I don't think he means "forgive" really, because forgiving does not necessarily mean rebuilding the marriage, and leaving does not necessarily mean an unwillingness to forgive.

I think he he means that wives should not see a husband's "fling" as the ultimate betrayal.

What do you think of his argument? British newspaper article

(I'll ask for this topic to be moved to Other Topics after a few responses.)

He would feel differently if his W cheated on him, and not just because he would believe it meant more to her, being a woman.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and pain is in the heart of the one who was betrayed. I think that trying to persuade people who have suffered a trauma that HE HAS NEVER EXPERIENCED isn't so bad, is patronizing in the extreme.

What an idjit maroon!

Isn't he trying to help wives see that a "fling" isn't about them? Isn't he trying to help them see men as the sexually-driven creatures that they are? He is saying that a "fling" for a man isn't about emotional feelings for the woman he has sex with. If a wife understood that, she might be able to avoid her emotional breakdown.

He isn't talking about affair like those in your marriage and mine, which involved more than just a "fling". I suppose he is talking about some of the rarer infidelities we see here, involving paid sex or multiple women who have come and gone (no pun intended).

He is talking about the type of affair my husband had - "sex for the sake of sex".

My H and the OW both said it meant nothing. They stopped on d-day, and never tried to contact each other. It was meaningless for BOTH of them. It was "just sex", because the OW in my case was and is a person who does this kind of thing all the time. My H was ripe for the picking - and believed he would never get caught, just as the scenario in the article is set up!


My H never experienced withdrawals, never talked of OW in any glowing terms, none of it.

There are those affairs out there that fit this category.

What the author has wrong? He talks about the idea of men in affairs like they all fit this category. They don't. He has no concept of the feeling of betrayal whatsoever, either.

I pray he never has to feel it.

My guess is that he has received plenty of letters and emails to tell him how very wrong he is on the topic, and to keep his very uninformed opinion to himself, too.


SB

He doesn't sound like the sort that will listen.

No, he doesn't, Neak!

sb, your point was one of the many objections I had to the article. He is trying to say that the "fling" is the kind of affair a man has a good proportion of the time.

I don't know where he gets his information. We have heard of such affairs from time to time here, but they seem to be a small proportion.

My H's affair started in his mind as a no-strings sex deal with someone who was also married with two kids, and who, in his eyes, had the same reason for having an affair as he had. She had as much to lose as he had, and the same incentive that he had for keeping emotions out of it and walking away if caught.

My H didn't count on OW "falling in love" almost immediately, and also didn't really believe that she meant her words. He also didn't count on how addictive the whole secret other life would become for him. So the "fling" didn't stay a fling for long, if it had ever really been one.

The author also seems to believe that if a wife sits down and has a good talk with her H, she will get honesty about his feelings and she will see that he has nothing invested in the affair. All that is needed in this situation is honesty!

You think?

Well, we had many talks about my H's feelings and he simply lied about walking away and having nothing to do with OW. Listening to him did not help my own situation at all. I don't know how BSs are supposed to know when they are getting honesty.

And another thing!

The author doesn't even mention the fact that if a wife accepts this as being part of her H's biology and does not allow it to threaten her marriage, she is giving him permission to do as he pleases over and over again. If it isn't such a crisis, and if he loves only her, then why shouldn't she turn a blind eye to this behaviour permanently?

We had a British politician named Alan Clarke whose marriage was like that. He married when he was in his mid-twenties and his wife was 16. He had many, many affairs, but "never fell in love". When interviewed, both he and his wife would say that she knew he loved only her. His wife was upset and humiliated by the affairs, and would give him a bad time about them, but did not allow them to end her marriage.

This author is setting women up for a marriage like that.

Nothing new here, in the land of an Entitled Spouse.

And in the land of the cake-eater, who enjoys his marital life and still wouldn't mind a little strange on the side.

My bottom line? It's pretty simple, and not hard to follow: if you want to screw different women, don't get married. If you want to get married, don't screw different women.

You don't get both, litte fella. Sorry. No magazine article will change that.

I wonder, is there also a penis and just penis? Like the one he uses with his wife and the another one with "just friends"... Beats me. When someone says that it's just sex, then why have it at the first place... You can have much more than just sex with your wife. I can almost hear the answer, no, you don't get it, it's not the same. Heh, then it is not JUST sex;-)

For me, this just sex is just a catchprase, it has no specific meaning, and it doesn't make infidelity somewhat more bearable. My H has also said that one of his affairs, the only one which was PA actually never meant anything to him, he didn't have any feelings for that woman. But he also admitted that when OW suggested those little get-togethers, he FELT flattered. She ego-boosted him enough to feel good about himself.

My comment to my husband was that he was willing to trade me for something that was MEANINGLESS.

And this made the whole affair worse to me, because if he at least loved the OW, I might be able to bear this...but that he would trash our 30 years together for NOTHING

it made what we had


LESS THAN NOTHING

because he was willing to risk what he had for NOTHING.


He was in this trap, then, where he called it meaningless, giving our marriage even less meaning than that.


He didn't know how to climb out of that hole.


Five years later, he looks at me and says he understands my point, and cannot believe that he called his "reasoning" at the time "logical".


He would puke if he read the article. He hates affairs now. A complete turnaround.

SB

That's how I feel, SB.

My WH said that the STD Tramp from his "one fling", the only one to which he admits, was "nothing" to him. My response was, "Well, if she was "nothing" to you, then for the 5 or 10 minutes you spent boinking, I was apparently LESS than "nothing"!

Maybe, just maybe, you do not always get to follow all of your urges because you are a human being and not some primitive life form.

Sometimes I would like to just bump into the slow driver in front of me, to throw a three-year-old with a temper tantrum out of the window, to pour the gravy over my husband after that last remark, to have 'just' sex with... but I don't.

There is a split second in which my frontal lobe just so happens to find what is left of my common sense and tells me I would regret it the next 60 years, if I would throw this dear child of mine, that I love so dearly most of the time and in which I invested so much time, money and energy, out of the window.
And as for the other situations, well... why should sex be any different? Because it is a bodily function? I can control my bowel long enough to get to the bathroom. And most waywards seem to be able to control their urges long enough to get to a place that is secluded, which tells us their thinking though clouded was intact for the most part.

No excuses.

So true...Home Depot would be a different place if not.