The story of her A documented elsewhere shines a light on an incredibly shallow, selfish, infinitely vicious, and self destructive person. It's a real contrast to the girl I'm with now.

It's too much to deal with sometimes.

It's too much to deal with sometimes.

Really? Beginning a great new life with a woman who is apparently diametrically opposed to being defined as "incredibly shallow, selfish, infinitely vicious, and self destructive" is that much of a strain, is it?

Try to struggle on, okay?

Yup.

You don't trust it.

Too many lies, too much crap.


Slog on brother, slog on.

Damage done. I have not read the 1000's of threads here but in three months i have not seen the sheer cruelty of what my wife pulled off during her A in anyone elses story. I just haven't. I'm know I can't rate ones hurt vs another's. And all the stories stink.

Is she sorry? No doubt.

Am I working on more forgiveness? Everyday.

Struggling at times. For sure.

Do you mean by length of time? Or by who the AP was? Keep reading. They're there.

Try not to compare apples to oranges. ALL adultery is damaging and cruel. I suspect that a poster reading your thread might think their situation was worse than yours. I guess it all depends on which side of the fence you're standing on. There have been some cases where the WS was so unbelievably cruel and hurtful that is was stunning - and the A was only a few months long! Wayward men leaving women with newborn babies - what POS would do that?! Wayward women abandoning their children - what?? A wayward husband screwing around with his brother's wife??

It's all so heartbreaking, and all so damned unnecessary.

Two men are camping, and they hear a grizzly bear getting closer to their site. Being well-seasoned outdoorsmen, they both recognized the sounds of a hungry bear about to attack. One of the men stood up, put on his running shoes and started stretching. His friend said, "That's a waste of time, you can't outrun a bear!"

The other answered, "I don't have to outrun the bear; I just have to outrun YOU!"

..i have not seen the sheer cruelty of what my wife pulled off during her A in anyone elses story.

First off, there have been staggeringly horrid accounts here of actions by WWs toward their BHs - including OCs foisted on the family, STDs shared, FRs dangled over and over, false criminal charges prosecuted to conviction, etc, etc.

But......WHO CARES? Unlike the runner-camper in my story above, you do NOT have to outrun/outdo/out-whatever anyone else. You have to outrun THE BEAR!

Concentrate on your partner's actions today and tomorrow. Fixating on the past will cause you to re-endure all the pain that those days presented you. The "bear" cannot catch you if you keep running. Stopping to look back will merely result in a well fed Ursus arctos horribilis.

thanks for the laugh NG, I agree you can get so stuck on the past that you miss what could be your future.............
Life is waiting for you if you run to it instead of putting the brakes on and restarting............
It is a choice........
jessi

I was talking to one of my gaming friends the other day... his XWW leveled molestation charges against him during the D.

Waywards are.... evil...

NG-awesome analogy as per usual.

Focusing on the future as the past gets furthr away.

We had a great conversation last night. About us.

Followed by an outstanding make-out session.

We were celebrating 4 months of her release from her affair. She asked me again to forgive her, I asked to stop asking me that because I have already.

She asked me if I love her. Yes.

Moving along.

Mike,

So happy for you two, I think you two are going to make it, this is now a life long commitment with some meaning, keep up the good work and don't ever let it slide again............
keep us posted......
jessi

The brutality a spouse can impose on another is beyond imagination. A new story appears on these forums everyday.

You maybe could understand infidelity if theres violence or neglect in the marriage. In nearly all cases we get the story from the BS so we may be missing details, but taking the BS at face value most of these cheaters are in 'normal' marriages.

It has to be a personality flaw, a weakness as I like to suggest to newly BS here, that drives someone to crush the life out a loved one.

They change life forever for the entire family.

Some of these stories are almost too much to read.

It's important to realize that -- aside from some with specific mental disorders -- the statement above is usually a falsehood. Every man or woman on the planet, under certain conditions, will fall in love with someone who is not their spouse. And under other conditions, they won't.

What are the conditions?

Allowing a member of the opposite sex to meet your intimate emotional needs, especially Intimate Conversation, Affection, and Recreational Companionship. Those generally lead to a desire to meet the need for Sexual Fulfillment, at which point you've met the definition of a Physical Affair.

That's it. That's all it takes. No "personality flaw", no "weakness" that causes a married person to have an affair. Just allowing a member of the opposite sex to meet their intimate emotional needs well enough, long enough to pass the Romantic Love Threshold is all it takes. Then the Giver takes over, the potential adulterer feel an overwhelming attraction to the other person, and the affair is in full swing.

It's important to understand this because understanding the cause informs the treatment!

If it really was "weakness", then the cure would be to keep letting someone other than your spouse meet your intimate emotional needs but just be "stronger". Well, that doesn't stop the affair. Let's try the next one.

