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A quick question for those out there who have completed their whys.

How long did it take you or your WS to get to their whys, ONCE you finally got your head out of your ass?

I appreciate getting to a place where you're head is removed from your ass can take a long time. Also there are threads on discovering your whys (which I'm reading again). I hope, I'm getting to a place where my head spends less time anally inserted and I'm beginning to think clearer than before.

I'm working on whys but have no idea how long this should or could take.

Thanks guys

Are you in therapy?

So, I would say I understood the major whys by the end of 6-8 months and had a firm grip on most of the ways I had gotten to the point of those whys by the end of the first year.

They aren’t as complicated as you might think. It’s about recognizing your sense of entitlement, where it came from?

You felt entitled cheat for some flawed thinking and there is a lot of clues in uncovering what those thoughts were.

I felt entitled to cheat because I had made myself into a martyr. It took some time to see my behavior and thoughts resulted in unconscious resentment of him. I know many men who feel like because they bring home the money and take care of the home financially that they deserve bigger rewards.

Extreme selfishness is usually trying to compensate for something that’s missing in you. For example, I know we have come here and realized that their self worth was stomped on during their childhood and they are always doing things to make it seem on the outside they are good enough. They need the best closures or cars to who the world how important they are. Or they were the ugly duckling and use their adulthood proving to themselves that the opposite sex finds them attractive.

For me, my martyrdom on the outside looked more like extremely unselfish behaviors. But again that was about my image to others. If I was a good girl and made myself valuable they would love me.

I think in both cases that boils down to a lack of self love and looking for ways to compensate for that. I think a lot of our behaviors stem from our relationship with ourselves. If we are full of shame we are avoidant, defensive, and lack the ability to have deeper connections out of fear. If we are full of pride, it becomes difficult to admit what we feel are weaker things about ourselves

I think almost always some of the things that lead to entitlement are about coping mechanisms that are toxic or non-existant. For me, I was experiencing an existential crisis and things get out of balance because my overcompensation and perfectionism was my coping mechanisms and when those things go into high gear you become hyper-critical of yourself to an extent that you can no longer receive love because you feel so unlovable. The numbing of these emotions become a full time thing to the detriment of all the connection in your life.

I think for other ws it can be similar without a crisis, but more of a long term pattern of negative being.

I think the whys are helpful but knowing them doesn’t mean a whole lot until you start to change them. Knowing them cue you for self awareness. And I believe that all the things I did to work on my whys boiled down to these things:

1. Conducting myself in a way I feel good about. Exercising integrity. I can’t even go into a store and put something back in the wrong place anymore. Doing the right thing feels good and helps improve self image.

2. Replacing coping mechanisms. So instead of people pleasing, I had to learn to be authentic. And man if that wasn’t scary. But by doing so it provided insight that I could be loved for me, not for what I provided. You can intellectually know something, but until you can put it into practice it means noting. I realized my needing things to be perfect is a shame based response because it’s about how something looks rather than how it feels so I replaced that coping mechanisms by practicing being okay with good enough and that not everything was a sign to everyone else of my lack.

3. Replacing toxic thinking. Read about common toxic thought patterns so you can recognize. Mine included expecting negative outcomes, making problems appear bigger than they are, saying nasty things to myself, etc. it’s helpful if you think about whether you would say these thing s to your best friend or biggest love. Start replacing them with more compassionate and positive thoughts. "Maybe it will work out better than I can imagine" "I am doing the best I can and it’s enough" things like that. This one takes a while but it’s maybe the best pasty of what I changed because by being kind and compassionate to myself I have come to believe that I am loveable.

4. Spirituality. I am not religious. But I have found by focusing on my spiritual life I can find peace in most situations. Meditation, practicing being present, feeling the divine love that is available to all of us. Acts of service, doing for others, etc.

5. Self care. We show other people love by taking care of them, our brain understands we are loving ourselves the same way. Eat well, sleep well, move more, rest, Pune present and put away worries. These are all baselevel things that help maintain good brain chemicals. By practicing them you are showing yourself you are worthy of love and that you love yourself. In addition finding things to do that you are excited about, things to look forward to, things that light you up. I think that’s what many of us were looking for when we chose an affair. Keeping maintenance of happiness and joy will change what you seek to do when life gets hard. When I struggle, I spend time hiking, or sitting somewhere in nature, as an example.

