AFFAIRS OCCUR BECAUSE OF PROBLEMS WITHIN THE BETRAYER. Oh, that makes me feel so good to read that. My head knows this, but my heart needs to catch up. Maybe I should start chanting this daily. Ha! Ha!

Isn't it amazing how these threads can develope a life of their own?<P>Nellie,<BR>I agree with the depression statement. But why the depression? And how is it dealt with?<BR>*Is the man, (since we're being specific), depressed because of his age? Why do you think men leave their wives for younger women? Is it for a younger body? Or is it because a younger woman respects him for his age and accomplishments and gives him the admiration that he so badly needs in life. Doesn't make comments about his growing older like his wife does. Is interested in the sex that makes him feel young and vibrant that he's missing in his marriage. Is completely interested in who he is and almost puts him on a pedestal. Makes him feel as though the world revolves around him. How many wives who's husband have an affair can say that this is how they treat their husband after x-years of marriage?<BR>*What if he's depressed for another reason? What if it is because of his childhood? How is this dealt with? Is he told "Honey, I love and care about you and I want our marriage to last, but I fear that something just isn't right. If we can't talk about it, maybe we should find someone to help us, if only to help me understand that everything's fine and that I'm worried about nothing." Or is her mindset that we all get older and go through bouts of depression, so he needs to deal with it, even if this is never verbalized.<BR>Either situation can easily lead to an affair as the spouse, either spouse, can eventually start talking to someone outside the marriage who either validates them or seems to understand them. Someone with the strongest convictions about marriage can find themselves in either a physical or emotion affair, emotions are one, if not the one, strongest attributes that we have as humans. They play a powerful role in our existance and can lead us to do things that we normally wouldn't do.<P>Hurting Badly,<BR>I don't disagree with the Harleys, but you must take everything that a therapist says with a grain of salt. When they talk to a spouse who is a leavee, that spouse tends to feel that they are responsible for the actions of the leaver, (and rightly so). In the initial stages of therapy, they are trying to prevent additional depression in the leavee. This is the most logical thing to do, and often it is done for the mental stability of the leavee as thoughts of suicide are often very strong in the initial stages of a separation, so the leavee must not be allowed to think that this is all their fault. Please don't think that I feel that it is 100% the leavee's fault, but they are not an innocent victim by any stretch of the imagination.<P>We are not separated because of an affair. We are separated because of emotional needs not being met in our marriage and because of a depression within her stemming from her childhood that I never understood until now.<P>Couples need to come out of the ether and understand what makes a marriage work in life. We are not machines that have no emotions. Spouses who betray do it for a reason, and it's not because of a character flaw or because they don't value their marriage vows. We don't fall out of love if our needs are being met and we are mentally healthy and stable. If we aren't mentally healthy and stable, then it needs to be addressed and dealt with before we do something as a cry for help.<P>You will never find a spouse that will say, "Although I have never been more in love with my wife/husband and couldn't be happier in life, I just woke up one morning and decided to make their life a living hell. I tried to think of all the ways that I could hurt them and make them feel miserable. I don't know why, but I just did it. I must be crazy."<BR><P>------------------<BR>I am in this situation for a very good reason, it just took time to get over my own self-pity and understand why.

In my case there was OM. I first suspected several months after the first time EXW accused me of having an affair(s). Just couldn't figure our why she was accusing me.<P>Six years later I got hit in the face with the fact that significant other was real and was a married man. We went on for two years, he was in the picture, out of the picture and back in the picture. The marriage finally ended when I got involved with her best friend. Dumb move. Four years later, OM divorced EXW because she was cheating on him with another married man. She is presently divorced and involved in an affair with another married man.<P>I'm now married and faithful for fourteen years. My wife and I knew each other for two years and had become friends before we even went to lunch. After fourteen years, I still feel good about her every day. Every morning I wake up in love with her. Go figure.

On many, many, occasions I tried to talk to my H. A few months before the affair started, I specifically mentioned to him that he had seemed to have lost interest in hobbies, etc., that had been very important to him, and he agreed. I convinced him to see a doctor, but he did not talk to the doctor about anything except physical problems. He told me that I had always acted like I loved him. And as to sex, I knew something was terribly wrong the day I confronted him, because he hadn't been interested in sex for almost a week - not weeks or months, but 6 days. <P>I don't think there is anything I could have done that would have been enough to make him feel like a success. When someone is depressed, no amount of admiration, especially if he doesn't feel he deserves it, is enough. Every innocent comment, will be misinterpreted to mean that you are criticizing him. You can not make someone feel good about himself when he is depressed, when he is projecting his feelings onto you, when he thinks he doesn't deserve to be admired by you. My H actually told me that he could not separate his feelings about our financial problems from his feelings about me. Many men leave, as Frank Pittman says, not because their wife doesn't understand them, but because she understands them too well. The OW is someone whom they have not yet hurt.<P>The whole point is that mentally healthy and stable people almost never, maybe never, leave long term marriages for another person. It is IMPOSSIBLE for the spouse to meet all the emotional needs of someone who is clinically depressed, so a discussion of "unmet needs" is completely irrelevant. <P>

