</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">I mean that self-esteem issues are an explanation for how and why someone can suddenly feel strongly attracted to an OP. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Actually folks with low and high self-esteem feel strongly attracted to an OP all the time. The attraction is unavoidable; it is part of life. Attraction is not the issue.

PW, womanizer is an understatement. OMM gives womanizers a bad name. What is so unacceptable to me is S_ must have seen it but did not care. Did not want to think about it. Of all the arguments for low self-esteem this is the only one I can accept. He was such an obvious player only a woman who had no respect for herself could attach to someone like him. OTOH, perhaps a woman who had a huge and inflated self-esteem does not care either.

Don’t get your knickers in a knot over re-analyzing your H’s life. Bottom line is, WS did it. Remaining question is, will WS do it again? Perhaps the related $64K question is, how many eggshells does BS have to walk on for how long to keep WS in the safe zone? And is it worth it?

Stanley, drats, you’re making me think. I hate that. Gives me headaches. Some off the top of my head observations:

“It is possible to be a very high achiever and still have low self-esteem.”

Maybe. But maybe this could be restated as, “ It is possible to be anything and still have anything.”

“In essence good self–esteem means that the exterior matches the interior in all aspects. IN other words that is the definition of true integrity - the inner and the outer are the same.”

Um, ah, er … nah. I can’t accept this, yet. Self-esteem is a perception. A feeling. Neither right nor wrong. It just is. Not necessary for it to match reality since it does not mean anything externally. Rarely matches external perceptions for anyone, IMO. Nearest feeling would be admiration (an EN) by others and that is scored more objectively. This is a funny definition of integrity, to me. People can have really low self-esteem, be highly esteemed by others and still act with integrity. Happens all the time.

Look at me and you and most BSs here. Our self-esteem is in the toilet after DDay. But we are esteemed by others - for fighting the good fight at least. Inner and outer perceptions are not the same, yet we generally act with integrity (through the tears).

Maybe self-esteem is a vector. A quantity made up of several orthogonal elements. Some can be high and some low. If it is normalized it is a unit vector pointing just about anywhere. Maybe the same goes for susceptibility to an A. If this hypothetical vector points into the A region, a person is susceptible.

I don’t want to think any more today. I’ll think more tomorrow. With apologies to Scarlet O’Hara).

edited for typos.
T

<small>[ December 22, 2004, 10:10 PM: Message edited by: Thos ]</small>

THOS- I remember you used to post in my thread when I just joined MB. I am sorry you are still having problems with your wife, and still have so many questions about why the affair happened.

I should tell you that all my life I was seen as a person of a lot of integrity, with good self respect, everyone thought that I had very good self esteem. But......my inner self did not match what others saw. I was pretending to be this perfect woman, but I had very imperfect thoughts. I thought I was not worth 3 cents. I thought I did not have anything to offer to my husband.
Since my childhood,very young girl, I was not given any positive input from my parents or sibblings. They expected me to perfect, b ut yet they gave these very bad examples to follow ,to copy. And for a while, for a long time, I thought I could be a different person, that my inner self was telling me to be, but at the end, my "legacy" won. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Frown]" src="images/icons/frown.gif" />
Still today, my parents, my sisters,and my brother think that I am a person with no faults, a proud person that would never, in a million years do what I did. Why did I do it Thos?
I think I did it because my self-esteem, my self-respect was practically non-existant.!!! I did not have an affair because I thought I was entitled to it. No, I had an affair, because even though I knew right from wrong now, I was not taught what respect is. All around me, I just saw lies, deceit, lack of respect.
And I tried very hard to be different, but I guess I was weaker than I thought I was.

Lack of respect-lack of good self esteem go hand in hand with affairs and lies!

Myrta

<small>[ December 22, 2004, 10:40 PM: Message edited by: Myrta ]</small>

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">It's how much you value yourself and how important you think you are. It's how you see yourself and how you feel about your achievements. Self-esteem isn't bragging about how great you are. It's more like quietly knowing that you're worth a lot (priceless, in fact!). It's not about thinking you're perfect - because nobody is - but knowing that you're worthy of being loved and accepted.. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Thos:


Maybe I did not express myself very clear.

