Natty, couldn't agree more - essentially have said as much here on this thread, and in my various rants on the subject the last few days. LOL Remember I've just ripped H a new one over this and now he's finally going to counseling.

Cole, I do hear what you're saying, and I don't 'hear' you saying it's justifiable. I hear you saying unmet needs as the 'reason' for unjustifiable behavior should not be discounted. I'm saying they certainly can be, because it's lack of character that's the real reason the CHOICE to cheat is made above all else.

Yes. I also understand your point, but altough that would bring some relief, that is not a solution. Cheating always comes with a price tag. Someone pays the price. The pain and mess is just not worth of it. When there is no attention/respect..one should first talk to the spouse, try to solve the issue and then end the relationship that does not satisfy the need.

I feel that when your wife said, "hey, come to the grocery store with me," that could have been a cry for attention that you were not recognizing.

However, going with what Natty was saying, before your wife decided to cheat, did she ever sit down with you and say, "Hey, I need you to spend time with me. I'm tempted to cheat. Other men seek me out and spend time with me, and I have been tempted to turn to them because you don't do things like go to the grocery store." I'm guessing she didn't. Instead, she suggested you go to the store, you didn't recognize it as a need of hers because SHE NEVER CLEARLY STATED THAT IT WAS, and she grew increasingly resentful and frustrated. Which, again, she didn't communicate with you about.

I agree with rollercoaster. Did you wife ever sit you down and tell you what she was feeling - before she decided to cheat?

Cole, I think you are being misheard here. Nothing you have said implies that anything can justify an A. You also do not have any crazy expectations of your spouse. Have you read, "Love and Respect"? This book really touches on the need men have to be respected in order to feel loved, as well as a woman's need to have love (and no fear of losing that love). I think that the points you are trying to make really coincide with the main points in this book. Men and women need to feel loved in different ways. We are very different, and generally speaking, each sex has it's own particular needs.

My H also did not sit down to let me know that he was so unhappy. I didn't know that there was a problem. If I had, I would have certainly worked on our issues. He was calling out to me in his own way to meet his needs. I just wasn't hearing him. Since my needs weren't being met, I didn't feel that I needed to meet his. Now I never consciencely thought this, but I can look at is now to see where things went wrong. Resentment builds when your needs aren't being met. You are not saying that it is your spouse's job to make you happy or make you feel worthy--not at all. We are still responsible for that. It is, however, each person's responsibility to respect the needs we have by communicating them clearly. For instance, your W was very hurt that you didn't go grocery shopping. You had justified that in your mind and the reasons you had for not going had nothing to do with not loving her. If she had let you know how that affected her, then I'm sure that you would have changed your behavior...not because you want to please her necessarily, but because you do love her and want her to know that. If my H had communicated how he felt when I did or didn't do certain things, I would have changed that behavior. Recently he said to me that I didn't like him. I can't understand how he could think that when I loved him so much. I tended to show my love the way that I wanted to be loved (and he the same). When we realize that we all have different needs, we can do our best to meet those needs to show how much we do love our spouse...again, not because it is our job to boost their ego, but simply because we do love them and want them to feel that love.

Well said Cole. I am hearing you 100%. Good luck to you and your W. I wish I had the chance to use what I have learned with my H, but he walked out the door on D-day.

I don't think I'm mishearing, I think I just disagree on some points.

"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."

The problem is that evaluating the situation in retrospect isn't exactly an objective undertaking. Interestingly enough, one of the things my H never said during the whole ordeal or afterwards was that he didn't feel loved. He said HE didn't love ME anymore when he left. (That he wasn't "in love" with me anymore, to be more precise.) He never said, You dont love me, you dont show me you love me, so why do you care?

"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."

How can we toss aside something we don't know exists? This suggests some kind of deliberate act on the part of the spouse to ignore a need, and I just don't believe that's usually the case.

"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."

It isn't the case for everyone that they look back and see these "cries for help". I still don't know what the hell happened leading up to what my H did. Sure, he threw out a lot of incidents that happened over the 12 years we'd been together prior, some of which I was certainly not proud of, but this is common and no relationship of any length will be without a history of instances where spouses hurt one another. I knew before he dropped all his bombs on me that I needed to make some changes and, in fact, had told him so. But 2 years later and there has still been no light bulb moment for me. I still dont know how one can kick themselves for something they did not know and basically had no way of knowing. I did it in the beginning myself, but I dont anymore.

"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."

I don't think we necessarily think something isn't important or that our spouse is being selfish or petty, we just don't KNOW it has a particular meaning at all. How can we if nothing is said?