I think what the goal is to create a wholesome life that you feel at peace in. Happy people who have peace in their lives don’t go out and use destructive behaviors. And when life gets hard they are prepared to handle it differently rather than acting out.

So the whys are helpful in order to figure out what those things are for you, and then you make plans on how to counteract them. I imagine you know many of yours and there is no real finish line. I still find small pieces of my own puzzle and I am many, many, years now in.

[This message edited by hikingout at 9:26 PM, Saturday, February 24th]

In my case, it was complicated. I was able to grasp my why's one piece at a time and try to piece them together, and it took me years of therapy and introspection just to get to the point where my head finally released from my ass. Once that happened, everything just about fell into place all at once. Part of what I learned was that the affair itself was really part of a much larger and pre-existing problem, which was my mental health overall. The affair was an outcome, but certainly not the only one. It did however, give me something to focus on, rather than the chaotic mess that existed.

Imagine for a moment that instead of an affair, your house had burned down. And then the question becomes, why did my house burn down? For me, it turned out that it wasn't due to something direct, such as leaving the stove burner on, or falling asleep with a lit cigarette, or even an arsonist. My house burned down because there was a forest fire, and anything that the fire got close enough to burst into flames, understand? So it was less about my particular house burning down, and more about the fact that the forest fire burned everything it touched. In this example, my life was the forest fire, and our marriage was the house, and our house (marriage) burned down because the forest fire (me) was at the center of it. I was a forest fire because I had no control over my life, no healthy boundaries, and my ability to love myself and show love and empathy towards others was broken.

You can't have boundaries when you don't even know who you are. Boundaries are born from our gut, and our conscience builds and drives them. When someone from outside the marriage tempts us, it is our boundaries that show up to prevent us from doing the wrong thing. In a healthy personality, our self-respect would kick in, and our head would say, "I'm not going to lower and debase myself in such a disgusting and awful way. No way am I going to be a slimeball like that." But for folks like you and I, those boundaries didn't exist or didn't work. The answer to "why did I cheat" lies in the answer to "why didn't I love or respect myself enough to not be someone who cheats?".

For me, that lack of self was really the key to everything. Since I did not, and could not, love myself, there was nothing to create a boundary from. More importantly however, since I could not love myself, I needed other people to do it for me. I needed other people to love me, tell me I'm great, make me feel special and valued and motivated, etc. As long as I had a steady flow of love from others coming in, I could maintain a false sense of self-respect. I fooled myself into thinking that my limits and boundaries existed. In truth, they only existed as long as external validation and love was available to me. When that flow of external love slowed or stopped however, so did my ability to have boundaries. It's the kind of life that an addict experiences, always chasing that high, always needing something external to help us get through our lives.

In my case, my wife had taken a job that was over an hour from our home, and her employer insisted that she live locally, so she had rented an apartment near work, and came home on weekends to visit. Prior to this, I had my wife's attention 100% of the time. When she wasn't around however, I fell apart. My self-hate and self-loathing kicked in, and so my boundaries went out the door entirely. I didn't understand this at all at the time however, so my brain just made up stories, excuses and justifications that would help explain the emptiness and lonliness that I was experiencing. My brain made up stories that were complete fiction, but I was just so broken, and so very, very needy, that I believed those stories even though they made no sense. My head "made" them make sense, because it needed it needed external love to survive, and by believing my own lies, I was able to throw any boundaries and self-respect I had out the door. I told myself that she no longer loved me, that she was probably just waiting to leave me, that I was a "single dad" and being taken advantage of, and so on. I didn't go looking for an affair, but when it was offered to me, it was like offering a liquor store to an alcoholic. Ethics went out the window, and my brain happily filled in the blanks as needed for the affair to continue.

That's why figuring this stuff out is so tough sometimes. Nobody with an ounce of self-respect has an affair. They wouldn't do that to someone else, and they wouldn't do it to themselves. That being the case, you then need to figure out why you had no self-respect or boundaries, and that... is where the forest fire comes in. At the end of the day, an affair is often less about "why did I cheat?" and is more about "how the hell did I allow my life come to a point where I couldn't respect myself enough to not be that kind of person?" Which is often followed by the question of, "What needs did I have that were unfulfilled, why did I have those needs, and how did the affair attempt to fulfill those needs?". That's where the "why" exists. For most if not all of us, the ultimate "why" is because we needed external validation for some reason. That's the easy part. The hard part is figuring out the "whys" of how you came to be that person. And that will be different for each of us.