Regarding integrity:

It is possible to have integrity and be a person of poor character. For example a man makes 10 million dollars illegally and has no problem admitting to others the money was made illegally. This man is what he is --------- a thief. However, he has no discrepancy between his inner self and what he projects to be (the outer).

OTOH, another man made 10 million dollars illegally and now tries to pretend he earned the money legally. In this instance there is no integrity. The inner does not match what he puts up in his outer shell.

It is not a matter of perception by others------- this is all within the person. A person with integrity does not try to fool you by pretending to be something else. These folks probably have good self-esteem and if they find themselves attracted to another person they probably get a divorce and pursue the other relationship. It may be the wrong thing to do, but at least what you see is what you get.

Now, someone with low-self-esteem will often try to project a different image on the outer shell whereas the inner self may be completely different. This is the hallmark of a cheater and someone who is prone to have an affair.

If you read the above quote you will see that someone with good self-esteem does not exaggerate the inner self. If they did, then by definition they would have low self-esteem. Since the inner matches the outer they have integrity. Therefore, great self-esteem can be seen in both high and low achievers. And of course, low self-esteem can be seen in either group as well.

Another hallmark of good self-esteem is self-respect. Many of the statements your wife made suggest lack of self-respect. BTW, my wife also made some remarks during her affair that are classic examples of low self-resspect. And low self-respect and low self-esteeem go hand in hand.

Hi Myrta. It’s always nice to hear from you.

I do not know if I am having trouble with S_ or with myself. I seem to be stalled. I have assumed I have to understand the message of her A (from Torn Asunder) yet here we are, a year out from DDay2, and neither she nor I do. And all the while S_ is becoming more and more reticent about it all.

I do not ask her about clinical details any more. Have not for a long time. I no longer care which way he bent her. I have a stomach full of details. But I get nothing coherent when I ask about why, what it meant to her, what he meant to her, why it started so quickly (it took just 2 days to go to bed with him way back ten years ago) and so on. So where do I go from here?


“I thought I did not have anything to offer to my husband.”

This is ancient history to S_ but according to the best of her recollection, at the start of the A she felt she was offering me more than I was worth.


“No, I had an affair, because even though I knew right from wrong now, I was not thought what respect is. All around me, I just saw lies, deceit and lack of respect.”

Hey, I just remembered something I wanted to ask you weeks ago but forgot. Dang AD’s make me so forgetful. In a post some weeks ago you said you always enjoyed going to Mass with Stanley, even during your A. You were raised a catholic, like me, I presume. Did you receive communion during your A. Knowing the church’s teachings on the Eucharist and the Sacrament of Reconciliation, how were you able to do this over and over for years?

I ask this because S_ did the same thing and has no answer.


”Lack of respect, lack of good self-esteem go hand in hand with affairs and lies!”

Myrta, you continue to amaze me how well you cut to the chase. Lies! That is one of the missing ingredients in this discussion. What kind of self-esteem do practicing liars have? According to the SA article I refer to at the start of this thread, the liars they studied tended to have high self-esteem. When I lie about something it depends on what it is I am lying about as to whether it is to boost some part of my low self-esteem or because I feel so superior I don’t feel a need to deal with all the details of the truth. BTW, I NEVER LIE! (So, is it my low or my high self-esteem saying that?)

I do know that the more I lie the lower my self-esteem becomes because of the lies. But is it the other way around for some people?

T

THOS--No, I was not raised a catholic, we converted to catholicism, about 15 years ago.
But yes, during the affair, I did take comunnion, cleanse my soul, but I continue to do the bad thing. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Frown]" src="images/icons/frown.gif" /> . what a hypocrite I was!!!
But Thos, it made me feel clean and that God was not judging me. But what a contradiction !!

