This one is a toughie.

Frankly, given that she works there and emails and lunches with the OM, she doesn't need a work group for contact with him.

I'd probably okay it and go a few times and eyeball it. It may help if her co-workers meet you and think you're a cool guy.

Then I suppose it could be said that I've been "addicted" to my wife for 15 years.

Sometimes, genuine human emotion does look like addiction.


I just have a problem with the whole "they couldn't help it" argument. It's crap.

Let me clarify something,

I think that you who have done an effective Plan A (got your wife back) Had nerves of steel and that I commend you for. To me, if my wife chose to have an affair and I found out or she told me, I am not going to hang around for 6 months to see if I could "win her back". She made vows to me not the OP. If I tell her it's him or me and she pauses for more than 5 seconds that's all I need. I don't care about the house, the car. I have a 20year old, a 17 yr old and a 12 year old. I will take care of them as I should, but I would be gone so fast the door won't be all the way closed as I'm backing out the driveway.

Galoot,
I respect your study and I know that it is true. I have had small crushes on women at my job, but never acted on them. Especially the ones who seemed interested in me. Even if I feel my wife isn't attentive in a few areas, I figure so what, she loves me and I can accept what she does give. I know that I my not be meeting every thing she needs too, but if she told me about it, I am willing to work on it and do it.
My thing is if she feels she can't talk to me and tell me what she needs, and goes and find someone else who does behind my back, why should I fight for that. I was in the same marriage too.

So I would calmly walk away. And go dark. That's just me.

I have much respect for those who did Plan A.

Who knows, I say this now,but I still have that bridge to cross.

shaken, have you ever been a betrayed spouse yourself?

I just have a problem with:

"I just have a problem with the whole "they couldn't help it" argument. It's crap."

This point is very broad and confuses the fact when someone makes a bad decision such as to have an affair. With the addiction to the OP once in an affair that makes it hard to end the affair and go NC with the OP.

Yes, I do too, but I have never seen Dr Harley promote that view EVER. It is simply NOT TRUE.

It's not that tough. They just don't really want to quit.

I couldn't even quit drinking coffee if I didn't really want to.

No, not that I know of, but I have been betrayed by a girlfriend. I left her too. She begged and pleaded. I was good to her, didn't deserve what she did and I wasn't going to be disrespected.
MB has good concepts for marriage, that's why I came here. I got intrigued by this section though and have been lurking since.

Things might look dramatically different if you were faced with reality of a 25 year marriage with 3 little kids whose lives would be destroyed by a divorce. Its real easy to say you would kick them to the curb until you have actually gone through with it.

That is an emotional reaction that is not based on reality. It takes enormous strength to hold a family together and many people here have done it effectively. Divorce is often much more traumatic than breaking up a 25 yr marriage with kids, mortgage, etc.

Its easy to say you would do this or that when hit with the most traumatic event of one's life, but things look very different when faced with the ACTUAL REALITY.

I have enormous respect for the folks here who did recover their marriages and hold their families together. I do not have respect for those who hide behind an endless Plan A as cover for conflict avoidance. That is a misuse of plan A, IMO.

You do realize you are comparing apples to oranges? Or are you? Dating is only a job interview for marriage. Cheating is an obvious knock out factor.

It would be stupid to try to make such a dating situation work.

Not so, with a 25 yr marriage and 3 kids. The 2 situations cannot be compared.

Yeah. A Lot of us said the same thing before it happened.

I can rationally make a decision all I want when it is all hypothetical, but once the real deal comes along, I have to deal with emotions and a lot of other stuff the original logic just can't account for.

There was a time I was convinced that if my wife ever cheated I would just kill her and OM and take my lumps. Then I grew up and actually GOT married and had a wife and I modified my position a bit.

I decided that what I would do instead was to leave her, get my own life and just be done with the drama. So when she actually had an affair, imagine my surprise when the thought of not having her in my life felt like someone was parked on my chest with a truck...


Krazy, I think there are a couple of things that need to be understood here. First, addiction is NOT a viable excuse for continuing an addiction or even for beginning one. It isn't something that happens by accident at all and is a decision made by a person for whatever reason because they are weak in some way, morally, ethically, commitment wise...something inside them is a failure and maybe it is merely a failure to accept responsibility...Whatever the reason, they take that first hit and are hooked...

