Mf, on the cocaine deal, suffice to say I'll take the fifth. My best friend from my youth is a thoracic and vascular surgeon. I often tell him that he will never get me on the table as he is susceptible to flashbacks(man, check out the trails).
In any case, I do have some familiarity with addiction and I have been in love. The two things are nothing alike ,IMO.

Ahhh...but an A is not being "in love". Ask any FWS who has completely defogged.

My FWH says it was not love...it was an addiction. He did not love the OW any more than an alcoholic "loves" alcohol or a crack addict "loves" crack. He even knew this at the time...but the "fog" prevented him from being able to look at the whole picture and see how his "crack" was making him act.

It was just an example and you aren't the only one to take the fifth on something like this, so no need to explain.

Many people want to have a happy marriage...and a happy affair.


TA

I have to admit, I have trouble with the idea that the woman I was for most of my adult life except during the affair and the woman I am now somehow constitutes fakeness and that the only time I have been my true self was during my A. I understand why that idea might be somewhat comforting, but it simply isn't the case; I know, God knows, and my husband knows.

As far as the fog goes, there is a song by Casting Crowns called "Slow Fade" that seems to illustrate this well. The idea is that it is the small incremental choices that start that fog rolling, at least for most people. I remember looking back the conversations that were too personal, the compliments I took too seriously, the thoughts I nurtured. At the same time I was blocking out those whispers in my heart and mind that said "Stop this." The selfishness and justifications and dismissing of what was obviously right and wrong....it still makes me sick.

But I also remember when that fog broke, and it was like waking up from a bad dream, albeit a dream I created myself. I do not see that fog as an escape from responsibility. In my case, I used that fog to keep me blinded because the only thing that seemed to matter was that fantasy. The choices were mine, and there was no excuse for them. I think that is why EP's are so important - nip it in the bud so that the fog can't even begin.

Okay. so , where do we draw the line as to whether our actions demonstrate who we are/were or whther they are the result of some outside force, like the fog.
I think a better way of looking at is is not to assign responsibility to "the fog", but, perhaps to accept that we do have this inside of us. Harely says all do(I disagree on that). Maybe Waywards just have a bigger dose of this than those who do not cheat.
This does not condemn them to a lifetime of hurting others. They have free will, as another poster mentions.
Luorosi, perhaps you just need to look at it as your haaving had a greater capacity to hurt folks and act selfishly than some people. Then, you can work on changing it, as you have obviously done.
Same deal with alcoholics and drug addicts. I have a lifetime of firsthand expierince with alcoholics in my family.I love them, but, they are different in terms of the capacity to be selfish and hurt folks as compared to other people. Thye are just fundamentally wire so as to be able to keep repeating hurtful behaviors that most people would stop upon seeing the effect on others.
To this day, I cannot beleve the stuff my dad would do when drunk and then how he would do it again, the next night. He had to be different than me or other folks with a conscience.

I can buy that about myself, esp. when you throw in the mental illness aspect. If I had been more focused on my M instead of myself I probably would not have been near as vulnerable.

I do agree that affairs are not mistakes or accidents. They are extremely hurtful decisions. And the decision happens waaay before the bedroom for many. I remember sitting in church anticipating going out to dinner with OM and a mutual friend - way before the A. I had this strange discomfort about going out with them the following Friday, but I shrugged it off because I was so looking forward to it. I had already withdrawn from my H. Looking back, I had no business eating dinner and knocking back margeritas with a man and a woman friend who wasn't faithful in her marriage. Those were the kind of steps I took. They seemed harmless...until they weren't. And by then I wanted what I wanted. So for me, the "fog" was nothing more than a tremendous web of lies I told myself.

But the fog isn't an outside force. It is nothing more than entitlement, resentment and justification fueled by selfishness.

The responsibility doesn't lie with the fog but with the person who wandered into the fog and allowed the fog to envelop them. The fog is not the cause of the affair but the result.

The fog is not the reason they say stupid stuff; it IS the stupid stuff they say.

The fog is the result of saying, doing and deciding based not on thinking but on feeling. It is allowing the right side of the brain to be the decision maker rather than the left side where logic, reason and data processing take place. The fog is nothing more than the manifestation of allowing that to happen, not the cause of it happening.

The fog does not take away the personal responsibility of the actors. It is the result of the actions. It is a decision to throw logic and reason away in favor of feelings and emotions. Emotions are NOT logical, therefore, anything that comes from pure emotion makes no sense logically. The disparity between these two positions is what is called the fog.

Those in the fog aren't seeing clearly because they aren't looking. They can't find their way because they are following their emotions. They don't make sense because what they are doing is nonsense. Their logic is faulty because they aren't using logic.

