SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I'm interested in hearing from anyone who did a Full Theraputic Disclosure with a lie detector.

BR, I didn't. Tried but only got as far as the most bs, incomplete disclosure every written in history.

A friend of mine did this with her WS. He did multiple lie detector tests over a year or more and ultimately she found out he gamed the tests. He passed multiple times completely lying and admits it. So, that's a thing you should know.

Every new disclosure adds trauma. I know we need to know what we're healing from or reconciling from, but I wonder sometimes if there's a point at which we don't need all the details. It's just more for us to recover from. I don't know the half of it and I'm still unsure I'll ever fully recover.

Every new disclosure adds trauma. I know we need to know what we're healing from or reconciling from, but I wonder sometimes if there's a point at which we don't need all the details. It's just more for us to recover from. I don't know the half of it and I'm still unsure I'll ever fully recover.

Yeah, it seems that it's different with SAs and serial cheaters. Do we need to know whether it was 5 or 7? 15 or 20? Perhaps I got all the answer I ever needed in my XWH's journal entry that brought on DDay. "Many". Many summed it up quite nicely once I got past "Was it 3 or 8 or 30?". You need to know if it's your sister or cousin or friend, sure. But do you need to know how many strangers there were? Probably you do if you're trying to R. If you're done, then I don't think it's necessary. If you're done, you already know enough.

It hurts me to see any of us blame ourselves for not seeing this coming. This was not our crime.

Amen to that. That's why your voice is so important here Dee. Everywhere you turn victims are blamed for relationship violence and abuse - everywhere. This whole codependency industry just pisses me off. If there weren't scum bags who take advantage of empaths, nurturers and other folks then there wouldn't be any victims to blame. It's the perpetrators fault, not our lack of X-ray vision, clinical training in psychiatry or our desire to nurture.

Blaming an abuse victim is like blaming a rape victim for how she dressed or where she walked alone. They get a pass to be untamed animals but it's on us for letting ourselves be attacked.

Blaming an abuse victim is like blaming a rape victim for how she dressed or where she walked alone. They get a pass to be untamed animals but it's on us for letting ourselves be attacked.

BOOM. There it is.

^^^ What she said!

It's fair to talk about codependency at a certain point. It is a real thing as is Stockholm Syndrome. These topics are relevent to discuss to understand how victims may not be protecting themselves in the aftermath of abuse (infidelity is abuse). They aren't the cause of the abuse, though. They are symptoms of being abused and victimized. To escape abusers or stop tolerating abuse, one must sometimes work on codependency issues.

But no, being a kind and empathetic person does not make one deserving of that goodness being taken advantage of. It is a lot easier to abuse someone who has empathy, but that doesn't make empathy the problem. You probably won't be as likely to be abused if you're a big asshole because you'll be the one doing the abusing, but who wants to be an asshole?

[This message edited by DevastatedDee at 12:58 PM, September 28th (Monday)]

They are symptoms of being abused and victimized. To escape abusers or stop tolerating abuse, one must sometimes work on codependency issues.

I get that completely. I don't like the name and the attached assumptions. It pathologizes the victim. We learn to tolerate abuse because it's our life. We have kids, sunk costs, financial dependency or medical issues in some cases. We adapt to the abuse and we suffer with it because we are in the proverbial, slowly heating pot. I'm not co-dependent. I was married to a disordered, deceptive train wreck and I did what I could to survive him and keep meeting the demands of my life while I figure it out. Some are able to wrap their minds around what's happening and have the resources to get out sooner than others - but I'm not sure that makes one codependent and the other not, just slower, in deeper shock/denial, more stuck, more hopeful...

I'm not arguing with you at all, Dee - you are my queen!! Just bristling at these loaded, pathologizing terms.

Blaming an abuse victim is like blaming a rape victim for how she dressed or where she walked alone. They get a pass to be untamed animals but it's on us for letting ourselves be attacked.

Well said skeetermooch this is exactly why I am so outspoken now in my daily life. I'm tired of abusers getting away with it and if I lose family and friends over it so be it!

I'm tired of abusers getting away with it and if I lose family and friends over it so be it!

Agreed.

I get that completely. I don't like the name and the attached assumptions. It pathologizes the victim. We learn to tolerate abuse because it's our life. We have kids, sunk costs, financial dependency or medical issues in some cases. We adapt to the abuse and we suffer with it because we are in the proverbial, slowly heating pot. I'm not co-dependent. I was married to a disordered, deceptive train wreck and I did what I could to survive him and keep meeting the demands of my life while I figure it out. Some are able to wrap their minds around what's happening and have the resources to get out sooner than others - but I'm not sure that makes one codependent and the other not, just slower, in deeper shock/denial, more stuck, more hopeful...

