless, my H's decision to cheat was his alone. I could have done the same thing, but I didn't.

Fortunately, we know better now (about ENs, care and protection, and more) and recognize that our marriage takes serious work. If my DH ever decided to cheat again, he wouldn't be able to claim it's because he's not getting his ENs met. It'd be a purely selfish choice and I'd be gone.

Well please do not patronize ME or the other bw's here NG. This ain't a sorority house. I should know. Spent lots of time in one during college for about 4 years

This forum is the club NOBODY wanted to get initiated into.

Anyhow know I'm late chiming in on this one but seriously. There simply ARE those who have poor boundaries and crave hero worship. Which is NOT admiration. Hero worship does not equate to admiration which is a top male EN.

I gave my xwh PLENTY of that admiration and was good at meeting needs. But he was one of those who simply felt he was ENTITLED TO MORE than one woman.

There are just some guys like that. Nothing I could have done would have changed a thing, and I DID 100 PERCENT TAKE CONTROL of my situation and future. So I take quite a bit of offense at your [censored]-umption. We all know what those 3 little letters at the beginning of that word means.

I was not some blind man bashing woman who went thru what I did. It was gut wrenching and I fought his affair addiction every step of the way.

We WERE indeed quite happy, just built a custom home, small child (where my other focus was besides on him), business was at the time great, we had no worries and were actively planning our next child and had just come back from a week in the bahamas when all h*ll broke loose.

So sell that fallacy elsewhere.

THERE ARE THE ENTITLED ones who cheat. And YES THERE ARE TONS OF PREDATORY OW out there. Tons. And they play the DID card and the men who buy it are weak, simply weak.

I most CERTAINLY did not cause my xh to cheat nor was I deficient in any way as a wife either.

The DiD card, when played by the predatorty ow, simply makes the wh feel like the KISH and his EGO MAKES HIM THINK HE'S THAT, but really it's just old fashioned hero worship she feeds him, along with a pile of crap in small doses over time.

Meanwhile, there was an attractive, loving wife probably pushing a grocery cart wearing a ponytail, no makeup, wearing a t shirt and yoga pants out getting food for the family. She in no way is aware that her husband has been getting hit on either at the office or when he goes out with his friends once after work to grab a beer. That was me, that wife. The day before I found MB.

All it took was a woman at a bar to zero in on somebody. Somebody she "heard" had alot of $ and somebody she thought was cute. She saw the ring. Heard from a friend he was married with a "nice" wife and was happy. A remote friend of a friend told the ow that about me. But she played. And pushed. And it went from an innocent meeting when he was playing darts after work with some work colleagues to her later that week stopping by his office (he gave her his business card, and to other people at her table too, some were guys). She HUNTED him down. Forced things, and it happened.

I had no idea. Never saw it coming. Like I told the group in divorce recovery, it was literally as if somebody pulled a rug out from under me and I fell and hit my head.

The sooner that people, both men and women, understand that yes there are predatory OW and OM out there, the more they can maybe talk about this with their spouses and work ahead of time on EN's, but you cannot MAKE somebody have good boundaries. That is a promise THEY THEMSELVES must keep to their marriage.

You can lead a horse to water...you know the rest.

The thing I would like everyone to understand most:

People don't have affairs because they want to replace their Betryaed Spouse.

They have affairs because they want an ADDITION to their Betrayed Spouse.

The goal of every cheater is to have both the security and benefit of marriage AND all the fun and excitement of dating AT THE SAME TIME.

If it wasn't, they would simply leave and get a divorce. But they don't. Instead, they lie and lie and lie in an effort to keep the spouse from finding out so that their double life can go on unimpeded. Cheaters don't leave until their lies collapse and the marriage is so damaged that there's nothing left to save.

No amount of meeting ENs will prevent this when somebody gets it in their head that they can have BOTH.

Idiot Rep. Weiner is the poster boy for this. He has a beautiful and accomplished new bride that he claims to adore, and yet was still sexting bimbos every chance he got. You can bet he thought his life was fantastic - he had the best of both worlds! - until the day the lies collapsed.

Please, Betrayed Spouses, understand that your WS is not trying to "choose" between you and someone else. They want BOTH and they will do everything in their power to KEEP both for as long as they possibly can.

Of course you should still make your best effort to meet your spouse's ENs - that's how you have a great marriage. But meeting ENs will not keep a cheater from deciding they deserve double and triple helpings of ENs, and THAT is what cheating is all about.

Yup, They might say that they want to replace them when they get caught, and pretend that was the reason/excuse, and when pushed the might even leave to pursue the fantasy, but in the long run the chickens come home to roost, they were selfish and wanted it all. Plus more, just like she says.

Some snap out of it, some stay stubbornly committed to thier folly for a while, and some go for good, but none of them 10 years later say it was a good idea to cheat.

