SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

So after having read daddydoms fantastic "why post" I am trying to figure out my own after my BS was trying to figure out why it was that my A was so extreme..... left the family home for the AP after only a few weeks only to then return after a few days and started some shit show of a rollercoaster along with divulging an awful secret to a friend of ours about my BS.

Now I already know I have massive issues with imposter syndrome, people pleasing and have been a typical conflict avoidant.

So anyway at this point I have got:-

So how the affair happened:-
Felt something was missing within, was down because of work and generally just felt shit about myself didn't feel as important as the other supervisors, felt a joke and was often made out to be that way by them during the day. Felt i wasnt good enough for the team, felt I had to prove myself.

Why did I feel something was missing:-

I wasnt happy, I felt myself drifting away from you over the years, i was too wrapped up in my own self and my own needs and too focussed on what I wanted to feel and that was to make myself feel happy, excited, validated, important and relevant to everyone

Why did I want to feel validated :-

Because it made me feel good about myself, made me feel as though I was popular and important and had a purpose/meaning.

Why were you and the girls not enough

I was too selfish too self-absorbed, I wasn't happy and was bored with work and the monotony of being at (insert location) and then when we started having our arguments i started to feel more helpless which led to more feeling of inadequacy and the like therefore needing more validation which she gave in bucket loads.

Where does that come from?

Childhood, middle child syndrome, not feeling as though my parents gave me enough attention or indeed to much maybe. Not feeling as though I was loved as much as the other two due to either being the youngest sibling or the eldest sibling just being a troublesome teen. Feeling a burden to my parents, grandparents being the black sheep in the family. it felt that way - eldest sibling got all the attn from grandparents, aunts and uncles etc and everyone else I was just too much and too needy I felt.

Why I treated you awfully:-

Was so angry therefore projecting this onto you.

Felt as though you were stopping me feeling happy and stopping me being able to be happy by pointing out my new social desires. Ap at the time was making me feel happy and important, tapped into my need for validation and tapped into my need to feel important, this also tapped into my need to feel relevant to the team and bolster my ego not actually looking at it to see that it just made me look pathetic and slimy.

Why did I go above and beyond in being vicious with words?

Shame and guilt - I wanted someone else to hurt as much as me.

I was too embarrassed to be honest with anyone too embarrassed and ashamed to admit what I was doing so I blamed you and denied it was ever my doing

It was far easier to blame someone else rather than myself. People pleasing again and wanting to have people not think of me as scummy and as someone who could do this to another person.

Divulging your secret

The friend stuff is similar, I put myself ahead of you as I was selfish. Didn't want him to call me out on my behaviour and was too ashamed to tell him what I was doing for a number of reasons....

1.i didn't want him to call me out and highlight what I was doing was wrong and that it needed to stop.

2.i couldn't admit it to him so therefore I put it on you, made you out to be the crazy one so to speak in that you couldn't trust me and never have.

This was also why I then got angry, accusing him of filling your head with crap, not wanting you speaking with him and when you did then getting pissed off as it was as though you were defying me and ignoring my wishes....

It's also the reason for being too afraid to reach out to him, fear of judgement shame and simple embarrassment.

Why I ended up leaving:-

Didn't believe we were right for each other, didn't believe you understood me, believed she did and believed that we couldn't be happy. Clear cognitive dissonance at play but at the time believed it and believed ap and I were to be together...

Was impulsive and lived this fantasy out with no sense of reality didn't stop and consider my selfish actions and instead thought only of myself.

Why I was so impulsive :-

Felt i had something to prove, always felt there was something not quite right in me so had to have the shiniest new things, be the most liked, be the most interesting and funniest but it was all just making my insecurities and my failings.

And now this is where I am stuck and can think of no more....any help would be appreciated as it just feels I'm going around in circles in my head its starting to drive me loopy. Sorry if it makes no sense, trying to keep it short and punchy.

I think this is a good start.

So to me, the deeper parts of this will come as you become mindful of what you learned about yourself. The step to get there is to take some time and think about the ways you can practice a different way of being.

I am going to use people pleasing as the example because we share that one. I also choose it because being authentic is a huge goal for all of us ws. For the next while pay attention to why you do things throughout the day. Just observe your motivations.

Though taking one of these and becoming mindful about it, will eventually change your perspective.

I would also ask yourself, why were you afraid to do something besides people please? That was your go to probably because you didn’t feel like you would get _____ if you didn’t. What are the things that go in your blank? And know there is likely more than one answer. Add that to when you feel the urge to people please. For me I wouldn’t deserve love as a primary one.

