SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I just want to say - on this we agree, schoolers. The things that challenged me a lot was deciding what my value system was and why. And I think ws have an easier time with recovery when they find that core.

All I am saying is that takes some time. My concern here is the same concern I actually have for new bs who come to this site. We often have folks frustrated at their timelines. It takes time to get oriented by both people. I find it natural a bs who has just been blindsided needs time to work through a process. Ws also have a lot of evolving to do. I think it would be disingenuous to be caught cheating one day and making grandiose claims about how strong they are in their marriage and knowing exactly how they must change to save it the next.

And while I can appreciate that the time it takes for them to figure it out can be hellish for the bs, I fully support honesty and figuring it out. Because in the end if you only try and adapt to fit the relationship, that’s just a continuation of being a chameleon. I want the ws to get sure of themselves, and I want the bs to detach so they can protect their energy and find their strength. Only from that place can the marriage start anew.

And when we have a ws being vulnerable enough to explore topics honestly on this site we often find ways of condemning them just enough that they leave. When in all reality, being able to say your truth and then see what you want to change and evolve it is where this place has power. And I think that’s true in both the bs and we side.

One of the most important things to me after I found out about my husbands affair was for him to take time to truly decide what it was he wanted and who he wanted to be. Only then would we be able to build an authentic marriage. I am a big proponent of you have to be willing to lose the marriage to save it, because I feel both sides need to deeply choose it before you can act in unison.

It’s a process. I recognize Ghostie’s process, and I don’t mind people talking to her about that flexibility, where I get protective is when people start shaming a person who is trying to figure out if she can leave behind some of that shame or not. Most ws start with this question but then continue to wrestle with the shame until they can excavate where it all started.

But letting go of it is exactly what the bs needs because space is available to be created for them. It’s so intense and overwhelming for some ws that they can’t function in the way that is conducive in their marriage.

Any IC will start with talking to a ws about what is holding them back or making them act out, and a lot of times Ghostie is right - it all starts from this lack of self worth that makes our boundaries sway. Our relationship with ourself dictates how we have relationships with others.

So you are right about what you are saying in terms of the correlation of discovering your values and how they have impacted your decisions. It’s just not something someone often decides overnight. Nor is it possible because these are deep complex things that are intertwined with all the years we have lived prior to this one.

For that, I think the philosophical discussions can be helpful - if we can do it without shaming. (I am not particularly pointing at you here, btw) Otherwise we are not helping Ghostie and by extension her husband either.

She doesn’t know where she is in the process, she is still trying to find her way, and I see she has at least found the markers of the start of it. Are there things she may still be in the fog about? Sure- I think it takes about six months on average for that to all subside and to gain clarity. (Unless we are talking about the emotionless type of cheating)

Okay- back to helping Ghostie. Are you here, have we chased you off?

[This message edited by hikingout at 2:12 PM, Tuesday, November 4th]

"My goal?" How did you arrogate this role?

How snippy.

That response is a disappointing misreading of my entire position. I've written thousands of words here with the explicit aim of helping Ghostie shift a poisonous worldview toward one of genuine accountability. My post was intended to read precisely as: "My goal (in posting this) is to get ghostie, the WS, to face true accountability."

Suppose more evidence that if you are determined enough you can intentionally misread anything you like.

So I can see that the discussion turned into something unhelpful. I apologize for my part in that and any unhelpful comments that I made. Ironically, I think I felt like I was being lectured on morality, etc. and was in turn defensive. I'll have to think more about that on my own behalf.

That response is a disappointing misreading of my entire position. I've written thousands of words here with the explicit aim of helping Ghostie shift a poisonous worldview toward one of genuine accountability. My post was intended to read precisely as: "My goal (in posting this) is to get ghostie, the WS, to face true accountability."

And you’ve put yourself in the judgment seat. How arrogant.

Although I have not read your hundreds of thousands of words oeuvre, I remember being super irritated about the level of excitement you conveyed when you thought a wayward was being served a kind of justice of which you approved. You can follow the rules and still put on a cloak of judgmental superiority which means the words are pointless at best and detrimental at worst.

[This message edited by Pippin at 5:34 PM, Tuesday, November 4th]

This forum isn't meant to be Chicken Soup For The Soul for Waywards. (I don't think this is really a place to open up about serious FOO as people here aren't therapists.) It is more about *accountability* for the affair.

