Can someone please explain the 'fog' to me?
Thank you...

i'll try to be brief but basically the fog is what we call the state that the WS (wayward spouse) is in while they are in an affair, this is whether or not it is physical or emotional. because they (the spouse who is in an Affair) are not able to see what they are doing and the ramification of what they are doing, or maybe they don't care because all that they can see is what's right in front of their face, the OP (the other person).

read more on the MB homepage and on this forum and things will be more clear to you <img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="images/icons/smile.gif" /> it always helps to include in your profile a little about yourself (ages, kids, married) but we all understand if you don't feel comfortable doing this. IF you need to find out more about all the abbreviations, etc. go to the emotional needs forum and i believe the first or second topic goes into this. prayers to you and yours for whatever is going on in your life.

<small>[ April 13, 2004, 11:49 AM: Message edited by: roughroad ]</small>

Thank you, roughroad, for the explanation. Guess my H is out of the fog, as he says A ended in Dec.03, but he continues to be very angry with me, doesn't usually speak to me ever, says I still ask too many questions, and he's going to move out. He said initially he wished things were the way they were before the A, but he doesn't say that anymore. Says the same things that I've been reading about here, ie he doesn't love me, isn't in love with me and that it's over. I was just wondering if maybe he was still in some kind of fog, but if the fog is only during the A, I guess he is thinking clearly.

Thanks,

asap ( Always Say A Prayer )
me - BS 46
WH 38
M - 4 years
1 beautiful step-daughter(his from his 2nd marriage)
EA May '03 til Dec '03

This was posted on Way2's website. It's the best explanation I know:

When the 'dumb answers' thread was started, I had trouble restricting myself to two posts. There were about 137 dumb answers I could have dropped in right away. I notice the thread is still growing healthily, so clearly 'fog' is a universal mirth-maker.

I was also struck by Kat's thread on how tough it must be to be the deliverer of the dumb answer, the one deep in fog.

So yesterday, during an interminable technical seminar and a long motorway journey, I found myself wondering just how WS's get into
that situation. My own H has described his own situation to me very clearly, and I've generated my own homespun psychology to explain it. I suppose I'm still at the stage where I'm trying to make sense of everything.

So the following is a personal slant on what I think goes on in the mind of affair partners, and how I think the fog works. It's talking about the 'soulmate' kind of affair - I think fling-type affairs follow different paths. I'd find it useful to know if it matches with others' experiences.

And it's LONG.

To begin with, I believe that 'fog' is a distorted reality. "Reality" for each of us, consists principally of two things: our
"life model", and our value system.

The "life model" is the picture we have in our head of how the world works, how people interact with each other. As with an engineering model, we feed possibilities into it and come up with predictions. The accuracy of the model is dependent on many things: how good a starter pack our parents gave us, how detailed we've made the model, how much we've tested it by running sample data through. Some people have highly accurate models and are considered "shrewd", and some have poor predictive powers and are thought naive. Most of us fall somewhere in the middle.

Our values system is what we use to guide us through life. It's the set of rules and restrictions and codes that we innately believe
will give us the best chance in life. It can be a narrow set “what's best for ME", can revolve around the family, or can be very broad “what's in the best interests of the community (town,
nation, world)?"

Some of our values are personal: we've learned hard lessons from our own experience. “Don't steal, or you'll get a record." Some we've unconsciously absorbed from our parents “It's wrong to steal". Some we adopt to fit in with peer group ideals “Her son was done for burglary, isn't it awful?"

When we engage with a life-partner, we usually pick someone with a similar values system to our own, and we work hard to bring those systems together. This is not lovey-dovey stuff - it's innately practical. If we are both bound by the same restrictions and drivers, we are likely to support and reinforce each other. We will
be able to "trust" -- to confidently predict the other's actions and opinions -- and will therefore have a solid platform on which to base our life.

Our values system is based implicitly on our life model, and it works by reward and punishment. If we conform to our values, we build self-esteem and feel good about ourselves. If we violate our
values, we feel discomfort. We attempt to get away from the discomfort by a) confessing and apologising, ie reconforming to values, or b) stuffing the discomfort down, or c) altering the
values system so that we don't appear to have breached it.

