Rebuilding Marriage After Infidelity Community Group
A community for those who have been through the heartbreak of infidelity and decided to stay with their partner and try to re-build the relationship.
Oh, I know. That title sounds so Vulcan. lol. *raises eyebrow* "Interesting."
This threatens to be a rambling thing, so I'll try to keep it to the point (didn't work, too long). And no, I'm not on the verge of giving up or anything. This is more dealing with how to reconcile two "truths" that I feel tends to be one of the humps people deal with in the rebuilding process, sometimes derailing it or they get stuck with it and can't get past it.
For instance, common issues we've discussed here is the deception, the lies, getting to the point of rebuilding trust, or at least headed down that road, etc. That is a big one for me. I have to feel I can trust her. She'd done a lot to earn that back, but it will take time to fully heal the damage that did. But I understand that her fear of getting caught as things snowballed, and the shame she didn't want to face, or the end of the affair she didn't want to lose while in the midst of it all, promoted her to deceive me about those things. And while the fact remains she did deceive me about the affair, I can at least understand on some level that if you were doing something like that, why you would want to hide it. Not saying it was right or the best thing (as it kept things going and she got progressively worse, if she'd confessed early it might have stopped with mostly EAs). But I understand if your don't something you know is wrong, most people want to keep it under wraps, don't want to be discovered, and will do all they can to avoid that, including deceiving the person they love the most.
But that really begs the question, because the deception is really a symptom. If she had nothing to hide in the first place, there would be no reason or temptation to hide anything, since there would be nothing horrible for me to find. And for 28.5 years of marriage, she was, as far as I know, open and honest with me. I never had any reason to doubt her, and trusted her implicitly. I even told others that I didn't worry about her cheating on me, because it simply wasn't in her to do something like that. I knew we had a good marriage, that she loved me, and she'd never shown any desires for any guy, sometimes including me it seemed. ;)
But I could see it in their eyes. "Yeah, right." And I knew it wasn't impossible for her to do that. But it was just so outside her character, her morals, her love for me, that I didn't worry that she'd ever do that to me. Unfortunately, they were right. I had set myself up for a fall. I knew it could happen, but never expected it to.
Okay, I'm rambling a bit. Back to focus. One of the issues that is harder to deal with, I think, is the concept that my wife loved me, and yet did what she did, knowing it would hurt me in the end. I know the explanation is that she became swallowed up by desires she wasn't ready to handle, and she compartmentalized, and avoided thinking about the consequences of what she was doing, and only focused on getting what she wanted. She was able to separate her two lives, one with me as the husband she loved, and one with the secrets and men she was having sex chats with, and eventually a full affair. And by so doing, kept them separate from each other so that she didn't have to think about how one affected the other.
But despite that, down deep inside, she had to know she was risking our marriage, our family, over 28 years of happy marriage, all for this moment of pleasure, for these experiences of guys wanting her, which made her feel so alive and excited. She had to know this was hurting me, was taking a knife and stabbing me in the back while I slept. I know she avoided thinking about that, and in the early days she fought hard to not go down those roads. At one point, even though part of her wanted to have sex with the first man, she barely avoided going to him by clinging to me. She avoided that in part knowing it would be a violation of our marriage and a knife to my back if she did it. And she didn't want to hurt me in that way. Yet, as time went on and she kept this double life a secret, that's exactly what she did. That part of her lost the battle and gave up to the desire to have the full experience with someone else.
As I've stated elsewhere, I'm familiar with the addictive behavior to something that gives you pleasure. I've mentioned before that when we both took a sex addiction test, I scored higher than she did, even in the midst of the affair. The test said if you answered 15 questions with a positive, you had a high probability of being susceptible to sexual addiction. I scored 14. And I've known this about myself, and always feared what I'd heard others seem to do: go crazy with desire and do something totally stupid and risk things I value highly because I couldn't control myself. And yet, that never happened. I've never become someone driven to commit some sexual sin on another person. As a matter of fact, the one time I even gave a fleeting thought to cheating on her when our marriage was at a low point, I knew I couldn't do that to her or the kids. I dismissed it as an option. I loved her too much to do that to her.
So knowing all that, the mental gymnastics her mind would play on her, the inching the nose into the doorway bit by bit, and its constantly looking for ways to make what her inflamed desires wanted, to happen, chipping away at the walls of morality and will, until they fall and it gets what she wants, knowing how the mind behaves with addictive behaviors, I can understand how it happened. What is still hard for me to wrap my mind around is if she loved me that much, how could she let that happen, knowing the pain it would cause me?