If you have the integrity to say, "Ok I'm done" and move out, well thats one thing, to lie and go behind someones back to a lover, thats sleazy and selfish. Its just that simple, no self respecting adult has any excuse to have an "affair" and sneak around behind someones back. Note self-respecting...


NG I think that it is possible to affair proof your marriage if both partys are honest about thier present and projected needs, roles, future plans, heck if they are honest about everything.

There are men and women who get married with unrealistic expectations from the other partner, and sometimes they expect more than can be given. If you happen to be linked up with one of those, emotions can easily flare and become rebelion, anger, and bitterness that gets turned into ,say,,"Well they promised me ..so-n-so..and now all bets are off, I can do what I want now!"

Thats when you can end up with one pulling the weight, and the other laying in the back of the wagon sulking and feeling sorry for themselves. They sit around thinking about thier needs until thats all they see, themselves.

If they jump ship or not, they are prime for an affair, and the needs of the mule pulling the wagon are growing also. Who will end up being the BS? The one who will not justify lieing or cheating to get what they want. Not what they need, unless thier percieved needs include lieing and cheating as part of getting what they want.

In other words, they want to lie and cheat to get what they want...yeah, its that selfish and they like it.

Some people NG are just that crooked in thier head and heart, and would rather use machivellian<sp> means to get something than to be straight up front about it. I guess they think there is something "special" or romantic about it. But that some people.

You can affair proof a marrige and still fall victim to someone like that, because they can raise the bar higher and higher and even manufacture problems to get thier "drama fix" to justify lies and deciet.

In the end it comes down to who refuses to play the game and cheat, lie, hide, steal when things get skinny in the needs filling dept, and what the real needs other have in thier heart that they are not sharing because,,well they want two mates?..never work?..never give or contribute?..the list of selfish needs goes on..

Of couse openess and honesty never seem to make that list..

Huh? Who said that?

NG, I also didn't see anyone say that we weren't supposed to meet each others ENs. All we were saying was that when someone has an A, it isn't because they weren't having their needs met at home, it's because they had weak boundaries and allowed someone other than their spouse, meet their ENs. If you are meeting your wife's ENs, but someone else can meet them better, and she has weak boundaries, she will have another A. That is why STRONG boundaries are most important.

Also, when someone suggests that the BS not meeting ENs is why a WS had an A, it almost absolves the WS for making that decision to have an A. If they put half the efforts into their MARRIAGE as they did the AFFAIR, they would actually have a better marriage.

Do you and you wife have friendships with people of the opposite sex? If you do, it is very dangerous to your marriage, regardless of how well you are meeting each others ENs. Just saying.

This is very interesting.

Here is a link to how STEVE HARLEY sees this:
LINK

It's so important, I'm going to begin a new thread so more people can read what Steve Harley says..

Aw, man. I missed a H-E-7-7 of a party.

Anyway, I'd get over the KISA idea. It's not about being a "hero." It's much, much simpler than that. It's about ease of access due to difference in status. All status is, is people saying "yes."

That's why "big-wigs" and "high-rollers" get comped crap all the time - it's companies and businesses coat-tailing on status to improve their bottom line.

Status = opportunity.

So executives will cheat with their secretaries. Managers will cheat with their employees, and burger flippers will cheat with crack addicts.

Status.


Besides, it's the ladies that do better as a KISA. We need you to save us from our fugly selves.

Again.

Spend any time alone with someone of the opposite gender, anywhere (office, resturant, bus, sidewalk) and talk with them and

opportunity is created to cross the line.

Who will resist the opportunity?

Someone who doesn't ever spend any time alone or alone like (you could be alone in a crowd too...like a line to buy a ticket, at a party in a corner, etc)

Who will HONOR THEIR VOW? That is the question.

And yes, my xwh was one of those guys who had people nodding yes to everything he once said. Not anymore.

And when you have opportunity and poor boundaries for one nanosecond it can happen.

Combine that imho, with the predatory ow and om out there, and you have a recipe for a perfect storm. They are the catalyst (skank hos and manginas) for this unholy union to be created.

Who do they vow to Peachy?. They create God out of thier own image they are comfortable with at the time. How big is thier God? Are they even afraid of the consequences of not listening to him as they grow?,(ah thats right, they don't have to grow now, they are married).

I knew it was going to be rough, and I promised God to honor those vows, and yes I was afraid of what would happen if I didn't. Guess thats why I could keep them and also why there was so much pain when I was betrayed, I was only human and I admit it.

I did fall into another relationship after I left the first time, out of anger, bitterness, lonliness, and confusion, and that is why I can attest to how it wears thin when you get down to the importance of REAL life and Children, which if you are a Man in my book, you put before you in everything, even your pain.

But when I came back and recommitted to the marriage I recommitted to God also trusting he would get me through with minimal colateral damage. He made good on that promise BTW.

I also like the mangina thing lol. Its a perfect example of what happens to men when they get so vain, Vanity is a killer.