Back to the airline thing with my dear husband, that happened recently with the potential ow type stewardess..

anybody have their spouse now "get it" and able to fend this type of predator off yet?

I am still taken aback by the aggressive nature of the flight attendant in a very empty almost first class cabin area.

My dh was a few weeks ago on a flight and he regularly flew on that exact flight the exact same days of week, and the flight attendants apparently recognized him clearly.

He was almost alone in 1st class, just resting (it's an early am flight) and she came up and (was a 30 something somewhat attractive woman)started talking to him. Next thing she's asking him if he'd like a complimentary neck pillow to keep. Then she's sitting DOWN BESIDE HIM talking to him like she knew him or something for about 15 minutes.

He was really sleepy (it was a 7 am flight and he likes to zzz on planes)and about that time his "sh*t-o-meter" went off and he realized EXACTLY WHAT this woman was doing. He told her he couldn't talk, had a big meeting ahead, and that he wanted to only sleep but thanks for the pillow. He then said, "my WIFE would love this pillow for when we take our anniversary trip to an island this summer." He said she immediately went away and didn't talk to him after that.

But what she DID try to talk to him about during that brief time she plopped down beside him in the plane was:

*what part of town are you from (in our city)
*where do you work in this other city?
*what do you do?
*what do you like to do when in the other city? (her layover)
*what are your favorite restaurants in both cities?

Stuff that was clearly off limits.

And he wears his wedding ring faithfully. Again, the opportunity to a predatory ow-wanna-be presented itself to the skan-er-dess and she attempted to take down new prey. I asked my dh if the stewardess was single, he said, she told him "I really want to have kids one day" somewhere in her rambling convo with him, so he assumed she was indeed single or divorced.

I seriously chalk this up to the number of GOOD single men versus single women out there. Hardly any men for them available (except they're only dating the GOOD single women!)

Thus, some predatory ow have no problem having alternative prey and go for the married men. Most of the time they have more $ anyway or have something in their lives they desire.

Ok Peachy gonna start a thread on the After Divorce Dating and relationships thread trying to simply state the odds and statistics.

Maybe it will help the broken-hearted in understanding the pitfalls and twists and turns of dating nowadays and encourage the borderline wayward lurkers to keep what they have and do the work.

I will post the link back here after.

As ussual, I am again reminded of an anecdote I heard a long time ago, both because of this subject, and because I just got out of a car where a boyfriend was complaining about his girl, so I told it to him.

There was this farmer selling his old reliable tractor that had been in his family for years. He had took good care of it and it still worked fine.

The potential buyer told him he was asking to much money for it because it was an old model, and pointed out all the gadgets they have on new ones and how sophisticated they were now.

The farmer said..

"You see my wife out there in the feild with my grandchildren, working slowly but steady helping them to learn thier jobs? Well we have been together many years through troubles and breakdowns I can't even tell you.. I've lost count.

Well I wouldn't trade her for a million dollars, but I wouldn't give you a nickel for another one exactly like her"

Some things just have value that is earned through perserverance, and its priceless.

What are the odds of meeting someone good?

There it is contribute if you want, gotta crunch some numbers first.

Scotland I can relate to this. Now that I am in Plan B and I have time to evaluate what actually went wrong in the marriage. I realized how much my WH checked out of the marriage. I finally realized he had major issues that contributed to this marriage failure.

In my case the POSOW is deployed with my WH, and she DiD him very well. With his native language he set her up and by all the evidence I found used him like her boyfriend. My WH finally got his real life porn star. She acts and dresses like one, and of course he couldn't resist.

The hardest part of this is knowing she likely used him, and will be done with him later. She has a track record and did this to another marriage when she was deployed to IRAQ. She doesn't go into a bar to pay for her own drinks. Nope, she uses men to get what she needs.

When I confronted her there was no sorry, or I didn't know. It was all about how she gets targeted by people just because she is pretty and isn't responsible for my bad relationship. She went on to tell me the hot tub pictures are just "Innocent, but playful pictures of good friends having fun!"

A family destroyed by a DiD that fueled my WH's addiction and now he is hooked. His entire life and his military career thrown into the toilet for a skankyho. He has yet to realize, feel it, or even own it.