I guess that's the big question for most BSs. I think in my mind, the "why" of this in her case was the last time she'd felt a guy wanted her like that was 30 years ago when we dated. She had our first child two years after marriage, and went over 200 pounds, never to return below that until about three years ago. Each of the following two kids bumped that weight up until she was around 260, and she stayed that weight through the bulk of our marriage, until she finally discovered a way to change her eating habits and she lost that all the way down to around 180 in a little over a year. So it wasn't until three years ago that she started feeling "sexy" for the first time in her life. Even though she weighed far less when we were married, as a teen and even then, she felt she was fat and saw herself that way, even though I told her she wasn't. So all her life she'd seen herself as fat, and no guy would want her, me being the exception.
So not having even felt any infatuation feelings for over 28 years, and enjoying the feeling that men started paying attention to her, she was ill prepared and naive in dealing with the surge of sexual excitement that another man's attention toward her generated. She said to herself she could handle it, but in reality, she totally lost control. Where as I, on the other hand, had dealt with those feelings all my life. And I had personality traits that probably mitigated that from manifesting as fully as they might have. And while I felt great at being with someone I loved, I never felt "out of control" passion causing me to feel uncontrollable sexual excitement.
Case in point. My first girlfriend I ever had in college, I discovered after the fact was there for her Mrs. degree. Problem was, I wasn't moving fast enough for her. We would regularly have petting sessions, usually in her car, and the windows would fog over so it was very private. I realize now what she wanted me to do was to lose control and have sex with her. But in kissing her and hugging her, I never even so much as touched her breast. I just felt it would be disrespectful of me to do that to her. One time I think she was trying to get me excited, but she wanted me to take the initiative. So I was lying in her lap, and she asked if it was okay to unbutton my shirt. I said yes, and she did, and began rubbing my belly slowly. She moved her fingertips a little under my belt as she circled around each time. I remember lying there, hoping she didn't go further, because I didn't want to go there. But unsure if I would have the gumption to stop her if she did. But what she really wanted was for me to lose it, and do something like shove her hand on down, or start taking her blouse off and doing the same. But I didn't realize that's what she wanted. I only felt it would be highly disrespectful of me to do that to her. So she gave up, and we went on with kissing, or maybe we ended it there as no doubt she was frustrated that I didn't end up having sex with her. So it is no wonder that over Christmas break, she 'fell out of love" with me. By the end of the second semester, she was engaged to a guy, and having sex with him regularly as well I'm sure. Ironically, it was through her that I was introduced to my future wife. But that's another long story.
As I feared, I'm rambling along on this story. Point being, I, scoring a 14, one short of highly prone to sexual addiction, when I considered cheating on my wife, my love for her wouldn't allow me to seriously consider it as an option. Because I loved her, I couldn't imagine hurting her that way, and potentially causing my kids to be raised in a divorced family like I was because my mother cheated on my dad. And so why didn't that stop her?
But to be honest, there are some major differences that played into it. One, even though there was a woman at work who I could have easily moved toward having sex with if I wanted it, she wasn't actively pursuing me. She was sharing with me her frustrations with her boyfriend, and I think I recall she either made comments or it was obvious from her reactions that she felt a connection to me, that I was easy to talk with, and she was telling me intimate stuff. I didn't know about all I know now back then, but I said to myself at the time, "this is how affairs start." So I backed off with her and it didn't go any further, without being rude about it. And that's pretty much as far as that went. She didn't try to really come onto me, or make advances over and over again. Whereas with my wife, she had a man actively asking her to come to his trailer for sex over a two month period. And she always said no. But eventually he broke her down to the point of giving him a BJ on his last day in town. If someone had been actively seeking me out like that, I don't know if I would have reacted differently, or withstood the attention. Knowing me, I would think I would, but I can't guarantee that as I've never been "tested" in that way. Any sexual experiences that I've always secretly desired I've turned down when opportunity arose to fulfill them, because I knew it would be too risky in other ways.