The fog isn't the reason they are having an affair but it is the reason they believe the affair is real. They don't have an affair because they are foggy. They are foggy because they are having an affair.

We all have this inside of us. We all have the ability for the blaming of others in order to gain what we want, when we want it, and to usurp all others in order to get it.

What good people do is to fight that urge back, that momentary "snap" in our minds that tells us to "go for it" when we know we shouldn't. Most of the time, if not all of the time, we do. We walk through stores and don't steal. We pay for our meals at restaurants, we don't scream curse words at those who are rude to us, and we refrain from slapping those who probably sorely need slapping. We exercise restraint, we hold back on doing the wrong thing when it would be easier, and we sacrifice what we "want" more times than we can count, because it is the right thing to do - even though it might be the thing that would "feel good".

But....

When we give in to that voice.................


Or when that decision is just a teeny bit iffy, or when it might not be a teeny bit iffy but that choice is just too tempting, we find ways to justify it to ourselves. We find fault with someone else - in the case of an affair, we maybe find something wrong with our spouse, something we can point to and maybe blow out of proportion. Then, we can harp on it, make it worse, even bring up more often.

And then it becomes a "reason". And we can maybe look back in time and say, "Hey, look, it was there all the time. It was really a habit..." And the spouse is blameworthy. The justification increases.

To me, that is the fog that Dr. Harley talks about. This cycle of temptation, decision to follow that "snap" and break the moral code within us, the blaming and justification, the increase in blaming and hunting for more reasons and making that following of the tempting even more okay - that's the fog. It's all about why everything from the moment we decided to do the WRONG THING was somehow changed and justified - how somehow WE were somehow changed in that "snap" moment. Because it is in that moment, that moment we betrayed our morals, that we did change. We changed into an affair partner, and were no longer the faithful spouse.

At that moment of snap, we began to justify why we could have an affair. Why our spouse was blameworthy. Why our thoughts of having an affair were okay, why we actually could, should, and would have an affair, and we began down that path of being an affairee.

I learned about that snap moment, and learned about myself and my thinking from that book I talked about. I can see myself doing this in other aspects of my life, and can see how it applies to so much of immoral and criminal behavior.

And the application to affairs and marital relationships is terrific. It has made me a calmer person overall. I no longer overreact to the special needs kids I work with, and I'm so much better with my H.

Life changing message in that text. Worth a read.

Makes sense to me , now. Thanks.

Nope....but I will add SB to the list.....

not2fun

luri,

That is a really good insight into how an otherwise faithfull spouse becomes a wayward. I can really sense through your writings what is going through my exWW's head for the last 18 months or so. Once POSOM and his trashy friend started helping exWW with her pony breeding, it was indeed a slippery slope culminating in the destruction of my family. Like a circling shark, POSOM saw that exWW was starting to withdraw from me and would then finigle his way into monopolizing more of exWW's time. While POSOM takes a lot of the blame, my exWW was the one who let her boundaries down and let him in.

Folks like POSOM are a dime a dozen in the horse world - we've had several of his ilk try and get an in with us but we've always distanced ourselves. But, POSOM used his relative status and that was his in to let exWW let her guard down. I've realized now that I was VERY vulnerable to an affair early in our marriage due to exWW's medical problems then. My exWW would spend just about every weekend in bed for the first couple of years of our marriage due to her back pain from a car accident. I was also working with a lot of young, single people who liked to party and we had a happy hour just about every week. While I never did anything inappropriate, I always made sure that after the 2nd beer, it was soda for me.

I look back, what if exWW had gone off on me over the phone prior to one of those happy hours? Would I have taken that third or fourth beer? Would I have paid more attention to that cute intern? Dr. Harley is right in that affairs can happen to anyone at anytime. My needs were not being met - but instead of taking the path of an affair or otherwise divorcing, I made a different choice and went to talk to the pain management counselor exWW was seeing. This counselor saved our marriage because she coached us on how to meet each other's needs in new ways. This counselor was the first person I called when exWW asked for a divorce. Unfortunatly, exWW didn't give me the same benefit of the doubt that I gave her 9 years prior and had the POSOM listen in on her only session with our old counselor.

bump

Ok, if H was very cruel, cold and distant during the A when still living with me (and by the way he fits perfectly into the fog description on this thread) can he still be considered "in the fog" now that we have been in plan b for 5 months and he lives on his own but see OW on his free time all the time and he has never attempted to contact me....?
Could it be that he is now really in love with OW, that, since now they no longer have to hide they were free to get to know eachother and fall in love?
blessing

Yes......


The "fog" is basically the thought process of ENTITLEMENT.......