Tread carefully, tread slowly, in your search. When something gets uncomfortable, you have to lean into it and suss out the truth. Those lies we told ourselves become our truth, our narrative, and so when we go to examine them, they can fool us into thinking they are real and true. For example, as I said, I told myself stories about how my wife no longer loved me, etc. When I think back to the affair, those were the thoughts in my head, so they seem "real" and reasonable because that's how they felt at the time. Now that I know better, when I think back, I have make a manual effort to correct those thoughts, and label them as "not true". Then I put the truth in where it belongs. ("Remember, you were supposed to move out to be with her after our daughter graduated. Remember how she called every day, and said she missed us, and took every opportunity to come home? You weren't unloved, you were just lonely without her.") Once the bullshit gets replaced with the truth, it's easier to start making sense of it, for both the WS and the BS.

I wish you luck. I'm sorry, I know this is a painful process. But if there is to be any hope of R, then it has to happen, so keep digging.

Since I did not, and could not, love myself, there was nothing to create a boundary from.

Yes!!! This exactly for me too. I don’t think I ever really thought about what I needed or wanted, most of those things would have required change in my part that I wasn’t willing to take the emotional risks to make. Others I wasn’t emotionally mature enough to see. In many ways that just meant a constant stream of throwing things at that void. Quick fix type stuff.

Also I don’t mean to say my work wasn’t complicated. I just meant that you can almost overwhelm yourself forcing it. Asking simpler questions like why did I feel entitled? Is a lot more of a narrow question then why did I cheat? That makes it less complicated.

Break down it by a smaller piece and it will give you clues and insights to the other pieces.

The cures though for most of the garden variety selfishness and dysfunction honestly always points back to relationship with self.

"I'm not going to lower and debase myself in such a disgusting and awful way. No way am I going to be a slimeball like that."

Yes, and actually she shame I was carrying hung around only got bigger. I already felt like I didn’t have value and that I was a slime bag.

The longest relationship you will ever have is with you. And from it everything will flow.

[This message edited by hikingout at 11:23 PM, Saturday, February 24th]

For me, it's simply: 1) I wanted to, 2) I could, 3) so I did.

For me, it's simply: 1) I wanted to, 2) I could, 3) so I did.

I think we can all say that. I think at the root of things all behavior is this way. Of course I wanted to do it. But I also wanted to become someone who would not want to do it again.

What’s changed for you ? What makes you go from a person who wants to into a person who does not?

For me, the value of exploring that has changed my way of being. I used to spend my days ruminating, worrying, making up narratives that didn’t serve me, people pleasing, and living in anxiety. I loved my husband but didn’t understand connection because I was avoidant in so many ways. I would not have been able to state what I wanted, I would have just passive aggressively left breadcrumbs.

There is no excuse for cheating, but the ability to become self aware and fully engaged in life took a lot of mindfulness. The whys were my breadcrumbs back.

Besides if nothing changes what keeps you from wanting to do it again? I mean, I get that it hurts, blows up your life, that realizing how much it hurt your spouse. But without taking stock of yourself and working on your own patterns, I feel like the hole that you were trying to fill by cheating will always be there?

For me, it's simply: 1) I wanted to, 2) I could, 3) so I did.

What is it that you wanted to do?

Did you want to be a liar and a cheater?
Did you want to hurt and decimate your spouse?
Did you want to have no boundaries or self-respect?
Did you want not to be proud of who you are or what you do?
Did you want to abuse and manipulate others?
Did you want to live a double life?
Did you want never to be trusted again?

I ask because you seem to instead be focused on the "I had sex with someone" aspect of infidelity, but don't seem to acknowledge what ACTUALLY occurred or take any kind of responsibility for it whatsoever. To be clear, I don't mean that as an insult, I mean it as an observation.

For me, I can't imagine wanting to be or to accomplish any of those things I listed. But that's what I did. And you did. And all WS's did.

