SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Definition of Fog: = Head firmly in ones ass.

Daddy Dom thank you for this, it’s made tears come to my eyes. I struggle with believing that the fog is something real that is not an excuse. I am very strict about filtering what I want to believe vs. what is true. I stopped trusting myself after being betrayed for a year and but seeing it. So I argued with my own beliefs in my head. Constantly. Was he a lying cheat or a broken man? I had hard evidence for the former, only his (now worthless) word for the latter. After discovering my WS’s affair I realised painfully that I was still viewing him as a man for whom being discovered had instantly turned him back into the man I believed he was. I trusted him again, too soon. Fog was still there but I didn’t know. My blind trust had been used against me during the affair, I handed trust back to him after discovery as he sobbed and told me he loved only me and was so, so sorry, believing his ‘epiphany’ had re-set his character. He further abused my fragile trust to continue seeing her, until further discoveries on my part made him see it for what it was, he was terrified he’d lost me and truly ended it that week for good. I struggled after this with "Is he a broken or a bad person? Is he using lying and deception to get by because of his brokenness or is he just a lying cheat who hid it well for over 30 years? Has my life been a sham? Who the hell is he? Mad or bad?" I read about the fog and wanted to believe it but fought with it, worried I was being suckered into accepting excuses. I wanted to believe it but resisted to protect myself. Your explanation fits my WS perfectly. He definitely tries to fit into a world that works differently to the one he grew up in, his self preservation and emotional reserve in relationships (due to not trusting those who say they love him to not let him down as his mother did) led him to seek validation elsewhere. He admits he justified it all to himself by blaming me (His perception was that I said I loved him, he’d married me and I was letting him down, but only by not being perfect, he sees that now) but that actually, that was all rubbish used to shelve guilt and not look at the reality of who he’d become. His fog finally painfully lifted.
Thank you, Daddy Dom, this has lifted my fog today. The fog of my self preservation that keeps stopping me really connecting with him for fear he will just hurt me again. We get so close then I push him away. The cycle needs to stop. Understanding is the key. Thank you.

Cognitive dissonance. In essence when one's behavior is in conflict with their established beliefs.

Everyone KNOWS infidelity is wrong, secular or non-secular, all people know it will hurt the person being betrayed.

It's a way to compartmentalize the rationalizations someone makes to enter in to that fantasy world where no one gets hurt because they will never find out.

I had to learn as much about as I could, in order to understand it seems almost universal as a part of a way for someone to justify poor choices along the way.

Which, as others have noted, the actual fog isn't an excuse.

There is no real excuse.

But there are reasons.

It was important for my wife as well to explore those choices and why she needed the validation, discover her real reasons.

She never used the 'fog' as a reason. Hell, neither of us heard of the concept until I found SI and then started MC. But I found learning about it helped me understand a lot about choices that are hard to understand.

I would posit that there are two distinct components to the "fog".

The first component is the cognitive dissonance. It is the total dissociation with the concepts of right and wrong, the justification of the selfish actions, etc.

The second component is the body/brain chemistry component of it. Our MC brought up a study a couple of weeks ago that measured the hormone levels of people both during and after an A. What the study showed was virtually the same chemical response in the brain as taking heroine. The enhanced levels of dopamine account for both the risky behaviors, as well as the addictive properties associated with them. It also accounts for the behaviors after the A in separating from the "addiction" which, according to the MC, can take between 6 months and a year to return to normal levels post-A.

As many have said, this is not an excuse for bad behaviors. It is, however, an explanation for behaviors that make absolutely no sense to those of us on the BS side of it.

I see it as when some positive stimulation (sex, or "being in love") completely overrides rational judgment. Like the rush of taking a selfie in front of an oncoming train…. "I’m going to get so many likes!!," (squish). People that get in the fog needs serious fixing.

I remember this story in JFO where the WW flies with her sister to a vacation spot, falls in love with a local, at a bar, who doesn’t speak her language, flies back home thinking of her new love and wondering why he won’t answer her texts anymore, aside from one last request for a sext. That sounds like fog to me. An external observer can see she just destroyed her life and the ones she cared about. She thinks she’s in love.

That’s opposed to WS who goes in eyes wide opened, and don’t really care about consequences, more on the narcissistic side.

Our MC brought up a study a couple of weeks ago that measured the hormone levels of people both during and after an A.

Off-topic musing... How the heck does one find a cheater BEFORE they cheated in order to do hormone testing?

"Okay Mr. Johnson, we're done testing your hormone levels. Now, if you could kindly go cheat on your wife for a while, then come back, we'd like to test them again afterward."

Mr Johnson: "What about my wife? Won't she be upset?"

"No, she'll be fine, we finished testing her for the same thing last week"

Off-topic musing... How the heck does one find a cheater BEFORE they cheated in order to do hormone testing?

Excellent question. I was wondering the same thing. What they did do was go through IC's who had clients that were in active As and continued testing their hormone levels for, if I remember correctly, 2 years after the As ended.

Though I did see this documentary a few years ago about an organization that could predict future criminal activity. I think it was called Minority Report. 😁

I read about that report— they were all people on Ashley Madison or something like that, so they were all looking for affairs…