Thanks for the responses...Sorry I couldn't reply earlier, since i was caught up in work. I'll post my thoughts and questions soon

I'm a FWS and my H is FWS. We both have a completely different personal recovery processes even though we both have betrayed.

I'm happy to have a transformed marriage, but I know this has come as a truly hard work for us and not some sort of reward for our wayward lives. And we are not nearly there yet. What we get from MB is what we put in there. I'm sure that if I had stayed wayward I would have ended with divorce. If you are curious about punishment, I can tell you that - MB is not about punishing, it is about making the marriage work. Recovery itself is a hard process accompanied by bad memories and horrible triggers, many tears and this is what we both get after having an affair, does it sound like a reward to you? It can take 2 to 5 years to get over your partner's affair, a reward huh? Standing in front of the mirror and looking at yourself with disgust, a reward?
Better marriage is a result of hard work by both partners, and you don't need an affair to accomplish that. You need to know the basic concept about emotional needs and how to avoid lovebusters and motivation to do all this - and I'm happy to be rewarded with a happy marriage after doing that kind of work. Our choices to have affairs have ruined our lives, not made it better in any way. Affairs are a lowest lowpoint where you can get and even then there is a chance turn things over and make it work.

pinging...Can i revive this thread?

Why?

These links are probably the Final Word on the topic... though being an Internet forum on a thread necroed after 18 months, it might go on forever.

MarriageBuilders recovery is about a concept called "Just Compensation". Please read these two articles to understand it:
http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi5042_qa.html
http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi5042b_qa.html

It's also important to realize that the most logical response to infidelity is usually a quick divorce with terms that highly favor the betrayed spouse. It's the most reasonable reaction, and often the path to the fastest personal recovery.

If you really want to fully understand the answer to your question, purchase or borrow a copy of "Surviving An Affair", by Dr. Willard Harley & Jennifer Harley Chalmers. We can summarize here, but the responses you'll get to your question will be scattershot. Surviving An Affair provides the reasons why affairs happen, why they end, how they SHOULD end, and what you can expect from recovery.

On a personal note, every so often my brain wanders into "fairness"-land. Is it justice that my spouse has a great marriage with me today after what she did? Of course not. It is not just at all. But she has provided me with Just Compensation in the form of living a MarriageBuilders lifestyle with me -- and I with her -- and helping us both have the marriage we always wanted.

The injustice of it all, I suppose, may be the one thing I eventually did have to forgive.

For 2 years you have been reading stories about adultery from those whose marriages survived and otherwise, now youre back for a personal reflection from us?

Read the material in the above post and that should be enough.

Now tell us about your experience with adultery because it pretty clear it hit close to home with you.

I grew old...I know that is a very simple statement. But do read on...

Doormat

Thanks for the links. I read those answers. And I do understand that you believe that fairness is a myth (or am I assuming so?)...But I find solace when I contemplate the Universal law of cause and effect. I expect to be punished, since I have been denied forgiveness for my own actions from those who I have wronged. To tell you the truth, I do not even think their forgiveness could change anything for me. I do not believe in a god who sits above us and penalizes us for our indiscretions. I simply believe, if i've done something bad, something bad happens to me, like the laws of physics...

Now, am i trying to apply my belief system for the FWS to reinforce my beliefs...certainly not...i thought it was so, when I posted here for the first time.....but now, I do not believe that is the reason why I'm curious...

Nope. It did not. But the last relationship i was in, turned abusive. She was abusive for a while. I was abusive towards the end of it. And my actions were worse than hers. That's a long story. But neither of us cheated.

So, my interest in this would be, like Doormat said, about the fairness of it all....But not the way he describes it. If i ever was cheated on, I am not sure mine would be a knee-jerk reaction and end it all...I certainly believe that even if the BS did forgive, despite that forgiveness, the consequence of the cheating will weigh down on FWS. Although I am no saint myself, when I first posted here, I did have contempt towards the FWS. I think part of my curosity is that I want to find out how the FWS are affected by all this, so that I can stop seeing them in just black and white...

Btw, i haven't been reading all this for 2 years.I did visit occasionally..Since I posted here the last time, i've been reading about so many things...And i've been travelling extensively...So much that I voluntarily took up an assignment in supposedly one of the most inhospitable places on earth just for the sake of getting to know about this part of the world...and after coming here, one more wrong assumption of mine got busted....

I can think of two productive approaches for you:

* Be specific about your situation here, and we can show you how to apply Marriage Builders concepts and what good that can do for you, or

* Research generally by becoming a daily listener of the Radio show, possibly subscribing the archives, and possibly buying and reading the Marriage Builders books.

From your posts as they are now, I don't understand what you are saying, and am not sure we can help you. If you want to be more specific about your situation, though, I'll bet we can help you lots!

If you want to do research here, then I think you need to dig in and do the research. I don't think we can help you do that.

There's a massive education available for you, though, if you want to get involved in it.

Hey Aaromale,

As I see it, your questioning is entirely philosophical and theoretical and not actionable or realistic.

MB is based on actions. It is a method for solving certain (solvable) relationship problems in general and marital problems in particular with real-world design solutions and no omphaloskepsis. It has been posted here before: MB methods are pretty much engineering solutions.

