I too feel that many people would try to characterize their WS's as the "victim" so they would find it easier to forgive. I don't like POSOW, but I do believe that some where deep inside, she has a good grain. I saw 2 hours worth of a keylogger that my WH found and deleted, and his side of the conversation was interesting. He had said he loves her and then said, "I know it makes it harder when I say that." I think she may have been expressing some kind of guilt. Then he said, "That's why I want to do other things with you so it isn't just about sex." Also he said, "You want me to want it MORE? No wonder I am like a horny teenager."

My friends and family believe that she was the aggressor and that she initiated the A, but it really doesn't matter to me.

My WH was naive in relationships and would often tell me that he didn't notice when someone was hitting on him(after I would point it out). His boundaries were set too far towards the wrong side of M(closer to SINGLE) in regards to friendships with women, so who is to blame?

When I confronted POSOW about cell phone calls, her response was, "I never called him did I?" My response was, "No, but you answered the phone."

It doesn't matter to me because it is his betrayal and lying that I would have to forgive him for, not if he was the one who initiated it or not. I also think that many BS's get caught up in the fog of an A and sometimes believe the babble coming out of WS's mouths. It isn't honest to worry about who initiated it because that really is a moot point.

My FWH said that the OW grabbed his hand while they were having lunch and told him what beautiful hands he had and she told him that she had heard that a man who had beautiful, large hands also had large genitals (what a low down dirty skank wh*re). Anyway, I actually despise any woman who would knowingly sleep with a MM. Always have even before my DH had an A. I do blame women who knowingly seek out MM. I also blame my DH because he could have said no.

I guess it doesn't matter who pursued whom.

Scotland, my H was the same way, being naive. I'd observe and later point out that what this or that woman was doing was inappropriate, and he would disagree or say, oh, that's nothing. I did not always do this for every woman, but I would always notice if something seemed off or have a funny gut feeling about certain women. Almost always, it turned out I was right.

I think most WS's are naive and/or have poor boundaries but they are in denial about this.

This is one of those questions that always makes me end up scratching my head.

Did OM seduce my wife? Did my wife seduce OM? Was my wife unhappy in our marriage and looking for a way out? Was OM trying to find a replacement for the wife who had just left him for his cheating?

Do any of the answers to any of those questions change what I am going to do or how I am going to view and live my life?

(THAT one I can answer)

Nope!

I suppose that for some it does matter whether your spouse accidentally without realizing it fell in love with some smooth operator rather than was just getting his/her rocks off. The distinction between being thoughtless and selfish and falling in love or being thoughtless and selfish and convincing someone else to jump into bed and then falling in love is getting lost somewhere.

If I ask a question and the answer is "A" and as the result I will do "X, Y and Z" but if the answer is "B" I will do "X, Y and Z", why ask the question at all?

Single failure, single affair, single affair partner followed by a "What was I thinking?" (Answer: you weren't thinking. You were being thoughtless.) Unless some other factor comes into the mix I see no reason to not try to reconcile.

Sleeping with every Tom, Richard and Harold (or Mary, Margaret and Mindy) that comes into the local watering hole on Friday and Saturday night...Sounds like other things are happening...

Those who are most likely to have an affair are the ones who don't know they are vulnerable. Those who have a series of ONS are the ones who think they are entitled. Those that are the most promising recovery material are the ones who have changed the way they think and believe about marriage, sex, cheating, friendships, boundaries...

I think the question is looking for an answer to was the cheater predator or prey. But unless there was rape involved, I don't think it matters and I wouldn't call that an affair.

If I lion sneaks up on a heard of antelope and kills the weakest, or simply the one she can catch, as opposed to the antelope just minding his own business and getting caught unawares, it sounds like a valid analogy.

The problem is that we have a lion and an antelope who decided to stand around in the same room until the lion decided to attack, even when all the other prey animals fled for safety. When the lion did attack, the antelope made no effort to get away and actually cheered the lion on. So is the lion or the antelope to blame for that?