There are many Waywards who remain foggy EVEN after their affairs END, never to come out of the fog. They are the ones who don't feel guilty for what they have done because they have CONVINCED themselves that they were ENTITLED to the affair, for whatever reason.....

Some know that what they did was bad, but REFUSE to address it, because it they are uncomfortable with addressing their own issues. My mother falls into this catagory. She has 3 affairs in my parents marriage, the last one being long term, in which she brought my sis and I around OM. I caught her making out, she ended the affair. To this day, she regrets what she did to US, but not my father. And in my opinion (even though I know this is a DJ...), I think she regrets more what her affair did to our thinking of her more than the pain that her actions caused.......She not had an affair for almost 24 yrs now, but she still spouts the same foggy wayward babble that we hear coming out of the mouths of waywards actively entreched in affairs......

Sadly, some waywards stumble around in the fog, lost, thier entire lives.....

not2fun

So these WS who never come out of the fog are actually happier than when the were married so they did the right thing leaving their spouse as they never really think they did anything wrong. They actually found love and excitement in the A and when it ended they seeked love and excitement in yet another A without feeling and any kind of guilt....
These people are then of a special kind...very hard and cruel, but life treats them well because they have a special mental attitude...they do not let anything worry them or upset them. it is not their problem if other people suffer. They do not even see or care about their suffering.
blessing

The "fog" is basically the thought process of ENTITLEMENT.......
In our society most human beings are, IMO, in the fog. There is a huge sense of entitlement in our youth and in relationship. The mantra that one deserves to be happy is what drives this country.
Hapiness at all cost. That is why nothing really lasts that long, because insted of realizing that hapiness is elusive, people stuborly pursue it in others, thinking yet another person
can make us happy and when they do not it is their fault not ours!
Very few people are comforable wth addressing their own issues and you have to be deeep in pain to be willing to.
That is why you find countless BS on this forum who are willing to change and better themselves.
You find very few WS on this forum to begin with and yes the few ones that come here are the good ones who have learned fro the pain.
But the vast majority of WS out there do not post here. �They are not in pain, they are doing all right. I thnk it is our BS fantasy that they are miserable.
Sure, some are miserable and we learn that from some BS postings, but a lot of those posting are guess work about what the WS might be feling or going thru while in the A and while gone form the marital home.

ACTUALLY, I don't think so......so they keep moving from relationship to relationship, from one affair to another, looking for that happiness. While it may appear to the rest of the world (and it is important that they keep this facade up, because otherwise they might have to really ACKNOWLEDGE thier unhappiness and their own disgusting behavior....) that they are happy, deep down they are not. They are really just a ticking time bomb.....until everything implodes on them.

My mother is ANOTHER good example of this. I cannot tell you how many pychiatric hospital stays she has had, how many suicide attempts she has made, all because of her own actions. Unfortunately, she doesn't see it as her own actions, but rather the actions of those around her to cause her mental anguish......its really a sad, sad cycle to watch. I have taken myself OUT of her drama these last 2 years, and it really has been a most healthy decision for me, my marriage, and my family. Of course, she see's it as me abandoning her, but she really does not see what all of this has done to me. I know that sounds rather harsh, but when you have watched them cart your mom off to the mental ward after taking a whole bottle of Ambien, cleaning up the blood from cutting her wrists, and attempting 2 other suicides due to decisions I've made in my own life she didn't agree with, well, I've had to develop this in order to preserve my own sanity......

anyway, that got off topic a bit....sorry about that....

not2fun

I'm glad this thread has come up because I have a question about the fog.

We can all agree that the fog warps our wayward's perception of reality.

But, the problem is that for them perception IS reality. It might be fantasy world stuff than any normal person could clearly see, but for the wayward that is their reality and they believe it to their core. The problem is that they make decisions and act out behaviors based on that perception, and we are left to deal with the consequences.

So, saying it's just fogbabble and to ignore it is okay for short periods of time, but not necessarily applicable in the long run. Whether we like it or not, that is their reality and they will react accordingly.

Sorry Not2Fun. I can see your point with your mom, her action did catch up on her and they actually are now shaping her life. And of course you did well do distance yourself from her.
Yes, I can see that the deep unhapiness the WS is in can make their life miserable. I guess I am looking at my H now and I see him very happy without me and in good shape, eating healthy, having a younger OW who adores him, doing sports and having fun. He got rid of me and can care less about our son who is in college and can fend for himself.
I guess men like my H will never come out of the fog and that fog keeps them cushioned from reality. You mom imploded, but not everybody ends up like her.
Again, itis sad. I am sorry you had to go thru that
blessing