Intro, I thought about revenge. Didn't do it although one opportunity did come my way. It was not because of my integrity but I was mortified at the thought of getting naked with somebody else - probably more of a self-confidence issue than a moralistic stance. Just wanted you to know that at least one other poster here thought about revenge. I just didn't act upon it.

Am glad now - 4 years later.

If I were to have tried the MB way at that time...it would have had to be plan B. If I were to go plan B on KMS, she would have been screwing OM the whole time I was in plan B. H3ll, we couldn't even have a heated discussion without her picking up the phone to call him 1/2 hour later.

So, to answer your question....

If I were to go back in time, and I tried MB instead of the way I acted, I would go straight to plan D.

Now that we are in recovery, and it's obvious to me that the RA opened her eyes to the fact that she was no longer going to able to cake-eat, hence ending her affair.....no, I wouldn't change a thing.

Am I any less of a man for it?...I guess (I'm sure you guys will continue to tell me that I am)...but I'm a married man, in recovery. I wouldn't be married if I followed MB principles during that time period and the time following...I'd either be a divorced man, or a chump who is going on with everyday life, letting my wife screw another man, and waiting for her to realize that the grass isn't greener on the other side, then letting her come home...like "plan B" is designed to do. KMS would be screwing OM to this day if I did plan B.

All of my answers I'm giving are basically because I can use hindsight to give them. I'm not saying I had the RA to get my wife back (this seems to be the reasoning for people to say I'm trying to justify it)....I'm not...

...I went out and had a ONS to get laid...period (or, as an original WS can put it without recourse from MB members..."I wasn't getting my EN's met...so I met someone, then one thing led to another...blah, blah, blah..."). It seems an original WS can say this crap, then get a whole bunch of "read up on MB principles, establish boundaries, become an open book, follow Radical Honesty, POJA, etc...." from MB members. But a guy who says anything other than the toe the line "my EN's didn't get met, crap" gets "immoral, sinner, immateur, should have known better, etc..."

I guess I should have came into this thread and said "KMS wasn't meeting my EN's...while she was screwing OM instead of me". Then I'd be getting some support? Or...no?

:twobyfour:Let 'em swing :twobyfour:

You sure haven't been reading the same posts to WSs that I have...Every single time a WS pulls the bull of "My ENs weren't being met" they get told in no uncertain terms that that is NOT an excuse to have an affair...

As Dr. Harley says, "There are always REASONS but NEVER any EXCUSES".

The WSs that stick around and truly earn their "F's" are those that GET that the problem was THEM...That it was their boundaries that were the problem and that NOTHING done by the BS was the cause of THEIR CHOICE to have an affair...And they come to REGRET what they did to cause pain to both their spouse and themselves...Intro, you will NEVER earn your F if you continue to believe that you were justified in what you did or that your wife is the cause of your ONS...

What you have proven is that if you are hurt or pissed off enough you WILL move your boundaries and will JUSTIFY doing whatever you feel ENTITLED to do...

Intro, I could give you MY sob story too (always alone because Mr. W worked ALL the time, I was extremely depressed, planning suicide at the time...blah, blah, blah- all true, but BLAH, BLAH, BLAH nonetheless)...Those are REASONS that I felt entitled to have an affair, but what I have learned is that NONE of that sob story holds water...Adultery being wrong is a moral absolute and there is NOTHING, NADA, ZIP, ZILCH that will EVER make it right or justified...

And I could point out the fact that our marriage is now infinitely better than it was pre-affair...But Intro, we most certainly COULD have gotten here in a much less painful way...Mr. W and I always say that we are better now IN SPITE of the affair, NOT BECAUSE of it...

For the sake of your marital recovery, I sincerely hope and pray that you wake up and realize all of this...

Mrs. W

And??

