My WW and I were officially divorced in November. Our two children(D6 & S5) are taking this very hard. My XW has continued her affair(started in June/July 2007) with OM and it appears headed toward M.

My question is...

Does a WS care at all about how their choices are affecting their children or are they just too selfish?

MMF

My story...

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/ubb...in=153962&Number=2155440#Post2155440

Hello MMF,

Short answer is no not really. They are somewhat blinded by the "fun", and the new "in love" feeling they have.

My first wife and I divorced, after multiple affairs by her, and we settled on a 50/50 custody, well 5 years later, and it's more like 90/10, she only has our daughter every other weekend.
But my XW may be the exception.

Now my current WW, I am sure still loves her children, but it is still fairly new (seperation), during which I have had the majority of the time with our two daughters.
Now how she is going to feel about them later, when the burden of living alone and taking care of them, and a second job. Well her tune may change as well.

I do think they care about them, but they just so happen to not be their priority at the moment.

No, they don't care. They only care about getting their next fix. They tell lies like "oh, kids are resilient, they will be just fine!" or my favorite "the kids just need for me to be happy!" All manner of lies and happy horsecrap conjured to justify scr*wing up little kid's lives.

I just hope you take charge of the moral training of your kids. Because if you don't, SHE WILL!!

What is so amazing to me is that being a mother was one of my XW's greatest goals. She had a hard time getting P(2+ years) and our DD was conceived artificially. Now she is more concerned about her life with OM more than showing up at her DD's cheer-leading parade not to mention other neglectful actions towards our children.

What a great future we all get to have because of her choices !!

Here's an example:

My DD asked her mother for $4 to buy her teacher a Christmas gift. XW said "No" that she didn't have the money. Sadly, my DD tells me about all of the gifts XW bought for OM's kids. My daughter said: "mommy couldn't give me $4 but she buys lots of presents for OM's kids"..."not fair"

BTW, XW doesn't work(school) and bought all the gifts for OM and his children(3) with CS I pay her every week.

MMF

NO, NO, NO. They do NOT care about their children at all whilst carrying on their dirty affairs. My FWH was truly the best dad in the world until he started his A. During it, he was sort of going through the motions with them, but lied to them as well as me, and even allowed his tramp of an OW to our son's 3rd birthday party.

He allowed her access to our DD who she then used in order to toy with my FWH. For example she lent our daugter some clothes then sent my FWH a text message suggesting that he should look at our DD and think of her. SICKO.

His behaviour duing the A was so out of character, even more so towards the children who he simply adores. It leads me to buy in totally to the theory of WS's being aliens and in a fog. I simply could never have imagined a scenario in which they would not come first and be uppermost in his mind when making decisions. Oh well, you live and learn!

He is, thankfully, back to normal now and trying so hard to rebuild relationships with all of us. We're 6 months down the line from D-Day.

It is so very very sad that these WS's can be so very selfish and hurt those they love most, and all for something dirty and sordid. Sad, sad, sad!

The children she so desperately wanted have become secondary in her life. I really think that right now if someone made her choose between our children and OM, I think she would choose OM. This is the same woman who went to counseling because she was having problems conceiving...grrr!!

MMF, same with my WH. Great dad pre-A. He's now filed for D and has not seen our kids in over a month. He's not out of town or across the ocean fighting for our country, he's living a few miles away with OW and her 3 kids.

And he didn't even try to see DD15 on her birthday last week. Instead dropped off a gift at his parents house to give to her. He can't face DD and her quest to save her old dad.

So -- no -- WS do not care about their kids. WH even said that he probably doesn't love them if they didn't even factor into the equation of him leaving us.

Bottomline -- it's all about WS and their "happiness" and their entitlement and their selfishness and their self-centeredness and their arrogance and their...well, you get the picture.

And I think "out of sight, out of mind." They just put their kids in a little compartment in their brain and maybe...just maybe...remember they have kids when someone asks.

And -- the killer -- they want to be known as AMAZING DADS or MOMS. They want us -- BS -- to REMIND our kids what a great parent the missing parent is.

My kids are teenagers. They know dad is an adulterer. They know he's lied to us for over a year. They know he is selfish. They know he is not an amazing dad.

Did I tell them this? NO. They heard it and saw it with their own ears and eyes. They know dad doesn't text them or phone them or see them. He's done a pretty good job on his own showing them what a despicable POS he's become.

They know that their dad is a sinner.

Look how many actually walk out and abandon their children. There's one guy here who's WW walked out on him and his 3 kids, including an infant soon-to-be-adopted daughter- actually jeopardizing the adoption. Luckily he was able to adopt her on his own but can you imagine that poor baby if she had been taken away as a result of it??

Seriously, when a WS says they care about this kids, it's just another one of their lies.

The short answer to this is "not as much as the THINK they do."

My H has turned into fog alien. My D15 said to me that she was "a Daddy's girl" and now she does not even want to see him.

People were shocked about H leaving me and more shocked that he would leave his D15 behind. They were close and he always used to say he was her "hero". H left Oct 1. Out of that time D15 has seen him maybe 5 times. She saw him first 2 weeks and then stopped seeing him for 5 weeks. Came around at Thanksgiving and she saw him on and off till 12/22 and has decided she does not like this father and wants her old Dad back.

