Looking back I think I should have been much more proactive in protecting my W from an A. I should have scrupulously fulfilled her ENs but also think I should not have trusted her so much and made it plain that I was paying attention.

BS husbands - do you agree?

Wayward Ws - isn't there some kind of feeling somewhere in some primitive part of your brain saying he should/could have prevented this by being more aggressive or vigilant in protecting our M?

I'm thinking that this functions on a level below the rational/moral thought process. [And it doesn't excuse anyone]. Just opening a dialogue here and wondering if it has any traction.

Any comments?

Blade,

Soon after our Dday, once when we were talking it through, W said "a spouse should never unconditionally trust their H/W, but should always be on the look out."

She had been carrying on a 3 year A and I never had A CLUE!! Until I stumbled upon some emails from OM, she did not delete from her account.

So for 3 years of unconditional trust, noticing small things, but not paying attention to them.

SO YES, LET HER KNOW YOU ARE PAYING ATTENTION!! That kind of says it all.

Good post.

kirk

krusht - your term "unconditional trust" is exactly where I was. I knew she was mad at me sometimes, but I thought that she would tell me if there was a serious problem - you know, make it really clear because she is an outspoken confident woman. Never did I believe that she would have an A. [I couldn't prove the A in a courtroom, but I know it happened.] This has taken the shine out of life and my faith in the basic goodness of my fellow man has taken a heavy blow.

I think any person needs to know that they are needed and wanted and desired. Life gets in the way. Your mission is to not let life get in the way. To put a little effort in, to work on your marriage, as they say. Both sides should.

Sometimes life isn't fair and it turns out only one will do the work. But that one still has to, or risk losing the marriage.

I got so despondent over what I wasn't getting from H so long ago that if situations had been different, I would have been ripe for an affair. Yet at the same time, he gave in a lot of other ways, such as physical touch or putting up with me gaining weight and not complaining. So it's really an ever-changing game, isn't it?

I really think that both people in a marriage need to stop and smell the roses. For a healthy marriage, we should always build in times for reflection, assessment, and time for change of plan. Just make it as important as checking your budget. Reassess your marriage every 5 years and see what you need to change to ensure its success.

Well, yes, you should have been fulfilling her ENs (and she yours), but if that was happening effectively, none of us would be here!

As for trusting her... there's a fine line, IMO. There's trusting her as your life-mate, to fulfill the vows you took, while she's trusting you to meet her ENs. (I'm just talking out of rear here, so if it doesn't quite make sense - sorry). Then there's trusting her when all the signs point to the fact that you should not be anymore. After our first D-day, everything seemed really good, and I was making every effort to keep her and make her happy (pratically Plan A-ing her, though I didn't know the term at the time). But the A continued. I kept finding evidence, and even gave her opportunities to admit it, but she lied to my face and told me everything was fine, and I chose to trust her. Finally, after incontrovertible evidence appeared and she lied about that too - she finally admitted it to me and jumped right into fixing it, and has been gung-ho about fixing practically ever since (we've had some ups and downs, but who doesn't?). She knows I don't trust her anymore. I've got programs on the computers and access to the cell-phone bill and can keep track of everything she does on-line.


I don't know about a primal feeling of protecting against an A. I think on my part, at least, it was more a primal feeling of protecting my own feelings. I could see her becoming more distant and, the first time, she wasn't very good about hiding what she was doing. It hurt, and I wanted to protect myself.

After D-day 2, we both started studying HNHN, SAA, etc and working on "us" instead of individually.

Hm. This is an extremely interesting point. It's easy to follow this line of thinking straight to justifying the A. In fact, it's a very short leap, so I want to stress that as the FWW, I'm not justifying ANYTHING. I'm a big girl and made my own (rotten) decisions.