At best the antelope rolled over and said..."Oh, this is so wrong...I should have run away..."

Mark

I agree, Mark, it makes no real difference to me whether my XWW was the aggressor or was simply a willing participant. Fact is she cheated repeatedly and broke her vows. She has shown zero remorse and accepted zero responsibility. She has done this in past relationships, as well and has been verbally and emotionally abusive to me and my sons. She overpsent and got us into finanacial trouble. She focused on spending money on herself and getting a nice tan, rather than contributing to our family. So, there was a lot more going on than isolated cheating.

Who started this A dance?? Good question even though not one of us as BS really know for sure.

I was told by a "friend" of PP that she really went after XWH. PP actually said that she was "going after her M boss so he would hire her as a permanent employee" (he did).

She was not Eve but the serpent that offered him the "golden apple".

I do feel she was the agressor. She was the last person that I thought that XH would cheat with. Prior to the A, XH did not have a high opinion of PP.

He said she was stupid; he used to make fun of her plastic surgery; he used to complain about all the time she took off from work.

She flirted shamelessly BUT all XH had to say was No. But fueled with booze (he is an alcoholic), he fell off the wagon and she encouraged his drinking.

I used to think he started the A and was guilty and started to drink again. Later I found out he started to drink and then the A started.

Either way it is wrong wrong wrong.

My H asked for her phone number and he said he did it because her body language told him that she wanted him. I know my husband, I couldn't believe he even had the guts to ask her, but the vibes that he got from her and she supposedly knew so much about vitamins and wanted to continue to conversate with him about it. So he asked.

Hi Mark,

I see what you mean, in terms of the A the result might be the same. Now, my questions are more in terms of R. If the WS was the "aggressor", on average, is R going to be easier or more difficult? Is an "aggressor" more likely to be a serial cheater? Is the passive one more likely to be so entrenched in the addiction that withdrawal will be more painful?

BTW, Mark, I ask these question because I have a lot of respect for your opinion in these matters. Your posts have helped me tremendously.

Thanks

--ElCamino72

Well in my original exposure conversation and small follow up email thread with Gollum�s BxW a few weeks later it was clear that he is a dedicated serial cheater. Wayzilla was his confirmed 3rd adultery in their 11-year marriage. In fact when we compared timelines he still had mystery disappearances that she and I could not account for and we both were suspicious he may have been working Wayzilla and another woman in Mordor Springs at the same time and frequently on the same nights.

His BxW told me he was very smooth and keen on seeking emotionally vulnerable women and becoming �friends�.

Her exact email words:

�Sorry to say that this is a recurring pattern with Gollum. He picks out someone who is feeling needy and vulnerable, gives her attention, tells his troubles to and becomes �buddies� and whatever else happens in between. I was in the same type of situation when he met me. I had just broke up with a guy that I had been in a 5-year relationship with. Gollum was there before the dust settled to help me through it all�..After he is tired of Wayzilla, he will move on to the next woman that �needs� a shoulder to cry on and listen to her troubles. He gets bored after a while and does not like to deal with the maturity of relationships.�

So I think he was the instigator but not aggressively at first. It was more like fishing and trying to lure out his trophy. It takes patience and a knowledge of timing, temperature and lures and when to set the hook. It was the thrill of the hunt.

But when Wayzilla responded she became the aggressor. According to the cell phone bills, 75-80% of all the calls from May to September were initiated by her. But sometime in September he seemed to fall fully in and the phone initiated contacts doubled, equaled out and right around that time the adultery became drippingly physical.

But in the end what does it matter? Adultery is an equal opportunity destroyer.

El Camino,

I think that there is a much less likelihood that there will be another affair. If nothing else, MB has given us a way to resolve conflict without damaging each other. It has also given us a common set of terms that we can use to talk of unmet ENs and we can now both identify Love Busters by name rather than generic complaints about being unhappy or "I wish you would just ____" kind of statements.