Two, I've never felt the type of sexual excitement of someone wanting me like that. I don't know that I've ever felt it to that degree, that it creates some exciting spark that causes me to look at her with rose-colored glasses, and desire to throw her in bed and go after her, damn the consequences. I'm not even sure I'm capable of that kind of emotion, to tell you the truth. I've never been so infatuated with a woman that I lost control of myself. Not that I didn't want sex, eventually if we were married, and my W and I when we were dating ended up with sexual play (without intercourse) before we were married, but interestingly enough only after we were engaged and her father gave us a book that described in detail how to pleasure each other, and discussing that broke down the walls between us that had prevented any sexual contact during nights of kissing and hugging for hours on end in the previous months. But apparently many men and women experience this state of not being able to think about reality when they fall in love. They get some kind of chemical reaction that causes mental stupidity so there is something to blame their destructive behaviors on if need be. (Being a little over dramatic there.) But I mean, I'm not that susceptible to that, apparently as others, so it is harder for me to grasp how my W could not realize what she was doing to me, and her love for me tell her, "I cannot do this under any circumstances." All she had to do upon realizing she was getting swept up into emotions that was leading her down the wrong path was to stop returning any text, refusing to even read them, from the OM, and upon seeing him explain that she cannot continue texting him in that way, as she loved me too much to hurt me like that, and she didn't even want to get close to that. But instead she specifically said after he sex-texted her a second time, "Let's see how far this will go." Really? You wanted to risk it all and see how far it would go, even if it was to lose the marriage? But that was the decision, and she never made the decision that no matter what the OM did, she would no longer respond or participate in any sexual chat's and avoid him as much as possible, which is what love would have demanded she do. Whether that is what the CS wants to convey or not, when you chose another man/woman to have intimate experiences with than your spouse, you are choosing that person over the spouse; it does say you love that other person more, no matter what your words are saying or what you've convinced yourself you believe. And that is how your spouse is going to tend to interpret it. For me it is only other actions she did which indicates she does love me. But that doesn't fix the conflicting data.
And I guess that is the hard part to take. I know she loves me, and loved me even then. And I've seen other BSs express this thought as well, and they can't seem to get past it. If she did this, she couldn't possibly love me, not like a spouse. Who claiming to have a happy marriage does that to the one they love?
We talked about this last night. And she is in the same boat. She looks back at that time now and can't believe she did what she did. She admits what she did hurt me tremendously, and there is no justification for it. And she really doesn't have an answer for how she could do what she did, knowing it was hurting me to do it, and yet still love me.
So I guess I've marked this up to her being totally out of character, fought but couldn't handle the raw emotions she was feeling that led her bit by bit down the wrong path, chipping away at her morals and boundaries until she was willing to let a guy she met at the gym in mid march start having sex with her before the month was over. Really, when I say that, it is totally mind boggling to me. From the time of meeting him to the time they started having sex was under two weeks. We waited for a year and a half, until we were married! Two short weeks. Boom. That's how far she'd allowed her walls to be destroyed. She barely put up a fight about it at that point, when in December she fought tooth and nail and squeezed out some minor victories, even though she regretted not getting to do what she wanted at the time.
Yeah, I figured this would be rambling. And in case it isn't clear from all that, as I've shared my thoughts on it all, I'm wondering in what ways the BSs here have dealt with that conflicting reality, if you believe as I do that she did love you, then how could she have done this? It's like trying to fit an round peg into a square hole. It doesn't jive. Yet, that appears to be what happened. The answer may be you can't make sense of it, but you have to deal with it in some form or fashion. just shoving it on a shelf and ignoring it could only come back to bite you later. How to do you reconcile this so that you are able to go on rebuilding?
This threatens to be a rambling thing, so I'll try to keep it to the point (didn't work, too long). And no, I'm not on the verge of giving up or anything. This is more dealing with how to reconcile two "truths" that I feel tends to be one of the humps people deal with in the rebuilding process, sometimes derailing it or they get stuck with it and can't get past it.
For instance, common issues we've discussed here is the deception, the lies, getting to the point of rebuilding trust, or at least headed down that road, etc. That is a big one for me. I have to feel I can trust her. She'd done a lot to earn that back, but it will take time to fully heal the damage that did. But I understand that her fear of getting caught as things snowballed, and the shame she didn't want to face, or the end of the affair she didn't want to lose while in the midst of it all, promoted her to deceive me about those things. And while the fact remains she did deceive me about the affair, I can at least understand on some level that if you were doing something like that, why you would want to hide it. Not saying it was right or the best thing (as it kept things going and she got progressively worse, if she'd confessed early it might have stopped with mostly EAs). But I understand if your don't something you know is wrong, most people want to keep it under wraps, don't want to be discovered, and will do all they can to avoid that, including deceiving the person they love the most.
