Hi Good Guy,<P>Ending the tenuous relationship with the other woman can be accomplished in a day. Then there is no way to communicate it to my wife, and she will not believe it anyway. Well, thanks, in any case, it's my mess as you've pointed out. As for the other woman, she hasn't ever expressed any desire for my happiness--we both knew from the start this would lead to great unhappiness for my wife, my lover, and me, and would harm the kids if it brought about a divorce. The question of happiness hardly seems relevant here, however much such cliches fit into the template of this conversation. Thanks again.<P>Bye

I am quite disturbed by a few things in this posting. First Wantotry says he does not believe that he married for love and that he is angry at wife for not SEEING how unhappy he was in their marriage. ANSWER: Wives aren't mind readers, you have to open your MOUTH if you are unhappy. That he loves the OW - even though they only see occasionally throughout the year. Then he blames wife for her sexual appetite, fine i can understand that one, u may not swing from the same branch she likes, no problem there, it can be worked out with COMMUNICATION. I think Phil was not wrong for saying what he said about affairs, they are exciting and aren't meant to replace a marriage but compliment it - That is usually how all waywards view it, UNTIL THE SHOE IS ON THE OTHER FOOT AND THEN THEIR VIEW IS NOT SO JADED AND THEY ARE NOT SO QUICK TO ACCEPT SUCH A "COMPLIMENT"! Then Wantotry goes on to say that he has lied & lied & lied to wife so many times that she finally got hip to it and said ENOUGH and did her angry version of Plan B. Then Wantotry's language totally changes to W won't give me the time of day to hear about how i love her and aside from convincing W he has to convince himself! WHAT! Sorry, but from what i have read in Wantotry's post he was just looking for an excuse to get out of the marriage and without some SELF COUNSELING he is going to continue to do the CRY WOLF routine. His talk of ok, i will try this or that sound like he is just trying to pacify the people on this board that are telling him his marriage deserves a chance. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to see any marriage end, UNLESS it has abuse in it. And from what he has admitted he is EMOTIONALLY ABUSING HIS WIFE, by continually lying and lying and lying again, to get the W to do what he wants when he wants it down. Wantotry, do not bother your wife right now. Leave her alone and get some counseling for yourself because until you know yourself better you will be useless to her and will continue on your journey of destroying her.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by trying2_4give:<BR><B> I think Phil was not wrong for saying what he said about affairs, they are exciting and aren't meant to replace a marriage but compliment it - That is usually how all waywards view it, UNTIL THE SHOE IS ON THE OTHER FOOT AND THEN THEIR VIEW IS NOT SO JADED AND THEY ARE NOT SO QUICK TO ACCEPT SUCH A "COMPLIMENT"! </B><HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P>There are a LOT of wayward spouses on this site who HATE what they did -- and not because the shoe ended up on the other foot.<P>SKM, for example... and Jill... remember? I happen to know what it's like from both sides. It DOESN'T help, believe me... it only helps in that I understand, from both sides, what betrayal does to a family.<P>It doesn't take away from the WRONGNESS of an affair - yes, for the family, but also for myself - how it made me cheap, ugly and dispicable. <P>Phil was honest, true enough, but I found his reply to be misguided and hurtful to those of us who hate what we've done.<BR>

I see this thread has gotten quite hot since I dropped in last. Just want to say that I am not insensitive to those who regret and hate themselves. Everybody hates themselves, but that doesn't make it easier to live with. Life is pain and loss, we all know that, and by the time they are fifty, most people have so thoroughly messed up their lives that a sense of humor is all that sustains them. You don't need to be an adulterer for that. I was only saying that some adultery can make life a nicer ride from time to time, so long as you don't get carried away. There's an even greater chance that it will end in disaster, if the affair is serious. This is life.<P>There's been a bit of an attack on this wantotry? Note the question mark. The guy admits he's got his head up his wazoo. He likes Sheryl because she gave him something to grab hold of, but the rest of the posts are judgmental. That's not all bad, I bet they're right on. Just don't think they're going to help. Here's a question: when a guy really really loves an OW, really really can't figure out if he's ever had romantic love for the W, or knows that he hasn't, then he's got to get some pretty good advice on how to motivate, otherwise all the pushing and shoving and telling him what an abusive jerk he is won't do diddly. But that why we are not councellors!

