These thoughts were prompted by the earlier thread "The difference between fog, infatuation, and being in love". This thread is purely about fog though.

OK, Fog isn't a real word. (re A's) It would seem that the English language doesn't have its own word for the fog state that we refer to. Bearing in mind that I was a cult member for 10 yrs and the word fog is also used for the condition of my mind, that held me captive to a cult, for 10 yrs. (brain dead, is another word excult members use <img border="0" title="" alt="[Big Grin]" src="images/icons/grin.gif" /> ).

After I "woke up" from the cult MIND SET, I often compared the getting sucked in to a cult with falling in love. "Love is blind" etc. So what is the fog really? Is it a highly altered state of mind? Or is it an addiction? Is the A fog a self induced hypnosis? People can slip into an altered mind state for many different reasons - and the A seems to be a classic. (another example of fog is the 18 yo who joined the older guy in the shooting spree across the US a year or so back - yet another is Patti Hurst joining her abductors in their cause).

I recently pursued a revenge A. It was more than that a revenge A though, because I was very attracted to the guy. I over came the situation, partly because I was so knowledgable about what was happening to me - but I did feel a VERY strong pull to the OM. At one point, after I talked with him on the phone to say I couldn't meet him, I felt like a caged animal for about 3 hours afterwards. I was quite agitated, but I knew it would pass if I waited it out and it did.

I knew without any shadow of a doubt that I felt no love for this man. In writing this down I can identify that the OP has control over you. If you don't fight it, the control continues until circumstances unburden you of the control or you acquiesce to it completely.

Another way fog is described is 'being under a spell' My H had tried to end his A, as it had slowly became apparent to him that it wasn't such a great idea after all. He said, "the spell had broken", and "she no longer had power me" - and he set about trying to extricate himself. But d-day caught up with him.

Is fog a trance? Natives of third world countries commonly work themselves into a trance - so what is a trance? Is a tance the same as hypnosis, and or spells? Are we talking psychological mind sets that we know very little about in the western world?

I think much more research needs to be done to identify the fog like state - so as to give the BS's in plan A, even more to work with.

Another point that needs to be raised here. Has any one ever considered abducting their WS and subjecting them to an intensified period of deprogramming? (it has worked in getting people out of cults) My H, who was a cult member with me, told me that, d-day being a 2 x 4 wack in the head experience, was the same as waking up from the cult 20 yrs earlier. He said, he could see it all very clearly for the first time. Though he did come out with some pretty weird justifications for a few weeks afterwards (fog talk).

If we can understand how the trance like state works, surely there is more chance of helping the WS deprogram from it?

an

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

Dear TA, I read your long post slowly and carefully, re-reading some of it several times. My H's A wasn't a love A, even so, much of the process you outlined applied to him.

My H's fog talk was: I just wanted to have some fun. Later: it was like an adventure. Then: It was exciting. Also. It was just something I was going to do when you weren't around. Another: I felt sorry for her. (oh right, bring out the big heart when all else fails!)

Talk about not having tested the logic with anyone but the OP huh? After 30 yrs of M, I could hardly believe he was saying this stuff to me.

Yours will be the first post from MB's that I will print out. Thank you very much for taking the time to respond.

I enjoy reading your opinion TA...good one.

But this is where I don't understand - right at the very beginning, WHY DIDN"T THEY THINK??

WH said OW kissed him and he just didn't think but followed her to her room. Fine. The second night she knocked on his door and what - his PhD grade brains failed AGAIN?? BULL****. OW didn't drag him by the hair through the door - the fact is he DECIDED to have an affair and he did it consciously and clear-mindedly. All the ****ty excuses they give themselves to justify carrying on are just satisfying their selfish wants. It's doing what they *want* instead of what they *should* or how their spouses will feel.

WH admitted that he never thought of the consequences because he never thought I would find out. He was happily making plans and fantasizing about playing good husband/father because the time abroad with OW was "just a dream, an unreal world" and a new life is waiting for him back home. He thinks that a plane-ride is akin to reincarnation and would cleanse him of the affair. And it just might have, except he couldn't bear to delete the flattering, love-struck emails OW kept sending him because they were *rather flattering* and he couldn't stop playing Romeo in his replies because he *felt bad* about lying to her.

oh yeah? what about lying to moi??

krystall, I can't fault anything you said. But reading TA's long post will surely help you understand more. I think ALL of the same stuff that you thought. I found photo's of my H's A in the sent messages of the email - so he couldn't even think to delete the photo's he sent to his work?

He could have thought, but if he'd done that, he wouldn't have been able to have the OW and he wanted that more than thinking. Same for my H. This is something we either accept or divorce for. My heart aches for your hurt. My heart knows your hurt very well. Hang in there huh?

anyname