When an affair begins, there is usually huge temptation involved -- for whatever reason. The temptation overwhelms the values system “when the WS says "I didn™t think", that's exactly right. The normal mental mechanisms were not in play, largely because the life model was not sophisticated or accurate enough to detect what was happening nor predict the likely consequences, or because an intensity of resentment or anger caused normal mechanisms to be
deliberately ignored. There is a "fantasy leap", almost like a leap of religious faith. This leap says "I want some fun / excitement /attention. I deserve that. I believe that this will make me feel better, and I believe I can control it, and get what I want out of it."

The "denial" mechanism can't operate for long -- the values system is too powerful for that. But by the time the underlying values system kicks in, the two affair partners have usually got themselves in sufficiently deep for there to be painful drawbacks in pulling out, and significant benefits in staying in. Excitement and pleasure
oppose pain and discomfort.

For most people, an affair is a serious violation of their values system, so that sooner or later, the intense discomfort of values-betrayal is felt. This is heavy-duty pain, the kind that the
WS is keen to escape from, like appendicitis. So how do they escape that pain? See above. They could a) confess -- but of course it's not
something trivial they'd be confessing, so forget that, b) stuff the discomfort down, or c) alter the values system.

I suspect that most WS's begin by trying to stuff the pain. But it's too big -- like getting an elephant into a suitcase. So there is really only one way to go. The values system has to change. It seems likely that the WS moves rapidly away from such intense pain -- perhaps so quickly that its presence is not even noticed.

So the WS's position metamorphoses: 1) It's wrong to have an affair. 2) Friendship is not an affair.
3) Affairs are only wrong if they threaten the marriage. This is a friendship-with-sex and does not threaten the marriage. 4) The outside relationship "brightens" me, and is therefore good for the marriage. 5) Other people are inexperienced. They don't understand the power of a passionate friendship, and how enriching it is. 6) This affair is not wrong. In fact, I could not live without it.

The process is driven, I suspect, by a factor which none of the literature seems to comment on much -- the fact that TWO people are involved.

Both affair partners are having to alter their values systems to accommodate what they're doing. This feels uncomfortable, so they look to each other for confirmation that they're justified in acting as they are. Neither wants to believe that they're involved with someone whose values system is easily changed -- that would be weak - so they must each work hard to convince each other that they are good, that their values are altering only because they are "growing", becoming too complex and sophisticated / visceral /emotionally liberated for the old realities as personified by their spouses. They therefore reinforce each other, generating a self-perpetuating cycle that builds like a fire in heavy winds.

In addition, the same values-converging process that happened with the marital partners operates on the affair partners. Ironically, there is a strong need for security, perhaps to replace the
dwindling security that the marriage is likely to provide (if the affair is exposed). The affair partners therefore work to keep each other "in" the relationship by escalating involvement and increasing the other's personal investment.

The desperate need to believe in the security of the relationship, in its ability to support and nurture, in its essential goodness, leads to what looks from the outside to be reckless behaviour. There is a mutual denial of the dangers of STDs or pregnancy.

By this time, the WS's values systems are a LONG way from where they began.

Think back to what a values system is. It's a set of beliefs based on a life model -- the most realistic picture an individual can generate of how the world works. To support the altered values
system, there has to be an altered life model (the one that says, eg, affairs won't hurt my family).

The problem with the altered life model is that it's not realistic. It starts from a premise that's innately flawed -- that it is OK for
this individual to have this affair. The flaw distorts all logic.

Imagine that you postulated a theory that air would support your weight if there was enough of it under you, ie if you got high enough above the ground. Obviously, water supports large ships under a similar theory, so it's a reasonable conjecture. The theory would look OK as long as you didn't have to personally prove it. We can
see that skydivers don't appear to conform to the principle, but perhaps that's just because they don't get high enough?

Once you're working to this theory, it becomes obvious that planes are a rather naïve concept. All that going-fast when all they have to do is climb up to the level where they're supported by air molecules! The notion that satellites have to orbit at high speed is also clearly daft -- at that height the trouble would be getting them
down!

The affair partners are now operating far above safe oxygen levels. But to them, everything makes perfect sense. This is "fog".

The flawed model is a poor predictor. It fails as soon as it's put to a real-world test. In fact, it fails all the time. In truth, it fails so frequently that the affairees must exert colossal energy just to keep themselves in the suspension of disbelief. And the self-delusion may eventually be exposed by real-world reactions
that cannot easily be denied or ignored -- the anguish of children, the disappointment on a mother's face, the lash of a lawyer's letter.

So what's happening to the marriage, while all of this is going on?

