Infidelity Support Group
Any relationship in which one partner engages willfully in sexual relations with another outside of the partnership is considered to have experienced infidelity. This breach of trust is often traumatizing for the faithful partner as well as the relationship, and support is often needed to heal emotionally and to decide whether or not the relationship should continue after...
It has been less than 2 weeks since DDay. Can't believe I had an affair. It seems surreal. I need to talk to other CS'. I am hurting, guilty, and feeling alone. H is supportive and doing his best. We are in counseling but I need to talk with others who have been there.
I'm the BS, but my wife and I have talked this subject to death. I understand the addiction she felt to romantic companionship. It lit a fire in her and it was a fire that I as her husband could never satisfy, because it was in part based on a feeling that what she missed out on as a "good" teen who'd never had any sex with anyone other than me her whole life, is that there were all these experience out there. The first man who started it in her gave her a taste, and she wanted more, near addictive levels.
She fought, hard, and tried to stop and break it off several times before it got to where it did. But eventually, she gave up the fight with the part of her that craved these experiences, and so shut out of her mind the likely consequences.
Ironically, she told me when she realized the OM and her were heading down the road of adultery, she told him, "You know, this can only end in pain for both of us." They both knew it would end up bad. Now it's bad. But they did it anyway.
Why does anyone who has shoved what they know to be right and true into a closet of their mind and shut the door so they don't have to think about the consequences of the actions they so desperately want to commit, risk so much on such little (and in the end if they were to go live with the other person in most cases) and such disappointing returns. Same reason we all justify actions we should know are wrong, know they will likely end in trouble, but we do them anyway.
And society fosters this kind of "Oh, it's just a fun thing to do when you like someone." No, it's the violation of bonds. But most don't want to acknowledge that or think about it, because it means they would have to change their behavior, behaviors they don't want to change.
It just so happens that this behavior, adultery, has some fairly serious consequences. But that doesn't matter to someone hungry to fill a need, and craving it with great passion. Same reason people are willing to climb cliffs with no safety net, knowing all the while one small slip will cost them their lives.
No, it doesn't make sense. If it made sense, it wouldn't be do devastating. But what makes sense goes out the door on something like this.
BS= Betrayed Spouse
The reason my story does not mention my husband is because The affair is a different "compartment" than my marriage. That is the best I can describe how it is possible I even did this. My "bad girl" and my "good girl" were in a war for the longest time. I guess my mind finally found a way to reconcile. Let them both exist separately. The A and sex addiction were like a different life. A different me. My marriage has always been good. My H has given me no reason to do this. Our marriage may have grown a little distracted and stale but we still felt lucky to have each other and happy together. At home I acted normal. I was living my normal life except my internet activities kind of bled the two lives together. I was living two lives and I kept them compartmentalized from each other. It may not make sense but I was a sick person. I don't know any other way to describe it.
None of that excuses the A relationship. None of it makes sense of the actions to risk so much to gain so little. But that is what they experienced. They are not thinking right, they are not in their right mind when this happens. I know my wife was nearly 180 degrees different than she'd ever been in our marriage. Before the man that started it all changed her, she could easily go without sex for a long time, months. She told me she would go up to two months without even thinking about it. Suddenly, like someone had flipped a switch on, she started wanting it every night, sometimes twice a day. And with much passion.
And that passion drove her as much as she fought it, she finally gave in and let it happen.
Contrast that to early in our marriage when my expectation was we'd be doing it every night, only to get the cold shoulder. Five years later, it was the worse it had ever been. I felt I had to beg and plead for it if I were to get it at all. I began to doubt that she loved me. It certainly didn't feel like she did.
And I started talking with a woman at work and she was telling me her boyfriend troubles. And I can't remember, I may have told her some of my marital struggles, but I don't think I mentioned the sex frustration. I realized in talking with her, however, is that this is how it starts. I'm sexually starved, and I could tell she'd probably, if not then, soon, make herself available to me if I indicated interest. The next step would be to go to a club or eat out after work so we could discuss things more privately.
But I didn't want to go there, and really it wasn't hard for me to fight that urge. I simply couldn't do that to my family. So naturally you get the idea that I struggled to preserve what we had, and then many years later she fails to do so. So I've gone over and over this in my mind why a happily married woman would do this to us.
But in the end, I understand, but I don't. I know the chemical reactions in the brain which tells the brain "You must get more of this or you will simply DIE!" that causes them to abandon all reason in pursuit of this craving they find very difficult to suppress.
But in the end, she knew the consequences of what she was doing, even told the OM that if they did this, it would only end in pain. And yet, her mind was so perverted from logical, right thinking that she chose to do it anyway. And, I might add, with a man who had been cheated on by his wife some years back. That really makes no sense why he would do that, knowing the pain it caused him.
But it still doesn't make sense why anyone would risk so much on so little benefit. They simply aren't thinking right, for whatever reason. Their mind is corrupted and rationalizations and justifications have perverted their perspective and morals.
My wife realizes that now, and still has to deal with some of those feelings and desires. They've been dormant the last two weeks, but she said yesterday they were starting to wake back up again.
So we're working on ways to help her effectively not allow it to get her in the frame of mind she ended up in last time. We plan on talking to the therapist about this as well.