The other thing you should think about as you move them rough being mindful of this trait each day. Where did you learn this behavior? Knowing that can absolutely help you to see that you no longer need it.

So this is why you do with each of them and if you stay mindful and dedicated over it a few things will happen:

1. You will learn subsets of that why.
2. You will find alternative behaviors to form new habits
3. You will lean why you don’t need it.
4. You will become more aware of the urge to do it and can mindfully address the motivation to change the behavior.

So much of what we do is like breathing. It’s automatic, ingrained. You can change the way you breathe, so to speak.

Good work by the way, this first exercise will help you in your quest to be more mindful, authentic, and whole. This will allow you to have better and deeper connection with your wife.

Thank you as usual very insightful!!

For me people pleasing is somewhat a curse that I never knew existed till I really started looking at myself.

Following D Day i had periods were i thought i cracked it but it wasn't till i changed jobs that i realised it was still there and needs to be kept in check.

For me the people pleasing stems from this constant need to be popular and liked and seen as dependable HOWEVER I was incredibly fickle and once I knew someone liked me (not romantically) then my job was done.

This I believe stems from again childhood, due to my dad's job we moved alot as children and therefore lost friends along the way. Thinking about just that I can see how i started to believe that people come and go and ill be alright as I'll just find someone else.... this also though led to having to find new friendships which was very difficult in rural settings.

I wasn't ever a really popular kid growing up, wasn't till I hit 16-18 I realised girls liked me and I think that's where I started lapping up the attn. However each GF I'd heavily invest in but grow bored after a while. My BS has been my longest relationship and I didn't even grow bored :-( simply someone showed me attn and that was all it took.

Anyway off to the drawing board to have a think

Wanted to send a shout out of encouragement, that from my perspective if my wife were having the kinds of insights that you are describing here, it would have been a game changer for me. I’m sure hikingout is correct (as usual ) about the further layers to the onion, but this BS is impressed at your current state and effort. As I believe they say across the pond, crack on

[This message edited by InkHulk at 4:40 PM, Saturday, March 23rd]

Cheers IH, it comes at a great cost mind as it's been a real real hard slog to even get to this point as I have tortured my BS to breaking point in varying ways.

I want this to work with her more than anything but have been governed by so much shame and fear which really is unhealthy and leads to further shit shows but hey here's hoping and as you say have to just crack on.

I saw your update the other night, sorry to hear that your going the D route. Just look after yourself and the little ones and just know you have done your best.

Take care of yourself, stay strong and keep smiling (even if its forced)

I’m not sure if your wife has asked this but as a BW my reaction to your whys (which are probably identical to those of my WH) and have been articulated in a similar way….my reaction is to feel that y’all keep leaving something out. Maybe Hiking Out knows the answer but…

okay so you need approval, validation, yada yada. Yes, you were a people pleaser but what is it on you that views a spouse as someone of soooo little value. why didn’t my attention(limited though it may have been) lift you up, boost your ego. You must think quite little of me. Sure, you’re gonna say no it wasn’t about you. but I was irrelevant in the extreme to you. How did I become so worthless. was i always worthless to you. did i devote my life to someone who saw no value in me?

why weren’t you so very scared to upset or anger me—the way you were so scared of upsetting the AP. Again, seems i’m pretty worthless to you.

I think this is kind of universal. kind of how people pleasers roll. or is it how narcissists roll. i worry about this. narcissists are transactional. all of a sudden i am very very high value to my spouse but maybe that’s just his fear of being outed by the world. looking like a scumbag. we all know the people pleasers don’t like that.

so how are we to know you have REAL feelings for us now. what is my worth to you and why the heck did i have to earn what i gave you unconditionally.

I think that is a follow on question you might address for her.

best to you and good luck!

I’m not sure if your wife has asked this but as a BW my reaction to your whys (which are probably identical to those of my WH) and have been articulated in a similar way….my reaction is to feel that y’all keep leaving something out. Maybe Hiking Out knows the answer but…

When it comes to the whys that we talk about as ws, and what the bs wants to know, they are separate yet related things.

The reason for every affair is because I wanted to do that. I wanted whatever I was seeking at any costs. I minimized in my mind what the costs were versus falsely maximizing what rewards would be there in the affair.

That doesn’t really go very deep. I wanted to because it felt good, but then you have to ask yourself why would something so destructive feel good? Because it was an escape from reality. About 90 percent of my affair was in my own mind. I projected what I wanted him to be and I justified why I deserved it.

These are all functions of any affair, but it doesn’t really get to the root of how I become someone who wouldn’t want to escape? Why did I feel so uncomfortable with my life that I ran from it?