Personally, I would much rather be divorced than have an affair to counter my spouses affair. I would not want that kind of marriage.

jmo...to each their own.

fair enough
you would not change a thing
noted & accepted as your position

here's the deal - if/when you tout "your way" and suggest a REVENGE AFFAIR to any NEWBIE man who is hurt/confused/bleeding from fresh wounds

you will be hit by numerous 2X4s :twobyfour: :twobyfour: :twobyfour: :twobyfour:

it is BAD ADVICE to give to others

no 2X4 now
not necessary

but a fair warning
this is BAD ADVICE to offer other men

future bad bad bad advice gets :twobyfour:



Pep

Intro I haven't posted to you in a while and we have butted heads in the past. But I totally get what you are saying. I pretty much plan B'd my H from the minute he walked out on me. I did not know about OW until a few months later. I did not know about MB at that time, but I do know that by me not talking to my H it made it much easier for him to be with OW. If I had continued my plan B I do not think we would be back together. Finding out about OW sent me into a sort of breakdown as I realized my H was not just on a break but starting a new life with OW. I then went into an amazing plan A for about 2 weeks, but H didn't seem to notice until he saw me looking hot and asked where I was going and I told him I was going on a date. Just me telling him that was all it took for him to suddenly realize he did love me and didn't love OW and he wanted our marriage to work. He yelled at me that he couldn't believe I was dating already, I laughed in his face and said "well you started dating before you walked out on us". He spent that entire night on the phone with one of our friends sobbing because he thought I was on a date. I got my first apology from him the next day and our recovery was able to begin. I didn't even go on the date because I was an emotional wreck, but I didn't tell H that. However, I do think that if I had SF with another my H would not be able to get over that. So maybe there is something about an EA is harder for a W to forgive and a PA is harder for a H to forgive. I do know that my H had a few ONS's during our marriage and those do not still haunt me like the thoughts of him having feels for the OW he was trying to start a new life with.

"And??"...what? If you have a question, don't be scared to ask me...I'm an open book...as you can probably tell.

I get what you are saying, but you are still missing my point...

I did NOT have a ONS to counter my WW's affair. This is what you guys keep saying that is totally false. How many times do I have to say it...I did not have a ONS to counter KMS' affair.

I'm not touting this to anybody. I'm simply telling the truth about how things went down...why they did...and in hindsight (the operative word)...it seemed to wake my WW the h3ll up.

It would never be advice that I would give to anyone as it would be impossible for me to know whether or not it would be something that would work in anyone else's sitch. And because I can only use hindsight to tell you guys that it worked in my sitch pretty much proves that it would be nothing but a stab in the dark for anyone else too.

Thanks for the backup lol.

Your post reminds me of something else that occurred around the time of my ONS. KMS moved out of OM's house (I thought she was living upstairs with her GF, but apparently he was living downstairs, and she obviously spent most of her time down there...so I say she lived with him...to KMS' dismay). Anyhoo...after KMS moved out of OM's house, she came home for two months, then I had Dday #2 and KMS moved in with her mother. During the time she was at her mother's was the time when I had my ONS. At this time (because the mortgage was becoming too much to bare) I put an ad out in the local paper for a "Room For Rent". I got many replies, but only from interested women. KMS was an emotional mess thinking that another woman may be moving into her house. I did not end up renting the room, but it sure seemed to be a big factor in waking KMS the h3ll up.

Maybe that would have been enough to clue her in without the ONS?...maybe not. I guess I'll never know.

Gee, using this logic, I could say that my affair was justified because our marriage is now better [ugh]...Mr. W is home so much now, and is meeting my needs [Hmmph, I showed him, right? :RollieEyes:]...Guess it took the affair to "wake him the h3ll up"...

PUHLEASE Intro...You're shoveling the same crap as any old wayward...you aren't unique or special...Your circumstances do not change TRUTH, and the TRUTH is that adultery is ALWAYS wrong...You not getting this will come back to bite you in the butt...

The end does NOT justify the means...

It is you that is missing the point...

Mrs. W

Good post, Mrs. W!

You have a way of cutting through the crap and getting right to the point!

I know it was wrong....but, here I am again having to state it for the 800th time because you selective readers chose to ignore it when I state it. I know it was wrong !!!!!!!

And now because I did something wrong I am blessed enough to be in the company of an immoral, pathetic, sinner...such as yourself.

For those of you that seem to be ignoring what I am typing and just want to disect every one of my posts....

1. I know what I did was wrong.
2. I'm not saying the end justifies the means.
3. I'm simply stating that the ONS had a part in ending KMS' affair. Just because this is true doesn't mean I'm justifying anything.......it's a fact.


As much as you guys like to disect every post, analyze it to death, then spin to be WS "fogbabble"...you are wrong.

I'm a FWH...not a WH.

