Cole, of course we all need our egos stroked once in a while. You know what I did to make myself feel better during the time when our marital issues peaked? I went to graduate school and worked on bettering myself. What did H do? Um....we all know...just saying!

Hey Cole, like your post and all. I do agree, to some extent. To some extent, I don't.

I agree that we all have needs in ourselves that we would appreciate if the other person respected us enough to do. That we matter enough to the our partner to do. Not only like those chores, but as in affection, taking the time to talk, reach out, consider, respect...all of that...and the ego stroking. I have to admit, I like hearing my partner tell me I am hot, cute, all of that. I do the same for him - because I want him to know I find him hot. I think that's important. He's not only my choice in a partner, I also want to be there with him.

On the other hand, to give a lack of ego stroking as a reason for cheating? Cole, I have to disagree. With all respect here. That's not a good enough reason to cheat. It IS a good enough reason to sit down and have a chat with your partner and say, 'hey, I love hearing that from you. It makes my day. I need that from you. I'll give it back to you always...' It does warrant that. It calls for a talk between the partners, but in my view, it's not an good reason for cheating. It's a 'problem in the marriage/relationship' but not a reason to cheat.

Two separate issues.

Now hold on here, before I disrupt the board here...I was married for 20 years, remember? I divorced with his cheating for a year with Spammy, and in my time here, and in my brutal honesty with myself, I HAD to admit that I wasn't going the extra mile daily for him. I wasn't chasing him around the kitchen table. I wasn't jumping his bones. I wasn't doing any of that.

He wasn't for me either.

We had reached a state of complacency. (spelling?) Where we took it all for granted that I believed he knew how I felt about us and our life together, and I didn't express it every day. Niether did he. We were well established and married, not kids just starting out in dating. Not with that heavy rush of adrenaline for eachother.

So, if he was unhappy in that, this would have been a problem in our marriage, not a reason to justifiably cheat.

yes, I can see that it can all escalate into cheating, and how it can all play into it, but as I have always said, and will continue to say...

'he could have stood for me, told me, left me, fought for me, said something, but he never had an excuse to cheat on me.'

Now, this is just my opinion only. I am putting a huge disclaimer on this whole thing.

What I do love about your post here? You and your wife are doing that 'brutal honesty' with eachother, to get to your healing. You have my full support.

...and just my tiny disagreement...

Complacency in marriage does not justify infidelity.

Sending my support, L~

Cole - "The spouses job isn't to meet the needs he or she thinks his or her spouse has, but to meet the needs they express they have, no matter how petty you may think it is." Couldn't have said it better myself. Thank you for putting into words some issues my marriage had way before my A.

ZNZ and Lstekler - no, this is NOT a REASON for cheating. I don't think that's what Cole is saying. From what I got from it is that lack of respect for each person in the relationship leads to needs being neglected. Unfortunately, some of us then stray when that respect comes from somewhere else.

I spent 2.5 of 4 years being neglected and to some degree disrespected by my wife. I begged, pleaded, chased, yelled and screamed for her to meet my needs. I got less and less of her. Eventually I felt she was just someone taking up space in my bed and found it annoying. I also, ZNZ, put myself through grad school, made new friends, tried to have a social life. Anything to make me feel better about me. Even lost 20 lbs (which have now almost all come back). I did things for my W such as take her out on dates, made sure her lunch was made each day, made sure she had breakfast, picked up the phone when she called to talk about her crappy job situation. I did that every day, even though my own needs weren't being met and I wasn't being respected in my relationship. Should I have cheated? h*ll no. but it happened and that's something I have to deal with now. But that doesn't mean that the lack of respect wasn't and isn't a HUGE issue in my marriage right now.

@L

No, I agree, L. It doesn't justify cheating. As I said in my second paragraph it doesn't, as not much really would justify it, no matter what needs were not being met in the marriage.

But it does increase the temptation for the cheating spouse when opportunity comes knocking. They are still fully responsible for making the choice to meet that need by going outside the marriage. But it is obvious the draw if one's spouse isn't acting like they love you, respect you, but another woman comes along who does. It can be a big temptation for men especially, but even for women.