If I could rewrite your answer from the perspective of a BS, I would see it as:

1) Fuck it, 2) I don't care, 3) Go fuck yourself

There is no remorse. There is no ownership. There is no accountability. There is nothing indicating that you understand nor care about what you did or who you are or who got hurt by your actions. It is a complete dismissal to everyone involved and even those not involved, because they see a WS that personifies all of their hurt, their pain, and their fears, and it hurts them all over again seeing it happen to someone else. It feels like a world-record attempt at rug-sweeping. You are not a safe person to be around and show no indication of working towards being safer or even wanting to do so.

Again, as much as it may seem as though I'm attacking you, it's more of an attempt to "smack some sense/reality into you." Being a WS isn't an "identity." No one pops out of their mother destined to be a liar and cheater. To me, it sounds more as though you are so sick of who you are and what you did that you feel you deserve just to be mud instead. Which sucks because it does nothing to help your spouse or family, but much more importantly, it does nothing for you but to doom you to a life and shame and disgrace, and offers you no opportunities to grow, change, or be a better person.

I would encourage you to search your feelings and make even the most meager attempt to do better, to be a better person, to love yourself enough to give a damn about why you did the things you did, why you feel the way you feel, and take some steps towards caring about yourself and others. Despite what your spouse may say, SI may say or how you feel, you are not a monster or worthless. You deserve to love and respect yourself. You deserve to be loved and respected by others. You deserve to go to bed at night and sleep peacefully knowing that you don't regret the things you did or said that day. And quite frankly, the people you hurt, deserve to see some remorse and some effort. It's basic human decency. Be kind to yourself and allow yourself the grace to accept your mistakes, and then take steps to live a better life. In the history of history, no one has ever regretted loving themselves more, was ashamed of being a better person, or suffered terribly as a result of loving themselves. They do however, regret the times they gave up and threw in the towel for no reason whatsoever.

I wish you luck in your recovery. I hope you take the time and effort to reflect a little.

Thanks guys for responding in so much detail. I'm taking a few days to read and understand what has been written before responding more formally. I wanted to check in with you guys and say I'm not ignoring you.

Bulcy, it took about 7 months for me to get to a place where I could begin to find them.

I started IC in November of 2018 after ending a PA. I was batshit insane from years of the double life at that point, so I finally made the call to the wellness hotline that my employer provides. Ended up hitting the jackpot with my therapist (still with him and now see him only once a month to check in), but the early days were frightening and brutal to cowardly me. He was very direct and we dove into the muck right away and I did my best to avoid having to face any of it. So much so that I ended up starting another very brief PA with a random MW on Tinder in December, which ended in early January, while also rekindling things with my longtime EAP.

I had zero idea of what I wanted other than a shoulder to cry on (and maybe validate me?), and my vision of therapy was like The Bob Newhart Show I watched as a kid in the '70s. Plus, I grew up in a family where appearances were of the utmost importance and anyone who needed a "shrink" was "a looney ready for the nuthouse".

Conflict-avoider extraordinaire? You bet. I have Olympic medals for that shit.

Somehow through all of this, my therapist didn't fire me. Little by little, there would be a breakthrough. It was like a big swatch of fog would lift and the feeling of being to able to see clearly was amazing. Yet, I still wasn't in a place where I wanted to give up the ego kibbles from EAP i.e. remove my head from my ass.

Things came to a head when we started getting deeper into the CSA I suffered. The day my therapist asked me if I was ready to start loving that little boy (little Skip, who was innocent and only wanted to be loved, not abused) was the day the wall finally fell down. I was now ready to start loving and forgiving (not excusing) myself. It was like finally coming out of the dark forest and seeing the road to freedom and healing right in front of me.

Finding my whys followed pretty rapidly after that.

I cut things off immediately with EAP. Direct and firm DNC, blocked, deleted SM and gone. She ended up outing me with an anonymous letter to my BW about a week later, which my BW then sat on for about another week before confronting me. When she did, I confessed everything, which I'm glad I had the clarity to do.

We will be ending our 5th year of R this May. We are happy (and yes, I check with her before typing things like that ).

You will get there. Keep doing what you're doing and just know that there is no deadline.

It took the better part of two years for my fWW to fully understand, come to grips with and share her why's with me. Both of us had individual therapy during this period.

You can read my full story here

https://www.survivinginfidelity.com/forums/?tid=662376&HL=84340

I cheated on my ex-W 45+ years ago. We divorced. I never got to my whys.