That’s why you don’t connect with the whys. It skips over the fundamental knowns of an affair and starts treating the mindset that likely has been a pattern a ws’s entire life. And that doesn’t mean they have been a cheater their whole life, I can attest that is very much not the case. I never even considered cheating before I did it.

okay so you need approval, validation, yada yada. Yes, you were a people pleaser but what is it on you that views a spouse as someone of soooo little value.

This can be different for different people. It’s a good question I think tiny needs to explore. However, I felt like your post was compelling and that I could shine a light on some of it. Hopefully that helps Tiny and you at the same time.

So I am just going to tell you what people pleasing means and does. (People pleasers learned this to survive something long term. Parents, past relationships,etc) the problem with going along to get along is you lose touch with who you are down deep. What your needs and wants are. It’s a form of shame-based perfectionism. If I do these things and be agreeable I will be more loveable. So it becomes this unconscious self sacrificing thing that eventually erodes our sense of self and happiness.

The problem is when it’s in a long term relationship, the other person is not aware you are doing it. So over time they don’t see you either. They can’t, because you aren’t showing up anymore, you are just giving what they want with this delusional hope they will give you what you want. (The transactional thing a lot of us have in our relationships)

I feel like as people we all deeply want connection. So what happened for me (and here is where our individual stories may go in separate directions) is that I wanted to meet who I could have been without all this sacrifice. And I didn’t understand it at the time because when so much goes unexamined, then their life is largely being driven by unconscious thoughts and actions. (You might notice that a ws might say things like “I felt like I was sleep walking though life, going through the motions)

So I showed up alright, as a previous version of myself. Like who I would have been at 20. Yikes. I wanted to feel younger, sexier, more interesting, and more vibrant. But I wasn’t any of these things. The value of the AP is they don’t really know you so you can believe they are buying what you are selling.

There is part of me that felt like my husband expected for me to be this person who I have been showing him all along. To me this translated to I am very unhappy with him. Also, all your responsibilities and the shit that drags you down as a people pleaser go with your spouse. It’s not really truly their fault of course, but there can’t be connection if you are never showing up to the relationship authentically.

So in essence, we strangle our own happiness and connection through being a people pleaser. And most of us blame our marriage for it.

why didn’t my attention(limited though it may have been) lift you up, boost your ego. You must think quite little of me. Sure, you’re gonna say no it wasn’t about you. but I was irrelevant in the extreme to you. How did I become so worthless. was i always worthless to you. did i devote my life to someone who saw no value in me?

These questions are normal bs questions. But truly the affair didn’t happen because of you. It happened because we can’t receive those things because we kind of feel like an imposter. They ring hollow. If you don’t love yourself, you can’t receive it from others. And if you are always sacrificing and bone we doing self reflection, taking time for yourself, and saying no when you don’t want to do things, there just isn’t a sense of self to base the self love on. We don’t know how to form a boundary for fear that will be the straw that will make our bs turn away from us. But we grow to resent those things and then use it as entitlement to do whatever we want.

why weren’t you so very scared to upset or anger me—the way you were so scared of upsetting the AP. Again, seems i’m pretty worthless to you.

Yes, that is how it would naturally make you feel. Because in many ways by not showing up as who we are and not being vulnerable enough, the connection just isn’t as strong. It’s not a statement of your worthiness at all. It’s more the ws doesn’t value themselves and therefore isn’t capable of valuing anyone.

Sure, it looks as though we value the ap, but if you think about it we don’t do that either. We are using them to escape, we aren’t caring what it does to their life to be with someone who is emotionally unavailable, we are often play acting with them because through all this people pleasing we don’t really know who we are or what we really want, we are no more having an authentic connection with the ap than we are our spouse. It’s just easier to be excited because we feel like we are finally showing up on who we want to be, and being seen by the ap. Reality is we aren’t being authentic so we are just buying our own hype.

It’s all bullshit. What is actually happening is we start looking around for the ego kibbles and pretty soon we have fucked our life up so badly that the only thing that feels good is the adrenaline and feel good chemicals our brains are over producing in the affair. So we keep upping our risks and letting our boundaries down until we are caught or no longer getting those rewards.

I did look at the person I wanted to be in the affair, and I did work on developing some of those things in real life. But when I look at myself now where I am being authentically me and showing up without my perfectionist mask, all I was doing in the affair was creating this cartoon character that was even further from the true me than what I experienced with my husband.

People pleasers get callous from feeling like they need to be x,y,z to be loved. And they are floored when they realize they are the ones who did that to themselves and not the spouse.