But that really begs the question, because the deception is really a symptom. If she had nothing to hide in the first place, there would be no reason or temptation to hide anything, since there would be nothing horrible for me to find. And for 28.5 years of marriage, she was, as far as I know, open and honest with me. I never had any reason to doubt her, and trusted her implicitly. I even told others that I didn't worry about her cheating on me, because it simply wasn't in her to do something like that. I knew we had a good marriage, that she loved me, and she'd never shown any desires for any guy, sometimes including me it seemed. ;)
But I could see it in their eyes. "Yeah, right." And I knew it wasn't impossible for her to do that. But it was just so outside her character, her morals, her love for me, that I didn't worry that she'd ever do that to me. Unfortunately, they were right. I had set myself up for a fall. I knew it could happen, but never expected it to.
Okay, I'm rambling a bit. Back to focus. One of the issues that is harder to deal with, I think, is the concept that my wife loved me, and yet did what she did, knowing it would hurt me in the end. I know the explanation is that she became swallowed up by desires she wasn't ready to handle, and she compartmentalized, and avoided thinking about the consequences of what she was doing, and only focused on getting what she wanted. She was able to separate her two lives, one with me as the husband she loved, and one with the secrets and men she was having sex chats with, and eventually a full affair. And by so doing, kept them separate from each other so that she didn't have to think about how one affected the other.
But despite that, down deep inside, she had to know she was risking our marriage, our family, over 28 years of happy marriage, all for this moment of pleasure, for these experiences of guys wanting her, which made her feel so alive and excited. She had to know this was hurting me, was taking a knife and stabbing me in the back while I slept. I know she avoided thinking about that, and in the early days she fought hard to not go down those roads. At one point, even though part of her wanted to have sex with the first man, she barely avoided going to him by clinging to me. She avoided that in part knowing it would be a violation of our marriage and a knife to my back if she did it. And she didn't want to hurt me in that way. Yet, as time went on and she kept this double life a secret, that's exactly what she did. That part of her lost the battle and gave up to the desire to have the full experience with someone else.
As I've stated elsewhere, I'm familiar with the addictive behavior to something that gives you pleasure. I've mentioned before that when we both took a sex addiction test, I scored higher than she did, even in the midst of the affair. The test said if you answered 15 questions with a positive, you had a high probability of being susceptible to sexual addiction. I scored 14. And I've known this about myself, and always feared what I'd heard others seem to do: go crazy with desire and do something totally stupid and risk things I value highly because I couldn't control myself. And yet, that never happened. I've never become someone driven to commit some sexual sin on another person. As a matter of fact, the one time I even gave a fleeting thought to cheating on her when our marriage was at a low point, I knew I couldn't do that to her or the kids. I dismissed it as an option. I loved her too much to do that to her.
So knowing all that, the mental gymnastics her mind would play on her, the inching the nose into the doorway bit by bit, and its constantly looking for ways to make what her inflamed desires wanted, to happen, chipping away at the walls of morality and will, until they fall and it gets what she wants, knowing how the mind behaves with addictive behaviors, I can understand how it happened. What is still hard for me to wrap my mind around is if she loved me that much, how could she let that happen, knowing the pain it would cause me?
I guess that's the big question for most BSs. I think in my mind, the "why" of this in her case was the last time she'd felt a guy wanted her like that was 30 years ago when we dated. She had our first child two years after marriage, and went over 200 pounds, never to return below that until about three years ago. Each of the following two kids bumped that weight up until she was around 260, and she stayed that weight through the bulk of our marriage, until she finally discovered a way to change her eating habits and she lost that all the way down to around 180 in a little over a year. So it wasn't until three years ago that she started feeling "sexy" for the first time in her life. Even though she weighed far less when we were married, as a teen and even then, she felt she was fat and saw herself that way, even though I told her she wasn't. So all her life she'd seen herself as fat, and no guy would want her, me being the exception.
So not having even felt any infatuation feelings for over 28 years, and enjoying the feeling that men started paying attention to her, she was ill prepared and naive in dealing with the surge of sexual excitement that another man's attention toward her generated. She said to herself she could handle it, but in reality, she totally lost control. Where as I, on the other hand, had dealt with those feelings all my life. And I had personality traits that probably mitigated that from manifesting as fully as they might have. And while I felt great at being with someone I loved, I never felt "out of control" passion causing me to feel uncontrollable sexual excitement.
