<and once again I am scraping myself up off of the floor>

Seriously??? I was not my H's first and he was not my only...and his adultery could not have BEEN any worse.

Marriage vows change things, DUDE...they do. They change ALOT of things.

Marriage vows are the only promises ever made that really mean anything.

THAT is why adultery and the betrayal that comes with it takes 2-5 YEARS to heal. Because when you marry someone, you are promising to be faithful. That is what marriage vows ARE.

Sheesh.

Married Forever

except for that part about marriage vows being the only promises that really mean something. I think you're way off with that statement.

Way off with what statement?

**edit**

No we weren't because NO VOWS WERE EVER TAKEN when we were single and dating. We didn't promise ANYONE that we would be faithful.

Married MEANS making vows to your spouse and promising to be faithful. That what marriage vows MEAN.

If I didn't care about being faithful and I didn't care if my husband (then boyfriend) banged other women as well as me, then we wouldn't have gotten married. We wouldn't have promised ourselves to each other ONLY.

It's those PROMISES that make the betrayal of M so incredibly hurtful. A promise WAS made to be faithful and it was broken.

There is such a huge difference here and (though I probably shouldn't be), I am shocked that you cannot see the HUGE difference.

Are you really "shocked"? I'm not.

Dude's putting ALL marriages into the same boat as when we say a OW shouldn't be shocked when she eventually marries her married men and he eventually cheats on her. We admonish such OW in the affairage for ever expecting anything otherwise. Dude thinks all non-virgin marriages should expect the same thing.

Myself and Sugarcane AGREE with him to the extent that it MAY make recovery easier for some. I, for one, can see that road to adultery that BOTH my wife and I took and such road can be seen as far back as Junior High School. Maybe YOU can see see some of that in your history too (which is why some/many of us are willing to recover in the first place). However, such road DOESN'T mitigate the betrayal and the pain any of us endured on D-day and it doesn't rationalize or justify the adultery in any way, shape or form.

For that matter, even the virgin married couple were sinners. We are ALL wayward in heart to some extent or another, some/most more than others. What Dude is saying could really be extended to virgin's too. Perhaps even they shouldn't be shocked either since they married a person that despite being a virgin was still a user of pornography, a tax evader, a masturbator, a covet'er, a curser, and/or anything "bad" etc.

Mr. Wondering

I guess "shocked" isnt' the right word. Baffled might be a better term.

I am baffled too MF....We are all sinners...But goodness a vow of marriage isnt just made to God (which making a vow to God doesnt seem to make a difference to almost anyone these days) you made it to another person, a person that you supposedly love, why make it at all if it means nothing to the wayward.....tell me WHAT IS THE POINT OF GETTING MARRIED?!!!!!...

Maybe it is a promise from to BS to the WS that they will never have an affair....but the WS when he is bored or not happy can just find someone else, but they can be sure their BS wont cheat(because it would probably surprise the WS that their BS cheated) maybe it is a one way street for the WS....THAT IS DATING!!!!!!!!

Sorry ranted a little.....But my WS said he doesnt beleive in marriage...THE WHY WHY WHY DIDNT HE TELL ME THIS, WHY WHY DID HE MARRY ME>>>>because he probably didnt want me to cheat!!!!

The vow isnt made according to if you had relations before marriage or with how many people......I was with my WH for over 15 years does that make a difference!???!!! I have not been with anyone else for 20 years.....

IT HURTS LIKE HE77!!!!!!!

When I was a teenager, yes from 17 until 21, I was with over 30 boys....Yes, horrible...I absolutely regret it, I WAS STUPID AND LOOKING FOR SOMEONE TO CARE ABOUT ME>>>>>>>I found him in WH....

It does not make it hurt any less>>>>>>>>

ALL MARRIAGE IS THE REAL DEAL!!!! IF IT IS NOT TO YOU THEN DONT GET MARRIED>>>>

I found it painful to look at my past and realise that it sent out the wrong signal to my H about my values. I was only able to do this when I read Dr Harley closely, about two years ago. You sound as if you are just now experiencing this realisation.