What exactly are you guys waiting for me to say anyway? It's like you have some sort of pre-requisite that every WS needs to say the "right thing" in order to get some support around here.

You wonder why people run from this place like it's the plague.

intro

"but, here I am again having to state it for the 800th time because you selective readers chose to ignore it when I state it"

but, here you have stated for the 800th time where you also justified your RA based on the "end justified the means".

Justifying a wrong is what WS's do. Why? Because they place themselves in the fog. They need the fog to avoid facing reality.

It is meaningless for one to admit the RA was now wrong while still justifying the RA's end result.

Your intent may of not to justify your RA, but read over all of your posts here on this thread. I am not the only one that has read your words prior to your last post as one that is justifying their affair.

I don't think he is doing that. He has clearly said he is wrong and that the end does NOT justify the means. He is stating a fact that HIS affair helped end his wifes affair.

Thanks med.

I don't know wtf is going on in here, but people sure tend to see what they want to see and ignore what they don't want to see.

Is it so hard to believe me? I'm completely honest with everyone, have nothing to hide...but yet they still seem to look past the fact that I continually post "I was wrong". Why is that?

Intro has stated that his RA directly led to the end of his WW's A, that it "woke her up" etc. And while I can see that to be true, I can see how an RA can BLOW UP in the face of a BH if his intention is to "wake up" the WW with it.

'Cause I lived it.

I was out of the house, and H was putting a lot of pressure on me to move back into the house, etc. It was at the point where I knew in the back of my head I couldn't really stretch things out anymore, I had been a cake-eater too long. That little nagging voice kept telling me that if I didn't move back and put some effort in, I was gonna lose it all.

So, I had a U-haul rented. Was ready to do it.

Then-- a strange twist of fate. I decided to look at the cell phone bills.

Noticed a TON of phone calls, all hours of the night, to a strange number. Tons of texts.

The rest is history. H, like most WH, tried to lie and lie and lie to me. But I finally talked to OW myself and got (what I believe to be) the whole story. He was lying to her too, so she was pretty "amenable" to working with me so that we both had the whole picture.

Anyways, needless to say, after finding out the truth over the course of 5 days (he lied to me over and over again about who she was and what had happened. I found out very little of "the truth" from him... most of it was from her once I got her to actually talk to me)-- I didn't move back home.

INSTEAD of doing what KMS did-- I used my H's RA as an excuse to stay out of the house. To flip the guilt on him. To continue to cake-eat.

His RA was over faster than you can say "RA" after the OW found out his WAS still married and had no intentions of actually moving (he told her he was moving to be with her, had met her family, etc etc...). But I used his RA as justification to continue my EA and stay out of the house.

So, it back-fired on him, BIG TIME.

Take it for what it is worth, but I believe that his RA allowed me to stay in the fog longer. We all hear how WS spew all these justifications about what happened in the past that justifies their A ("you were an awful H that didn't meet my EN's"... etc). Well, his RA was just another justification I could tack right on there...

Huge backfiring, and really impeded our recovery. It just gave me every reason in the world to NOT come home. And he had to really "start all over again" with plan A, etc with me.

I'm not saying that he SHOULD have had to do all of this. But it is what happened-- I was as foggy as they come. I was an enormous cake-eater that drained my poor H. I UNDERSTAND his RA-- where it came from, etc. But it was a huge, huge setback in even getting to a place where we could both recover.

So, if RECOVERY is the goal, and RA can backfire, BIG TIME. BTDT.

E.

I'm not saying that.....you are implying that I am, even though I have stated otherwise.

So here's a scenario. Let's say we had a lady here who had a FWW by her name, and she claimed she knew her affair was wrong, and maybe the ends didn't justify the means, but she feels it saved her marriage and if she had it to do over again, she would still have the affair.

Would you say she has hearned her "F" or would you say she still has the wayward mentality?

What difference does it make? A WS is a WS....F or no F.

People here can say "if you don't have an F in front of your tag...you're still wayward" all they want. If someone has ended their affair...they are not wayward...period.

You will have to excuse me if I don't consider myself a "foggy, wayward husband" just because some of you don't think I've earned my "f". I'm not here to convince you guys that I'm a "F"WH. All I know is that I'm not having an affair...so you can all treat me like I am all you want.....you're wrong.