But a second part of this is that each betrayed spouse gets to decide what to do for him or herself. Dr Harley has stated on more than one occasion that if his wife Joyce ever cheated on him he would kick her to the curb. But part of his reasoning in that is because he knows that SHE knows how affairs happen and it is HER responsibility to protect herself from having one. She is the one that has to make sure she never cheats. To KNOW and understand how affairs happen and allow it to occur means that you are not showing any empathy for the other person you promised to be faithful to for life.

But some, dare I say most, folks have this Hollywood/romance novel/Gone With The Wind concept of what love is and believe that it is something that happens to us instead of something that is built and maintained. They believe that if they fall in love with someone, it is fate, kismet, destiny or an act of God. Since they don't know that you can be in live, committed and still fall in love with someone else, so they don't protect themselves from it happening. Once it begins, it is too late to count on education to stop it from taking place. It isn’t malice that makes the affair begin but ignorance.

Now, if an affair takes place and BOTH the WS and the BS learn how affairs happen, put things into place to prevent it from ever happening again and THEN another affair happens, it show total lack of concern for the BS and I think it is time to kick the WS well past the curb.

I know in my case, there may be another affair, but there will be no more Plan A, Plan B or recovery from one. We now have tools to deal with the problems that might lead to an affair and there is NO excuse possible now.

Some learn this stuff before an affair and in those cases I think ending the marriage is a good idea.

There are also those who just can't do the recovery effort it takes or for some reason simply decide not to save the marriage and THAT is their decision to make. I don't think we get a lot of those folks here. In many cases it might be a case of the BS not really thinking the marriage is worth saving even without the affair and the affair just gives them a reason to call it quits.

You don't have to forgive and recover after a marriage, but if you choose to try, this is the place to do it. If someone comes here and says, “I want a divorce instead of fighting for my marriage," I would support that decision; it is not my place to tell someone they have to do this stuff. But it isn't anyone's place to tell them they shouldn't if they should decide to try.

JMO

Mark

Recovery from an affair when just dating is sheer luncy.

Actually, lots of people buy it, including clinical psychologists. And I didn't say it makes the WS blameless. My FWW was wrong for letting her boundaries down, and allowing OM to meet her EN's when she should have tried to resolve that with me. But, understanding infatuations allowed me to at least understand why she had a hard time ending the A, once it started.


Well, not having ever tried amphetamines myself, I can't say. But I can say I went through a similar experience when I was young, in college. I was going steady with one girl, then fell in love with another. During that time, even though I loved my girlfriend, I couldn't get this other girl off my mind. I was oblivious to how it affected my now former girlfriend. But, after 6 months, all the feelings subsided, and I got back with my girlfriend. So, from that earlier experience, I could at least understand what my FWW was going through. Didn't make it right, but it didn't make her the evil slut I originally thought of her as.

And, the neuro transmitter which causes infatuation is phenylethylamine. Many anti-depressants, stimulants and hallucinogens are substituted phenylethylamines. Amphetamines are phenylisopropylamine. If you ask someone knowledgable about organic chemistry, the difference between the two is only a -CH2- group. And, like amphetamines, when you have a fix, you feel great, but when you try to withdraw, you're really down.

You may not want to accept this explanation, but just read all the threads on this board which talk about how a WS is in a "fog", or like they've been possessed by an alien. It's because they are under the influence of their brain's love drug.



Yup, that's about right. They can still do other things, but they still think about OP all the time, and they get very down when they can't talk or be with him or her very long.


Some handle it better than others. Some WS can break off and maintain contact, but are miserable and moody for months while they withdraw from the effects of the infatuation. Others cannot or refuse to break contact during the A, but only to come back to their BS six months or so later, begging to be taken back. My FWW was in between. She tried several times to maintain NC, only to give in and recontact OM. But now, she has no feelings for OM. She has been a textbook case of infatuation.