Oh Phil,<P>Well, um, uh, ... I guess I have to say that I simply don't agree that some adultery makes life easier. I appreciate your honesty, and you've got guts to come to a site called Marriage<B>BUILDERS</B> and say this stuff... but really, adultery is SOOOOOOOOO beyond painful, for both the betrayed and betrayer. <P>Do you really, truly, honestly believe what you've written?<P>------------------<BR>~Sheryl<P>And we know. We who have seen. ~Pellegrino

I will be blunt. <P>Life is not an organic, integrated web of experiences produced and felt by a unitary self who continues in a never-ending process of growth and progress towards fulll authenticity until death. No. Sorry. We are all many selves, fragmentary, partial. This is especially true nowadays, and not necessarily something I would attribute to 'human nature' that transcends time and space. Plus the nature of experience in time, re-experienced through memory, is that life is composed of moments, also fragments, little poems or scribbles of prose from a technical manual, whatever. It is perfectly evident that most of the time spent in a marriage is some sort of blah blah gray, often it's drudgery--ah! Only to re-emerge into the bright dawn of golden light and deep feeling! Great! But a bit of adultery thrown in can add to your beautiful moments, your love poetry, when the marriage is going through the doldrums, a normal cyclical event after all. The point is, you need to keep your perspective. Personally, I couldn't live without the occassional fling with another woman, it's just unthinkable for me. I love tasting new women, it's exciting, mysterious, simply fantastic. It requires some deception (and I expect my wife to take the time to hide flings from me too, it's only fair, whatever the principle of radical honesty says). But not much, as I am careful not to confuse my family relationships with relationships outside of the family. Were I to live without affairs I would whither and die, and I am happy with my wife, God bless her! I come back from the bed of another woman more ready to make love to my wife than ever, and at that point it usually doesn't take long for us to turn things around and send the sparks flying. <P>What I believe is that the cases that come to this site are the out of control cases, the ones where affairs were turned into what they inherently are not. All affairs end. That is why they are called affairs. But love, and the mystery of other human beings naked and open and revealing themselves, the soul in people's eyes, these things are universal and never end. <P>Know thyself, said Socrates.

I'll be blunt too.<P>Phil,<P>What you've written here is tantimount to abuse for a betrayed spouse to read. <P>I'm sorry I asked <P>I should have asked: What exactly brought you to MarriageBuilders?

I in no way was saying that ALL BETRAYERS don't feel guilty. And I don't agree with Phil at all saying that some adultery is ok. I think we can all agree that Phil is from OR needs to visit another board, i won't say which one, but let's just say reading all the pain that these people put themselves through is NOT GLORY-ous in any way! Phil i think one day u will see what a selfish attitude you have by believing that some cheating is good as long as u don't get too emotional or caught up in it. That is a child's game, one that will someday be RECALLED on you IF that is the double life u r living(don't know your story). I agreed w/Phil by saying that affairs are exciting. All relationships begin that way, exciting and new, and that is the first thing everyone here learns on the MB site about how affairs usually start, exciting, new, but w/affairs it spins into lies, deceit, secrecy, pain, more pain and some cases FORGIVENESS and RESPONSIBILITY. <BR>WOW just read Phil's recent post. My question is if you both sleep around why get married? Just live the life single and have multiple partners? And do u have children involved in this scenerio? Look, if that is the life u want then fine, but u r DELUDING yourself into thinking u will never get emotionally involved in an affair, if u r just doing a 1 time- WHAM BAM with different woman then maybe, but I don't see someone sleeping with the same person continually and not getting caught up, it's not black and white like that. And call it my gut instinct but I WOULD BET MY HOUSE that if u found out your wife was having an affair, YOUR TUNE WOULD CHANGE. Woman aren't able to decompartmentalize as easily as men, and she will have an emotionally attachment to that man she is laying with. Can't be helped. And it also can't be helped that men's ego are most hurt by this than a woman.<p>[This message has been edited by trying2_4give (edited May 17, 2001).]

Boredom, accident, cruising relationship sites, love sites, finished a project and reluctant to move on to the next .... So I am a passerby at an active site, an interlocutor now fluttering off to do some real work, and thank you for your kind acceptance.<P>About abuse: come on! It's good to get a different perspective. But I'll shut up, be gone after this post, promise. Don't have any interest in motivating a mob. But you gotta be a bit more broadminded, don't you think? Have you read the novels of Philip Roth? Tolstoy? Balzac? Sure, there's always tragedy when things get too serious, that is exactly my point. Read Kundera for a really different perspective. <P>If you always talk to the same people who always reinforce the truth as you know it you will never really mature as a human being, and your speech will become boilerplate and you will turn off all thinking people in your life. On the other hand, I have learned valuable things here, and am not in any way saying that this is bs. Absolutely not. It's the extremes, the tunnel vision that I detect, as one always does in true believer groups.<P>I apologise for offending you, I did not mean to, but only to express a different point of view, one that I would hope could take some of the heavy, judging, moralizing, Puritanical hue out of this thread of discussion. I say nothing personal, and do not for a moment mean to imply that any person's pain isn't real, or without justification. I am a complete agnostic when it comes to judging the experiences of people, I don't do it. People are different. Very different. Were we not prone to such uniqueness our libraries would not be full of hundreds of millions of volumes, our earth not peopled by so many cultures, our history not so diverse and florid, our religions not so incomensurable. The tone, weight, color of every existence is, or potentially is, unique. And affairs too have different shapes and sizes, just as the people who are in them.<P>Wishing us all a speedy recovery .... sadly, it's life that eventually beats us, fate we will never escape. Love.<P><BR>