However, H and I have both acknowleged that the A came about partly because I was in a position to be vulnerable to it. I don't remember how much I've said here before, but the Cliff Notes version is, I was lonely, and tired, and felt very alone and unable to carry the burdens in our M that I thought I had. H and I had drifted apart and weren't communicating. OM swooped in looking like a knight in shining armor, giving me everything I was starved for. ofc, I realize now what a pitiful sham it was, but at the time...well, when you're starving, half of a stale cracker, maybe with some dirt on it from being dropped on the ground, tastes pretty darn good.

That's part one. Part two, which my husband mentioned, came after D-Day number one. He was pretty much Plan-A-ing me, as he said. But according to his emotional needs. You know how that works - you tend to try to fill the ENs of your spouse, according to what yours are. In our case, he touched, kissed, cuddled and hugged like mad. Called constantly when we were apart. Mailed romantic cards to the house, and to my workplace. Sent flowers. Brought home a gigantic ballon that said "I love you." Showered me with attention.

If you've read my posts very much, you can imagine what my reaction to all this was. I felt completely smothered because some of his ENs are in direct conflict with mine. I need a little space sometimes. I'm not very touchy feely and after a while I need to withdraw a bit. Not even leave the room, even sitting on opposite ends of the sofa reading is enough to let me breathe a bit. So he'd shower me with all this stuff, I'd retreat. He'd sense my withdrawal and redouble his efforts. and on and on. After five weeks of this, I was back with OM.

My point here, is there was a giant lack of communication on both of our parts. Being aggressive and vigilant in protecting our marriage would have resulted in my never getting to the point where I had the opportunity to cheat. I would never have taken a second look at the stale cracker, because of the feast in my own home, if I can continue the goofy metaphor.

The responsibility of communication falls equally on the shoulders of both. I take full responsibility for the A. Like I said, I'm a big girl and made my decisions. But H and I are both responsible for letting our marriage and ourselves drift apart until the opportunity presented itself.

a Watched pot never boils. . .

Factoid: As males, both of us know that males are idiots. If a woman smiles at some guys, those same guys immediately think said female wants to have their baby.

Factoid: Swedish shrink study; females flirt with other men to keep their mates close. And the threat has to be credible to be real and effective.

Factoid: "PMS equals out of control behavior" as an example of entitlement, ha ha (I'm not laughing).

Factoid: Some or most women yearn for Harlequin style infatuation.

Put just those four factoids into a pot and then wander off into the weeds as a formula for growing a pair of horns.

Larry

Before we get into this, please realize that having the A was the decision of the WS, and therefore the WS is responsibile for the A, not the BS.

Having said that:

Had the problems in the M been fixed prior to the A, then the A would not have happened. The problems that lead to the A seem to be centered about the WS's inability to communicate his/her needs to the BSs.

The dynamic is often that the WS is not very assertive due to insecurity and lack of self-confidence, while the BS is a "shape it up, get straight, go forward" kind of person. Often, BSs tend to need a whack over the head with a 2x4 to notice that the WS isn't happy.

The BS often says something like, "We had a perfect M before the A." Even after you point out to them that obviously the M wasn't perfect and that the WS apparently was not very happy in the M, they will still say that the M was perfect. It is almost like the BS is thinking, "Hey, I'm happy. WS must be happy, too."

Anyway, it is pretty clear that both the BS and the WS have to work together after the A to build a better M, and both have to change. Whatever the M was before the A wasn't working, and going back to the way it was before the A will simply result in more unhappiness.

Larry: one more factoid: Many are lazy about romance, and married men are lazier than single men.


JM

Thanks for the posts everyone. This is a helpful conversation to me. I was one of those guys with the "go forward" lets fix it approach. I was totally unfamiliar with "relationship speak" - the son of an engineer and trained in philosophy, history and law. Not really good at interpreting indirect clues and - well body language, forget about it!

Anyway, she actually told me she wasn't happy. I basically told her to get it together that we had two kids to raise and that we would get our external issues solved. That's just it - I thought our problems were external, i.e. the strain of raising kids and running businesses and managing cash flow and occasional money issues. I mean external as in "us against the world."

I didn't even realize that there were any real problems between us. In fact, I used to tell myself when things were not going perfectly in the external world "Well at least I have two great kids and a wife who loves me." Not so fast, buddy.

