Qoute: you cant say. "i didnt know", and "i saw it coming."

Yes, I think you can, because when you see someone floundering with their daily life coping skills, and they refuse to listen or identify any of the existing problems surrounding them or their perceptions of it, then you might have thoughts such as "I would not put anything past him/her in this state he/she is in right now. But on the other hand as they have never shown any signs of straying or even suggested that was in their mind, when it happens you really "Did not know" for that time.

It sometimes appears other than what is really happening at the time. If some one as I stated in the previous post is sub-consciously sabatoging themselves, and you add lack of recognition or will to cope then "anything is up for grabs as far as what they will do to themselves". The ones that are closest to them (spouse) will become the target of anger and blame for their unwillingness to delve into themselves, as unfair as that is, it is a self- destructive motive to alienate the one person who knows you at your best, worst and everything in between. You do not want the S directing any resolutions for a healthy M when it is not in the person's realm of thinking on those lines. Escapism in any form is destructive even no matter if it's premeditated or has not even surface in the consciousness of the individual going thru it. So considering this post you can see it coming or at least something coming, but when it's an A it does throw you a curve because you have been dealing with someone who has not been coping with any real life issues and barely is functioning in job, school, home, and is neglecting to confront that, immerses themselves into another situation that is being an all consuming behavior that is also unhealthy. Does that make sense?

Neesha,

here is the basic concept.

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by jdmac1:
<strong> </font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">its not so much why they cheat, its why the marriage is in such a state that it doesnt seem to matter to the cheater.

isnt that really the point? </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Yes but why is it that the marriage always seems to be in such a state only to the cheater? Time and again it is the same, these affairs come out of the blue for the BS. Most have absolutely no idea that the marriage is bad enough that something like this could happen. If it is as you say, why is that?

I agree that some BS have blinders on and will forever refuse to remove them. But an A isn't the answer to removing them. Is it?

jd</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">you cant have blinders on and then say i didnt know followed up with i saw it coming and then there was nothing i could do.

if your spouse is telling you there are problems with the marriage, and your happy with the way it is and change nothing or so little that its insulting and your marriage fails to the point that a weakened or emotionally distressed person chooses to exit it or have an Affair because it doesnt matter anyway, you dont get to have the luxury of saying I DIDNT KNOW.

also if your abusive and the person your abusing is self destructing and your too self absorbed to take any of the credit again you loose the right to say there was nothing i could have done.

when someone is in ultimate control and the object of that control states the obvious its easily dismissed by the controller because it has no effect on them so what if the other person isnt happy, i am so they should be too.

it often isnt that the future WS hasnt cryed out for help, or stated what is needed, quite the opposite, no one was willing to hear.

not every time, but often enough for it to be half or maybe even just alot of the time.

the words I never knew are very often very very often code words for I was too busy to hear what was being asked of me.

does that make it ok for someone to have and A? nope, does that make it ok for a BS to absolve themselves for the condition of the marriage....

you tell me Id say no.

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">you cant have blinders on and then say i didnt know followed up with i saw it coming and then there was nothing i could do. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Chaz I understand what you are trying to say. The problem is that not all affairs happen for the same reasons. The above statement cannot be used for every instance of infedility. Surely you do not believe that every BS has blinders on?

I ask you, what is a spouse supposed to do? They cannot force these WS to seek assistance for depression, nor any other problem. When people tell you they tried to get help for their WS, if that person refuses to get help what can they do? Obviously where assistance, via counsiling or whatever, is needed, it has to be a choice of the person needing the help. All you or I or anyone else can do is try. The decision is not ours to make.

I want to make this clear. I do not feel I was blind to my wifes needs. She would likely tell you I was. But I think not. My wife never hinted that we were in any kind of major trouble until after her first affair. Sure we had problems just like everyone. But the affairs totally caught me by surprise.

This is why I tend to be offended by negative statements toward BSes. But, I don't disagree that there are couples with situations such as yours was. Even still, an A was not the answer.

jd

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by jdmac1:
<strong> This is why I tend to be offended by negative statements toward BSes. But, I don't disagree that there are couples with situations such as yours was. Even still, an A was not the answer.

jd</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">i was very carful to say not every, and careful to say that an A isnt the aswer i dont believe either is the case.

would you agree that the effort you have put toward repairing your marriage after the Affair would have been significantly better spent before it happened?

assuming you will say yes, why wasnt it as important then?

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">would you agree that the effort you have put toward repairing your marriage after the Affair would have been significantly better spent before it happened?

assuming you will say yes, why wasnt it as important then? </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">I believe that the effort could have helped prevent want occurred. My WS says it would have. I cannot second guess that now.