If it was a "personality flaw", then the cure would be to keep letting someone other than your spouse meet your intimate emotional needs, but take medication or therapy to correct your "defect". That also doesn't stop the affair.

But trying to remedy those "defects" or "weaknesses" is extremely popular with those who are currently in active affairs. The crazy thing is, usually stopping the affair dead and instituting extraordinary precautions usually fixes the "weakness" or "defect". When someone fully implements strong Extraordinary Precautions -- particularly Radical Honesty and Transparency -- they don't end up having more affairs!

Go figure. Don't fix the person. Change their behavior... and the person fixes themselves.

Just to add onto my previous post: all the crazy-making behavior surrounding an affair (lying, emotional abuse, and more) can be explained as well without resorting to an assumption of defect or weakness on the part of the person having the affair.

There are a number of concepts that are important to understand that perfectly explain typical affair behavior. I'd encourage you to Google them.
1. Contrast Effect (see new version of His Needs, Her Needs).
2. Exclusive need-meeting (read "Surviving An Affair").
3. Love Bank balances, particularly the Romantic Love Threshold (see any Dr. Harley book).
4. Approach-avoidance conflict (listen to the radio show; he doesn't talk about this much in the books, but it's a well-documented phenomenon with a Wikipedia page).
5. Different types of lies (read "Love Busters").

A wayward engages in Protector Lying and Stay Out Of Trouble Lying during an affair. Approach-avoidance causes them to vacillate between their spouse and the affair partner. Allowing the AP to meet emotional needs drives Love Bank balances higher, resulting in a feeling of overwhelming attraction toward the affair partner and the feelings toward the spouse suffer by contrast (Contrast Effect).

It all makes a twisted sort of sense once you wrap your head around the reasons for the behaviors. The wayward would be hard-pressed to explain their reasoning, but a decent psychologist (or armchair quarterback like me) with a grounding in MarriageBuilders philosophy can

I know this, i have a lot more to learn this stuff.

Thought of the Day:

While I agree with the above, why is that I can keep my fantasies and millions of other married folks can keep their fantasies just that: fantasies? Its weakness. It comes down to not having the courage to tell your spouse at the time of engagement someone else is making you happy. Maybe a touch of fear is there too. And of course, a ton of selfishness.

I see a beautiful woman everyday. I speak to beautiful women everyday in my travels. Women in different life Id like to be with. Am I a superhuman because I can keep it in my pants? No, I have committments to my family and a love of my wife that precludes even the notion of doing something.

Cheaters are weak. Comes back to that.

Edit: I have seen a few threads where the poster has noticed some distance and things seem to be uncool at home and they confronted their spouses and got the 'we have to talk' or the 'Im not happy' thing. To let the A start, continue, and flourish like too many seem to is deviant.

I hate to give the holier than thou impression and Im as interested in SF as the next guy, I have been in more than one situation where I could have strayed to some degree but it really never went passed a fantasy. Im strong.

I mean I do appreciate the more scientific reasoning for Affairs that was nicely laid out above.

Im not poo-poo'ing all those concepts as invalid.

Im a simple guy and look to break downs things to their lowest common denominator. And I always seem to come back, at least in my wifes case, a weakness in her. She let this guy into her life and let him deliver a lot of things that I wasnt. And, at a certain point he made his needs known.

So what does she do? 1) run and apologize for leading him on and come home to me and face the prospect of looking for a new job and all the uncertainies that come with it or 2) give him what he wants, completely renege on our marriage vows, and start a long term situation where it spiraled into a thing where she couldnt remove herself.

A strong person chooses 1. A weakling number 2.

Today, I have someone with a strong #1 ambition. Someone I can be proud of. Someone who is proud of herself. Someone I can love.

Cheaters are weak.

BINGO! But let's be a tad more prcise, okay?

"Weakness" in and of itself is of no interest to this discourse. "Weakness" as a function of having "weak boundaries" in dealing with the opposite sex (we'll focus on heterosexual conduct here) is the elemental issue.

Boundaries can be externally enforced, manifesting itself in social conventions such as those in place in Islamic, or Orthodox Jewish communities, or in archaic controls (chastity belts, anyone?).

In modern Western society, the controls are "trusted" to be erected by the individuals themselves. Well, that sure as HELL is not working very well, is it? And the reason for that is that adolescents going into adulthood (as they approach monogamous commitments) are NEVER educated about the necessity of creating their own system of boundaries. As a matter of fact, they are inundated with innumerable counterproductive cultural communication about "doing what's good for you", and "seeking to find one's own joy", whether or not that "good" or "joy" means banging the pool-boy, or stopping by a convenient parking lot while driving the babysitter home. (Apologies to pool-boys and babysitters!)

Do I have to get a pool before I can have a pool boy?