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It only takes one person to ruin a marriage,but whatever happens there are 2 sides to any story? The rock and roller from Genesis band, Phil Collins sings a song called Both Sides of the Story. They may not hear it in full detail, but there is a reality to the situation of a failing marriage. I dealt with a lot of rejection from him; it still hurts but time heals all wounds and prayer too.


Divorced, newly married again less than 5 years, both of us Christians, 2 small children
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Originally Posted by SableVenus57
It only takes one person to ruin a marriage,but whatever happens there are 2 sides to any story?

There is only one side to the truth, though.


"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.." Theodore Roosevelt

Exposure 101


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@GloveOil: What you wrote was
Quote
to have saved my wife and then thrown myself in.

And how I read that was
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to have saved my wife, because I loved her and would have sacrificed anything for her well-being, unconditionally - and then thrown myself in, because the OW was a drug I was seriously addicted to, which I couldn't live without .

I am sorry, I tried to paraphrase you. But what I wanted to see was if your situation of being in a happy marriage and still have an affair will fit my belief that happy marriages that face an affair will not be broken up - atleast by the WS, because the WS will rather let go of the AP than to leave the BS.

Why it matters to me is this...If I do everything right and still get cheated on, that is devastating. But beyond that, if I get ditched, that will destroy the soul won't it?

I am not in such a situation. But having read a BH say that he was in that situation, I had my doubts can it be so. Some of his statements were ambiguous. And I felt there was a [probably inadvertent] misrepresentation of the FWW side of the story. If he was right, then I will have to concede to myself that the love of a WS in a happy marriage is farcically volatile. Or to put it bluntly, love is volatile on the whole. Which I did not want to.


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It's hard for a sober person to accurately imagine, or remember, what it feels like to be drunk; and to a staggering drunk, an accidental tumble off a bridge might just feel like a controlled descent. To a schmuck in an affair, it feels like love. Doesn't necessarily mean it is.

If faced with a make or break decision, I didn't think a schmuck in affair will go for breaking. But only you'd know better.


@NeverGuessed: Dude...I am not nitpicking. I just asked a very specific question because, I simply wanted to know if a FWS would willingly leave a happy marriage for an AP. I am sorry about the long drivel.

@Markos: Reading SAA now(skipping certain parts though..will give it a full read some other time..maybe after I read HNHN)...will write about that "truth" once I finish.


“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there.”-Rumi
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...if a FWS would willingly leave a happy marriage for an AP...

Okay, getting to the core of the issue here is whether or not unilaterally "leaving the marriage" is the worst kind of behavior a WS can engage in, or if such an act is not actually more considerate than the usual WS game of having a "secret second life."

(Potential) WSs are the craftiest and most selfish of creatures. Their goal is rarely initially (and sometimes never) to jettison their current life with their soon-to-be BS. Their goal is to enjoy a buffet from two separate serving tables, for men usually reserving family comfort ENs to the home-front, while sourcing admiration and SF, for example, from the tart next door. (Women usually re-order the take-out menu, but the principle holds.)

In my case, as objectively as I can gauge the situation, I had done everything my bride could have wanted from a loving, attentive, and devoted husband - WITH ONE VITAL EXCEPTION. She sourced that EN inappropriately, and would likely have continued down the path to marital destruction but for my almost incredible discovery of what was just happening.

Crystal-balling, then: Given another six(?) months, and then discovery, there would have been no willingness on my part to recover the union, probably to her devastation. Extend it maybe a year instead, and then have discovery, and given the stories here, she likely would not have cared if my choice was not to attempt reconciliation, having completely gone over to the "dark side".

It becomes the treading toward the slippery slope, occasioned by poor boundaries meant to prevent alternative sourcing of ENs, that have created the tragedies we deal with here.

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Originally Posted by Aaromale
@GloveOil: What you wrote was
Quote
to have saved my wife and then thrown myself in.

And how I read that was
Quote
to have saved my wife, because I loved her and would have sacrificed anything for her well-being, unconditionally - and then thrown myself in, because the OW was a drug I was seriously addicted to, which I couldn't live without .

I am sorry, I tried to paraphrase you. But what I wanted to see was if your situation of being in a happy marriage and still have an affair will fit my belief that happy marriages that face an affair will not be broken up - atleast by the WS, because the WS will rather let go of the AP than to leave the BS.
No, not because I couldn't live without OW. But because at that point, I simply deserved to drown, and part of me realized it.

I don't know if one can put a percentage figure on the extent to which what happens to a marriage hit with infidelity hinges on what happens prior to the affair (residual goodwill, etc.) vs. the extent to which it depends on what both spouses do to save the marriage after the affair, but I think that what happens after can be just as important or more important than what happened in the marriage before the affair. And I'm not sure what you mean by "happy." "Happy" may be more of a point on a continuum than a point on either side of a bright line. Lots of marriages survive after affairs, but they may not have been "happy" before the affair and may not be "happy" after it -- instead, those marriages can limp along in a crippled state. Maybe you can call that surviving, but don't call it livin'!

That's why I think MarriageBuilders is so cool. It doesn't get caught up in deterministic predictions. It's aimed at moving a marriage toward the "happy" side of the continuum, regardless of what preceded the affair, regardless of what went on in the past.

And I think that, yes, human love is rather "volatile", as you put it. Or as I'd rather put it, it's a living thing. It's not an "either always-was-always-will-be or never-was-never-will-be" situation. Human love needs care & feeding. It needs watered. It needs nurtured & cultivated. It can degrade, fall victim to entropy, end, die. MB is about that nurture and cultivation.



Me: FWH, 50
My BW: Trust_Will_Come, 52, tall, beautiful & heart of gold
DD23, DS19
EA-then-PA Oct'08-Jan'09
Broke it off & confessed to BW (after OW's H found out) Jan.7 2009
Married 25 years & counting.
Grateful for forgiveness. Working to be a better husband.
"I wear the chain I forged in life... I made it link by link, and yard by yard" ~Jacob Marley's ghost, A Christmas Carol
"Do it again & you're out on your [bum]." ~My BW, Jan.7 2009
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