I have a topic here I would like to discuss. I have thought of this many times through my ordeal and ESPECIALLY when Lala posted on the "Foggy Mind of a Wayward".

When do you all think the fog rolls in??

Does it come once the Affair starts or maybe before? Maybe when the first flirtations start between WS and OP? Or maybe when the M has started the downward spiral???

You see, I have read many posts on the fog. I can see what people are saying (I don't doubt it at all....), but I think where I get stuck is when someone (including myself here...) posts something specific the Wayward has said, everyone starts calling it fog.

Well, for my sitch specifically, my WS was saying foggy things WAY before the A ever began, emotionally or physically.

So, that is where I am wondering when exactly does the fog begin???


Now, we can start a whole new discussion on when it ends, but I already know the answer to that one...and for some it may never end. My mom is a wayward and she just said the foggiest thing to me about a month ago.....and her last A ended 20 yrs ago....(too bad SAA wasn't around then....)


not2fun

not2fun

Ok....I see I have some lookers here but no takers.....


Surely someone has opinion on this....or at least some thoughts......

It's a very good question, but unfortunately it's a very hard question to answer. Everything since the middle of February is pretty much a blur for me. I know I'm just using hindsight, but if I could remember when WW started her fog, that would mean that I was mentally looking for it and noting it....I wasn't at that time...sure wish I was.

I think the fog CAN start rolling in the minute another person shows an interest. I think it can BARREL in if there is alcohol involved. It seems like it's at that point that the bad little angel starts whispering, "who's gonna know?", "you know you're not 'happy'"?, "just once to see what it's like"... blah, blah, blah.

In a marriage with healthy boundaries, extraordinary precautions, etc. in place, I don't think the fog can find a crack to seep in.

So, what does that say about MY marriage pre-affair? Yup.

In our case, it was pretty much when the intent was formed.
She had started emailing under the guise of friendship, then graduated to gaslighting on her part, Cause you all know I called her out on it. Then his fog & gaslighting started. Then the phone calls....more gaslighting, the more I couldn't do right. Not to take away from Bug's thread, but I do believe I was one of many BS's responsible for global warming back in '04.
Nothing I did was right, I was too fat, then losing too much weight, then too tall, then too short and then, wait for it...I was in "his Air" Puhleeze, the perfume he bought for me...alll of a sudden he was allegic to. Yep, it was a trip, Howevah...
Now I can do no wrong and am back up on the pedestal the mouthbreathing, knuckle dragging baboon OW knocked me off of!

Recovered 2 yrs and counting. GF

Well I for one was more than a little scared to respond for fear that someone would hit me over and over again thinking I'm talking fog babble. Here it goes (for me)...

After the fog clearing and looking back to see where I went so horribly wrong I found that it was few "small" misteps here and there with OM. It wasn't one day that I woke up and said, today's the day I'm going to try my darnest to destroy my husband. It was a slow and painful slide. The fog came in slowly and then became so thick that I could hear the fog horn but couldn't see the lighthouse.

I wasn't happy about the place my husband and I had come to be in our marriage and I was trying to make the best of the situation until he came home again. When I first started talking with OM, there was absolutely no thoughts of anything going more than talking as two grown adults. As I realized that I was talking more with the OM than with my husband I thought to myself, I'm helping us (my husband and I out) because Husband hates when I'm asking for more conversation. OM is giving me conversation without me having to deal with my GF berate my husband for being gone.

(Can you see the crazy beginning? The fog coming in.)

When the talks turned more intimate, more than I shared with GF's or husband (not considering the quantity of time talking) I thought to myself, well this going to really help Husband and I out. I'm getting all this male perspective...

(Yes, full blown crazy now.)

I think that the fog is called fog because it rolls in, slowly and then becomes thicker. Then when it starts to lift you start to see more clearly but like real fog, there are patches that are pretty dense again.

When I look back fog is definately the best word to describe it. When I found MB and heard that term (the fog had cleared before I found MB) it really struck me as perfect. The term addiction feels accurate too. I recall at one point listening to a song called "Addicted" and the person saying they needed just one more hit - I related that to OM - and this was when I was still in the fog.

Does this provide any useful thought or just makes things a little foggier?

That is so right! Small comments are made to you from the OP and as you reflect on the conversation, you start building doubts about your spouse.

