SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I think Bigger’s focus on validation is spot on.

And I think it all starts in high school, when we become sexual beings.

Few of us were the star quarterback or the prom queen. And even those fortunate few didn’t get 100% of the success they hoped for (getting laid, being chased).

And those failures and rejections and disappointments create holes in our psyches that we long to fill.

And when the temptations, desires and opportunities come along, some of us have the necessary character, values, morals, integrity, self-control, self-respect etc. to resist those temptations, and some of us don’t.

The question that haunts me, as a BS, is whether love can strengthen character.

That is, is my WW’s cheating proof that she didn’t love me enough, or at all. Or is what many WWs claim, that they continued to love their BS but just couldn’t help themselves, true. And most importantly, is it true in my case.

That, for me, is the $64,000 question.

"Women’s Infidelity: Living in Limbo" books by Michele Langley, made for me a convincing case that cheating wives usually fall out of love with their husbands (if they ever were in love) and it never comes back.

Pretty sure that’s where I am. Can’t recommend being here.

[This message edited by Formerpeopleperson at 5:31 PM, Friday, January 3rd]

Every woman I know who cheated said they knew they were marrying the wrong person. Their SOs are good people who probably feel conned but it is much more complicated than that.
Off the top off my head… a young, early 20s, woman was courted by a very sweet man. His family is so wealthy that a simple trip to the beach is meh. They go all over the world for fun and they took her along. The lifestyle was so heady that she got swept up in the romance of it and only after marriage did she realize she did not LOVE her husband. She cared for him but not in a romantic way. A coworker and she fell in love. They are still married with children. She felt much guilt because her ex did not ask for what happened to him. Another was also about money. Her family pushed very hard for a marriage and several years later she left for a man she met through work. They are still married. She brought children into the second one. Both these marriages happened in the US to typical people..except for the money, of course.
Second, and very important, we all needed validation from birth. Parents who are stingy with it set up their kids for the constant overwhelming need for it. Going to get a little wordy here. We are not blank slates when we are born, we come in with a definite set of genetic components and our parents, if they are very good at it, make allowances for each child’s difference from the next. You can’t do blanket parenting. There is a dialogue in a child’s brain from the beginning that has no words. It is still a mystery how the human brain thinks but it not only does, it thinks in the abstract even in infancy. It begins to make decisions right away about who it can trust. Is this person meeting my needs? Those include nurturing, shelter, food, and possible clothing. They don’t need to be hit or miss. They need to be there every single time it’s needed by that child. A baby cannot trust unless they are cared for in a nurturing way. They live the rest of their lives with that dialogue running under the surface of every single thing they do. You see people, whose anger, possibly road rage, shows up and you wonder where it came from. It came from an incomplete childhood. I cannot express in strong enough terms, for anyone who acts the way your wife does, to make sure she gets a very good therapist who deals with early early childhood traumas and uses something like EMDR to get down to those memories and dig them out. The dialogue under the surface of her life all day long is one of "pay attention to me, love me". They can talk in meetings, chat over the dinner to people, do schoolwork, but under the surface is this constant need for someone to make them feel they are worthwhile. Unless that’s taken care of that person has an almost impossible chance of living a fulfilling, healthy, happy life.

This is my first message,but I have been lurking since November 2023.My spouse had a 6 month EA with a former employee.We are reconciling very well and he has cut off all contact.Formerpeoplepersons comment about high school insecurities is so on point.I firmly believe that was my BS why.I call it the Fonzie complex.He does not admit it but I feel that he was so proud of AP admiration that when he saw an opportunity he could not pass it up.He was proud when she told him that he was the only man who treated her with respect.How rich...he was absolutely disrespecting me by sneaking behind my back and keeping the affair secret.Anyway he got to be Fonzie for 6 months and I am still raw and hurting.The affair was emotional but it still hurt to the core.He was a bit iof a geek in high school and I love him for that,but I guess most men dont want to be geeks but Fonzies and in the cool croud.

I made a couple of spelling errors and want to restate that both most BS male or female are looking for that validation that the think they missed in high school

Super interesting the last few messages from formerpeople, Cooley, and ditched..

The neurotic complexes around childhood traumas, neglect, needing affirmation and validation are all over my situation.

As for whether this is a "love him, but still cheated", or a "fell out of love and cheated", I really don't know and I'm afraid of the answer. Even more afraid that I won't ever learn or believe the truth on that one.

Cooley,

Online wonders if it is "loved him, but cheated anyway" or "fell out of love and then cheated."

A third option, you’re suggesting, is "never loved him to begin with, and cheated."

I wonder, do you suppose that marrying the wrong person was what caused these women to cheat, or was their cheating what led them to believe they had married the wrong person.