To begin with, the WS moves between the two realities with a sense of excitement. It's an escape. But, as the two realities diverge,
there is increasing discomfort at the difficulty of bridging the two, of making the transition between them. To counter this, and because the affair is where the excitement is, a sense of anger, indignation and self-righteousness develops that the WS is "having" to lie and deceive. If only the BS's could be sophisticated enough to understand the benefits of the arrangement! If the BS's were not so selfish, they would be glad that the WS's are happy! It is
infuriating that the stupid, inflexible BS's would inevitably whinge and complain and wreck the perfect love of two people who were destined for each other¦

There is no counter-balancing argument from the BS, because the BS does not know what is going on. But the likelihood is that the spouse has an instinctive awareness that something is wrong, and is becoming defensive and confrontational. The marriage is becoming an uncomfortable environment.

So the WS has now manoeuvred themselves into a position where the only source of acceptance and pleasure is with the OP. The WS inevitably moves further away from the marriage.

The affair usually loses its flavour, as the affairees begin to know each other and recognise that the affair partner is far from an improvement on the marital partner, and that the effort involved is no longer justified by the benefits. But as the emotional bond weakens, the two affairees may perversely cling to each other even more tightly, though not always at the same time. There is probably a bond of friendship, hopelessly complicated by the sexual connection and conspiracy to betray.

By now they are in a position where exposure of the affair seems likely to end the two marriages anyway. The marriages are now so tarnished -- the WS's have moved so far away from the original values systems still supported by their spouses -- that the affair, for all its misery, is now a more likely candidate for the future than the
marriage. Both WS's are locked in a death-spiral -- each is terrified that the affair partner will leave the affair to recover the marriage, leaving one WS abandoned and hopeless. And at least one WS may be trapped by the terror of having to establish permanence with the affair partner, or be alone.

So what about the "fog"? The WS is moving between two realities; he or she is effectively two people. There is a "flickering" effect, like moving between perceptions in a magic-eye picture. Sometimes WS#2 flickers into life in Reality #1. If the bad reception makes it difficult for the BS to "see" the wayward spouse, the discontinuity makes it impossible for the WS to "see" the old reality clearly too.

WS convinces themselves that all is unchanged and well in the old life. They may even become angry if the BS is liberal with the old value system. It is necessary for the BS to be predictable via a
well-understood parcel of values, in order for the WS's deceit to work. There may also be a need, unacknowledged, for the BS to act as
keeper-of-the-flame, to vicariously hold to what the WS has lost, to be a solid platform to return to.

And then comes dday, and the clash of matter and anti-matter, as the two realities meet. For the first time, the WS is presented with penetrating questions about the logic of the affair's life-model.

For the first time, the illogicality of the affair's premise is exposed. The WS must defend the affair, or appear hilariously stupid. Defending the affair with dodgy logic has been the option for the life of the affair; the dodgy logic has been vigorously supported by the OP, so that the WS has had no practice in providing
a reasonable defence. Small wonder that the WS feels threatened and humiliated and hits back. Small wonder that the arguments are so feeble -- the same feeble arguments have been applauded as sage wisdom for so long, the WS is profoundly indignant at being challenged in any way. At this point, the WS provides us with all of those witty sayings that we howl at on the "dumb answer" threads.

At this point, the WS can head off in one of several directions. They might retreat permanently. They might reluctantly acknowledge
that some of the logic was flawed, and move slowly back into the old values system. They might recognise immediately the mistake they
have made, and set about with energy and determination to fix the mess they have created. Or they might settle for a fortress mentality and stubbornly defend what they've done, in unconscious fear that being wrong means being annihilated.

There seem to be lots of each WS type here on this board.

Has anyone reached this point without unconsciousness overtaking them?

TA

Yes... I made it to the end.

Very logical and great thesis-like expose' of "the fog." Should be required reading for any WS and BS, whenever each party is ready to comprehend what it says. Could be today for the BS's, could be years for the WS.

Now presenting logic to any of our WSs and expecting results..... that's humor.

Good Job,
Ethan

Thanks for the responses. Very helpful reading, I appreciate any advice/opinions I can get.

What's the scoop on doing a 180? It is being/doing the opposite of what you've been doing during your married life? My H says he can't stand that I sometimes act like nothing is wrong, I tell him I know everything is wrong in our world, but if he'd prefer, I could show my sadness, cry, etc, all of the time, but I prefer not to in front of him and our daughter. This is a place I would not wish anyone to be. Little does he know that he is making it a little easier for me to not be just quite so sad 24 hours a day. For that I am grateful, never thought I'd be saying that in a million years.