Now, there was a time in my marriage when my wife did several things that made me thing she didn't respect me. Add onto that sex was a really big sticking point where I felt she was avoiding it and me because of it, and I was a prime target for temptation. But even in the worst of that, though the thought did cross my mind, I never seriously considered cheating, even though I did have one opportunity that I realized could head that way with a woman at work. Instead, I put a stop to the intimate talk about her boyfriend an how dissatisfied she was with him.

But aside from that opportunity, I was never seriously pursued by another woman either. I would like to think I would have ignored that, but I can't guarantee I would have at the time. Thankfully, I'll never know. But, I did decide I wasn't going to cheat on her, even though I had serious doubts that she loved me, because she wasn't acting like it at the time.

Happily, she has been meeting both of those needs of mind in spades, especially since dday. And I've been working to meet hers which was to spend more time with her and communicate with her more, along with some domestic support. Affection, though I give it, doesn't appear to be high up on her list. Wish I had known that last year, as i was making an intentional effort to be more affectionate. But she still felt distant from me because that wasn't her key needs.

But for sure, not meeting needs is never an excuse of justification for cheating. I stated that right up front so no one would think that's what I was saying.

@znz

For sure, we can do things that make us feel better about ourselves. But that won't help the relationship if all we get from our spouse is negative and the message one gets is, "I don't think very highly of you, Dear." If I feel my wife doesn't respect me as a person, and I go take classes and better myself, I'll still feel she doesn't respect me as a person unless that causes her to change her tune about me.

I don't feel I have a ego problem, or self-esteem problem. I'm very comfortable with who I am, my abilities, and my life. That has nothing to do with needing to feel like my wife respects me. If she doesn't, that doesn't reflect on my self-worth, only her inability to see what she's got (not that I don't have shortcomings, mind you, we all do, but that doesn't mean I'm worthless either). And if she has that opinion of me, that she doesn't respect me, I don't see how she can then turn around and say she loves me. I won't feel it or see it if everything she says and does tells me she doesn't trust my opinions, feelings, and what I do for her and the family.

I'm not saying she can't bring up problems and address areas I'm not meeting her needs or failing as a husband or person. Only if I don't get the respect from her, if I don't feel she looks at me with admiration in her eyes, I don't feel she loves me. And that hurts the relationship, not my ego. To me respect for one another is foundational to a good relationship.

Hope I've made the difference clear. Taking classes is great, but that wouldn't address what I was pointing out. Neither would cheating, because even though he found someone who praised him and made him feel good about himself, it still didn't mean you changed in that regard. As a matter of fact, once you found out what was going on, I'm sure showing him respect and ego stroking was the last thing on your mind. Cheating on you made it that much harder for him to feel you respect him. So though it made him feel better for a while, it did more damage to your respect of him, which is what he would really want to feel from you.

Mostly all I'm saying is that acting like you respect your spouse is a valid need, which involves ego stroking, and can be extremely important to one's spouse. Not fake, but real. Some seem to diss it like it shouldn't be important, like it is totally selfish. And while such an unmet need would never justify cheating, it can be a contributing factor to the circumstances that lead to it, which should be validly considered in that regard if one wants to do all they can to avoid such complications in the future.

Cole, "Taking classes is great, but that wouldn't address what I was pointing out. Neither would cheating, because even though he found someone who praised him and made him feel good about himself, it still didn't mean you changed in that regard. As a matter of fact, once you found out what was going on, I'm sure showing him respect and ego stroking was the last thing on your mind. Cheating on you made it that much harder for him to feel you respect him. So though it made him feel better for a while, it did more damage to your respect of him, which is what he would really want to feel from you."

I totally get what you are saying, but here's the deal. My H ended his A on his own because the OW became a whack job and he got scared, scared of losing me, his family and his job. As I progressed in school, I felt more confident. I had less time to focus on that which made me so unhappy, namely my H's emotional neglect. As school work and internships took up more and more of my time, my H actually started to step up to the plate. The more he did, the more my respect returned. When I graduated with a 4.0 GPA and then got a great job very quickly, I felt like a real person again, not just my children's mother. I found out about the A way after the fact when the OW sent my the message on FB. At that time, our relationship was vastly better than before his A. It wasn't great; we still hadn't addressed our marital issues, but we loved each other and RESECTED each other.