Chaz I wouldn't say it was unimportant then. All I can tell you is that I was happy in my marriage. I thought my wife was. With perhaps a few exceptions. I obviously never dreamed things were bad enough for an A to happen. I still do not believe things were that bad. I still believe that if they were so bad I should have been divorced by her.

I loved my wife then, I love her now. I made mistakes then, I make mistakes now. You know what? She made mistakes then in the marriage, and she makes them now. The mistakes on both our parts may not be the same as they were then, some of them might be. The question is have the both of us grown enough to realize that stepping outside the marriage for comfort is not the answer to fix any of our problems?

If that lesson has not been learned I want a divorce, period. I honestly tell you I would rather die than to go through that pain again. That my friend is real.

jd

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by jdmac1:
<strong> If that lesson has not been learned I want a divorce, period. I honestly tell you I would rather die than to go through that pain again. That my friend is real.

jd</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">i will agree with that, all the way to the core.

i will never allow myself to be the way i was before, nor would i be interested in a the marriage i had before either.

i think knowing now what my wife and i know, i know she wouldnt either.

Seems a very common aspect of this is SELFISHNESS. Pure and simple. No regard or respect for your spouse, just want you think you want for the moment and it grows from there. Selfish in that they don't care about consequences, family, reputation or their future, except for some fantasy future with the OP. The devistation that they leave is almost beyond description...of course, when I said that to my WH, he told me that this was NOT the most devistating thing that could have happened in my life, I was making WAY to much of it......yeah, right. SELFISH sums it up.

From Neesha: </font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial"> if someone is on a path of self destruction and you try to do everything and anything you can to stray the course for that person, it sometimes and often does fall on deaf ears. It can only be changed when that person decides to seek the help they need or communicate or whatever is needed to get them back on track for themselves. Sometimes it does take that person going to the lowest depths of their inner selves. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">I certainly sensed that my H was on self-destruct, and headed for some kind of disaster. I spent years trying to help him work out what he was about - I got books on depression, on father-son relationships, I dragged him to counselling. I was in a permanent state of tension that he was going to do something that would really screw us up. I worried about financial indiscretions, addictions, illegality - no concrete sign, just a sense of risk-taking behaviour. The one thing I didn't predict for a minute was infidelity. But what he was doing was finding a series of other women to get sympathy and support for his view of himself as a misunderstood wage-slave, for which he could blame me. He didn't want to face up to his own failures and limitations, and he knew that that was what I would make him do, so he escaped into a world where a lover would say all the right things, and demand little of him. Ironically, it's the last OW who seems to have made him confront himself - even more ironically, in an effort to make him hers and get him to leave me. It was her ruthlessness that finally brought him to his knees and made him tell me. Perhaps, subconsciously, he chose her for that very quality.

Ultimately, only the cheater can sort himself / herself out, and this takes a lot of personal courage. Yet cheating, by definition, implies a lack of courage. So, unfair though it is, the BS has to provide safe conditions for the WS to expose their frailties and explore themselves. And the risk exists that the 'real' WS that is uncovered may not be what the BS wants or needs. Facing up to that takes courage from the BS too.

<small>[ December 20, 2002, 05:46 AM: Message edited by: TogetherAlone ]</small>

Zoey-

They do it because they are hypocrites.
They do it because they are dishonest.
They do it because they think its exciting
They do it because they are ego-maniacs
They do it because they were at the altar and ignored..."I promise my love an fidelity"
They do it because they are cruel
They do it because of a chemical imbalance

When they get caught up in it and fall in love, then they say "See this affair was right" "It was meant to be" "We are soul mates" "I must not love my spouse if I feel like this for OP"

IT MAKES ME SICK

!

Just because someone notices that their spouse is not himself, doesn't mean that they have any idea that the spouse is "self-destructing" or that the marriage is in danger. The BS's can not be expected to read their spouses' minds! In many cases, the WS has NOT given any indication that they perceived that anything was wrong with the marriage. Around the time his affair began, I specifically asked him such a question, and he insisted that there was not. After he left, he said that he had tried to hide his feelings. He has never once claimed that he made any attempt to communicate any disastisfaction to me - and I think that is very typical, especially among male WS's.

We are not talking about spouses who threaten suicide or become alcoholics or drug addicts or who stop going to work - generally the signs are far more subtle, and unless you happen to be a psychiatrist as well as a spouse, it is completely unreasonable for anyone to expect the BS to recognize the signs, except in retrospect, much less actually be able to do anything about it.

