Sexism police, on patrol.

Is your badge shiney?

Frank Pittman describes a variety of types of waywards in his article, Beyond Betrayal: Life after Infidelity, found here: http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200910/beyond-betrayal-life-after-infidelity

I believe this article is also posted in the Notable Posts thread.

According to this, Type 1 would be Dr. Pittman's "romantic affair" while Type 2 would be a philanderer. Dr. Pittman says romantic affairs affect men and women equally while philanderers are usually always men. There is a type of female philanderer but they are different then male philanderers in that they usually remain single but target other women's marriages.

It's a very interesting read.

Then there is the long term cake eater and what amounts to a permanent double life

Probably the most insulting to the BS.

Escape from reality becomes a permanent fixture not just for the WW but unknowingly for the BS whilst insidiously the OW becomes an invisible member of the family. She knows what is happening, on a day to day basis, in their lives.

That is the creepiest part of the whole catastrophe

These are great points and the article is very insightful and true. As I read it I could almost name someone's thread here. One thing that hasn't been mentioned and I know there's a lot of debate about MLC being an excuse to have an A. It just seems to me lately there have been many WWs in their forties that seem to lose it or try to go back to younger years (FB examples have been plenty here).

Gg

bump - anyone have any more thoughts?

How would you categorize someone like my xWW?

It wasn't so much that she found a soulmate, nor was she a habitual cheater. She just wanted to be single.

It started by going out to bars and dancing with a single girlfriend. Of course, you know where that led and eventually it was OM#1. Using the stick of plan A and for other reasons, things faded with OM#1. But, she refused to give up her single lifestyle and going out with her friends.

Before long she was meeting other men and starting relationships with them via texting, facebook, etc.

Clearly she had checked out of the marriage and had no intention of checking back in.

So it wasn't the soulmate thing, and it wasn't necessarily serial cheating because it all started in the matter of a year or so. It was just not wanting to be married.

I don't know where to classify my H.

His history:


ONS
EA, left me for this EA, which then turned out to be NOTHING because the object of his affection loved someone else, and their EA fizzled....he dated one other woman once, returned to the marriage and then IMMEDIATELY had a
ONS
then....

EA

then nothing for many years

then

PA about 6 years ago (sex-for-the-sake-of-sex, not emotional).



What is "this" kind of person????


Messed up.........?



Variable?


My take is that early on in the marriage, he had the first ONS as a revenge affair for my ONS.

The first EA came about three years into the marriage, due to the typical reasons for affairs, complete lack of boundaries, and his ideation of being a "rock star" fantasy life.

He returned to the marriage because he realized his stupidity, but had not hit rock bottom, and it was at a false recovery point, and that resulted in the ONS, as he was involved with the OW in this case at the time of his return to the marriage and we were not schooled in the MB plans. We were "close" to doing the right thing, but not quite there. After the ONS, we were "closer", but not perfect.


The EA was the result of his grief at his brother's death, inappropriate boundaries with his SIL, and his (yet again) fantasies. Definitely we were not meeting EN's at the time, and he was looking to fill SIL's EN's, was blocking my attempts to fill his, etc. Typical scenario......


And the latest affair, the PA, again, it was his fantasy life deal.



So, this is a man who lives in a kind of world where he visualizes things as he "would wish they could be" and then does not visualize them coming to fruition through his own acts with the person in the current relationship.

MB puts people on track for this type of visualization, and helps them to understand that this is POSSIBLE, and more importantly, under their immediate control, through their own actions and focus.

I think that many people live life with the belief that the world "happens to them" instead of the understanding they are the locus of control of much of what happens in their life - including the idea that they can influence the direction of their marriages and other relationships by the amount of positive effort they put into them.

On the radio show this week, Dr. Harley was talking about impulsive people.

In the case of my H, I think impulsivity played into his cheating. His spontaneous personality was one of the things that attracted me when we first met. My long-term planning is one of the things he has admired about me.

I think though, when one spouse is impulsive, changing the environment after an affair is extremely important.

AM