Ok Z, what's my point? Yes, there are things we need from our spouse, needs we do want them to fill. However, no one person can give you what you need to have, which is a sense of self-worth and self-respect. So, in a sense, my going to grad school and "taking classes" enabled me to embark upon a career that I love. When I shifted the focus off of what my H wasn't doing or what he was doing wrong onto bettering myself, we both were happier for it. I'm not saying that the solution is for everyone to further their education. What I am saying is that people need to stop looking to others to find their self-worth. One can certainly deal with marital issues in a more productive way if they have a sense of self-worth.

I think the confusion comes in when we consider how the CS proceeded to get that need met, if that truly is what really motivated the behavior. The need isn't the problem, it's how they went about finding some kind of satisfaction for that need.

So many here relate that the CS never approached them about the supposed issues that led to their affair. People are going to have a hard time being sympathetic to the needs of someone that didn't even try to explore other options. In that vein, it becomes shallow, because clearly, the only person they were thinking of was themselves. Otherwise, there would have been cries for help instead of discoveries of phone calls and emails.

It also presupposes the idea that it was truly a failure of this need being met that led to their behavior rather than the other way around. In a search for reasons, particularly for those that it seems to be out of character for and acknowledge how bad they screwed up, there is going to be a mad search for the "why". I don't believe it's usually very objective.

I'm handing out a lot of bullshit cards today. Here's yours. ;^).

It's not that we don't need our egos stroked. Sure, we all need that, and sure, relationships become deficient in that, or many other 'needs'.
But you cheat because there is something within you that says 'it's ok to do this'. Your 'because' doesn't matter in terms of the actual cheating. If it matters so much, you address it within the relationship, or you leave the relationship if you aren't 'heard'. For far too many BS's it's only 'heard' AFTER the cheating.

I want an ego stroke, I recently bitched about H not commenting on my new swimsuit. Would've been nice. I can name a thousand other times I felt ignored or unloved or invisible. Guess what I DIDN'T do? Cheat.

Yes, the state of the marriage issues have to be addressed if the marriage is to be saved. But never jump to the conclusion that ANY reason you give for essentially ending your marriage unbeknownst to your partner, has to be acceptable to him/her.

The time to have such 'reasons' taken seriously is when you still give a damn enough about the marriage, not to cheat.

"But it does increase the temptation for the cheating spouse when opportunity comes knocking. They are still fully responsible for making the choice to meet that need by going outside the marriage. But it is obvious the draw if one's spouse isn't acting like they love you, respect you, but another woman comes along who does."

The problem is there is no litmus test for when a person can/should get to this point where they become more vulnerable than other times. How much ego-stroking is enough? It's a slippery slope. I think the real issue for most is that there is always going to be someone who can stroke our egos better than our spouses because the infatuation and newness that make the beginning of a relationship so charged and ego-satisfying doesn't last forever. There's much less in a longer term marriage that is going to knock our socks off. That doesn't mean that one's spouse isn't stroking their partner's ego, it's just old hat now and less flattering. Someone discovering your positive qualities for the first time is gonna have a lot more to say. They will most likely even see you in ways your spouse doesn't. It's just the way it works. In those cases, it's not about what's lacking in the marriage, but what's lacking in the one who makes the decision to cheat.

I think we may kind of be agreeing.

While that lack of attention may make it easier to cheat (yes, I do agree), in my book, it may be understandable but never justifiable.

My two cents...L~

L, I'll throw in my 2 & make it 4. :)

If it may be understandable but never justifiable, then conversely, it's also understandable why those who don't cheat in the same situations, don't.

Q: Just what is it that we understand about these two individuals, respectively? What is the fundamental difference between them?

A: Character.
Unhappy circumstances occur every day. Those of weak character, who put primal self above all else, merely use them as a means to an end.