<small>[ December 20, 2002, 09:35 PM: Message edited by: Nellie1 ]</small>

rlyhurtin, I agree 100%. that's it in a nutshell. selfish, self centered, feeling they are the only ones bored with the marriage or sex life. Somehow they have this attitude that they still are the King of the HIll and we're the ones who've lost it.
If they put as much into the marriage relationship as they put into these dirty A's, they'd still be married and happy! Most A's end when reality sets in. Even if they go off and marry these people, it turns sour eventually. Because they still have themselves with them and can't learn how to make others happy. they only think of themselves! when the thrill of newness dies out, they're off and running again. leaving anoter person hurt in their wake. I would never trust a married man who wanted to cheat with me and was telling me how unhappy he is and bashing the spouse. I like what Dr. Phil says. if they'll do it with you, they'll do it to you. Those A's who wind up together really deserve each other. Then we have two people who couldn't care less about commitment. LOL And they an torture each other! LouLou

Can someone explain to me why posts like these exist? And "stupid things WS's say" etc. etc. etc.

Its like asking someone why the sky is blue or why birds fly -- nobody but the actual person involved is going to have the answer.

All we have here is a bunch of BS's spouting disrespectful judgements of all WS's.

So how about if all the WS's on the board band together and have a post or two -- maybe "why are BS's so emotional?" or "most demanding thing your BS said to you" Then we could all join in and assasinate the characters of BS's in general.

Merry Christmas everyone.

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by Lexxxy:
<strong>Can someone explain to me why posts like these exist? And "stupid things WS's say" etc. etc. etc.

Its like asking someone why the sky is blue or why birds fly -- nobody but the actual person involved is going to have the answer.

All we have here is a bunch of BS's spouting disrespectful judgements of all WS's.

So how about if all the WS's on the board band together and have a post or two -- maybe "why are BS's so emotional?" or "most demanding thing your BS said to you" Then we could all join in and assasinate the characters of BS's in general.

Merry Christmas everyone.</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Guilty as charged. Very sorry Lexxx. Thanks for reminding us.

Lv,
Jo

actually Lexxxy... my reply wasn't flip... wasn't berating WS... but the actual words of my own FWH...

btw THIS WAS A WS POST...the question was posed by a FWS...

I also think it was fairly obvious that those who are 'recent' BSs answered w/ pain and anger... and those of us farther along were pretty introspective...

Why did it get under YOUR skin?

Happy Holidays...

Cali

<small>[ December 23, 2002, 01:49 AM: Message edited by: Cali ]</small>

i cant tell you why other people do it....i can tell you why i did it...or what i thought was the reason at the time....it had nothing to do with not getting caught....i wish i would have.....my H and i went from seeing each other every day to being lucky to see each other once a week.....it had been almost a year since he had said he loved me....not because he didnt love me....but because he thought i knew.....there was no sex life.....and no affection......i know personally i would give anything to take it back......because to be totally honest.....now i cant think of a single reason why i did it....

Reading this agian after wrapping last minute presents so I apologise in advance for skimming through many of the posts.

I have thought about the "WHY" of the affair. I remember how it was last christmas. I knew that things were not all right in paradise. But you know we are all human. When you have tried and it doesn't improve the marriage and he has tried and it doesn't improve the marriage. It saps your energy and hope and drains your reserves to be loving toward each other and nurturing of the marriage.

After the A and D-weeks--devastation weeks,we, by the grace of god, went into couselling and there we picked up tools and we are still trying hard to hone our skills at marriage building. I don't think it wasn't that we didn't make efforts to show each other we cared for each other, it was like we were two wounded animals wary of each other. Trust that we could make each other feel better dwindled. Communication dried up.

So yes I think it is very possible to know something is wrong with your marriage and that your spouse is in a deep black hole and still not see that an A is in the offing. WHY? because we can only think and act like US not anyone else in a given situation. Who knows what pressures are in play here? H's family may have had a history of A's, mine too but as they were handled differently, we learnt different lessons from what would be essentially the same situations. We are the sum of our experiences. Like peppermint I don't think I will ever "know" why, neither does my H. We can come close but when in a deep pain-numbing depression and fog (both of us) can we tell why we chose to make a right turn instead of left or change lanes and still head toward the same place or even know where in heck we were heading?>>

Why do we now put in so much more effort in nurturing and protecting our marriage?

I really don't think we put in MORE effort, it is like our energies are now directed and focused by the lessons we have learnt through our experiences. Unfortunately, that includes the A.
Also, and most importantly to us we discovered that we were the most important to us. Does that make sense? WE learned about boundaries and we learned how to turn each other on. Learned that we were family and to quote a line from our child's favourite film:
Family means no one gets left behind or forgotten.