"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."

I don't think it is dismissing a need as much as it is dismissing it as being some sort of a justification for the affair, which you agree it isn't. That's the problem that arises with discussing marital issues as part of the affair when, in fact, they are two separate things. I will always remember a comment by Dr. Phil a few months after my H came home on a show dealing with infidelity in which he said, "The marriage issues are separate from the affair issues." I could've kissed that man that day ;) Of course there is nothing wrong with and everything good about identifying weaknesses in your relationship and correcting them as part of the rebuilding process. However, if these weaknesses are not justification or reason to have an affair, I just don't understand their place in discussing it.

"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."

Again, there is an issue with the idea that these conditions fostered the decision to have an affair when all there really needs to be is attraction, opportunity, and a desire to act on that attraction. We can all come up with lots of reasons for doing lots of bad things, but the bottom line is that the reason is that it made us feel good. It doesnt even have to mean we felt bad to begin with. I believe that in most cases the "badness" of a marriage is distorted and magnified rather than being completely based in reality because the CS needs that in order to behave the way they do. Demonizing the marriage is commonly acknowledged in sources about infidelity. I dont understand the idea that their perception of their affair world was total fantasy while their perception of their married world was somehow completely based in reality.

"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."

I agree. But I think this has more to do with the need, particularly by the BS, to have a marriage they can feel good about despite the betrayal in order to overcome the bad feelings that result from it. Any marriage would benefit from spouses acting more loving and responsive toward each other. But in marriages where infidelity has occurred, it is surely even more important. This isn't necessarily because unmet needs led to an affair, but because it takes more to put the awful feelings resulting from it away and focus on the good that remains.

"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 think anyone willing to rebuild after an affair must love their spouse in some capacity because we all know what a terribly difficult undertaking it is. I think the difference here is between the idea that the need is being dismissed versus the idea that the need being being part of the reason the decision for the affair was made is being dismissed. On that, I think we all agree....that unmet needs weren't a justification for it. Maybe it's a matter of semantics, I don't know. I'm not unwilling to stroke my H's ego to make him feel good. I'm just not willing to say him not getting it stroked enough by me contributed to his affair. He got the hots for someone else, convinced himself that his life was going to somehow be better, and threw me and his kids under the bus, bottom line.

@Natty, you said, "Cole, I do hear what you're saying, and I don't 'hear' you saying it's justifiable. I hear you saying unmet needs as the 'reason' for unjustifiable behavior should not be discounted. I'm saying they certainly can be, because it's lack of character that's the real reason the CHOICE to cheat is made above all else."

I agree, it is a matter of character, and bad choices. The fact of the matter is, we all do that. We all, at one point or another, if we're honest enough to admit it, make really bad choices due our own character weaknesses. I gave an example of one of my own. The difference here is this bad choice has some fairly serious consequences. My bad choice could have, but I got lucky in that only a car was lost, and not my fiance at the time.

That as a given, it still doesn't mean it is to one's advantage or marriage to ignore factors that lead to the bad choice. Yes, working on one's character flaws could be included in that list. The only reason to decide to ignore that is if you've given up on the relationship and marriage and don't intend to make it better.

Note: I'm not saying in your specific situation that you did, or didn't, or that it was even the right thing to focus on. This is more of a general statement that applies to most people, most of the time.

Cole, I disagree on some points as well.

In my situation, my husband had 2 affairs, I ound out, and decided to try and fix things. Initially, I did try and pinpoint what caused the affair. What was going wrong in our marriage that would cause him to look down the cotch of other women. There were many factors. I refused to communicate with him, I was not giving hm attention or compliments anymore, and our sex life had dwindled due to a very stressful situation we were going through. He tried to get me to open up and I ignored the signs and refused to. So he stated talking to (and eventually devoloping more of a relationship with) other women.

I recognized those poblems and fixed them. During the rebuilding period, my husband even commented that I was doing everything right. I was communicating, I was sexual, I was spending time with him. I stroked his ego ll the time, and I made him the center of my world, and I know that because he told me. He noticed nd said, "Thank you."

Meanwhile...he cheated yet again. I found out, we started the process all over again. And then...he cheated with a 4th woman.

I realized that while yes, I definitely had things I could have improved upon as a spouse, his happiness is NOT my responsibility to notice and tune into. It is not my job to read his mind and try to figure out his needs. HE needed to communicate about what was wrong. At the time, he didn't do so because he couldn't put it into words himself. There was just a hole, and he didn't know what would fill it. He could have at least communicated that to me- but he did not. Instead, he put on a happy face, pretended wewere fine nd dandy, and had a secret life behind my back.