OK, so I hijacked my own thread....

Back on topic - the book Emotional Intelligence talks about a human emotional life that operates in the old brain (the lizard brain) that is not connected to the rational "new" cerebral cortex. It does not process logic or morality. I think now that we live in this primal, animal world much more than I realized during my "Mr. Nice Guy, Trusting H" period (from marriage til about a year ago and now gone forever).

In the jungle, you keep your wits about you and don't get complacent or something will have you for dinner. In our society, you have to lock up everything that belongs to you so somebody doesn't take it. In M you better pay very close attention to your W or you may pay an unexpectedly painful price for your inability to see the real world for what it is.

that's not really true. There are MANY WS that have all of their needs met at home and yet they still stray in order to get some "strange" sex.

"strange sex" ?? HAHAHAHA

now, if a married couple is adventurous enough and use their imaginations there should be no need for outside strange sex. make your own!

**chuckling**

mlhb

so, how far are we apart?

LOL you flirt!

mlhb

Many affairs have nothing to do with unmet needs. For example, in my current marriage we had only been married for 4 months. My H and our MB counselor both agreed his affair had absolutely nothing to do with unmet needs. There are many others here in the same boat.

But, regardless of unmet needs, there is NEVER an excuse for an affair. NEVER.

i think a couple should never be too naive to think it couldn't happen to them. a marriage should be a completely open book, no secrets, nothing. completely open communication on all things. no turning to friends of the opposite sex for someone to talk to.

hopefully we have all learned here how a relationship should be. and how we were all probably wayyy too trusting of our spouses.

mlhb

I totally agree with this and is true in my case as well (except not the counselor because we are not in counseling but my H says he did not have any unmet needs).

I agree, but I have a question. Not to TJ this topic too far, but how did you help fix a problem that you weren't part of to begin with? What I mean is this: if there were no EN for you to work on filling, but your husband (pardon the bluntness) went looking for "strange", how do you reconcile that? Your story, I would think is rare. IRL, the couples I've known in that situation never recovered, because there was no reason that the adulterer might not go looking again when the moood hit, KWIM?
For instance, if my husband cheated on me, and I found out it he was unhappy with my nagging, or housekeeping, or lack of libido, although I would know those weren't excuses to cheat, I would at least have the options of working on improving. If on the other hand he was satisfied with everything about me, but yet still cheated, that would scare me and make me feel very helpless.

This is very interesting to me. Should I begin a new topic?

I can not speak for Melody because she is recovered in her M, but for me i have the EXACT question every day since the A. I do not feel i can recover from it and am currently not really trying to.

Well, I didn't want to reconcile that so I kicked the bum out. I had made a terrible mistake in marrying this man. He was, in fact, a man of low character who had defrauded me into marrying him. When I discovered this, I wanted a divorce. I told him to get out.

He asked for a chance to redeem himself and said he would "go to counseling." I figured I would go a couple of times so I could say "I tried" before I kicked the bum to the curb.

The MC we chose was at the Baptist Church and he believed in Marriage Builders. To make a long story short, at the 2nd session, the MC asked my H if he was saved. My H said "of course, I am a nice guy, blah, blah, blah..." or something like that. My H did become saved that day.

He is not the same man today. He said when he said the sinners prayer with our MC that he felt "a dark cloud lift off my shoulders." My H will tell you that he used to be a BAD MAN, very dark inside. But he is not the same man today.

If my H had not made remarkable changes in his character and his behavior, I would not have had any use for him. But people can change IF THEY WANT TO. He wanted to change bad enough and is not the same man today.

I am not with my husband because I had HOPE that he would change. I am only with him because he DEMONSTRATED a dramatic change. Hope and empty TALK would not have been enough for me.

Mine is a RARE, RARE case. Most folks with character problems do not choose to change.

edited to add: when the adultery stems from a character problem then the only solution is for that person to change. And that person has to WANT to change. No one else can make him change against his will.

God has been very, very good to me.