Adults don't become infatuated as often as as teenagers, due to the differing levels of hormones. But how different is our WW's infatuation from that of a teenager? Infatuated teenagers still function in school or their jobs, still maintain their friends. But they will lie through their teeth to their parents to be with their boyfriend or girlfriend.

Just as an aside -- I've read a statistic where, n cases where an affair results in a divorce, 70% of the time the one filing for divorce later regretted it (It didn't say if the petitioner was the WS or the BS). But could it be that they subsequently realized it was a temporary condition, and the WS had not morphed permanently into some monster?

If you can't forgive your WW, I hope you don't wind up as one of the 70% who later regret that they didn't.

Best of luck.



P.S. - I subsequently read on this thread that Shaken is not a BH (though he says he once had a cheating girlfriend). I just assumed he was. Its easy to criticize someone else when you haven't walked in their shoes. Hopefully, Shaken will never have to experience the pain of a wife's infidelity (As Mel has pointed out, its not the same thing as a dating situation).

I agree. Both my FWW and I realize her A resulted from letting her boundaries down and seeking solace from OM. She didn't go out seeking an A, but now realizes she shouldn't have let him get so close to cause an infatuation that she couldn't control. Since we both now know how important it is to maintain boundaries, neither have an excuse anymore if another A happens. We both understand that if it does, the other is checking out.

I can totally understand this description. When my wife and I reconnected, I was totally infatuated with her... for about six months. And although I carried on with life as usual, going to work, dealing with kids, paying bills, etc... I thought about her all... the... time... and I couldn't let two hours go by without at least a phone call.

That lasted about six months, and although we are still completely in love and committed to one another, I can clearly see a difference between the euphoric monomanic state of infatuation I was in, and what we have now which is deep and rich, but not so all-consuming.

I am fortunate to have been able to have that infatuation with my wife a second time, almost 10 years after our wedding, and it did bond us together in a way that helped us lay the foundations for our renewed marriage. (I'm also fortunate that I felt that way for my wife instead of for someone else...)

We can't always control how we feel about people. When my wife was withdrawn from me - which was my own fault, my indifference and love busting hurt her tremendously - she didn't know about boundaries, or about marriage building. She didn't know she needed to guard her heart, or how easy it might be to feel that way toward someone else. And when she was speaking to her ex-boyfriend, it was just to have someone to talk to... I can't hold the fact that she started to develop feelings for him against her.

I am, in fact, a little awed that she was able to resist the siren's call when she had nothing from me to make her want to stay married.

Mebbe. But there aren't any wedding vows then, right?

I am not comparing the two. I am just saying what I believe I would do. Respect plays high with me. Cheating is very disrespectful to say the least. My wife knows my views on this. If she is cheating and I found out, she knows it's either Sydney or the bush. She knows my character too. Trust me, if she couldn't commit to me within those 5 seconds, she knows I will leave. I have two grown kids, (my daughter is 17 going on 30)

I would still be there for them, but cheating to me is a dealbreaker, no Plan A no Plan B Just Plan get the you know what OUT!
Apples and oranges? maybe. But I know how I have always been and I don't see that changing now. I may come back to this post one day and have to eat crow, but right now, this is how I feel deep in my soul.

Just so you know, almost everyone here who recovered their marriage said the same thing. Doesn't mean you WON'T kick her to the curb, but keep that in mind. Again, talk is cheap when you have never had to face that situation.

These men didn't react emotionally and hastily and were able to keep their families together while killing the affair. That is no small feat to protect and save your family. That is not the behavior of a wimp, by any stretch. A man is supposed to protect his family. Not at all costs, of course.

An affair is devastating to one's psyche, but so is divorce to little children. I think people who say "I would kick her to the curb" may very well do that, but it is mostly an emotional reaction and more often NOT how one acts when faced with reality.

The reality is, who physically gets "kicked to the curb"? The woman? Not in my state.

You know CC, I sure do wish your wife would post here too [has she ever?]...From your very thoughtful and insightful posts I gather that the two of you are quite a dynamic couple and I'm sure she would make a wonderful addition to these forums...You guys could likely help many people together...At the very least, I hope she reads your posts and realizes just what a lucky pair the two of you are!

Mrs. W