No. This is not THE agenda of the wayward forum. This is (apparently) YOUR agenda. I’d be careful with that —the bible warns of original sin (my will be done not thy will be done) and the classicists against hubris. There may not be a contemporary term for asserting control without consent, but would think such a word would not be positive. I can think of many ways that I used SI that had nothing to do with accountability: finding a friend, finding a community of others who shared my experiences, looking for words to describe my experience when I didn’t have them, dark humor, reading positive reconciliation stories, reading the first hand experiences of betrayed spouses, learning about the breadth and width of different kinds of betrayals (my husband called this studying the dog), sending posts to my husband for his perspective, learning about resources that waywards used to help themselves. I could come up with 20 more reasons if I took some time. All of them centered on hope, compassion, practical steps. None on accountability. I'm sure some waywards might want that. But how dare you put yourself in the position of getting to decide what the point of the forum is and what it isn't?!

Wait. I'm confused now. Is this turn in the conversation meant to be more helpful?

I mean maybe it is. Ghostie came here looking for support, she started this thread because she was feeling vulnerable about some of the harsh judgment she is grappling with that is exacerbating her shame.

She might at least see there are people here who see her and do care enough to speak up for her. Maybe she can also identify people in this thread she can reach out to privately.

I personally think that we should have an automatic stop sign until they get to their 50 posts that they need to dm. Just a thought.

Ok. Fair enough. Your ideas may be a good policy change.

I don't think Ghostie (or anyone else) can personal message someone until they have a certain number of posts though, right?

Yes. Rarely do new ws stay here long enough for that though.

Rarely do new ws stay here long enough for that though.

Threads like this one are a big part of why this is true.

I doubt Ghostie will be back.

I do hope that the next time a new WS shows up we can all do much better to make them feel welcomed and supported.

Although I have not read your hundreds of thousands of words oeuvre, I remember being super irritated about the level of excitement you conveyed when you thought a wayward was being served a kind of justice of which you approved. You can follow the rules and still put on a cloak of judgmental superiority which means the words are pointless at best and detrimental at worst

What an interesting perspective. We could play the whole: let's judge each other one action game and see who comes out cleaner? Are you sure this is a game you'd want to play?

I'm ready to be judged.

I don't remember the comment in question but I have no doubts I've not been perfect in all my responses here. I too get triggered. I'm not excusing it. I genuinely try my best not to. I do try my best to help.

How interesting it is that all of my writings can be dismissed due to thus comment though. You after all interpreted it as me being excited at perceived justice. I must ask, Is this in line with the forgiveness that is preached in your church? Is this in line with forgiveness you begged from your husband?

I guess somethings are forgivable but a comment that appeared to you as a little over zealous is etched in stone forever. Great perspective for a forum like this. I'm apparently irredeemable.

I think I will step away from this discussion at this point. I hope Ghostie reads some of what I said. I hope it helps her to challenge her beliefs.

@Ghostie, I apologize for some of the judgemental things that I have said on your post. I understand that you are trying. If you are still reading this and if I may, this is what I should have said on your thread instead:

1. I agree with you that shame and self-loathing is not what you and your BS need right now. I think, however, there is a tendency for people to read your OP as asking 'when can I feel good again' and that makes it extremely hard for them to respond kindly to this, as they know that your BS will be going through many many more dark days.

Do you know the difference between shame and self-loathing, versus, actually getting on the floor with your BS when he is flooding and even lashing out at you? And committing to keep on doing this even through the many many more dark days coming up.

2. We are ALL judged by our actions even the ones that we feel do not represent our character. If someone acts in a way that we feel is bad or wrong, it is human nature for better or worse to want to drive the karma bus right back into their car. It would do all of us well, I really believe, to make friends with this truth.

3. What does it even mean to be 'deserving' of love and marriage in the first place? What would you say to someone who has not been able to find that for themselves for whatever reason? Or someone who seemingly had that but left due to *their* partner cheating.

Bravo WBFA, thank you for adjusting your approach for this forum and this specific poster. It is especially wonderful for someone who has had such a negative experience with online groups to see that people can reconsider and do better. I very much appreciate it.