Nellie<P>"When someone is depressed, no amount of admiration, especially if he doesn't feel he deserves it, is enough. Every innocent comment, will be misinterpreted to mean that you are criticizing him. You can not make someone feel good about himself when he is depressed, when he is projecting his feelings<BR>onto you, when he thinks he doesn't deserve to be admired by you."<P>I totally agree with you. No matter how much my ex told me I was beautiful and he loved me, I didn't believe him. Any negative comment sent me into a tailspin. Towards the end, he had lots and lots of negative comments, though. He may not have started my depression, but he definately contributed. Unlike your ex, I did tell my H how his comments affected me. I wish more than anything that I would have gotten counseling, however, I'd already been through a year of counseling while we were married and before I came up to school. My ex's idea of "working" on our marriage was convincing me how screwed up I was, how all of my perceptions were wrong, and anything I did different than him was a mistake. <P>Your situation is different. Your ex did not talk to you or even give you a chance. I feel like I gave my ex a zillion chances to see how he was hurting me, before, during, and after my attraction to someone else.

rtn2,<P>In answer to your starting of this thread, yes...yes....yes. I do believe there is usually another person and I see so many here who don't know it yet. I can tell by their posts that their spouses are involved with OP. It is much easier (for whatever reason) to detect cheating wives in these threads.<P>WORD UP TO HURTING IN OMAHA!!!<P>I was in shear torture for 4 months in marriage counselling and being told by W at the end of 4 months that D papers were coming. I even told her 2 months in that I would be relieved if I found out of an affair, because I had no reasonable explanation for why the f*** she was doing this to me.<P>I was relieved for about 1 hour after I found out. Thereafter, another hemisphere of my brain is being tortured.<P>Jay

rtn2,<P>I appologize for not replying sooner, I have been extremely busy but meaning to get to your post. I hope I'm not too late.<P>In my case, YES, there was someone else, and ex left to be with her. As a matter of fact a year later, they are still together.<P>In the case of your percentages, I know a LOT Of people personally going thru this, here are some more results for you. THey are brutally sad and shocking.<P>W left her H and his 2 d's for OM. The affair couple is still together.<P>Best Friend left her fiancee for another man after a year long affair behind his back. Friend now engaged to the affair partner.<P>Another friend , should be my best friend but we're in disagreement now, is sleeping with a married man. She knows of the W but feels this is only a sexual matter. Deep down I see her starting to fall for him and see a marraige coming to a discovery point soon. (this is destroying our friendship too)<P>Another male friend who's W left him for OM. Affair was 2 years prior, and a year later the affair couple still together.<P>Another male friend who was married 7 years, W told him she didn't love him and left him for OM. She kept the 2 boys and affair couple still together.<P>Another male friend who's W fell out of love due to a 2 year affair which is still going on.<P>A female friend who left her 3 sons' and H for an affair partner, which she married right away. 6 years later, they are still married.<P>Keep in mind these are all personal people I know and not from MB. The statistics to me with just what I know personally are disgusting. Unfortunately to me it points out that affairs do last longer than a year in most cases. <P>I also see that the affair couple tries harder to keep this relationship than the WS even cared to save the original relationship.<P>Lastly in every one of these cases, except one, there were children involved. Most children wound up with the person who cheated in the first place, and years later the kids still have behavior problems because at the time of break up the kids were neglected in one way or another.<P>Hope this helps your question. Leaves me wondering what the world is really like. I have never cheated on anyone and I really don't plan on it. I used to say I never would until people here pointed out never say never, but in my heart, I don't think I could live with myself and also, I just don't believe in it. My friends think I'm crazy but maybe its just the fact that no one values their vows anymore.<P>Prayers and hugs to you rtn, Dana<P>PS I know 4 couples still together. My parents 30+ years, my grandparents 60+ years, my ex's aunt and uncle 30+ years and still act like they just met and my friend and her h at 12 years and they also act like they just fell in love yesterday. As far as they tell me, there have never been any affairs in their marriage and all their parents are still married/ never divorced as well.<P><BR>