CR, along those same lines, whose fault is it, then, if one's needs go unaddressed, as in the cases like mine where absolutely no discussion was had about the alleged issues? The problem we encounter when unmet needs start being cited as reasons for vulnerability to an affair is that it implicates the BS, who in many cases is completely unaware of any major problems. No one can read minds or address problems they don't even know exist. We have, as I think you have kind of pointed out recently, our own responsibility to ourselves to speak up. So it's not really the lack of ego stroking that made them more susceptible, it was their own unwillingness to address the issue. The million dollar question is why were they unwilling? I know I wasn't standing there tapping my wooden rolling pin against my hand waiting to clobber my H as soon as he took issue with me. Were you?

You know, I agree, I do need my ego stroked from time to time.

There are certainly ways of getting that without, you know, sleeping with someone other than your spouse. When I feel ugly and go to the bar with a girlfriend, a man buys me a drink and I feel better about myself. Then...I go home. ALONE. No boundaries crossed.

Needing a little more attention or ego stroking does not justify having sex with someone else. I agree with L- if your partner is not giving you everything you feel that you need, then you need to sit down and say, "hey, I like it when you do this. I need this."

Bottom line- you hit the nail right on the head when you said, "What reason does [justify cheating]. Short of abuse, not much." Not much does justify cheating because NOTHING does. It's an absolutely not okay thing to do- and there were always other (and better) choices that the CS could have and should have made instead of the choice they made.

Hum, lots to comment on here.

@znz,

I understand what you are saying. True, you don't get your self-esteem from one person or place. But I wasn't talking about my self-esteem, I was talking about whether she respected me. For the marriage, to me, that is critical. Not because it makes me feel good (though it does), but because I need my spouse to respect me to feel like she loves me. If I don't feel that, then I don't feel she loves me that much. That's the only point I was making with that. For me to feel loved by her, I need her to respect me. Any other concept is off what I was talking about.

@Natty and a think a couple others brought this up,

Most of us don't tend to sit down and think, "You know, to feel like he/she loves me, I really need X. Maybe I should go talk to him/her about that, because that could make me more susceptible to temptation."

What happens frequently, I believe, is what happened in my case. My wife says to me, "Would you like to come to the grocery store with me?" I, being absorbed in my world, think, "She doesn't need me to buy groceries, I'd probably slow her down, and i have this important work to do. Why waste my time at the grocery store when I could be getting this important stuff off my to-do list?" So I'd say, "No, not really."

What I didn't know is that for her to feel I loved her, I needed to spend time with her doing things like going to the grocery store. The problem was I looked at it and saw a waste of time compared to getting something done I thought was important. So I didn't hear her call for attention and conversation even though she was giving it to me.

Conversely, all those times I practically begged for sex early in our marriage and she refused, sometimes for months, I kept asking myself, "Can't she see I really need this to connect with her? If she loved me, she would do it at willingly at least some times if for no other reason than she loves me and wants to meet a need I have. Since she won't, she must not love me." Theoretically, many guys would have cheated at that point. I didn't.

I think frequently the spouse, without recognizing it themselves all the time, are calling for help, but because we think it isn't important, ignore it, or don't recognize it for what is is, a call for meeting a need. After all, my wife and I had been dealing with that for most of our 29 years of marriage. I hadn't been meeting that need for a long time. Not meeting that need had become the norm. Why would I have suddenly realized, "Hey, she's been wanting this for years, and I've not given it to her. Maybe I'd better or she might have an affair."

And I'm sad to say that it took her affair to make me seriously evaluate what I was doing wrong. She did the same thing because there were needs I had she hadn't been meeting either. But for many people it takes something this big to force them to take a long, hard look at their relationship and spot areas where deficiencies had been going on for years, where each other have been in various ways crying out for meeting a need, but because each of us didn't see the need as important, tossed it aside to meet our own needs.