As I build myself up and my figure gets back to sexy it cannot make up for failing my husband at his most important need. He and I were caught in a sick cycle. I ate to escape the lack of my needs being met. I begged him for years to fill my needs, but he didn't want to and didn't have the desire. I kind of think I have four babies today because it was the only thing that I could get from him. We had the Taker/Giver relationship for years. I gave and he took. My resentment grew. No amount of this sick cycle is responsible for his choices. I was miserable by him, but I stayed true to my vows. Today, I am still faithful to him.

I pray everyday for the POSOW to just go away. I hope when they come home in a month she will go find another man that now has way more money than my man. When she first dug her claws into him he had a hefty six figure salary, but now I get half of it. Along with that we are losing our two homes. He was rich, but now he is poor. I just don't think the DiD will want that anymore. I just hope the gossip is true and that she just uses men for their money. Then she will dump mine and maybe (not sure still) we can reconcile.

My four babies sure do miss him!

Tough~

So why does he stay with her?

I so relate to your other post about how the things your husband said to OW would often come from you.... my husband's other woman basically liked ME in my husband.... ridiculous.

Mehr, he stays with her because she makes him feel good. At least that's my best guess since I don't really know, being in Plan B I am oblivious

Ladies, before finding this site, I spent time on another one, one that was heavily BW-dominated. There were some useful exchanges there, but all too often, and all too soon, the discussions migrated to "can you top this" exchanges demonizing the OW. Since, as one of the few BH's participating, I technically was married to, and reconciling with, an OW, I often protested their views (with such force and persistence that I was "excused" from further participation). It was not that I wanted to defend the OW's of the world, but that the BW's were taking the easy way out. Rather than dig into what caused the rupture in their marriages, the ladies there were content to say, "Oh, yes, my WH is a moron, and she was an easy piece." Like a fault-line in the Earth's crust, leading to unexpected quakes, the conclusion was that the BW's could not have known, could not have done anything to prevent the disaster.

If nothing else, this marvelous site lays out the game-pieces that can build a successful, and affair-resistent marriage. (I don't like absolutes, so "-proof" is not used here.) Looking back NOW I can see which EN's were not being supplied by me, (and which by my wife, which contributed to my increasingly not supplying those she needed), the lack of which led her to look for them without me. Yes, the OM was competent in many fields, decent-looking, funny, and hard-working. These qualities also highly describe ME. (Wife mentioned this after recovery: "D was more like you than any man I had ever known.") What he did, as with any paedophile, was identify what was lacking in my wife's daily existence, and supply it in large doses.

I asked the question, "What do DiDs provide to KISAs?" and the consensus answer is "admiration". This male will tell you that is very close but not exactly right. It is a melange of admiration mixed with expressed gratitude, and an internally-generated feeling that the KISA made someone's situation better, easier, etc. Why do you think men stop on busy highways to assist females with car trouble? Most of them are NOT attempting to initiate an extra-marital relationship.

I dove very hard into discovering where my efforts at satisfying my wife's ENs was lacking. I can tell you what I wasn't doing then, and what I now consciously do, to improve our lives together. I attend to it everyday (BTW: So does she.)

One of you said that the xWH and OW are still together "because she makes him feel good" which is obviously true. But the key would be to answer "How?" It may be that the "need" he had/has would not be acceptable to you, (outrageous SF demands, abandonment of family responsibilies, etc) and therefore the marriage was doomed to fail.

But over the recent six months, the six or eight BHs on this site have been doing the hard work to uncover those missing EN's and "lure" the WW's back. (And shrinks would tell us that their tasks are more daunting than those facing the typical BW.) Those BHs are not sitting back and saying, "Well, he had a killer hairdo and danced like a champion. No WAY could my WW resist that!"

Society has done immeasurable damage to the opportunities for men to generate the good feelings of being the KISA we all have some secret desire to be. (No sabre-tooth tigers to vanquish; a phone call brings AAA to change the wife's flat tire!) DiDs provide those opportunities for their targets. Should wives seek opportunities to do the same?

I think it ties in with the Admiration need, the desire to be a KISA.

