I'm curious wehter anyone here has had experience with what I call "revenge cheating" - basically, you cheat on a spouse who cheated on you, as a way of evening the score.

It's not somethign I'm thinking about. But..there are some people, apparently, who see it as a very important way to cope.

It seems to me that it would be very hard to put a marriage back together at that point. But...is there somethign to be said for starting from a level playing field?

Don't do it. It will not help at all.

BTW, my wife said she would feel better if I had been unfaithful in the past. She stated her remorse would not be as strong. However, I don't think she would be happy if I had an affair now.

In any event, there are many threads about this issue----- check them out!

Why would anyone want to stoop to the level that the cheating spouse has already stooped to?

There is a thread from Bog titled Revenge Affairs? that deals with so called RA. I had a pretty good slug fest with a woman with the handle 'doing the best I can' who is a BW and now a WW that was trying to justify her ongoing affair.

I'm sure many of us BS have thought about it...

I told my WH that I felt I needed Revenge Sex - he thought it was OK..and that I did deserve to have it..Talk about being in the fog..What man in his right mind would tell his W it's ok to have sex with someone else....??????????

I can't even imagine touching someone else - I still want my WH too bad he doesn't want me..

He prefers other men's wives to his own, he prefers women without class, self-respect, dignity, hmmmmm- could be he's looking for his equal..

Hey Andrew,

First of all I am really sorry about the fact that you have to be here. About the revenge affairs I can tell you that I totally understand you too. The fact that you decided to post this topic tells me that you are under big confussion and I do not blame you. I felt the same way, and I will be very unpopular here for this but I did have a RA. And not only one but three. It is not something that I feel proud of. My wife was living abroad when all this mess happen. Since she left we only had troubles because we never agreed on how we were going to work it out while she was abroad. They were 4 months of nightmare. Month after month the desire and emotions of talking to each other decreased because of the constant fights. They worsened when she got involved with this man and I started to get suspicious because of her change in behaviors. I found out 7 weeks later after she started the EA and right then transformed into a PA. When I found out I was devastated. Even though she denied everything, I knew something was going on. The shock was so big and there was nothing I could do about it because she was living 10hrs. away by plane. This distance did not allow us to work on anything so I was left with feelings of anger, betrayal, humiliation and all that stuff that you are feeling right now. Two weeks after I found out we met and traveled together for three weeks. Because we did not want to make each other angry we avoided talking about it. Mistake, we didn't deal with it. Because I did not work on the feelings and I had the doubt about she telling me truth, the only thing that happened was that those feeling grew stronger and started eating me up. I met a woman a month later, she made me feel good and I felt for it. Now I understand that the only reason I did it was because I have anger issues and I wanted to hurt her and revenge. She had another PA 2 months later (she was still abroad) which I did not found out until the real D-DAY on March 04 and I had 2 PA's more 2 months after the first one. Why I had them again? I did not want her to come back because I knew we will have to face the truth of our actions so I wanted to give her a reason to leave me. Fast forward, he hurt each other in the worse way possible but in a way my RA helped me because at least I feel we are equal. I would feel more like a stupid and humiliated if I would have waited for her to come back and then finding out she was ****ing other people while I was waiting for her. She know what I felt and I know what she felt. We faced both sides of the coin at once. Are we thinking about having another one? NO WAY. WE ARE HAPPY WITH OUR MARRIAGE WORKING EVERYDAY ON IT. The A's and RA's made us aware of what we can loose if we let ourselves be controlled by out selfishness and stupidity. Our M is more meaningful than whatever Sex we had with other people. If you feel that a RA will help you and you feel the strong need of being equal think about it twice because you will be playing with fire. It might help you by making your wife aware that you too can do it, that you too are attractive and that she can loose you. But there is a big possibility that you might ruin your marriage even further. Big gamble.