Practicing liars,dont have a Self Esteem! If it exists, is almost null. Thats why we can carry on being liars and cheats, is almost like I did not have a concience, when I was doing that.

I really dont know how can liars in that study be able to have high self esteem. It is not possible !!! If you are a liar, you are lying thru your teeth, how can you hold your head high and proud and have good self esteem???? <img border="0" title="" alt="[Roll Eyes]" src="images/icons/rolleyes.gif" />

It is nice to talk to you again Thos! YOu were always so sweet with me when I started to post here.

Take care

Myrta

Example--while I was having the Affair, my son and his wife were separated and she had an affair. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Roll Eyes]" src="images/icons/rolleyes.gif" /> . We were talking about it, my husband and I and my older girls, and I said, with so much conviction in my voice, "She is not worthy of him anymore, he should not take her back"! I believed this while I was saying it.
While I was the affair, I completely detached myself from reality. It was like I had two personalities. It was weird!!!!!

Stanley,

I think your comment about people with low self-esteem seeming to have a totally different impression of themselves than that which they project to the world or that which others have of them is a really good observation.

H and I have a friend who has a doctorate, is an ex-world champion in his sport, also a kind and thoughtful person, and still he directly and indirectly tells good friends that he is stupid and worth nothing. His low level of self-respect has led him to be taken advantage of or taken for granted by colleagues, family and others.

Its strange, but his low self-respect often lead him to 'sabotage' himself, and put himself in situations that reinforced his view. For example, he couldn't say no to work requests, then he was often overcommitted, and then he often couldn't complete his work on time. So colleagues would become frustrated with him... and this would reinforce his view that he was useless at his job.

Maybe this seems a little off-topic, but I think its true that some FWS had (have?) at heart an opinion of themselves as low and unworthy people, then, somehow, their behaviour seemed to reinforce this view of themselves.

Again this is not meant as any kind of justification!

<small>[ December 23, 2004, 03:41 AM: Message edited by: smur ]</small>

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial"> Maybe this seems a little off-topic, but I think its true that some FWS had (have?) at heart an opinion of themselves as low and unworthy people, then, somehow, their behaviour seemed to reinforce this view of themselves. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">It must be difficult to constantly deal with the discrepancy between what’s inside and what they try to project to the outer world. It is way easier when one does not have to fake it----------- Basically, what you see is what you get.

Yes, folks with low self-esteem have a hard time saying no. That is why young 13-14 year old girls get pregnant. They think that if they don’t sleep with the BF they will get dump. In fact, I believe my wife probably had a hard time saying NO to the OM who was likely a manipulator.

SO you are correct. When a person has to constantly pretend to be something else they must have a low opinion of themselves. John Lennon, probably a more famous philosopher than Joe Cool once said:

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">
I'm a Loser
Lennon/McCartney

I’m a loser, I’m a loser,
And I’m not what I appear to be.

Of all the love I have won or have lost,
There is one love I should never have crossed.
She was a girl in a million my friend,
I should have known she would win in the end.

I’m a loser, and I lost someone who’s near to me,
I’m a loser, and I’m not what I appear to be.

Although I laugh and I act like a clown,
Beneath this mask I am wearing a frown,
My tears are falling like rain from the sky,
Is it for her or myself that I cry.

I’m a loser, and I lost someone who’s near to me,
I’m a loser, and I’m not what I appear to be.

What I have done to deserve such a fate,
I realize I have left it too late.
And so it’s true pride comes before a fall,
I’m telling you so that you won’t lose all.

I’m a loser, and I lost someone who’s near to me,
I’m a loser, and I’m not what I appear to be.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">And-------- for reasons that are not clear to me these folks eventually sabotage themselves to make sure their low opinion of themselves becomes a reality. In a sense they probably try to seek balance between the inner and the outer shell. In other words---- if they feel like losers they might as well act like one.

Does that make sense?

<small>[ December 23, 2004, 08:32 AM: Message edited by: Stan-ley ]</small>