When I filed for divorce, his responce astounded me. All of a sudden, he came up with a laundry list of all these "needs" he had that I had neglected to meet because I'm so selfish, I'm so awful, I'm so clueless. I think that many CS do this- after the affair, they realize what needs weren't being met. But during the affair...they are lost souls searching for something that might make them feel less empty.

@roller, you said, "However, going with what Natty was saying, before your wife decided to cheat, did she ever sit down with you and say, "Hey, I need you to spend time with me. I'm tempted to cheat. Other men seek me out and spend time with me, and I have been tempted to turn to them because you don't do things like go to the grocery store." I'm guessing she didn't. Instead, she suggested you go to the store, you didn't recognize it as a need of hers because SHE NEVER CLEARLY STATED THAT IT WAS, and she grew increasingly resentful and frustrated. Which, again, she didn't communicate with you about."

No one does that. Here's how it happened in my case, and I suppose happened in most cases. Much of this I've learned after the fact in discussing it with my wife.

For years, we had this communication issue. I was often wrapped up in the computer, doing thing things I felt I needed to get done. She would come back to get ready for bed. Sometimes it worked, other times I would tend to ignore her, just going "uh hu" in response to things she said, but not giving her my full attention. Sometimes she would get mad at me and we'd have a big "discussion" about how she would like to spend at least a few minutes talking before she goes to bed, and why can't I tear myself away for just a few minutes. Like I said, sometimes it was better, often she put up with getting only a very little, Other times it boiled over, especially when I had trouble pulling myself away from what I was doing. I wanted to give her time, but the dynamic never really changed significantly though we tried different things. I think we had both sort of given up on it ever changing much, but I certainly knew she wanted me to spend more time talking with her. But for whatever reason, I never put enough importance to it to seriously think she felt more unloved from me because of it. It was just the way things were due to our personalities, I figured, and I really didn't know how to change that. And i gave it little to no more thought beyond that.

On the going to the grocery store, that went on for years. She'd talk about how she saw other couples there and lamented that I wasn't there with her. And the grocery store was just one example. Not that I totally didn't do anything ever with her and the family. But like the 4th of July, she liked to go to the fireworks. I was bored with them and didn't care to fight the crowds. She would take the kids and I would stay home. Halloween, another sticking point. They decorate the front yard, my sons dress up, and they would sit in the yard, putting on a show, handing out candy, to the many kids that come down our street. The most I would do would be to go out and look at what they'd done, comment on it, and then go back to my writing. I knew she wanted me to come to the fireworks. She would act real sad and argue with me about it at times. Last year she asked, and when I said no, she nodded and walked off, having already set herself up for what I would do, and decided not to argue about it that year.

Did she ever come to me and say, "If you don't start doing these things, I'm going to go and cheat on you?" No. She didn't think she would ever cheat. She looks back on what she did in disbelief now as much as I do. But a guy started flirting with her and it excited her. She saw it as all just fun and games, and never had a thought of cheating on me. She even told me about the flirting and I warned her that she shouldn't do that because it broadcast to a guy that she's available and desiring him.

She went to the guy and explained that she is married, and would never cheat on me, would never violate our marriage vows. He left her alone for a while, but started texting her again. At this point, she figured he knew she wouldn't do any of the things they were talking about, and she thought she could handle it (rationalizations going on for sure). At this point, it had moved beyond flirting to sex chatting, and she never told me about this until after dday. But even then, she said, she saw it as a game, and never had any intentions of cheating on me (she didn't know enough to realize that this is what she was already doing, being neck deep in the fog by this point) and she didn't think she would ever cheat on me up until the point she actually let it happen.

IOW, she never thought she would cheat on me until shortly before it happened, and was naive enough to not realize sex chatting with another guy was anything more than a game to play. So of course she would never come up to me and say, "...or I might end up cheating on you." No one is going to say that, because very few know that is what is going to happen and don't think they would ever do such a thing.

But I certainly knew she wanted to spend more time with me and talk with me. I was just so busy with my "second job" of writing that I hated to pull away from it unless I absolutely had to. When I'm doing something, I get focused and hours fly by before I realize it. What I didn't know, however, is that by not spending more time with her and talking to her, I was essentially telling her, "You're not that important enough. I don't love you enough to spend time with you, to chat with you." I mean, looking back on it, I don't know how I could have logically missed that. It is so obvious now. But I guess it is one of those character flaws of mine. The dots don't always connect.