Not sure I’m being clear; I’m thinking about cause and effect.

Did my WW want me for nothing more than a wedding, or was it only after she found herself being an adulteress, the other woman, a home wrecker, a side piece, that she discerned she had married the wrong guy?

Are these women simply blaming their husbands, "If it hadn’t been for my shitty husband, who didn’t take care of my emotional and/or physical needs, I wouldn’t have done this terrible thing."

I expect all of these scenarios exist. It falls to us to do our best to discern which timeline we live in, and whether we believe it or not.

My personal opinion is that affairs between the High School boyfriend/girlfriend and your cheating spouse are the most damaging.

When people believe they are the "one that got away" it is hard to bring the cheater back to reality. They are re-living their youth and sadly, do not see the reality if the situation, but instead choose to live in the fantasy of it all.

How very sad.

I don’t necessarily see this as something chasing people from childhood or high-school. In fact one can argue that for some the highlight of their lives could be those two years they got attention for being on the team, only for the never-noticed nerd now – twenty years later – being the successful IT specialist, or doctor, or owner of the company said "great potential quarterback" now works at an entry-level job at.
This need for validation – we can see it in successful politicians caught in affairs, same with Hollywood celebrities, towers of business, clergymen... People that we think might have had it all all the time, or that we think have it all.

Several years ago, I read a post by a WS that explained how they loved their BS even while cheating. I just wasn't ready to accept it, so I've forgotten what the WS wrote. I was convinced, though.

My W said she loved me all during her A. From what she said over time, she probably had some thoughts and feelings for me that are associated with love, but neither our MC nor I accepted her statement, and she only said it once, IIRC.

*****

IMO, my W betrayed herself before me. I view her A as a symptom of an illness.

IMO, whether she loved me or not during the A doesn't matter to me. The fact that she professed love for ow is an annoyance to me - I just don't/won't place any weight on the words of someone so deeply into self-betrayal. IMO, because my W betrayed herself, nothing she did or said had much meaning, even though what she did had tremendous negative impact.

IMO, when a BS becomes aware of an A, the problem the BS faces is the future and present. The A is in the past. The WS's behavior after being outed is entirely relevant; the past, not so much. In my case, R required my W to win me back, to prove she loved me for myself, not my income (which went way down after d-day anyway). She did that with 1000s of trust-building actions - but that took years.

As I wrote, I viewed my W as if she were sick, and I give sick people leeway that I don't give to healthy people. But that's me. Each BS has to decide for themself how much leeway to allow.

I want to say we,re about 3 years into the reconciliation and some people on this page might not consider me in reconciliation. Because if the kids all went off to college today, I’m not sure I’d stay with her. If I’m being honest though, I still don’t 100% trust her and likely never will. Knowing and believing I can leave her at any point and live a great life is what gives me relief. If you read my story you’ll see I made just about every mistake in the book.

Oh, man! I hope that knowing D is always an option isn't a disqualifier for R!

Before I committed to R, the 1st question I always asked myself with each new revelation or issue was, 'Is this the deal killer?' After committing to R, I assumed we'd resolve every issue that arose between us - but I've always known that D is possible if we hit an issue we can't resolve.

Thanks for the update, Legatus. I'm glad you found yourself.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 7:17 PM, Saturday, January 4th]

When I wrote about the wwomen who cheated and left I also know one who started an affair with her boss. Her guilt was so extreme that she broke it off after a couple of weeks and quit her job. The two women I wrote about have nothing in common except knowing they married the wrong man and cheated on innocent husbands.
The "one who got away" is very real. I know families that were torn up by FB and class reunions. Really tragic because the spouses were blindsided.

1. The one who got away
2. The one I fell in love with at work
3. The one I should not have married
4. The one who paid the price for my screwed up childhood
5. The one who mistreated me so badly I cheated to feel better.
6. The one who watched my addiction turn me into a lying cheater.

Many reasons but cheating is still the wrong way to act.

Some comedian has a line:

Why is your wife always mad at you? You weren’t her first choice!

[This message edited by Formerpeopleperson at 3:21 AM, Sunday, January 5th]

Bought the How to Help Your Spouse Heal book for her.. no resistance, and she started reading it, thankfully. I came clean a few days prior on being completely unimpressed with her efforts (there were almost none), trickle truths, etc.

It's a super short book, so I'm not super pleased that she hasn't binge read it yet, but I will make some allowance there for lots if stuff going on.

MC session in a couple days will be challenging, as I think I need to ultimatum on transparency vs trial separation or something equivalently impactful. Not sure about the 180 concept. The kids are so far uninjured.