Dear Trying: I can't resist one last response. You are right that emotions always play a role, I do not sleep with women only for sex, or even mainly. And in principle I always encourage my wife to have affairs, but I do not want particular knowledge because I am perfectly aware of how jealous I would be and I don't want to waste time combating that monster. Don't ask, don't tell. This is the basis of every French marriage. You must break out of your cultural biases, even if only intellectually, to see that your way of being is only one among countless numbers of others. You could not have a conversation like this in most countries in the world. My Thai friends always sleep with several women in a month, this is normal, expected. They have learned from the AIDS crisis and use rubbers, this is crucial. But the cultural practices do not change. In Thailand as in France, the demarcation point is what intrudes upon the family. If any affair intrudes upon the family it must end. Otherwise, we are not geese and do not mate with only one for life and that is why this is such an issue in the first place. A smart culture somehow creates rules for adultery instead of trying to defy human nature. The sadness of the religious legacy in America is that it is sure to burden most people not only with sexual guilt, which isn't so bad anymore, but a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of human sexuality. I refuse to desensitise myself to body and mind and senses and spirit by imposing impossible strictures on my sexuality. Period. All the best.

Sadly you are so lost in psychobabble that you can't see that it is not life that eventually beats us it is inevitable DEATH. <P>No matter your spiritual persuasion,agnostic or whatever, a life spent using human beings for one's own pleasure and excitement surely will not escape fate in the hereafter.<P>God help you, you need it.<P>

You, my friend, are by definition engaged in psychobable, and if you could not understand that I was alluding to death as a part of life you are not only ..... #*@*@&#&!!!!

wantotry?,<P>I hope you haven't been frightened away!! <P>Still with us?<P>------------------<BR>~Sheryl<P>And we know. We who have seen. ~Pellegrino

I would say that agression is as much a part of human nature as is procreation. So do you find it unacceptable to sit up in a tree like an ape and pounce upon your neighbor and club him to death? And if so then why is it perfectly acceptable to wait up in the tree like an ape and pounce on your neighbors wife?<P>Psychobable and justification. <P>I too call myself agnostic, which is why I spend this one cherished lifetime doing unto others as I would have them do unto me. <P>Snow

Phil, honestly I don't hate your posts, of course they hurt to read because I like other do the internalizing, thinking "GEE, I WONDER IF THIS IS HOW MY SPOUSE REALLY THINKS"! I will say that I think u have been lucky (can't think of a better word) in not having gotten too emotional with your OP so far. U say that once it touches home or family the affair must end. If only it were that easy! For some it is always that pull, or wanting to get the WANTED FEELING that lures the betrayer back into it. You say we have to open up our minds to different cultures, I think we should be more ENLIGHTENED but certainly don't have to want a certain culture in our life if it makes us unhappy. You are happy with the arrangement u and wife have, then I say so be it. But like u admitting to being too jealous, i am too possessive, and I don't SHARE very well. Keep coming here, u have some deep insights, but UNDERSTAND and accept that this site is for people who don't LIKE SHARING as well.

My Goodness, Snow, I AM waiting for my neighbors wife to pounce on me. IF she is clear about the rules, and this ends, we get a moment, and don't risk marriages. Let's take a look at what you refer to, known in the philosophical world as Kant's categorical imperative: Act only on that maxim whereby thou can at the same time will that it should become a universal law. If the principle of acting according to the strongest natural instincts (sexual curiosity about each other being primary) within socially defined restraints that are meant to maintain key social institutions were universally applied then infidelity would not be a problem. Not only that, it would be seen what it Could be, which is an outlet for new experience and expression that helps to maintain institutions, the family mainly, by making sure that these needs are not bottled up, and ALSO not allowed to rampage without check. The American dilemma is that everything is always taken to the extremes. It's either put married partners into straight-jackets, deny them free movement around the earth, the company of the opposite sex, time alone: these absurd strictures advocated in this site OR it's have sex out of control or allow yourself to be seduced into marriage destroying affairs, etc. <P>FIND ME A SITE IN WHICH CONTINENTAL EUROPEANS TAKE PART THAT HAS THIS KIND OF CONTENT!

Got a meeting. Affectionately signing off. This was interesting and fun, and elivening, and has added zest to my otherwise work-besodden day and so I thank you all. Cheers.

<B>wantotry?</B>,<P>You still here?<P><B>Everyone</B>,<P>Well, I did it again. I let the interloper get to me, and look what happened... we lost <B>wantotry?</B> <P>**note to self** <I>ignore, ignore, ignore</I><P>Dammit! <P>------------------<BR>~Sheryl<P>And we know. We who have seen. ~Pellegrino

I actually, I was born and raised on "the continent". Not far from Hungary. <BR> <BR>They call it "patriarchal society" for a reason. And every woman I've ever known back home who was unfortunate enough to be married to a smarty-pants bully like you was a miserable wretch because she sensed that she had no choice in the state of her own marriage. That would be your enlightened continental society. <P><BR>

Sorry Sheryl! Eastern European dandies really p*** me off!<P>Won't let it happen again...<P>Snow