Or to put it another way. No one is ever going to say that, but she certainly did tell me in so many words that she wanted to spend more time with me, many times over many years, and I never really got the message that by not doing that, i was missing telling her, "I love you."

What I'm hearing you and other say here, is that telling your spouse in a way that they can understand, "I love you," is not important and should be dismissed. Because that is what this is about. How to tell each other, "I love you," in actions. I'm hearing from some that this is not important and has no place in evaluating what may have played into the decision to cheat, as wrong as that decision is.

I'm not excluding other factors here, only pointing out we dismiss this one factor to our detriment, especially if we're trying to rebuild the marriage. If it is over, well, then there isn't much point in learning how to tell them you love them. But you'd better learn how to to it with the next person.

@hope,

Thanks. I've not read that book before. The book I'm basing some of this off of is "HIs Needs, Her Needs." It speaks to the ways we in actions tell each other we love one another. And how we often try to tell them in actions by what makes us feel loved, which is nine times out of ten, not what makes them feel loved. Thus the need to sit down with one's spouse and ask them, what are the top five things I could do to or with you that would say to you, "I love you."

Then do those things. If you really love him or her.

@Natty, you said, "The problem is that evaluating the situation in retrospect isn't exactly an objective undertaking."

It never is, really. I get what you are saying. That said, I don't think that is a reason to not try or give up.

"How can we toss aside something we don't know exists?"

We can't. Which is why if we love one another, we find out. But most of us are like myself. I didn't realize these factors, that how I received "I love you" from her is different from how she would receive it from me, and that I was essentially telling her, "I don't love you" many times through our marriage. That's the whole reason I thought I would post this. That we don't automatically diss the other's way of feeling love from us simply because we don't think it is important.

But certainly, if neither of you realize this fact, and if you never ask him, "what do i do that tell you I love you," or he never tells you in a way you understand that he's not feeling like you love him and why, then naturally you can't do anything about it. Thus the point of my post. So people will know.

"It isn't the case for everyone that they look back and see these "cries for help"."

Of course. I was speaking for those that were there to be seen, but like myself, were blind to them until the affair made them something serious enough, and after reading "His Needs, Her Needs," I saw what should have been obvious, as I've already detailed. But each person's specific experience may be different. I'm not saying you should have seen any cries for help. But if they were there, the affair may have highlighted them. If not, then either they weren't there, or just way to hidden for you to see.

"That's the problem that arises with discussing marital issues as part of the affair when, in fact, they are two separate things." and "However, if these weaknesses are not justification or reason to have an affair, I just don't understand their place in discussing it."

Because if your goal is to rebuild the marriage, then what helps a marriage, fixing what issues may have promoted the decision to cheat. Like I said, traditional affair counseling methods yield around a 40-45% success, while focusing on these issues results in around 80% success rate after an affair. So why ignore it?

"Again, there is an issue with the idea that these conditions fostered the decision to have an affair when all there really needs to be is attraction, opportunity, and a desire to act on that attraction."

I'm afraid I don't see the difference. If not telling them, "I love you" in action leads to attraction, opportunity and desire to act on that attraction, then how is this not fostering the decision to cheat?

"I believe that in most cases the "badness" of a marriage is distorted and magnified rather than being completely based in reality because the CS needs that in order to behave the way they do."

For sure. Yes, in the fog, CS's will attempt to justify their behavior based on some of these things. I don't think that abuse of the information should justify ignoring where it really does have an affect, and how to lessen that effect.

"I think the difference here is between the idea that the need is being dismissed versus the idea that the need being being part of the reason the decision for the affair was made is being dismissed. On that, I think we all agree....that unmet needs weren't a justification for it."

Correct. But I do think the need to "hear" from your spouse "I love you" in actions can in many cases, be a factor in the conditions that lead to that decision. Not in all cases, by any stretch. In my case, it might have. I'll never know. If i had spent plenty of time with my wife, and she not only heard me say I love her, knew in her head that I loved her, but felt it in her heart because I did all the things that said to her, "I love you," would she have succumbed to the guy who started flirting with her, leading her step by step deeper and deeper in until she felt 'trapped" in deceit and desire for that kind of attention? (Long run on sentence there.) I'll never know. It might have, then again, it may have played out exactly as it did. But I would have to think his attention would have been less of a pull on her if she felt in her heart the infatuation type love from me because I couldn't stay away from her, and spent plenty of time with her. People get desperate when they are starved and hungry.