Case in point. My first girlfriend I ever had in college, I discovered after the fact was there for her Mrs. degree. Problem was, I wasn't moving fast enough for her. We would regularly have petting sessions, usually in her car, and the windows would fog over so it was very private. I realize now what she wanted me to do was to lose control and have sex with her. But in kissing her and hugging her, I never even so much as touched her breast. I just felt it would be disrespectful of me to do that to her. One time I think she was trying to get me excited, but she wanted me to take the initiative. So I was lying in her lap, and she asked if it was okay to unbutton my shirt. I said yes, and she did, and began rubbing my belly slowly. She moved her fingertips a little under my belt as she circled around each time. I remember lying there, hoping she didn't go further, because I didn't want to go there. But unsure if I would have the gumption to stop her if she did. But what she really wanted was for me to lose it, and do something like shove her hand on down, or start taking her blouse off and doing the same. But I didn't realize that's what she wanted. I only felt it would be highly disrespectful of me to do that to her. So she gave up, and we went on with kissing, or maybe we ended it there as no doubt she was frustrated that I didn't end up having sex with her. So it is no wonder that over Christmas break, she 'fell out of love" with me. By the end of the second semester, she was engaged to a guy, and having sex with him regularly as well I'm sure. Ironically, it was through her that I was introduced to my future wife. But that's another long story.
As I feared, I'm rambling along on this story. Point being, I, scoring a 14, one short of highly prone to sexual addiction, when I considered cheating on my wife, my love for her wouldn't allow me to seriously consider it as an option. Because I loved her, I couldn't imagine hurting her that way, and potentially causing my kids to be raised in a divorced family like I was because my mother cheated on my dad. And so why didn't that stop her?
But to be honest, there are some major differences that played into it. One, even though there was a woman at work who I could have easily moved toward having sex with if I wanted it, she wasn't actively pursuing me. She was sharing with me her frustrations with her boyfriend, and I think I recall she either made comments or it was obvious from her reactions that she felt a connection to me, that I was easy to talk with, and she was telling me intimate stuff. I didn't know about all I know now back then, but I said to myself at the time, "this is how affairs start." So I backed off with her and it didn't go any further, without being rude about it. And that's pretty much as far as that went. She didn't try to really come onto me, or make advances over and over again. Whereas with my wife, she had a man actively asking her to come to his trailer for sex over a two month period. And she always said no. But eventually he broke her down to the point of giving him a BJ on his last day in town. If someone had been actively seeking me out like that, I don't know if I would have reacted differently, or withstood the attention. Knowing me, I would think I would, but I can't guarantee that as I've never been "tested" in that way. Any sexual experiences that I've always secretly desired I've turned down when opportunity arose to fulfill them, because I knew it would be too risky in other ways.
Two, I've never felt the type of sexual excitement of someone wanting me like that. I don't know that I've ever felt it to that degree, that it creates some exciting spark that causes me to look at her with rose-colored glasses, and desire to throw her in bed and go after her, damn the consequences. I'm not even sure I'm capable of that kind of emotion, to tell you the truth. I've never been so infatuated with a woman that I lost control of myself. Not that I didn't want sex, eventually if we were married, and my W and I when we were dating ended up with sexual play (without intercourse) before we were married, but interestingly enough only after we were engaged and her father gave us a book that described in detail how to pleasure each other, and discussing that broke down the walls between us that had prevented any sexual contact during nights of kissing and hugging for hours on end in the previous months. But apparently many men and women experience this state of not being able to think about reality when they fall in love. They get some kind of chemical reaction that causes mental stupidity so there is something to blame their destructive behaviors on if need be. (Being a little over dramatic there.) But I mean, I'm not that susceptible to that, apparently as others, so it is harder for me to grasp how my W could not realize what she was doing to me, and her love for me tell her, "I cannot do this under any circumstances." All she had to do upon realizing she was getting swept up into emotions that was leading her down the wrong path was to stop returning any text, refusing to even read them, from the OM, and upon seeing him explain that she cannot continue texting him in that way, as she loved me too much to hurt me like that, and she didn't even want to get close to that. But instead she specifically said after he sex-texted her a second time, "Let's see how far this will go." Really? You wanted to risk it all and see how far it would go, even if it was to lose the marriage? But that was the decision, and she never made the decision that no matter what the OM did, she would no longer respond or participate in any sexual chat's and avoid him as much as possible, which is what love would have demanded she do. Whether that is what the CS wants to convey or not, when you chose another man/woman to have intimate experiences with than your spouse, you are choosing that person over the spouse; it does say you love that other person more, no matter what your words are saying or what you've convinced yourself you believe. And that is how your spouse is going to tend to interpret it. For me it is only other actions she did which indicates she does love me. But that doesn't fix the conflicting data.