Thanks,

asap Always Say A Prayer
me - BS 46
WH - 38
M - 4 years
1 beautiful step-daughter(his from his 2nd marriage)
EA May '03 til Dec '03

AM-
are you BS or WS?
you describe both sides so perfectly.
I am WS-I denied and justified so many stupid incidences-that when I look back now I can see how ignorant all my explanations were. I was in the fog for about 7 months.
The moment I knew I was clear headed is when I decided I was better than all the sh** OM was inflicting on me. When his W found out-he turned everything on me-I had my own guilt, then he put his on me. He shared some many moments with me-then just like that he shut off from me emotionally & I was left to deal with on my own. I am blessed to be married to a great guy-he has loved me unconditionally because he knew I was not myself.
Even before I came to this web site few weeks ago, when asked how I was doing- I would say it is like the fog has lifted-things are clearer, and I can finally move forward without feeling emotionally threatened.
I am so grateful to be here sharing with all. I would like to talk to other WS & how they are getting through memory fogs that re-occur spontaneously. thanks-pal

Oh, it's not my post, so I can't take credit. It's from Way2's website.

ASAP:

The "spontaneously reoccurring fogs" (SRFs?) tend to become less frequent as you distance yourself from the A. The further you are away from it, the more you can see the "forest" rather than the "trees".

You begin to realize that you were in love with something that didn't exist...kind of like a kid being in love with Santa Claus.

In the more near term, whenever you have an SRF, focus on the pain inflicted upon yourself and your BS as well as the joy you have in your M now. You also have to start coming to terms with what YOU did.

OP was not responsible for your actions. You are. So, you need to be asking yourself "Why?" What did you do what you did? What needs were not being met in the M? Were the needs legitimate? How are you going to fix it?

JimmyMac, I'm the betrayed spouse, it was my husband who had the affair. I was just asking about the fog as I started reading things here and wasn't 100% sure what it meant. Also, that is why I was asking about the 180, although in my situation it seems to be a done deal, he's moving on, I was just wondering what 180's I could do that might, might bring some hope. Oh, well I'll get through it somehow.

Thanks,

asap (Always Say A Prayer)
me - BS 46
WH - 38
M - 4 years
1 beautiful step-daughter(his from his 2nd marriage)
PA May '03 til Dec '03

<small>[ April 14, 2004, 09:25 AM: Message edited by: asap ]</small>

asap

Everyone is different but it took me a long time to "come out of the 'fog'". Maybe if I hadn't kept so many secrets things would have cleared up faster. Depression has been very difficult to overcome. I am better now but it has taken much more work than I imagined. I am not finished yet. Others have given you a good definition of "the fog". I walked through it and didn't know I was there nor was I anxious to come out of it. For the WS it is a familiar place and at least for me I chose familiarity over the unknown. I know it is difficult to be patient and forgiving of the person you thought you trusted and now they need your compassion. It isn't fair... you both need to go to the repair shop. Only when you pull back the surface damage can you determine the true extent of the internal damage.
H

Hiker,
Thanks for your insight on this. I think we are at the end of our journey, just trying to understand a little more about the whole thing. H is just very angry with me all the time, won't put any effort into our M, and says he's had NC for a long time with OW. He told me last night to quit reading the books (Harley's etc) as it was no use. He is leaving and that's that. Initially he told me he'd stay for 6 months and give it a shot, but he has put zero effort in, and his mood is progressively worse with me every day. He just wants me to cut him a cheque for his 1/2 of the house and he'll move out. I wish it were different, but it is not looking good. It's a tough spot, and I hate it. He refuses to go to counselling, I've been, but was just hoping to get some insight/hope/advice from this site. I have no idea what I am supposed to be doing at this point. Dr. Harley does say however, that once they move out, it makes reconciliation that much tougher (out of sight, out of mind). I am trying to let go, wish my grip wasn't so tight.

Thanks for your response -

asap

asap
I am sorry to hear that. What is he so angry about? He's leaving but he isn't going to be with OW? Why dosen't he want to stay in the M?

It sounds as if all this is a moot point. If he has made up his mind to leave it dosen't seem to be much that you can do. I am sure there are those here that can help you with that. Have you sold the house? How can you give him a check for his 1/2 if it hasn't sold? Seems like there are somethings that you haven't explained. Second marriage for him and one step daughter for you. Why did his first marriage end? Sorry too many questions I guess... now I am trying to understand too.
H