Who are you shouting at? Who are you angry with? Not us here who believe in marriage, surely.

Dude? But why be angry at Dude? You did not marry him, and he did not betray you.

Your husband?

Yourself?

I AM YELLIN AT MY WH I GUESS.....sorry I didnt mean to take it out on you guys...

And I do not agree with this quote about the REAL DEAL marriage....

SO I AM YELLIN AT DUDE TOO!!!! Just kiddin DUDE ya know I love ya...

And I do not beleive that I sent my WH any kind of signal that it was okay for him to cheat on me after 15 years together by sleepin with a lot of boys when I was a teenager......He knew my values...he just lost his....

We went to church together, we took precana (SP) classes, got married in the catholic church we both grew up in....I made mistakes as a teen, so did he....We went into this marriage with committment and open eyes about what we were doing, we were together six years before we got married....If I was sending him signals, it was through my faithfulness to him, and his to I in that six years before we got married....Yes we had relations before marriage (and that was wrong, wrong, wrong and I am sure I committed other sins also). But we were faithful to each other, why would that change AFTER we took our marriage vows?.... Oh yeah, cuz he didnt believe in marriage anymore, and he wasnt happy.....He changed his values after he took our wedding vows...I did not send him mixed signals about mine....

If the signals I sent him about my values were that it was okay for him to have an affair....Why did he hide it from me...He hid and lied about his affair until I accidentally found out, because he knew that it was not okay for him to have an affair....

Otherwise why didnt he just tell me he didnt want to be with me anymore....Oh that is because his values changed and made it okay to lie and cheat behind my back...and at the time he did not want a divorce he just wanted to have relations with someone else and knew that I would leave him if I found out...hence the sneaking and lying...

He knew I would be hurt, he knew it was against everything he and I had beleived in.....i think that means he changed his values to fit his unfortunate situation...This did not happen because I had premarrital sex when I was a teenager....

Okay, let me say first that I am a FWW, although is there really such thing as "F" now that someone youslept with at 16 is fair game for judgement? Anyway, a couple of questions I have had rolling around...

1. Why is it that believing in absolutes is necessarily bad? Do we really want to live in a society with no absolutes (some people in the news seem to)? Is believing in a definite right or wrong somehow wrong? Not to me

2. Ya can't have it both ways in my book. IF you are a Bible believing Christian - and by that I mean all of it - then believing in absolutes is kind of a given. And sois believing in redemption. And anyway, isn't it kind of illogical to say adultery is wrong ut of one side of your mouth, and basically disavow adultery for anyone who wasn't a virgin in the next?

3. Really? We're minimizing people's pain from an affair on a forum called "surviving an affair"???

4. I don't see a BS or FWS veiwing adultery is a sin as anything but truth. Why is that some sort of fog?

5. Talking about all the adultery "loopholes" like premarital sex or living together and how they erase the commitment of marriage is like deciding mrder isn't murdder just because some people kill in self-defense. It makes no sense.

6. Bottom line in my opinion, when you make that vow/promise/truly legally recognized word marriage commitment, going to someone else is aulter, and it is wrong. Wait, that isn't just my opinion...that is what the book I believe says, as well as the God who wrote it.

7. FWW means former wayward wife, not forever wayward wife, and I knw that to the core of my soul, so reminding me of what a crappy person I was three years ago isn't going to change my mind.

I just hate to see so many BS's feeling compelled to justify all the pain they went through. That pain is real...absolutely.

Okay, never try to type with a fever...arggh

What I read made perfect sense to me, Lurioosi...and you get no argument from me....and I just want to add that all that stuff doesnt make it hurt any more or any less either...I can absolutely say that if me and WH were virgins, I could not have hurt any more than I did...