And I guess that is the hard part to take. I know she loves me, and loved me even then. And I've seen other BSs express this thought as well, and they can't seem to get past it. If she did this, she couldn't possibly love me, not like a spouse. Who claiming to have a happy marriage does that to the one they love?
We talked about this last night. And she is in the same boat. She looks back at that time now and can't believe she did what she did. She admits what she did hurt me tremendously, and there is no justification for it. And she really doesn't have an answer for how she could do what she did, knowing it was hurting me to do it, and yet still love me.
So I guess I've marked this up to her being totally out of character, fought but couldn't handle the raw emotions she was feeling that led her bit by bit down the wrong path, chipping away at her morals and boundaries until she was willing to let a guy she met at the gym in mid march start having sex with her before the month was over. Really, when I say that, it is totally mind boggling to me. From the time of meeting him to the time they started having sex was under two weeks. We waited for a year and a half, until we were married! Two short weeks. Boom. That's how far she'd allowed her walls to be destroyed. She barely put up a fight about it at that point, when in December she fought tooth and nail and squeezed out some minor victories, even though she regretted not getting to do what she wanted at the time.
Yeah, I figured this would be rambling. And in case it isn't clear from all that, as I've shared my thoughts on it all, I'm wondering in what ways the BSs here have dealt with that conflicting reality, if you believe as I do that she did love you, then how could she have done this? It's like trying to fit an round peg into a square hole. It doesn't jive. Yet, that appears to be what happened. The answer may be you can't make sense of it, but you have to deal with it in some form or fashion. just shoving it on a shelf and ignoring it could only come back to bite you later. How to do you reconcile this so that you are able to go on rebuilding?
Cole....I am a writer too but I checked out about half way down so I may have missed a point here, but the statement above is what stands out the most to me.
One thing you wrote is that you are a sexual person who faced temptations and chose not to ever engage in an affair. You said "when I considered cheating on my wife, my love for her wouldn't allow me to seriously consider it as an option. Because I loved her, I couldn't imagine hurting her that way, and potentially causing my kids to be raised in a divorced family like I was because my mother cheated on my dad. And so why didn't that stop her?"
I think that is the crux for many of us. My H travels a lot with the military. I found that the wolves came out when he was gone...men who graciously checked in on me to see if "I needed anything." Now, not all of these friends had ill intentions, but on occasion, someone who I am not close to has suddenly taken an interest in me. One was so nice that to be honest, it would have been very easy to go the affair route. He started out helping me fix a broken fence while my H was in Afghanistan and then always stopped by to check in. He was funny, engaging, and going through a divorce. I found myself looking forward to seeing him around town. Then like a lightening bolt it dawned on me that I was in dangerous territory and lonely. It took a great deal of effort to change my schedule so I didn't run into him anymore and I MISSED our conversations. Nothing inappropriate had been said but they were getting more personal in nature. I backed away because I loved my H and just could not do that to him. So knowing that he had no problem doing that to me does become a painful point to work through.