One thing I can tell you with certainty is that there will never be another recovery from an affair. There are no more Plan A or Plan B in my future. There are ways to communicate now that did not exist before and learning to address things rather than allowing them to become reason for withdrawal from the Love Bank means that if our marriage ever reaches that point again, one of us has seriously messed up.

I think the key to preventing a recurrence is to change enough about the marriage to prevent it but at the same time the once WS needs to understand the things that enabled having an affair and avoid them or in some way prevent those same things from taking place.

If WS and AP met at a PTA meeting, maybe PTA meetings need to be something to be avoided or something that requires both spouses to be in attendance. If the wayward couple met at work, then the circumstances surrounding the onset of the affair need to be figured out so that the same circumstances can be avoided.

Obviously if the affair began when one spouse started hanging out at the local club with single/divorced/separated or already adulterous people, whether from work, school, the PTA, church...wherever those who stood by and watched the affair begin, then those kinds of folks need to be eliminated from the lives of any married couple. But what is really the solution is to make certain that neither husband nor wife has any friend of either sex that is not also a friend of the marriage.

Learning to spend RC time together is one of the big things that has to happen. If I go off fishing with my buds and while I am out she goes off to a work function, a school function, a church function with both sexes present, especially those who may be attending without their spouse, or even shopping with the girls with a quick stop for a drink at the local watering hole on the way home, then we are not only making an affair possible but also squandering the opportunity to make Love Bank deposits into both Love Banks in a way that is so easy it should be mandatory in marriage.

Dr Harley talks about how when we first get married, or when we are dating before marriage, we spend all of our time together. The woman does things like fishing, hunting, golf, working on cars, plays computer games etc with the man she is in love with because she is in love with him and enjoys being with him. But after we have been married for a while, especially when kids enter the mix, we end up going our separate ways. She no longer goes with him to the golf course or on that fishing trip because either she doesn't really enjoy it very much or she stays home to care for the kids.

As time goes on, she finds her own activities and soon both husband and wife are off doing all sorts of things that no longer includes the other and worse, they begin doing it without concern for the feelings of the other. This leads to a loss of Love Bank units being deposited on a regular basis and also results in independent activities becoming Independent Behavior.

The key to recovery is the the same as the key to building a strong and happy marriage to begin with. That is, we need to learn to identify our own ENs and be able to communicate them to our spouse while also resolving conflicts without resorting to Love Busters. We can't just know what the other person needs, but we must be willing to provide that very thing and we can't do that if we are living a life of independence, doing stuff that is not addressing those needs but rather only seeking satisfaction for ourselves.

If I neglect my wife enough, she will seek something to fill the void. At first it may be something that is benign or even good, but eventually as Love Bank balances drop dangerously low, our Taker steps up to the plate and demands a shot at fulfillment. If I go off on a fishing trip, she has a crisis while I am gone and has cause to hang onto resentment, she is one step closer to an affair than if we were doing something we both enjoyed on our day off.

The more time a couple spends together doing fun things, the more time they want to be together until they each become the others favorite recreational partner. If we spend our fun time together we can keep our Love Bank balances high enough that an affair is pretty unlikely not to mention the fact that if we spend almost all of our time together there is little opportunity to fall in love with someone else.

We must learn to protect our own weaknesses but also to protect our spouse from his or her weaknesses as well. The best way to do that is to learn to spend time with each other actually meeting each others top ENs. This keeps both Givers engaged, holds at bay the entitlement of our Takers and helps us to feel the romantic love that brought us together in the first place.

What I am driving at here is that whether the WS was the aggressor or the helpless victim of a predator, we are guarding against both situations by following the MB plan for marriage. A marriage in which both spouses actively pursue the goal of keeping romantic love alive and have a plan to address what brings that about is pretty much immune to infidelity. It takes not just a commitment to the marriage but to making the marriage great for both spouses.

Mark

Mark,

I appreciate your insightful analysis.

Thanks