Then when the affair happened, all those cries for help became painfully obvious, and I kick myself for failing to see them all that time for what they were. Not merely because meeting them might have prevented the affair (maybe it would have, maybe it won't have) but because I do love her, and all that time I was telling her the exact opposite, just like she did with me when I wanted sex from her so bad. It's about the marriage, not just preventing an affair. It's what people who are truly in love with each other do. It happens naturally in a dating relationship (which is why an affair is so appealing on that front), but for a long term marriage, you have to pay attention to it, water it, not take it for granted. That becomes the fertile ground making an affair more likely to take hold. But even if it doesn't, it is still an unloving thing to do to the one you've committed your life to. To rarely tell them in a way that communicates to them, that you love them.

And for the fourth time, I'm not saying this justifies any cheating "solution" to meeting the need. CR, there is no need to hand out a BS card here, because I've already said what you said. It may have been a motivating factor, but it cannot be an excuse or justification for meeting that need. I've said that at least twice before.

And Nattie, of course there is no litmus test. I'm the one with the need, When I feel it is met, then it is met. No one can determine that but me. It isn't a matter of how much is enough, but whether I feel loved because I can tell she respects me. I'll tell her if she's going overboard.

I think what some may be getting confused over isn't just meeting my needs to meet my needs. It deals with what a person needs to feel like the other person loves them. Everyone's list of priorities on that are different. But in general, men tend to want sex, respect, recreational companionship, among others, while women tend to put at the top of their list affection, attention, companionship/conversation, among others. The need is for what makes a specific person feel loved. Not just to meet a need, but what do I do to communicate to my spouse that I love them? What communicates that to me is usually not what communicates that to her. And that's where we get messed up, because I might think, "We have sex often enough, surely that should make her feel loved." While she might think, "He's so shallow, all he wants is my body to satisfy himself with, but he doesn't really care for me because he won't sit down and chit chat about his day with me." Each receives love differently, and each doesn't think what the other is doing is communicating love, so they put it on the unimportant list and think their spouse is just being selfish or petty. But to that spouse, it is anything but petty and unimportant. It is critical to feeling like their spouse loves them.

My whole point is that we don't dismiss the others way of feeling loved as unimportant simply because it isn't how we receive love. And that's what I sense people doing sometimes when they dismiss a CS's realization that he or she didn't feel loved because they didn't get their egos stroked, didn't feel respected, and for them, that's how they best experience love. You can substitute another need a person has by which they experience love as well.

And again, I'm not saying acknowledging that such could have played a role in the CS's temptation to make a decision to have an affair means it is an excuse for them, or a justification of their decision. They most certainly may have felt that way at the time they decided to either do it or let it happen, but outside the fog it doesn't justify it, and if they are honest about it, they will agree. But that doesn't mean we can't recognize the conditions that fostered that decision as things that are needing fixing in the marriage as a whole, whether or not the affair had ever happened, and that the affair has ended up highlighting these problems.

There of course is no guarantee that fixing those problems will prevent another affair. But, if we are to believe the therapist who wrote "His Needs, Her Needs," it was this reality that changed his results of successful marriage rebuildings after affairs from the norm of around 45%, to around 80%. That's not a difference to sneeze at. One ignores such facts to their marriage's own peril.

The real question is, do you love your spouse? And if so, do you want to make sure they feel that love? If so, you have to speak it in the language they understand instead of dismissing that language as the wrong one, or not important, etc.

I am on the same page as Crossroads. I was one of the BS that would have loved to have had my ego stroked now and then. My H made the statement that I was supposed to just know with out recieving any compliments for years. I wasn't fishing for them or long quit being hurt because I didn't get one once a year. I chalked it up to H's lack of emotions.

I did however give him compliments now and then, appearance wise or doing a good job on a task, or chore. I didn't cheat either. I accepted as is and went along with it. Only after DD to my surprise I actually recieved a compliment after 4 years, but it was after I mentioned the cold hard facts during an argument as to how " H and OW" were able to pass compliments back and forth for ego stroking.

Did H at anytime during the days of charming the OW days think at any one time have the thought he should have at least gave one or two to his wife? No.. This is the choice he made. My H had no reason to cheat either. But his personality or whatever it's called has the desire to help I shall say women mostly, there is the mass potential for compliments( ego stroking) that has led to more what is there for the taking.