EG: OP: What are you doing?

FWH: My Laundry.

OP: Im' surprised GF didn't do that for you on her last visit.`

FWH: Oh, I just wanted to take her around to a few places, didn't want her to work while she was here.

OP Sounds like she's taking you for granted to me, but it's not my call.

They had these conversations over and over til my FWH actually thought I was taking him for granted.

The shame of it was that i wasn't even there to "not take him for granted" as he was away on a work assignment.

Yep, it comes on in little increments and then snowballs.

GF.

With every good boundary that gets moved or dropped, with every fantasy that gets entertained instead of dismissed, with every white lie that gets told to keep you away, with every secret held away from you cause you are just SO JEALOUS, with every justification as to why I am so entitled to be happy, with every thought that no one will know, with every thought of why can't I have both..........


The fog rolls in like a disease. And the cure is Radical Honesty, forever!!!!

All blessings,
Jerry

The fog rolled in for me as soon as the OM contacted me after we had met up again (after 30 years)at a mutual friend's funeral. I had intended seeing the OM, catching up on our families, talking a bit about old times and then carrying on with life and never seeing each other again. That was my only intention. My H knew I would be seeing the OM at the funeral, he wasn't thrilled about it, but he thought he could trust me. I thought I could be trusted too.

The fog began the minute the OM emailed me after the funeral and I didn't tell my H I'd heard from him. From then on, every contact was secret from my H.

It lifted partially after d-day. It lifted completely about 8 months later.

The fog, for me, was rewriting our marital history, investing the OM with qualities he didn't have, seeing faults in my H that he didnt have and being totally addicted to the A and the OM, to the point where I didn't care if I lost my H and my (adult) kids. It affected my job (I nearly lost my job by being totally consumed with the A - I wasn't working properly, I was taking long lunch hours and leaving work unfinished or sloppily done if the OM called and asked to meet after work.

Ooh, Ooh, that too Kiwi,plus my H took up drinking on regular basis,
(not sayin' you did) but he was getting in trouble at work,due to being on the phone so much...stupid me...I didn't pick up on it, I thought it was work people. The other thing he did was cut off contact with his family, and quit doing repairs on our house.I thought he was in a MLC. He lost weight, got a trainer, got a sports car (that I'm sure she was too fat to get into), got spiffy new clothes without me dragging him to the store. He started going out with the boys, had never done that a day in his life. And I do know that is true since SHE lived abt 400 miles away.

Oh, and he said things to me, that to this day he claims he can't remember...such as I did this cause you were a bad mother, You never listened to me..total history rewrite. As I remember it, that's why we got our first video camera..so he could see all of the kid's events he was missing due to work.T

The worst...he took up listening to Celine Dionne.... He's a hard rocker from back in the day..surreal!! He was a complete alien!! Good news, the MLC sports car got sold 2 yrs back.YeeHaw!
Now he has an occasional beer and we sit around reflecting on the accomplishments of our kids...He really came back to me.

And by the way, his was a 35 yr old "reignition" GF

Oh, the drinking. Yes, I was drunk most nights by 8.00pm and then I'd crawl into bed.

I wasn't sure if that counted as fog so I didn't add it. It was guilt that made me drink.

In my husband's case, the fog started rolling in when the other woman began flirting with him. He thought about other women, sure, before that. He looked at porn, but when she arrived on the scene and offered to look at porn with him and criticized me for being so prude as to not serve that need of his with him, well the fog rushed in so fast the radar couldn't even pick it up!

It was all over then. He was on the fast track and not looking back - he wouldn't have been able to see anyway, because there was nothing but fog anyway.

Ooh, Ooh, that too, I saw his TV bill when I was visiting and there were all of those PPV XXMovies on it, Now that was a first..though he didn't deny it....Gals, someone needs to compile the information into a "Fog" thead. You know so that folks like Booger, excuse me, Boogey can see the signs, before they drift off into their own Fog that lies above the old river "Denial"

Do ya'll think he's into the bargaining phase of grief right now? I do. GF

You be too funny GF... lol

I don't know when it started, before or after the EA and then the PA. I see lots of comments above that are common to our M.