So, I do believe it is a factor. Not an excuse for what they did, for sure. Nor something they can point back and say, "But she wouldn't do X, that's why I cheated!" I have many influences upon why I chose either good or bad. But if I chose to do something bad, I have no real excuses. I made the wrong decision, no matter 'why" I made the wrong decision. Consequences don't care why you made the wrong decision. But if you want to not make the wrong decision in the future, then all facets of why you made the wrong decision have to be taken into account, including any influences. To not look at those I think is to ignore real issues, that a relationship is always a two way street, and that it is a rare case indeed where only one of the parties are "at fault" for what happened. For to not address those would and it happens again, you can't say you did everything you needed to do (not you specifically, mind you, but in general because i noticed in your later post that you did do these things).

More later. Got to go pick up my son from school (See, I'm involved! lol)

@roller

Yes, I understand. In your specific situation, you did work to meet his needs. Two things.

One, that it didn't 'work" in your case doesn't mean it wasn't important to do. You don't know whether it would "fix" the issues that caused him to have an affair or not, because you can never know exactly how much of that really played into it. If the rate of healing rebuilding marriages is any indicator, then it does play into it for a lot of people. But not all. But at least you can say you did everything in your power to make it work, and if it failed, if he still cheated, it wasn't because he lacked from you, even if he does point back to 'before". There is still that 20% that still don't make it because there are other mitigating factors that simply showing each other you love one another doesn't overcome.

Two, there is the possibility that while you felt you were meeting his needs or what you believed to be his needs, it was actually missing the target, it wasn't the needs that would say to him, "I love you." Maybe because he himself isn't that aware of it, it just "happens" and he feels love from you but he doesn't know enough to evaluate exactly what needs you're meeting that say that to him. Usually it is best to go back to your dating period, when you both felt each other could do no wrong, and you both felt you loved each other desperately, and didn't want to be apart, then ask yourselves what was he or she doing that caused you to feel that way.

You see, the 'spark" that happens with a new relationship, that the CS experiences in an affair, only dies off because the spouses stop doing the things that tell each other, "I love you." Those happen naturally at first. When we were dating and the first year of our marriage, I spent lots of time with my wife. She felt love from me a ton. But over time, that dwindled away as kids came on the scene, we didn't jive in how we disciplined them so I backed out to avoid conflict, which made me seem "distant" from the family. She got wrapped up in the kids and I got wrapped up in my work, school, whatever was going on, and our time spent with each other dwindled. Then that became the norm. But it didn't need to be. If we had understood things better, we could have kept that initial flame alive. Not only said I love you, but did the things that made us each feel in love. But that takes awareness and investing the work to do it, rather than let things take their natural course, which is to drift apart.

I have no idea if that applies to your situation or not. But it did to mine.

Natty, just wanted to tell you that what you said was the exact reason my H gave for turning to someone else. He never told me how he was feeling before his A because we never communicated like that. Meaning, we just never came to each other with these deep issues maybe because we felt embarrased or something I'm not sure.

We were very young when we married and I guess this isn't something that developed over time either. But my God, couldn't he have come up with a better solution than cheating? I know it may have been hard to come to me with some things, but look at what we're going through now! I wish he would have at least made an effort to come to me.

I feel for everyone here! I stroked my stbx's ego - went out of my way for him every chance I could. Always asked him to do things with me, to which he would always say no. I don't like that - you go - you don't need me... All the while, he was cheating - chatting, porn sites. Addicted. I turned a blind eye and put a wall up over the years because I was disappointed over and over again. I didn't want to see what he was doing, because I didn't want to break up my family. I told him I loved him every day. I had sex with him 4 times a week - I cooked, cleaned and entertained all of his friends who he invited over constantly - to no avail. He still cheated over and over again Serial Cheater - finally he found someone whom he fell in love with after 30 years together and left the house 5 months ago. At first, I was devastated - but now I know that he did me a favor.

He would never be able to give me the love and support that I need and deserve. Sometimes stroking egos just doesn't work. It's just not in him. The same thing is bound to happen to her too - but that's her problem.

Sometimes people just give too much of themselves. Way too much.

"What I'm hearing you and other say here, is that telling your spouse in a way that they can understand, "I love you," is not important and should be dismissed. Because that is what this is about. How to tell each other, "I love you," in actions. I'm hearing from some that this is not important and has no place in evaluating what may have played into the decision to cheat, as wrong as that decision is."