So, if a FWS (actual, genuine F) wants to repair the damage they have done and heal the wounds they have caused by their adultery, lies and mean behavior, and the BS is at some point willing to accept their attempt at compensation MB tends to work more often than not. If either person, and it�s usually the FWS, will not or can not work the entire program 100% results are not guaranteed.

(Personally I do not believe there are very many true FWS in the world. Oh, specific examples can be found in a pinch. But they are rare birds and come from a limited set of adulterous scenarios.)

�I expect to be punished, since I have been denied forgiveness for my own actions from those who I have wronged. To tell you the truth, I do not even think their forgiveness could change anything for me. I do not believe in a god who sits above us and penalizes us for our indiscretions. I simply believe, if I�ve done something bad, something bad happens to me, like the laws of physics...�

Huh? If you are appealing to physics, and not metaphysics, present your analyses and your data. If you believe there is no God, how will you be punished? What is judging your actions (and lack of actions)? Where is this cosmic balance beam? You do realize you are simply appealing to the randomness of the void, right? Sooner or later everything happens in every order and you think you will be allowed to pick out the things you want, the things that make sense to you. But everything that affects you and makes no sense to you will also happen, over and over.


So, my turn to ask you a couple of questions.

I would like to know where you have read Justice (with a capital J) actually exists in this universe; where is this Justice you speak of? Where is it real, accurate, true or even fair?

And finally, where do you think the most inhospitable place on earth is? Research station in Antarctica? Atacama Desert observatory? Gobi paleontology dig? International Court of Justice in The Hague?

I am of the firm opposite opinion.

The wayward spouse chooses their destruction and pain. The BS does not.

My spouse tells me all the time he knows that he can never take back what he did, or even fully comprehend the pain he inflicted upon me.

I believe him.

Oops, I did not realize this thread was elderly. I was just so taken aback by the quote I responded to that I had to answer.

My jaw is on the floor, still.

One doesn't need a concept of God to have resentment and forgiveness.

Resentment exists as a protective response to threat. We resent those who have injured us.

We forgive those who have compensated us for our injuries.

These things exist because, like many mammals, human beings survive and thrive better in social groups than in single family units.


What about biology, sir? While you are correct that many of the things that happen in our bodies happen because of the laws of chemistry and physics, many of those things are gamed by biology. Having the proper amount of chemical receptors for given neurotransmitters or other organic compounds, for instance.

As for none of it mattering, my very simple belief is this; I only get ONE chance to get this right, period. I get no after life, no forever after. No nirvana.

The only "immortality" available is the mark I leave behind in the lives that I touch... and even those lives will be brief. So, for me, it is best that I do the best I can in my one chance, and leave a positive mark in my trail, because there is no forgiveness, redemption, or forever after for me if I fail (or succeed).

bolded for emphasis

Point taken for sake of argument as re: resentment and forgiveness. But from whence this broader & strange concept of "right?" A wolf lunching on a fawn is neither right nor wrong. The wolf is just doing what wolves often do. Predatory OMs? Just doing what they sometimes do. Just interacting, until the hunger reflex abates and the sensory stimuli and neurotransmitters tip over into balance to indicate that they go off & do otherwise, no?

I'll respectfully agree to disagree with you, HHH. I know I won't solve it here, but for me, to be able to conclude that it all came to be quite fully ex nihilo, without a creator, requires more faith than I've got.

Ah, and I, sir, believe you have mountains of faith over what I posess myself.

Don't misunderstand me; I have great respect for faith and those who have it.

Just one problem with your comparison, though. A fawn is not a willing participant in the hunt. Adultery is a cooperative act. Deception is a cooperative act.

So, while your description of a predatory OM my be partly accurate, it does not factor in the willing participation of the AP, along with the unconditional trust of the BS - the part which we agree to accept deception.

@GloveOil: Total threadjack, but if you want I'll snail-mail or Kindle loan you one of my copies of Richard Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene". It's a great read, and provides a superb framework for understanding the "why" of an ethic of right and wrong for our species sans supernatural intervention. IMHO it's a cornerstone book for understanding the phenomena we are currently observing in -- for instance -- the growing plague of pesticide-resistant bedbugs in the USA, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and even many common human interactions (including adultery).

I'm a huge fan of MarriageBuilders and agree on moral questions with many of the posters, but -- as you probably already know -- I'm completely nonreligious.

Don't know if I've mentioned him to you before, but if you check youtube, there is a TedX talk from Baba Brinkman which ends with a bit about simple genetic basis for altruism that is pretty fantastic.

You might also get a kick out of his Rap Guide to Evolution and Rap Guide to Human Nature.

There was also a recent study involving simple robots which produced surprising results.

Dawkins is alright... but... he kind of throws me off with his belief in "short term mating."

The problem with brilliant people in so many fields, from the ecclesiastical to the scientific, is that they may have superb insights and amazing eloquence, but their personal lives are often train wrecks.

True, very true.

Another comes to mind, and I have come to enjoy it more with MB as a basis while I read, and that is You Are Not So Smart, which is all about psychological bias and fallacies. Love it.