You and I are working under different understandings of how the world works, the divine, etc, but I just want to mention that in my understanding of Christianity and the Abrahamic religions more generally, God is absolutely a God of justice, with a settled, fixed, implacable irrevocable, incorruptible opposition to injustice and evil, and an assurance to everyone who has suffered injustice or evil that it will be punished completely and fully. The Christian belief (as I understand it) is that it is not the guilty who pay the price but Jesus who did. Have you ever had someone take the blame for something you did, cover you, when it really mattered and there was a huge price you could not have possibly paid? The sense of gratitude, of wanting to grow into the person that your rescuer wants you to be, is life changing. Will people misinterpret this and abuse it? Of course, humans can be horrible and use any good thing for evil. I am telling you this not to convert you or give cover to people who claim to be Christian but are using it as a fig leaf, but to say that there is an approach to the question of justice and retribution which is both as definite as yours but can look really different. This poster mentions going to church. I have no idea if it’s sincere or not.

Sorry for the wall of text, no offense taken if you didn’t read it, I wrote fast and on my phone during a busy weekend. But I want to bookend the whole thing with gratitude for your post.

I am just coming to a place where I can read (most of) the responses on this thread without getting triggered and obsessing over the ‘debate’ to the detriment of my daily responsibilities. So bear with me as I move through it slowly.

Hikingout: Thank you so much for making me feel understood and for eloquently putting into words what I often struggle to communicate. I really appreciate you <3… Do you have any recommendations on finding an IC who will focus on your childhood instead of on the present? I’m struggling to find someone who will do that.

WontBeFooledAgain:

This is not a 'Why' though, this instead reads to me more like a JUSTIFICATION.

Whoop, there it is. Did I not recommend earlier in the thread to consider whether someone is recounting their feelings and experiences during their affair WITHOUT justifying their actions? To read with the intention of listening to understand, rather than to immediately respond?

A justification is an explanation of one’s action specifically made with the intention of proving why the action was just. Infidelity is inherently unjust; there are NO justifications for it. And I am not attempting to make any. If, as someone else said, what I described of my affair reads as "romantic" to you… Can’t it just be read as that’s how it felt in the moment to me, without you hearing "What I did was just because I felt this way and these were the things going on in my marriage?" I firmly believe that you (and others) are responding this way because you are still hurt, and you are subconsciously trying to defend yourself, as a BS, from any justifications your WS could make/could have made. Please rest assured, that’s not what’s happening here. You are not to blame. You are safe.

If you would proceed to read further on in my previous post, you would see that the description of the way the affair felt to me, contrasted with what I felt at home, was simply a lead up to the deeper whys, which were that I was looking for external sources of acceptance and love and feeling good enough as I was, rather than having self-love and self-acceptance… and as hikingout mentioned, which I am just having a lightbulb moment over, apparently self-respect. I have (had?) my husband on this pedestal, believing that he’s so much better than me and that I have to present the best of me to him at all times to earn and deserve his love, such that it felt like such a relief to feel accepted by someone I perceived to be "down here" on my level, without having to try so hard all the time and still feeling like shit about myself afterwards… I think that’s probably part of why I was hyper-fixating on the whole "I’m not any more bad than anyone else because they could do it too in the right circumstances."

Why didn't anyone want to talk to you at home? Did you play a part of this? Why did you let AP in emotionally in the first place?

I don’t have space in my life for friends currently, and my husband is often preoccupied with thoughts of work and other things besides the present moment. He also didn’t realize that I was so desperate for conversation and that I need him to share his thoughts, feelings, ideas, etc. for me to feel connected to him, not just be physically present together. He withdrew even further into himself when he sensed I was having an affair, and of course I misread this as confirmation that he didn’t find me interesting or worthy of meaningful conversation… But again, there’s another example of the deep seated belief that I’m not good enough as I am, which lead me to being susceptible to extra-marital attention. (Are you still listening or are you writing this off as justification again?)

Did you try talking to your BH about the dissatisfaction in your marriage?

Yes, I did. Before and during the affair, though definitely not as persistently and explicitly as I should have. Even BH himself said sometimes he really needs to be hit over the head with these sorts of things. But I know that he is more than willing to me my needs if I can communicate them effectively. He is so wonderful in that way.

If your marriage was that unhappy before and your BH was unresponsive to working on it, why didn't you divorce BH?