My husband descibes the A and the fog as being lost. His description is that he felt like he was in a wooded area with many paths to chose and he wanted to go home, but he did not know where home was. And there was this OW attracting him, calling him away and he didn't want to go there, but he did anyway. He felt as though if he called out that no one would hear him. So he tried to stay in one place until he was found. He looked so bad a couple of months before I found out, that I thought he was physically ill and I remmember thinking how old he looked all of a sudden.

The first time I asked, he denied the A and they had one more sexual encounter (well, that is what I think anyway), but once I had proof a few days later, he readily admitted the A and agreed to MC. Lots of fog since then, lots of contact at work, lots of lying and trying to re-write facts or blame things on me. I call him on it every time. He does not like to hear that he has been a liar and a cheat. But it is truth.

AM

These are all good answers.

Now for me in my sitch, WS was saying he wasn't happy for a long time before A began. Now, that may not have been fog, but maybe a RED FLAG that I didn't know what to do about (I say that because I knew this, but didn't know what to do to change it. The stuff I DID try to change would go unnoticed or wasn't good enough followed by my EN'S not getting met, so I figured "why bother??"....).

But the fog itself, well, I am not sure when it really came into play.....I do know that for me I didn't really pick up on it until Dday......

not2fun

I know this is not going to be popular on this site but what you are asking in my opinion is the wrong question. The question should be why does abusive behavior get excused by calling it "FOG".

You may as well be asking about Santa and the Easter Bunny. I am of the opinion it is not fog at all but free will. God gave us all free will and the fog is just trying to rationalize another persons behavior or your own behavior.

I think it is a way to try and explain away abuse. After all can it be called abuse if it "Fog". The simple fact of the matter at some point the WS may stop abusing their spouse and all of a sudden they are out of the so called "Fog".

I know it is popular to say well they are in the Fog so that is why they have abusive behavior. But really it is just a human choice by the WS to treat their spouse like they do.

But if we call it "FOG" then again they are not really responsible and there is nothing they can do about it.

My XW wanted to have great sex outside of marriage. She did this even knowing that I would divorce her if she ever slept with another man. "FOG" had nothing to do with it since it was a calculated choice she made when she heard about the OM skills in the sack from one of her friends.

I have to accept she met a better man than me. A guy that was better in bed and could maybe do things for her that I could not. I had to accept that as difficult as it is for a man. She made a choice that he was more important to her than me and our children. Her financial security was not as important as having a porn star in bed with her. FOG, no her free will. I guess I could have called it FOG but I would be living a lie. Again, I mean no disrespect to anyone else since most of this post is about my failings.

No one excuses "Fog". I've never seen it excused yet on MB. It is a name for the irrational, out of character behaviour that MOST WS's engage in. Your XW is a case in point - I wouldn't describe what she did as "fog" either.

The whole premise of this site is that most A's occur after a "slippery slope" period and not from calculated choice. Of course it's a choice but to an FWS, it's only in hindsight that it is accepted as a choice and it is THAT twisted thinking that describes the fog. Not the behaviour itself.

Sorry but I see it excused all of the time. Post after post of usually men told to ignore her abuse because she is in the FOG.

It is excused all of the time here. And I really don't find my XW attitude any different from other WS. It really does not matter how the affair starts but it is the treatment when they are found out.

And again you are making free will out to be something else in my opinion. Many BS are told not to listen to the FOG and to excuse the behavior so they can fogive the WS if they ever decide to treat the BS with respect.

I guess people can argue about this all day since it is semantics. The only real word for it is Abuse.

Yes, we could argue it all day. I should put a disclaimer here. I am an FWW, but it really doesn't make that much difference to my basic point.

The point is that this website gives a clear and defined plan which works. BS's are not told to "ignore" the fog, they are told to work on Plan A.

My H and I are a very definite MB success story. My H instinctively used a Plan A on me. He wasn't a doormat, quite the opposite, he made his anger and hurt very clear to me. FWIW I treated my H with respect as soon as D-day occurred. I didn't set out to do or say hurtful things. The A had been over 6 months when he found out. But my thinking was still very screwed up. I was defensive, I put a lot of blame on my H, I justified things - in other words I acted just like a "foggy" wayward.

When the "fog" (for want of a better word) lifts, the scales fall from your eyes - you see reality. That's why "fog" describes it so well. It is truly like a heavy mist lifting.