That being said, if she didn't want it to happen, the one question I ask repeatedly is "why didn't you say no?" She says she thought it but never verbalized it.
Hi, GP. I'm glad you two are talking and that you believe she is being honest in her answers.
Part of the disconnect with understanding all of this is that you're thinking logically. And if she is truly out of the fog, your W is thinking that way too and in my non-doctor opinion, affairs are not logical or rational. There are reasons why they happen, but it's not data that you can chart on a bar graph resulting in a sound conclusion that makes sense to us laymen. Before my betrayal last year, I was among the majority who would say that I'd get divorced before I ever cheated on my H and anyone who doesn't do their spouse that courtesy is a horrible person. So how is it that "good" people have affairs?
Have you read this?
Inside the Wayward Mind It might provide some insight. Of course the articles on this site and books by Dr. H are fantastic too. Another book called
Getting Past The Affair by Snyder, Baucom, and Gordon, has a chapter in it called "How Could My Partner Have Done This?" that helped my husband a bit with understanding my crazy, nonsensical mind and heart at the time of my affair. None of these resources justifies the betrayal. But they might provide a helpful glimpse for you.
Some of the points from the book I just mentioned I'll share here:
"It's important to achieve a
balanced view of your partner -- one that's neither unduly negative and all-condemning nor unrealistically positive and excusing. It's unlikely that the person you fell in love with and chose to marry has no positive qualities... you may even need to consider how your partner's affair came about partly because of some of your partner's positive qualities or strengths."
Factors that might have contributed to your wife's vulnerability:
* Attitudes, beliefs, anxieties, needs, or other tendencies that were in place before you met. Such as how a marriage is supposed to be, lack of confidence in sexual intimacy, or inability to withstand long periods of unhappiness or stress.
* Other factors that lower safeguards and raise risks such as seeking company of the opposite sex, increased time alone with someone, emotional relationships.
* Triggers such as alcohol, other substances, anger toward a partner, or traumatic event that increases the need for comfort.
"In most cases answering the question 'How could my partner have gotten involved?' requires thinking of all of these kinds of factors -- some long-term, others more recent, and some brief or even coincidental. Understanding your partner's vulnerability to an affair involves adopting the larger view. You need to consider not only who your partner is, but also how your partner came to be this way and is likely to be in the future."
Among the things your wife
may have been looking for:
* Affirmation of self-worth
* Affirmation of sexual attractiveness and adequacy
* Emotional connection and intimacy
* Fulfillment of unrealistic expectations
Possible reasons why your W didn't resist:
* Problems with Commitment - Commitment can be undermined by despair about whether the marriage will ever get better.
* Lapses in Judgement - Related to problems with commitment, impulsive, mostly unplanned actions that are driven primarily by emotions rather than by rational thought. Sometimes lapses in judgement result from naivety and failure to recognize the complex or hidden motives of others. Other lapses are related directly to abuse of alcohol or other substances.
* Reluctance to Confront Marital Difficulties - How willing and able is your W to express concerns in the marriage?
* Expression of Discontent - A way of communicating feelings to a partner that they're having difficulty expressing more directly. The affair becomes a last-ditch effort to be heard, to gain the other's attention.
(End of book references.)
I met with Dr. Harley last week and it was one of the best $195 ever spent. I strongly recommend you and/or your wife do the same. He told me many things that are helping, and I'll share one analogy here that made me say, "Aha."
If you put a frog into boiling water, it will immediately jump out. It instinctively knows something is wrong and protects itself by leaving right away. Frogs, however, are able to adapt to the environmental temperature around them. Therefore, if you put a frog in cool water in a pot, and ever so slowly increase the temperature, the frog will adapt along the way, be comfortable, and stay in the pot. They won't even realize the danger until it's too late and the frog dies from the heat. I don't know if your W put herself into the pot or if the FOM placed her in there, and I don't know who turned up the heat. But it happened and if you want to resuscitate your W and your M, you have to commit to the difficult work it's going to take.
At the end of the day, your W shouldn't have done this, GP. No reason in the world excuses that which makes a WW a WW. Maybe some of the above applies, maybe none of it. I'm blathering on here because even though my H and I are still struggling, hearing a third-party put into words things that I was unable to, helped my H somewhat.
Take care.
