On my other thread, intexas came up with a statistic she thought she'd read somewhere here. The line of thought was that "good" marriages recover from affairs better. In marriages where affair-behavior was an abberation, recovery was more possible.

Conversely, in a marriage where a spouse has often or always been secretive, independent, entitled, or less giving, recovery is less likely.

Affairs happen for many reasons: lack of meeting of EN, entitlement, opportunity, exit. Every BS is taken by surprise. Is it possible to have a great recovery even if the marriage before hand perhaps sucked? Is it always going to be a lot of work? How does one get the CS to buy into recovery?

Any thoughts on this?

My situation fits with that statistic..

Our marriage was mostly good prior to the A.

Even more importantly, my H's AFFAIR BEHAVIOR was way out of character for him...

HE IS WONDERFUL AGAIN but not as "goody-goody" as he was before..more AUTHENTIC now...

Interesting...

However, Grape, ALWAYS (secretive, entitled, etc.) seems to be an extreme description of your H. So how come you married him then?

I've wondered that myself. We met and married young. My marriage role models (my parents) were for a husband who liked to control things and for a wife that put up with all of his crap. My CH is much like his mother. His family model was for a workaholic dad and a mom who is the world's oldest dad's girl. She believes she deserves everything and FIL gives her whatever she wants. I believe that is how that marriage has survived. I suspect there's more water under the bridge than they want us to see.

All of our parents were raised on farms during the depression. God-fearing, salt-of-the-earth people. Men provided and women saw to the house. They aren't people with big dreams or expectations. You get by and you survive. You work hard and do your duty. You don't expect to always be happy.

I was raised to be a truthful person. It took me years to realize that people would actually lie to me. Unfortunately, part of that discovery was my H lied to me. We'd been married for a while before I discovered that many things he said were not be to trusted. No, he didn't write the song "Single Pigeon" nor did he play on his high school football team. He spent many Saturday nights 'playing tennis' with his friend. Was he really? He didn't like to spend holidays with any of our families. He could never spare the time to take our children to visit his grandmother. As an experienced MB-er, I see red flags. At the time, I was just in the trenches. I guess I thought I was seeing to my husband's needs.

After we'd been married about 6 years, we went through a really rocky patch. H did a complete and very effective Plan A on me. Flowers, notes, sweet things. I would have left the marriage if he hadn't done that. So, I know that the capability is there.

Perhaps our drift became continental. CH certainly didn't move in the same direction as the rest of us. Sometimes, I think about Pride and Prejudice and Charlotte's words about her marriage to Mr. Collins. I have loved the life that I have had. If CH was on the edges of it, I tried to bring him in, include him and make him part of the family. We avoided conflict and our life seemed to be fairly decent.

I suppose that's not enough.

I'm not hearing PASSION in any of this description of your marriage.

My and H I have maintained our PASSION for each other..now it's mostly displayed POSITIVELY..

However, during many phases, including the INFIDELITY phase, it was mainly displayed NEGATIVELY....

We raise each others' temperatures...

Where's the PASSION, GG??

Mimi - many marriages are comfortable, not passionate. We can't all be swinging from the chandaliers.

Sorry grape, disagree with you on this one.

As happen for ONE reason: CS (as you so aptly put it) means of dealing with the underlying issue. It is always based on a form of character flaw--how could it really be otherwise?

Whether a CS--can become a FCS--depends on whether the person can deal with their own character flaw.

This is obviously a necessary element to a true recovery.

Of course it makes sense that a good M would more easily recover--since they have less issues to deal with outside of the A destruction!

Hmmm...what do you think I mean by PASSION...

I'm not talking about SWINGING FROM THE CHANDELIERS...

I'm talking about EMOTIONAL PASSION.. EMOTIONAL CONNECTION..which I find to be COMFORTABLE...

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I think that it can be both, to one degree or another. Case in point, my last marriage ended in divorce because of my H"s affair. For 20 years, I refused to meet any of his needs, treated him disrespectfully, and tore him down. His top needs were SF and companionship. I refused to do anything with him and only gave him sex when the nagging became too intense. And then it was "are you done yet??" I turned him into a starving man so the first time he came to an all-you-can-eat buffet, he was GONE. I might as well as driven him to the OW's house!

I have no doubt, whatsoever, that my shabby treatment made him vulnerable to an affair. Did he have a character flaw? Probably. But the overriding factor was starvation for need fulfillment.

Enter my next marriage [the one that got me here]. I had only been married 4 months when I found out he was having an affair. I met his needs perfectly and our counselor, who used only Marriage Builders principles, agreed that I had. Unmet needs had nothing to do with my H' affair. It was purely a character flaw. He was a scumbag.

I think that every case is different and Harley recognizes this. There is no one reason for an affair but every factor should be examined.

Mimi, some people are not going to know what you mean because they have never experienced this. I did not experience this until my current marriage. But if you had said this to me 6 yrs ago, I could not have related at all.

That being said, we didn't have that passion in our marriage until I found MB. We do have an extremely passionate marriage now!

Again, it is still the way he dealt with the underlying problem. Why didnt he leave? Why didnt he ask for counseling?

Thats all I was trying to point out.

But that is a seperate argument entirely. It doesn't erase the fact that the terrible conditions in the marriage made him vulnerable to an affair. And actually he did leave and he did go to counseling to try and wake me up. Nothing worked.

I am not trying to excuse his affair, there is no excuse, just making the point that certain conditions DO make folks vulnerable to an affair.

I agree on the conditions making someone vulnerable....but there is still something personal to the WS (and that is what I meant by character-related) that exists and should be dealt with ASIDE from the issues in the M.

.....I guess when people talk about character flaw on these boards they are referring to those WS that have an internal-eternal conditioned vulnerability to using an A to fix something missing in themselves....a perpetual narccist. Not just someone really down in the dumps on the M scale.

Grapes post struck a chord with me because so often I see a tendancy for the BS to look to the missing needs in the M as the cause and completing the needs as the solution to adultery.

Maybe its just me, but it seems that recovery requires a serious WS self-questioning revelation where the WS takes a deep and dirty look at why they choose the A method to cure whatever the ill was....not just why they were unhappy and "vulnerable"....

I agree. A WS and most Xws' are not capable of that deep kind of soul searching. It is necessary but not a step most take but should.

Good MC can help the Xws face that reality. Knowing the cause is over a 50% step towards the cure.

Good post.

L.

Absolutely. There has to be an admission that it was a character flaw that enabled them to get into the affair in the first place, regardless of the condition of the marriage. And then there are some affairs that have absolutely nothing to do with the condition of the marriage.

You are so right Mimi. I've thought about your question for the past day. It haunts me. Where is the passion? I don't know where it went. I think my love bank got so empty that there was nothing left. CH is good at sucking it in but not so good with giving back.