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.
I was looking for the thread where we were discussing the words, accident, mistake, etc....
I have been thinking about what is the difference between mistake and bad decision. Sometimes the difference is very clear. Sometimes a little muddier. I have avoided the word mistake in preference to just saying I made some colossally bad decisions but I suddenly realized that I did indeed make some mistakes. I was thinking about it as small micro steps all along the way starting from the beginning that led me in deeper and deeper and in the beginning I would have to say I was making a series of mistakes.
I was so naive and the first guy was such a skilled womanizer. I had no idea what I was getting myself into so I would have to call some of the things I allowed to happen and went along with in the early days, such as the light flirting at the beginning, a mistake. Mistakes that led me to the place of making decisions. I made some good decisions but ultimately the good ones were overcome by the epically bad ones.
I thought of a number of other incidences along the way of things that happened or things that I did that seemed innocent or inconsequential enough at the moment but proved to be more arrows leading me deeper towards the epic bad decisions.
So I wanted to just point that out because I had never thought of it all this way. Micro-divisions into individual incidences, some of which were mistakes of naivety and poor judgement and some of which were bad decisions.
In the end when you look at the overall picture, mistake doesn't cut it at all. I gotta go with calling it all epically bad decisions. I think I would have to put the mistakes along the way into the contributing factors file.
I have been thinking about what is the difference between mistake and bad decision. Sometimes the difference is very clear. Sometimes a little muddier. I have avoided the word mistake in preference to just saying I made some colossally bad decisions but I suddenly realized that I did indeed make some mistakes. I was thinking about it as small micro steps all along the way starting from the beginning that led me in deeper and deeper and in the beginning I would have to say I was making a series of mistakes.
I was so naive and the first guy was such a skilled womanizer. I had no idea what I was getting myself into so I would have to call some of the things I allowed to happen and went along with in the early days, such as the light flirting at the beginning, a mistake. Mistakes that led me to the place of making decisions. I made some good decisions but ultimately the good ones were overcome by the epically bad ones.
I thought of a number of other incidences along the way of things that happened or things that I did that seemed innocent or inconsequential enough at the moment but proved to be more arrows leading me deeper towards the epic bad decisions.
So I wanted to just point that out because I had never thought of it all this way. Micro-divisions into individual incidences, some of which were mistakes of naivety and poor judgement and some of which were bad decisions.
In the end when you look at the overall picture, mistake doesn't cut it at all. I gotta go with calling it all epically bad decisions. I think I would have to put the mistakes along the way into the contributing factors file.
Saying mistake is honest and can also mean bad decision, it's the same to me.
But, from a CS's pov, it can feel like a mistake. They often ignore or don't think about the consequences of what they are doing, and if asked, admit they never wanted to or intended to hurt their spouse. But their mind got sucked into a vortex of temptation, and their mind worked to get them what they wanted in part by ignoring the consequences. Many CSs don't think right before they have sex with another person, "Well, I know this is going to hurt my spouse, but I'm okay with that. Let 'em hurt. I chose to be there for this woman." They only see what they want and what is right in front of them, and very little else. So once they come out of the fog, realize the full impact of what they've done to their spouse and marriage, then they feel like it was all one big, giant, mistake in the sense what happened was wrong and they didn't want to hurt their spouse, despite the fact they did just that. That said, to tell a BS it was a mistake is going to sound like you are avoiding responsibility for your bad decisions. That it was an accident.
But I think in terms of real mistakes as described in the first instance, Gabi is right. There often are a series of decisions a CS makes in crossing boundaries. Take the flirting instance. By rights, she should know that a married woman flirting with another man isn't a proper thing to do. But there is a fine line sometime between flirting and just kidding around. Gabi is a very social person, and enjoys having fun. So it was natural for her to kid around with other people. But this one guy gradually turned that kidding into flirting with her, and she didn't think much about it. Figured it was all a fun game, and didn't mean anything. She never in a million years thought she'd ever go where it eventually led. So she crossed that boundary, to her seeming quite innocent about it, and now she looks back on it and realizes crossing that boundary, as innocent as it appeared at the time, as a real mistake. If she could have looked down the road the first time she responded back in kind to one of his flirts and see where that would lead, she would have never flirted back, and would have never given him her number to begin with. I'm very certain her goal in flirting with him wasn't to cheat on me and if she'd seen it in that light, wouldn't have done what she did.
She knows better now. But all down the line there were a series of decisions she made that brought her to the mental state where her passions consumed her, blocking out all other considerations to get what she wanted.
Of course, calling the flirting and even the sex chatting a mistake on her part, because she convinced herself it was a game, doesn't take away from the fact she should have known better. Flirting says to men, "I'm available, come and get me if you can." I even told her that at the time. The real issue was she enjoyed the attention too much, and that hooked her in to thinking of it all as innocent fun because she already was hooked on the attention she was getting and it excited her, and that caused her to ignore consequences of what she was doing, even when I told her to her face what they were, she didn't believe me. Wanted to believe it was all fun and games and innocent and she could handle it.
It wasn't innocent for the man, as I told her it wouldn't be. It wasn't a game for him, other than to see if he could get her into bed, which he did for practical purposes even though it never went all the way to intercourse. And seriously, in who's book is sex chatting to someone other than your spouse a game and innocent fun when you're married? No spouse would agree to that idea who was in their right mind. Which is why she hid that activity from me, because she knew I wouldn't approve of it. She knew inside it was wrong. But she was drawn to the attention like a moth to light. Damn the consequences. The fog had set in long before the sex chatting started.
So a mistake? If you look at it a certain way. Does that excuse the responsibility? I guess no more than when a doctor makes a mistake and a patient dies. It may not have been the intended outcome, but that was the outcome. it may have felt like innocent fun, but that's because you were already in the fog to a degree, and was only focused on getting what you wanted to get, and it was a way to ignore the consequences of what you were doing. Because if you seriously realized the possible consequences of what you were doing, it would have derailed getting what you wanted. So naturally your mind wanted to believe flirting with this guy was innocent fun.
A mistake? Maybe. But a purposeful one. Yeah, a bad decision.