I think this is kind of universal. kind of how people pleasers roll. or is it how narcissists roll. i worry about this. narcissists are transactional. all of a sudden i am very very high value to my spouse but maybe that’s just his fear of being outed by the world. looking like a scumbag. we all know the people pleasers don’t like that.

I don’t know if your husband is a narcissist. I know I am not one. I displayed a lot of narcissistic tendencies while in the affair, but I think most of that was just the mental gymnastics I did in order to have the affair- minimizing my spouse, fueling my entitlements by putting a microscope on him and his flaws, having this mantra if I am going to be happy, I am tired of the pain. And I associated and blamed him for a lot of things that were baseless.

There wasn’t anything wrong with my husband. All the major problems were with me, happening in my head. But I don’t know about your situation.

so how are we to know you have REAL feelings for us now. what is my worth to you and why the heck did i have to earn what i gave you unconditionally.

I think the only way a bs can know is with a lot of consistency for a long period of time. What are their actions telling you versus their words. Are they able to empathize with you? Are they working on their character flaws that led them to be so unhappy they had an affair?

So you can see that there are a layers of whys.

We did it because we wanted to. So the answers have to be why did you want to do it? Why would something so destructive be something I want to do? And then they have to get to the hows. How were they able to go through with something they knew was so wrong and risked the marriage to do it? Those answers are things like lack of integrity, using resentments to fuel entitlements, etc.

And so it’s not just how do you know they want you and love you, but how do you know they have learned and grown from this and have developed healthier habits ways to cope with their life moving forward. That’s the prisoner of the whys ws talk about here. It’s easily to get to the basic ones where it felt good and they wanted to do it.

[This message edited by hikingout at 9:53 PM, Monday, March 25th]

I learned a lot about myself after D-day. It took me years to really understand it all however. "The Why's" are the catalyst for a great deal of personal introspection, and hopefully they will inspire some curiousity in you about your roots and how you came to be who you are today. No one sets out in life to be a liar or a cheater. We dream of growing up and being a doctor, a dancer, a politician, a parent. We never plan to hurt others or ourselves. So how the hell did we get here?

One of the things I learned about myself is that my own interpretation of things was not the same as it is for other people. The way we see the world, and ourselves, is often a reflection of our own thoughts and experiences, and we shape our sense of truth around that. In other words, we expect other people to think and react the same way we do in similar situations. For example, if you are the type of person who lets others ahead of you in line at the market, then you expect most people would do the same thing. If you would lie to get a better position at work, then you think everyone lies to get ahead. Part of the reason so many of our BS's are so devastated when they are cheated on, is because they would never do such a thing. Think about crossing the street. When the light changes, we calmly walk in front of a line of running cars that could easily mow us down if they wanted to. But nonetheless, we remain confident they won't do so, because WE would not do so.

It's important to understand the views we have of the world and to be able to compare those views with other points of view. Take spanking for example. People who were raised in homes where corporal punishment was used may view the process as "tough love" and equate it with a proper, moral upbringing. People who were raised in non-spanking homes however may see it as "generational trauma", and equate it with abuse. My point here is not to debate the subject itself, rather, I want to point out that what one person may see as unacceptable, another may see as mandatory, and those two views are simply not compatible.

As a more relevant example, let's consider how we view "love". Many people, if they are lucky, grow up in a loving home. Their parents protect them, nurture them, reinforce their positive sense of self, and encourage them to be authentic to themselves. People who get that kind of experience growing up often have a very positive self view. They rarely become cheaters because they would never disrespect themselves by doing otherwise. They view loving others, and themselves, with the same positive influences that they learned in their youth. Their parents model a healthy relationship for them.

Now, take someone (like myself) who is raised in a home where the parents aren't capable of showing the child healthy examples of love. Imagine growing up in a home where love is measured by what you can give to others. When the parents are incapable (perhaps because they themselves were never taught about real love) of protecting, nurturing, and encouraging their child, the child then learns that their own self-worth is based solely on others' opinions of them. The child ends up with no sense of self, no sense of self-love, no sense of innate value and self-respect. A person who lacks those qualities cannot exist without the approval and praise of others, because they lack the ability to feel a sense of value all on their own. As long as the "love" and praise comes in from outside sources, that type of person can usually function fairly normally. But what happens when there isn't enough praise coming in to make the person feel worthy? Well, they often feel unloved, unseen, unworthy, and unacceptable. It is a cold, empty and dreadful state of mind, much like the proverbial person in the desert looking for an oasis. It makes us desperate, desperate to the point where we allow ourselves to twist the truth however we need to in order to escape that loneliness. That's how affairs often start. All we're looking for is a little positive input. But like the person that reaches the oasis, we gulp instead of sip. We drink it all and long for more. Most of the time, we have no idea how we ended up this way, but if we look hard enough, the path can be seen.