You don't have to slay a dragon to be a KISA for your wife or girlfriend. It can be doing something "small", such as Al leaving work to be with me when I went to the ER a week ago. I was so utterly grateful to him that I couldn't have shown more affection (a top 5 for him) and gratitude than I was showing.

It gives them the chance to feel like they are a hero. You shouldn't depend on being the KISA for every issue, I think, but there are still times when it's good to let her know you can be her KISA.

Sometimes all it takes is getting dinner ready for her. Sometimes it's being there when she's very ill.

Anyway, I digress. The point is that I think it is okay to be a KISA for your wife or girlfriend (if you are not married)...NOT for anyone else. And not all the time, for everything.

The unmet "need" (wandering husbands) is sometimes the need to hear excessive admiration in absence of actual admirable behaviors/qualities.
A glowing (borrowed) sense of self, which is mostly unearned.
Heavy reliance on a woman's praise to feel like a man.
An underdeveloped sense of self.
Combine this need with an intolerance for hearing radical honesty as a positive thing, you have yourself a man who will find that the DiD is a strong aphrodisiac.

Sometimes, we see a MBer BH (divorced, or soon to be) head down this path to seek premature & unearned womanly approval if he has been rejected by his WW.

Admiration is a legitimate need.
It's possible to have this need met in false ways, via a DiD.

The KISA and the DiD need each other's weaknesses to fit together.
If either makes positive personal growth towards having a sense of self without the reflection, the other one is left without their reflected sense of self, and that's not OK for him/her.

Thank you Pep. You are a God send to this board. Some how you put to words exactly what is going on in my brain at exactly the right time.

nESRE

If you read here long enough, you will see that what the BW or BH did or didn't do has nothing to do with their spouse's choice to cheat.

To use your example: If the wife wanted her cheating husband's company and asked for his help with things, she was needy/helpless/clingy/suffocating and he just had to get away from her to a woman who wasn't so demanding and controlling.

And if she was independent and didn't rely on him much, then (*sniff*) she didn't need him and he wanted a woman who did.

You will find the same comparison for every excuse anyone ever gave for cheating.

Cheating is a like a disease that has no outside cause, much as we would like to find one. Cheating is an autoimmune disease - that means the cause rises from inside the person and turns on him/her and causes an awful sickness.

We've debated this here before and pretty much came to the conclusion that using the MB principles will make for a great marriage, but even then will not prevent adultery if one partner continues to have poor boundaries and is therefore open and vulnerable to either Damsels in Distress or Cruising Men, as described above.

Regarding Scotlands WH:

See my post above. Female with sexy body who acts availble + male with poor boundaries = Male Struck Stupid.

When Male Struck Stupid also has Status and Pays Attention to said female, you end up with Male Struck Stupid AND Female Struck Stupid. And that = Wrecked Marriage for one or both.

See also "Woods, Tiger,", "Schwarzenegger, Arnold," and "Weiner, U.S. Rep." And loads upon loads of other WH who aren't so famous but act the same way. It's virtually always the same thing.

Could not have said it better myself. And I could add that this is practically the definition of narcissism - when the person has shut off all sources of admiration *from the inside*, as in self-respect, self-valdiation, self-worth, and instead wants all of that to come from outside sources.

Like a Damsel in Distress if male, or a Cruising Man if female.

Why shut it off from the inside? Because it feels really good to get all that praise and admiration from the outside. It feels like being a rock star, no matter what your actual position in life. So you shut it off from the inside in order to remain 100% available to getting it from the outside anytime it's there.

That's what Dr. Drew calls "acquired narcissism", and it's an addiction like any other - a stone-cold addiction to Attention.

And I must add that this is so very, very true - the person knows that they're doing something terribly wrong, but there is such a huge amount of instant gratification going on that they become completely hooked on it.

It's so easy! No work involved! Actually EARNING respect and validation is WORK and takes TIME. Why bother when you can go to your workplace or go online and get tons and tons of Admiration right now? Sure, it's all fake crap, but who cares when it feels so good?

Again, for recent 100% example of this see "Weiner, U.S. Rep.", who ignored his beautiful and intelligent new wife for tons of instant sucking up from online bimbos that he didn't even know.