We have learned and the pain of experience is excruciating. We are still learning and hope to learn some more. We will make mistakes and we will make up or try to...we have to ... the alternative is just too painful/shattering/dehumanising to contemplate. Some days are diamonds and some are lemons.

ok I'll stop now. The cliches are getting to me.

Have a happy peaceful holiday.

Well, they can give you a ton of reasons, but none are justifiable. An A is never justified no matter what one thinks. And I read all the excuses they give and how they say didn't mean it to happen, and how much they love the BS and want to work it out. But can we believe any of it now?
I mean all the same words were there prior to, the I love you's, together until the end of time, etc. Then you find out all the time they were saying these things they were having an A behind your back. So now when I hear sorry, and regret Because i'd heard it all before. They cheat because they think it's going to be fun, new thrill, new sex, and no one can convince me mine didn't start out knowing it would be PA. That was his whole agenda to start with. Saying he had always wanted to sleep with her since HIgh school 43 yrs ago! So how do I feel knowing he had thought of her all these yrs we're together? Married 29 when it happened. Now he says he didn't think of her at all all those years, Just became unhappy and remembered her and looked her up. She's married too. Even wrote each other that one day they'd be free and marry each other.Now he denies those words. tore up the emails so I can't show them to him again. But the plans were there. So, how do we believe anything said now about being commmited? I don't, nor will I ever blindly trust again. I will always be snooping and watching closely. Someone may say not right. Well, my pain was not right either or deserved. So I say if you cheat, expect to be watched all the time for signs. My WH told me I had to trust him now. LOL yeah, right honey. Like I would trust a viper in a baby's crib.
We'll never know why they cheat.Because they can never give a good enough excuse. If they put as much effort into blowing smoke up S's butt as they do the Other people's, the marriage might have been much better off. All A's involve lying to the Other people as well. All WS's are in a pretend mode, and the OP never see the real them. I can guarantee it! So it's the WS's way of game playing to get others to flatter them and berate the BS's. I can guarantee he never bashed the OW, or she the OM. Never showed them how they prefer to sit in front of TV 12 hours a day and let you wait on them. The OP never had to do the dirty laundry, take out the trash, pick up after the pets, pay the bills or take care of family problems on a daily basis. It looked so good because all they do is flatter each other, go out to eat, stay at nice places, and sleep together. Now let me ask you? How many of us BS's could be the total siren if all we had to do is have sex and have fun? No responsibities at all other than fun. To the WS's. The other person never did a damned thing for you that showed love. All they did is take from you! Treat them the way you do your S and see how long your great love last! Start lying more to them and see how they like you then. Treat your spouse like you do the other people you're cheating with and see how wonderful your spouse becomes. How happy and upbeat they'll be when you're just making them think they're the whole world to you. Oh by the way. Please let the OW do your dirty underwear and the chores your S does. Tell them you can't possibly expect your S to do these things while you're sleeping with them. Let the OW/OM do all the things you expect of S,so you can just go home to screw and have fun with S. Hey, you might even ask the OP to baby sit while you take wife on a romantic trip or night out. LOL Turn this around and see if the S doesn't become the better person! LouLou
P.S. I threw all my H clothes out rather than wash them after his being with her. I did not want her dirt in my machine. Even the shoes he wore! Clothes he bought to wear with her too. I don't let him disrespect me that way when I know!I say he should have had her do his laundry somewhere before coming home from his nice vacation with her in Florida! I think he thought her too good to ask to do chores. LOL So am I now!
You want the cake and eat it too, then let the sluts and jerks do the dirty work too.

Lexxy-

Typical WS comments. No one said BS's are perfect. At least I didn't read anywhere they were. I am not, not by a long stretch.

All I know is that my "Needs" were far and let me repeat this FAR from being met and for heavens sake...I still had enough self pride, enough gumption to use that as an exuse to hurt someone for not batting 1000 on meeting all of my needs.

Well, this is just my own personal story....I am a survivor of childhood sexual, physical and emotional abuse...i have a lot of trust issues...and a lot of relationship issues...and a lot of memories and flashbacks...and fear...and cheating was my way of running from the fear...of running from the intimacy...and all it ended up doing for me was making things even harder...i am finally ready to face those demons...and h is not there anymore...gave up on me when i needed him the most....because i cheated....i made my bed...now i have to lay in it...no...i know that what i went through as a child does not justify it...but more people need to understand where people like me are coming from...the repressed memories that suddenly start coming back for no reason...the fear...the confusion...all of it...i have lived in a hell others created for me my whole life...now i live in the hell i created for myself...

Lonliness.

I was too.

Why did he cheat and not me?

Opportunity.