But on the days that I get to that point I remind myself that I am a strong person, have a deep spiritual background, and I am very self aware and self confident. My H struggles with his self esteem, has no spiritual connections and lacks the positive thoughts about himself. He was also raised in a home where his father cheated on his mother and their was infidelity with grandparents too (GOSH, major warning signs here that I was ignorant of how they can impact a marriage). When SHE came along she was totally a DRUG. He was truly the person who tries Meth the first time and is hooked. The problem is he wasn't thinking about ME at all. He was ONLY thinking about HIMSELF and even when it was all over and she wrote him asking what she meant to him, his reply was about HIMSELF (so he screwed her too....no pun intended here!). All of his actions were geared towards gratification and the high....there was nothing but fleeting thoughts on how everyone else would be affected....when you cheat on your wife...you cheat on your children too and if doing something hurtful to me wasn't enough to stop him, you'd at least think that how it would impact your children would be taken into consideration, but it was not....or if it was - it was ignored because the need for that HIGH. (Did I mention that my H comes from a family with major addiction issues too? Just another food for thought here)
My H is a great guy overall and he has done his best helping us rebuild, but he lacks empathy for ME. He still relates to the A in how it affects HIM. In other words, he knows I hurt but he is more concerned at times at how bad he feels versus what I must be going through. So I look at his struggles to have empathy for others as a birth defect. And I am sure I have my own birth defects, but lack of empathy is not one of them. So a family history of addictions, no spiritual background, a family history of infidelity, problems in own marriage, lack of conflict resolution skills, no desire to communicate and lack of self esteem is why he was willing and able to turn his back on me.
I have asked my husband if he had ever thought about what would happen if/when I found out. He said that, at the time, he believed that if I found out, I would have to forgive him because it was my fault that he felt the way he did (didn't give him enough attention, etc.). Please note, he is not saying he feels that way now, he was just telling me what was going through his mind at the time. He had also convinced himself that I was cheating on him because I had been working late sometimes. It's amazing what the mind can do.
If you think about it though, "justifying it" in your mind is how anybody lies about anything. Everyone has lied about something. Even to say, I lied about her dress looking good so I didn't hurt her feelings, is a justification for the lie. For me, the biggest lie I ever told was to keep my job (long story), but how I faced my boss every day after that was that I had justified the lie to myself.
Those justifications our mind uses to allow us to do dishonest or inappropriate things are not usually accurate, but they are powerful. I am definitely not completely over the question of "how could he do what he did if he loved me?" I think, though, that I have made progress in accepting that it was not a conscious decision to hurt me, and it was not really about me at all. It was a gradual progression "into the fog" where he made increasingly bad decisions, which he allowed himself to be convinced were justified.
@looking, I've asked my wife the same thing. It did pop up on occasion, and she did try to stop, always unsuccessfully. One time when she realized where the relationship was going with the last guy she had a full PA with, she went to meet him with the full intention of saying that was it. They couldn't continue down that road. I think she said it to him, but instead of getting out of the car or whatever, the meeting turned into kissing and hugging and the affair continued.
So yes, I fully understand all of that, but she knew. For some reason, however, that was not enough to stop hurting me. And I know she has empathy. Like me, she has her selfish side, but it has never done anything like this before.
To be clear, this isn't something I'm stuck on. It is more of a "how can I fit this piece of the puzzle into the bigger picture here in a way that makes sense." I have to a degree, and yet, it still remains a conflicting reality. She loved me, but her actions said she didn't love me as much as I always thought she did. But her actions since dday have certainly said she loves me very much, and she has done the hard thing of breaking her ties to everyone, including the OM she had a PA with. So I'm not so questioning her love for me, but wishing I was more important, I guess, in her mind that like me, it would have been enough to not go there.
But some only say they love the other person when really they have lost that love for them. And some people think the fires of infatuation is love, that feelings equate to love, when they are just one factor in it, and certainly not the foundation. So when they feel the "chemistry" of the affair, they mistake that for love they haven't had for a while, and in comparison, the love of the spouse seems much less exciting. Doesn't mean it isn't there, but that it is overshadowed by this infatuation feelings they are experiencing and mistaking for love.
And some cheat for other reasons, like serial cheaters can't help themselves, no matter how good their marriage is or how hot and great their spouse is in bed, they are driven to find other women. They can love their spouse like no one's business, and still cheat.
I'm thinking your husband, qccq, sounds like he must be in his 40s if you've been married for 20 years, and if he's been introverted, this may be a type of midlife crisis. Being introverted all his life, he probably never had the gall to do what he's doing now, to be with a woman that wild. So this is like new and exciting territory for him. And it sounds like he's still in the fog of his affair, and responding to things in that framework. Much like my wife, his character and actions changed. My W is still trying to figure out who she is now. She's not the same person she was before the A. In some ways that is good. She needed to change. Other ways, we're still trying to figure that out. But both of us view her in a different light now, and it is what I would call a bit of an identity crisis. Anyway, that's for another post, probably make a good journal entry.
Don't know what's going on inside your hubby's head, but most certainly he is affected by the affair thinking still.