danab,<BR>I see affairs and infidelity all around me as well. It does disturb me. Given my experience now, I feel a bit like an evangelist. I've been on both sides, sad to say. I had one friend who was involved in an affair. I say "had" because I've chosen to distance myself from her. I stayed friends with her long enough to learn that this has been going on for a year, it really doesn't bother her conscience all that much, and all she can think about is herself and what she wants. Not a good friend to have.<P>My first H was a sex addict. Had sex with over 20 women during our 1-1/2 yr marriage. Didn't want to go to counseling and ended up divorcing me. He remarried a year later. He looked me up about 7 yrs after our divorce. He was divorced again, but this time he had children.<P>I cheated on my second H, then he cheated on me. My parents have been married for 37 yrs, grandparents for 60 yrs. There is no divorce amongst all of my aunts, uncles, and cousins, yet I've been through two now, both against my will. <P>I too thought I could never do it, and yes, I cannot live with myself most of the time. The only thing that keeps my head up most days is (hopefully) being able to keep others from making the same mistake I did.

People ask me all the time if I'm seeing someone else because I was the one who started the divorce and who left my husband.<P>I can understand why people attribute infidelity to the break up, but really the OP is not the whole story. I knew that my marriage was in trouble. For a long time, I did what I knew how to do at that time (talk to my husband, nag my husband, and finally withdrew from him)to make things better. When that did not work...I began to look to other things to fill up the empytiness I felt in my life.<P>I happen to have family and two sisters close by and a lot of friends and coworkers to hang out with. I also had a new baby occupying most of my time. <P>If I did not have the friends and family or the baby...maybe I would have been more open to the passes from men.<P>The other thing about being attracted to someone else is that it gives you hope that can be happy again. I did not have an affair in real life, but I daydreamed and fantasized about being married to the perfect man in my mind a lot!! I used to imagine that the man I was cooking for and making love to was somebody other than my husband.

TS,<P>I remember an old post of yours a long time ago, at least maybe April when you told of your first husband. I can imagine that would bring tremendous pain. Thats why I don't feel I am "incapable" of cheating, sometimes I feel like i"m the only one not doing it. Don't punish yourself forever, we're all human and we all make mistakes. I think your second H has given you enough punishment. I know my ex punishes me all the time too. Prayers, Dana<BR>

Where are all these affairs? I know virtually no one, except my sister, who isn't part of an apparently happily married couple. In the last 10 years, I can think of only a couple people I knew even slightly who divorced. In my entire adult life, I have met only a handful of men over 30 who were single or divorced, and maybe two or three times as many women. I was a room mother for years, and consequently knew how many of the parents in my kids' school were divorced - and it wasn't more than 10%. Except for one couple who divorced after their daughter's tragic death, I have only once met someone personally whose spouse left them after a marriage anywhere near as long as mine. <P>People say it is so common, but it is not common among the people I know - and the people I know are not, generally speaking, particularly religious.

In my case, I think the OM was the ghost of the W's X, and all the emotional baggage he left her with. It was a bitter, ugly divorce, with children involved. He left them with a lot of baggage, too, and it's all coming out now. It's a tough thing to fight.

I have been divorced twice. Ex-husband number one decided he was gay (how do you fight THAT one??) and ex-husband number two was a cheating alcoholic with a bad attitude. I left for my sanity and emotional health, not for another man.<P>Good news - I am now married to a GREAT man who treats me like I should've been treated 20 years ago.

Nellie,<P>I'd say most of those affairs I spoke of started at work. And some of them were going on for a year while I thought my friends were happily together/married, whatever.<P>I sure hope there are a lot of happily married people out there, but I'm not sure if thats so common. <P>Dana<BR>

It depends on who you ask in our marriage. I nominate my H's BestFriend (cute little term) with whom he has had a years-long relationship including $300/mo cell phone bill, pages-long letters written while they were apart to update her on his life, gifts between the two of them to each other, one-on-one birthday dinners for each other, phone calls to each other's offices, e-mails, and God knows what all else. <P>I foolishly believed in his integrity and goodness and in my own sexiness being enough to hold us together. As the years wore on and I liked this "arrangement" less and less, he humored me with lies until last year when he finally came clean. <P>Since that day I have made his life difficult in refusing to accept invitations from this OW and her family, by shrewing at him, impugning his masculinity, challenging him, criticizing his morals. He has made my life miserable by going colder (if that were possible!), refusing to touch me, and by making such declarations as "I don't love you the way you want me to; you can't dictate my friendships; she's my best friend and she's a completely inoffense good person. For once think of yourself and of our child. I'm entitled to some happiness. I don't have any other friends."<P>Things are a little better now. I hold my temper because H has agreed to attend counseling (though he participates as little as humanly possible; while I wait him out in silence, encouraging him to speak) and I take xanax to keep my temper even. <P>I guess H's vote and mine cancel each other out!<P>What's the final page on this story? Still to be written.<BR><P>------------------<BR>Belle, Domestic Goddess