You misunderstand. Marriage issues on one side, cheating issues on the other, kind of like two sides of the same coin. It's not an either/or proposition, and I would venture to guess that those besides me that have a different opinion than yours have, in fact, done things and made their own changes to improve their relationships with their spouses. I'm not sitting on my ass here saying, "Well, you screwed it all up, fix it! I'll wait." I've done a lot. I've suffered through a lot to still be here 2 years later. Because, it IS important. But I'm not doing it so he won't cheat on me again, I'm doing it because I want to be able to live happily with the man that once broke my heart.

"That said, I don't think that is a reason to not try or give up."

I don't think I've ever suggested not trying or giving up. I believe in marriage and have often said that here. If I didn't have the belief I do in marriage, I highly doubt I would be here. My point is that I don't think looking back and pointing at every thing the BS did wrong is an objective way to look at what led someone to cheat. And, one's perceptions can change as a result of a period of time spent ruminating over such things while the OP sat next to them reinforcing all of it without even knowing the whole story. The line gets blurred between blame and responsibility and, at least for me, that was VERY detrimental to my recovery from this in the beginning.

"That's the whole reason I thought I would post this. That we don't automatically diss the other's way of feeling love from us simply because we don't think it is important."

I'm sorry that I don't appear to be making myself clear. I know I've expressed this very sentiment here before because I've had some issue with my own H over this. He's basically told me before that he's just not that guy (that does some of the things I need to feel loved). Of course it's important for me AND for him. I don't use what he did as some sort of reason not to do for him what he wants and needs from me. It would never work that way and we'd probably be headed for another disaster of one form or another. It's not that it's not important, it's just that it's not what led him to cheat. His erecting walls between me and him and his willingness to cross boundaries is what led him to cheat.

"Because if your goal is to rebuild the marriage, then what helps a marriage, fixing what issues may have promoted the decision to cheat. "

I can't fix whatever was within him that led him to cheat and walk out on his family. That's his to own. Can I do things to change myself and, hopefully, improve our relationship? Sure. But I cannot make him recognize those things that he did or told himself to make it okay when he did it. That's up to him.

"Like I said, traditional affair counseling methods yield around a 40-45% success, while focusing on these issues results in around 80% success rate after an affair. So why ignore it?"

If you go back to my previous post, you will see that I didn't suggest ignoring marital issues at all. Every couple has issues in their marriage, even those where infidelity isn't a factor. Every. Single. One. I'm simply saying that I think addressing the issues has more to do with the general happiness of the couple and less to do with the affair. An affair is tough enough. Add the rest of the difficult parts of the marital load on top of it and yes, I can see why those that don't ALSO address other problems would be less likely to make it.

"I'm afraid I don't see the difference. If not telling them, "I love you" in action leads to attraction, opportunity and desire to act on that attraction, then how is this not fostering the decision to cheat?"

I think you don't see the difference because you presuppose that the CS is automatically feeling unloved when they become attracted to someone else. I don't think that has to be true at all. I think all of us could find at least one other person in this world that we could be attracted to and enjoy being with, whether we're happy in our marriage or not. I seem to recall reading in "Not Just Friends" that many men who have affairs report being happy in their marriages, but I'd have to look that up to verify. The point is, I don't assume that everyone that engages in an affair does so because their needs aren't being met by their spouses. We can be perfectly satisfied after a meal and still go for dessert.

"I don't think that abuse of the information should justify ignoring where it really does have an affect, and how to lessen that effect."

Again, I'm not suggesting it should be ignored, just separated.

"But I would have to think his attention would have been less of a pull on her if she felt in her heart the infatuation type love from me because I couldn't stay away from her, and spent plenty of time with her."

This is unrealistic in a long-term marriage. We all know that infatuation fades. I know that rush is pretty powerful, but it doesn't necessarily mean that the marriage is so lacking that it couldn't be resisted from another. I think the danger lies in not recognizing it can ALWAYS be a pull on us, because it does feel good to have others like us, care about us, even want us. It just does. Temptation is everywhere, regardless of what we have. Imelda Marcos had how many pairs of shoes? ;)

"To not look at those I think is to ignore real issues, that a relationship is always a two way street, and that it is a rare case indeed where only one of the parties are "at fault" for what happened."

Of course it's a two-way street, but I am in no way at fault for what happened. Accepting that doesn't mean I don't think being a good wife and respecting my H's needs is important or necessary. I certainly do. I just think it's important in a different way. And I'm okay with that difference of opinion. I admire the way you have engaged in self-reflection to rebuild your marriage in the role of the betrayed spouse. Your wife is lucky to have you, no matter what may have happened in the past.