Which leads me to my final point. Whatever forces that shaped our being become our "normal". And normal, feels "safe and comfortable", even when it is neither. Someone raised in a loving home is most comfortable when their life reflects that. A house, two cars, three kids and a white picket fence makes them feel safe, secure, normal. But the kid who grew up in a bad area, with crime and violence and no self-worth... well, that becomes THEIR "normal". Even though it is dangerous and self-deprecating, they still long for it to live that way because it is what feels most natural to them.

People like that... self-sabotage. Because when things are going to well for them, it makes them uncomfortable. They feel like a turd in a field of flowers. It's easier to be a turd surrounded by turds. As dumb as it sounds, we seek out that which we know, because we identify as broken people, at least on the inside. Sometimes, we just aren't aware of it, because, as we said before, we expect everyone feels the same way we do. And since we grew up in trauma, we often repeat it (unintentionally in many cases) with our own children and families. "Hurt people hurt people" and all that. It's very, very true.

(I just want to note that I'm using the terms "parents/kids/families" here, but what I'm talking about also includes society, community, and all of our greater relationships. A kid that has a great home life but gets bullied at school experiences both love and trauma, and they may have distorted views of society whether they can admit and accept that or not).

What is YOUR normal? Do you see self-sabotage in your actions? Do you get your value from others? In order to overcome these things, we first need to know they exist, and how, and why. The next step is to replace those "broken" views of love and respect with healthier ones. Which is a topic for another day, but in the meantime, I suggest starting with an IC. Ask them to help you pick apart your past and figure out where unhealthy thoughts and feelings come from. Learn how to love and respect yourself. Do that, and no matter what the outcomes of your marriage, you will be better able to cope and recover, and you will live a better life overall.

I wish you luck.

[This message edited by DaddyDom at 5:07 AM, Tuesday, March 26th]

Tinytim 1980,

I too had a self-destruct button that I pushed at various times in my life. One of my "whys" was the feeling of being unloveable and that I didn't deserve anything nice, especially the kindness of others. The majority of that came from CSA that I suffered. Not an excuse, just a hard-learned fact in over 5 years of IC. Plenty of survivors who suffered abuse have never cheated in a relationship. Unfortunately, I am not one of them.

It may sound corny, but self-affirmations have been a help for me. Just being able to look in the mirror and say, "I am loved and deserving of love" has pulled me through some of the roughest times. Appreciating everything I have whether I "deserve" it or not and being truly thankful for it doesn't come easy for me, but it's getting easier all the time little by little.

To lighten things up a little, when I think of self-affirmation I also think of the party scene in Annie Hall. Jeff Goldblum is shown on the phone trying to get a hold of his guru, telling the person on the other end "I forgot my mantra!"

Avoidance and people-pleasing. I check those boxes too. Really can't add much to what Hikingout and DaddyDom have already said.

You're doing good work. Keep it up and keep posting. It helps all of us.

Hi all,

Just want to say a massive thanks to all of you that have responded. Whilst I havent responded to these directly I ave used these to start up a dialogue with my BS.

Your insight is really useful and makes me really evaluate behaviours from my youth up till even this morning....

May seem small, my daughter made muffins at college (stay with me). I was dieting yesterday so mentioned I would take one today, she had three left and one was a little bashed about....now old selfish beyond belief me would have taken the perfect looking one, leaving the smashed one behind for someone else. Not today though, smashed one in the bag and here we are ... just little things I realise more and more how selfish and what an ass I have been all these years!!

Anyway off topic, my point is thank you so much for the advice above. The journey continues x

Not today though, smashed one in the bag and here we are ... just little things I realise more and more how selfish and what an ass I have been all these years!!

For me, this is how recovery worked. I decided to do at least one (if not many) nice thing a day for someone else, and if possible, I wanted to make sure I personally did not benefit from it (other than knowing I did something positive for others that day). I opened the door for someone. I left someone cut ahead of me in line. I let someone get into my lane without responding. I complimented someone's looks or service. I left a big tip, or paid for the food of the people behind me in line. Whatever it was, I did something that was not selfish, and that I could feel good about, and that was easily achievable. Over time, I no longer had to make an effort to do so, it just started to become "who I was" and my whole attitude about myself and others began to change.

This is a good first step you've taken. Keep it up. There is light at the end of the tunnel, but it's a long tunnel. :)

[This message edited by DaddyDom at 9:28 PM, Wednesday, March 27th]