He has texted her 2/3 times asking to see her and she keeps saying no. She has cut him off at the knees like he cut our family off.

When this originally happened H said that he knew D15 would be fine; she would be mad at first but get over it. He got an apt. less than a mile from our house. In his Fantasy Island mind, he envisioned her sleeping over every weekend, swimming in the pool with her friends, barbequing etc.

Well H has been there 4 months -- times D15 has been there 2x, times slept over - 0, times swimming and barbequing - 0.

I knew that D15 would not be receptive but H actually believed his own fog babble. H spends 95% of time at OW's house and is renting an apt that he is never in. With a D looming, we are considering moving back to the east coast and if that happens I am not sure what H will do. This is not what he had envisioned.

Their "i am not happy" and their sleazy affairs are devasting and incredibly selfish.

I feel that my XW somehow resents our children because she had them with me and not OM. This may be totally off but it is how I interpret her actions/inaction in regards to the children. For my D6 to see all the Xmas presents XW bought for OM's kids is cruel.

No they never truly loved you or the kids. In my opinion.

1. You married a selfish self centered woman
2. She begged to have children for some selfish need of her own
3. Now she is boinking OM due to another selfish need of hers
4. She discards the children she had out of selfishness and boredom and goes on to fulfilling her other selfish needs.
5. The world revolves around her and it always has.


It is best not to marry and have children with a self centered woman. The bottom line is she could care less about anyone but herself. You will always be dissapointed in her coldness and selfishness as long as you are with her.

Children born of this selfish one will be neglected and discarded when something better (OM) comes along to fill her needs...and something more fun for her, she will always go for it.

They think they love their kids. They convince themselves that they do.

They then paint us the BSes as the lesser parents.

They can't see that their infidelity is also infidelity towards the children, who would rather have an intact home with mom and dad together, than the whacked out substitute imposed on them by the wayward.

But the wayward thinks their actions are for their kids since they "can be a better mother if they are happy".

It's wayward fog and the kids eventually see through it.

So a wayward is guided by their own self interests, and not the interests of their children.

But this is where your burden comes in. You, as the BS, must rise above.

I sense that you're stuck thinking about what your XW once was versus who she is today.

I understand your frustration. You probably went through he77 to conceive. You bore a big burden and were there for her through the tough times.

But she doesn't see it, isn't going to see it, nor should you expect her to see it.

You're stuck in a stage of dis-belief when the reality is that the woman you loved is dead and has been replaced by this sick creature instead.

I understand your anger. Believe me, I went through my own he77 with my exww when she was pregnant with all our kids. All the pregnancies had their drama and required significant time away from work.

None of this was appreciated by exww, who viewed it as part of my obligation as a husband. That certainly is true, but the self sacrifice, especially to career, is significant and was not appreciated.

So we may have certainly sacrificed in vain, but it should also not be surprising that the waywards see this sacrifice in their own narcissistic ways. I mean, didn't you know you were supposed to sacrifice yourself for her?

This is a great answer, I was trying to think about how best to phrase this, and then I read this...PERFECT!

Their actions while they are wayward spell out pretty clearly that they don't care as much as they THINK or ACT like they do...otherwise they wouldn't be having an A, which is probably one of thes cruelest things you could do to a child.

I wonder how mature your wife really is, and if she has considered how the possible desperation for her children may have caused her to "step out of reality" for a time?

Is it possible that when trying for her children she just became desperate to have what she thought she couldn't have?

When you try so hard for a family it becomes easy to convince yourself of the fairytale of family life. In essence, it can be built up into a dream that you fear you may not achieve. Her whole life may then become only about fulfilling this dream. However, the realities of family life can never match up to the dreams that she has fantasised about for so long.

When her family became a reality, ie, sleepless nights, tiredness, having her needs become secondary to those of her children, etc etc etc, is it possible that she simply could not cope with the real life situation, and that she sought to replace one fairytale with another?

Is the OM just a substitute fairytale life for the fairytale life that became all to real? If so, she is so far in la-la land that she needs real help.

I may be comletely wrong here as I haven't read your whole story so feel free to ignore what I have said. There was just some feeling I got having read your posts on this thread.

Anyway, I finally want to wish you and your family all the very best. You know you are not alone in BSland.

Here is what I mean...

XW miscarried child #3 at 24 weeks. Due to our financial stress etc., we didn't try again right away. She has just turned 40 and I definitely wanted another child but the finances were not set.

XW said: "you took away my perfect life"(3 children)

My response: "we have two beautiful healthy children"

Her reply: "I guess I will just have to accept that"

This, of course, was said post DDay.

MMF

Her "perfect" life was never hers. That was a "what if" and an "I wish."

None of those are guarenteed to us whether we are waynerds or betrayeds.

The moment we let go of the "what ifs" and the "I wish's" is the moment we grow up and HEAL from this stuff.

It's lunacy to expect "perfect" in this world.

But "content"...yep...we can find "content."

Lets say she gave birth to a third baby but it was "terribly deformed or disabled"! Who would she blame then???

There is nothing certain about life.

And DE, I love that term "WayNerds"!

Nope.