I'm not arguing with you at all, Dee - you are my queen!! Just bristling at these loaded, pathologizing terms.

I completely agree with you about this bullshit pathologizing abuse victims for being at fault for picking such bad people, Skeeter. Codependency is used almost like a weapon against the victim. "He's an addict/abusive, but YOU'RE CODEPENDENT AND NEED HELP". It's like you expressed before, codependency is the short skirt on a rape victim.

codependency is the short skirt on a rape victim

OMG - exactly.

Talking about "fixing our pickers" - I'm very guilty of this - also confers blame. You know how they ask rape victims if they said "No" or why they went back to his apartment or if they screamed? I think asking us which red flags we missed, why we were vulnerable to their charms or we didn't leave after the first dday is similar.

Talking about "fixing our pickers" - I'm very guilty of this - also confers blame. You know how they ask rape victims if they said "No" or why they went back to his apartment or if they screamed? I think asking us which red flags we missed, why we were vulnerable to their charms or we didn't leave after the first dday is similar.

For me, I don't need to fix my picker so much as add additional data to my picker that I didn't have before. My picker was fine for avoiding emotional and physical abuse. It was good for avoiding blatant narcissists. I'd had the bad fortune to date a sociopath for a short time and added those data points to it. So I was already safe from all those people. There was no area in my picker to pick up red flags of the addict/cheater/maybe covert narcissist type. I didn't have anything to reference those red flags to. He didn't mistreat me openly.

Shit, we're vulnerable to their types because they become whatever it is that we most want in a person. Like Play-Doh people. Bet you guys coincidentally had a lot in common with your SAs too, didn't you?

I don't need to fix my picker so much as add additional data to my picker that I didn't have before

Exactly. I'd been with a narc but never someone with anti-social pd and covert narc tendencies. Very different presentation. My recent STBX was so damned humble seemingly.

Bet you guys coincidentally had a lot in common with your SAs too, didn't you?

We were perfect matches. He even played up having a small amount of my ethnicity in his background - claimed 50% - not the case at all after he did a dna test. Some of the similarities were real (we're both liberals) but many were feigned. He mirrored me a ton but it'd more like he takes my thoughts and feelings as his own. He has parroted back my exact statements about how victimized and traumatized he is (I know, from what?). He started accusing me of gas lighting post dday, which makes me want to scream.

Ladies,

I hate to be a drama queen but...a receipt was emailed to me for a purchase STBX made today. It was a knife. He used my REI membership, hence me receiving the receipt. He immediately realized this and emailed me to say he got it for camping at his friend's urging because he'll be "in the wilderness." He's car camping, not backpacking into the deep woods. He'd bought all his gear last week or so and only went back to the store because I forgot to give him back his headlamp.

What's sticking in my craw is that he felt the need to email me to explain the purchase of the knife specifically and then used his friend as an excuse for buying it. I'm kind of freaked out. It's probably ridiculous paranoia but yeah, seems odd. Maybe he did it all on purpose to tweak me. I don't know. Changing the locks asap.

Get a can of bear spray and make sure the receipt is sent to him. Keep it next to your bed.

Good suggestion from BlackRaven - if bears are seen on your camping trips.

Or SBXWH in your house ...

Right, but it would be unassailable to buy it, if bears are a threat, when camping there. Nobody could argue intentions...

OMG love the bear spray idea. Bears are a thing where I camp. He doesn't have access to info on my purchases though, so he'd never know.

I have video security all around my house, which he's well aware of. So, if he had ill intentions towards me, he knows he'd be caught. Just something about him emailing me about the knife felt very off. Maybe it was simply an excuse to break NC? That's probably more plausible.

Every so often I get this paranoid thought that I don't know him at all - that he could be capable of anything. The SA crap was unexpected and so incredibly over the top - it feels like it's all up for grabs.

Every so often I get this paranoid thought that I don't know him at all - that he could be capable of anything. The SA crap was unexpected and so incredibly over the top - it feels like it's all up for grabs.

Skeeter, I had those thoughts too. I have no indication whatsoever that my XWH is capable of violence, but just that unreal "I don't even know this person" feeling had me paranoid. Plus, he was suicidal and on drugs. I bought a gun. It has never been needed, but I stopped relying on who I had thought he was because at that point, I had no firm idea of who he really was.