Because I love him dearly. I cried so, so much when I thought he didn’t love me the same way and that our marriage was dead. I wished I was dead too. I sought solace in the affection that AP (intermittently) gave me— gobbled up those breadcrumbs... Because we built a whole life together, and that’s not something that’s so easy to throw in the bin and walk away from... I think it suffices to say that I hate when people ask that question as if it’s really so simple.

Why do you want to save your marriage to BH NOW? And related, what if in the future someone comes along who seems to 'get' you better than you feel your BH understands you.

I’ve always wanted to "save it," or, preferably, to keep it healthy and thriving to begin with… I should not be so intimate with other people such that I can come to feel that they understand me better than BH. One reason that the whole "I could never do that" thing bothers me is because that’s exactly what I said before I committed infidelity. I thought I could walk right up to the boundary and not cross it, and then I blurred it with rationalizations and continued inching my way forward into the affair. This is why it’s so important to believe that you could do it, so you stay vigilant…(And if you’re truly passionate about preventing infidelity and all the trauma it causes, why would you not put away that bit of pride you have in your supposed "principled-ness" and adopt that honest, microscopic introspection with which to self-monitor?) If I remain vigilant, I should be able to recognize when I’m building inappropriate intimacy with someone else, and not lie to myself about it, such that I can cut that person out of my life and redouble my focus on strengthening the connection in my marriage. ("But Ghostie, I already do that. That’s the default response." Why would you do that if you truly weren’t capable of infidelity? Think about it.)

Well, as I said before, we are ALL sinners. That isn't so much the issue, the issue is instead that your BH's world is shattered.

No shit.

I think that’s enough for tonight. My child is still awake and my house is dirty.

[This message edited by Ghostie at 3:00 AM, Monday, November 10th]

Not much to add to this thread, but am up again with insomnia (Sunday nights seem to be bad as Monday is IC and my wife and I often talk lots before bed and that often seems to result in me waking up with lots of anxiety a few times during the night) and am so glad other you are back and responding.

Hikingout often puts into words what I am thinking / feeling so I often just want to post amen/agree to her words. One of the big topics lately between my wife and me is trying to explain what my thought process was during the affair. My sitch is a bit different in that I am trying to recount something that happened 20+y ears ago and through the lens of my 53-year old self that has done a lot of work to understand how the trauma and baggage (and associated shame) that I brought into the marriage impacted me (and continues to). One conclusion we often come to is that trying to apply the lens of someone who is acting rationale to the decisions a wayward makes will often result in the rationale actor falling to understand the wayward. I have difficulty at times understanding how I could have made many of my decisions and that stretches beyond just the infidelity into other destructive behaviors like substance and alcohol abuse, driving drunk, etc when those actions could have resulted in devastating consequences that would have impacted my family in ways that were truly unrecoverable.

One thing we are 100% sure of at this point is that me wallowing in shame is not only not helpful, but also detrimental to our reconciliation and my recovery. Hikingout really nails my issues when she explains shame and how corrosive it is.

Just want you to know that I think your progress is pretty amazing especially for your age. I needed 20+ years to process my issues enough to disclose and understand much of what I am working on now. You are ahead of my curve by miles. Hope you stay engaged here as it has helped me personally.

[This message edited by feelingverylow at 11:50 AM, Monday, November 10th]

Hi ghostie- I am so glad you stayed.

And for what it’s worth some of the adversity I experienced on this site did help things come into focus for me. However, I needed to get more stable in my recovery before that benefit began. Some of the things expressed in this site (not necessarily in this thread) are things my husband thought and would never say to me. So eventually me reading them led to some very enlightening conversations. I think in that way I was able to turn those triggers into something constructive.

It takes time to get to that point and in the beginning I actually left for a while because I needed to get stronger. Not recommending you do that, I am just commiserating the nature of the triggering is normal.

As for a recommendation on IC helping with childhood issues- I don’t have anything to give you. The way that your therapist is going about it may be that they feel at the point you are at that you need more help with your present still. If you want to address childhood and FOO (family of origin) I would tell them that is one of your goals. My therapist went mostly straight to childhood- but that might have either been her method or what she felt I needed. Not sure.

I had to fire therapists and find one that fit. I sort of think it would be unusual to find one you like off the bat as that is so highly subjective.

Thanks for staying and I will continue to watch for your posts.