If you read here long enough, you will see that what the BW or BH did or didn't do has nothing to do with their spouse's choice to cheat.

I invite you to continue reading, as you generously inferred I should. You only mastered half the lesson.

Yes, that the decision to cross the boundaries and participate in an affair is the WS's exclusively, is a principle here. But an equally important principle is that the conditions in the marriage are equally the responsibility of the two partners.

What my point was, which you so studiously ignored, was that what the potential betrayed spouse can do, if they know what they are looking for, can prevent the EN-search that leads to boundaries being crossed, by the potential wayward spouse. Yes, strong boundaries would stem the progress toward infidelity. What I'm talking about is stemming the need to approach to the boundaries.

There is hairpin turn high up on a mountain. People who maintain too high a speed fly off, crash, and die. I want to put up guardrails. The "nothing can be done" position just expands the cemetary at the crash site below.

If your "what the BW or BH did or didn't do has nothing to do with their spouse's choice to cheat" has any validity, then spouses have no ability to control their own marriage's future - it would just be random selection as to which marriages succeed, and which fail. God forbid that's what the reality is!

Why do you think knowing the EN list, and actively satisfying it, and implementing the principles of O&H, POJA, etc are so important? I think you'll salute the statement that observing those principles and actions will build better marriages. Well, one of the indicators of "better" to me would be that neither partner seeks EN satisfaction outside of the marital union.

NG, all the things you name will indeed make for a great and satisfying marriage. But you live in a fool's paradise if you think that having a great marriage will always protect you from somebody cheating.

That's because in the end, you cannot control what your spouse does - what any other person does. You can put all the protections in place, as you should, but in the end if somebody Gets Stupid and crosses the line, there is nothing you can do to stop them short of duct-taping them to a chair and keeping them locked in your basement 24/7. And even in AZ, where I live, that would be frowned upon by law enforcement.

My XWH actually said, "Things were good at home so I thought it wouldn't hurt anything." I'll bet Rep. Weiner thought exactly the same thing.

Bottom line is

if a married person spends time
alone
with a person of the opposite gender
and they start talking with each other and discussing anything it WILL eventually lead to kvetching about each others spouses or partners and
the ball goes a rolling. The 'horror' of each nonperfect relationship will be magnified and expanded with each conversation.
Men'll feel like the OW's H is truly evil and he must protect her gentle spirit.
Women'll feel like the OM's W is truly shrewish and nonfeminine and he deserves so muchmore and only she is capable of fullfilling his manliness properly.

Emotional needs get more and more met and its off and running.

So.

Time alone with person of opposite gender=a horrible mess. A big, cruel, horrible mess.

But you live in a fool's paradise if you think that having a great marriage will always protect you from somebody cheating.

That's me:

Never Guessed
777 TryingToFinda Way
Fools Paradise, NY

But if you are right, my pessimistic (fatalistic?) friend, then TAKE ME NOW, LORD!

What you are employing is sophistry ("subtly deceptive reasoning or argumentation"), and I am going to call you on it this time.

You typed: ...you cannot control what your spouse does - what any other person does... as if by stating that, you present it as fact that that is what I said. I did not.

What I said was to the effect that: Each spouse, with enough knowledge, commitment, and effort, should be able to construct a program to satisfy the EN's of the partner. Such EN-satisfaction will not "control" (your word, NEVER mine) the opposite number, but it should work toward influencing the partner's commitment to the union, and disinclination to cheating, by reducing (or, ideally, eliminating) the search for EN-satisfaction by that partner from sources outside of the marital union.

Now, limiting your rebuttal to the words in blue italic, do you disagree with that position?

BTW:

My XWH actually said, "Things were good at home so I thought it wouldn't hurt anything."
This was a man who betrayed you, deceived you, and you present HIS self-serving words as supporting your position? Really?

Yes.


Yes. That was exactly the point.

_________________________

And yes, I do know what that means. For anyone who doesn't: it's funny, but it isn't terribly polite.

I agree with the addiction to attention thing that KR mentioned. It can also be described as " approbation lust". The constant uncontrollable drive for attention and admiration