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hikingout and Darkness falls

Thanks for your replies.
To be honest I wasn't expecting too much if any response to this question because any or the majority of wayward wife's that this would really apply to would not be on this site mainly because they would be way too embarrassed and ashamed to tell their story. They basically got treated worse than a cheap hooker a lest the hooker gets paid for the use of her body.
PS it may come across as I am picking on wayward women. It's not my intention, it's just that I think women relate sex with intimacy and love more so than men which is probably why they are more likely than a male to end up in the situation of my original question.

Waywards,
Thank you always for your honest responses. They have been incredibly helpful to me.
Question:
Some of you have said when you look back, you realize the affair relationship was a fantasy, AP didn’t really love you and vice versa, and your eyes were finally opened to the reality of the affair. How long after you started R did you come to this realization?
It’s been about 12 months since WH’s affair ended. AP dumped him after 15 months of LTA. He says what he did is wrong. And he’s doing many of right things to heal us. BUT!!! When i ask him about the affair, he says they did have some good times. He doesn’t remember them with fondness but those "good times" haven’t been tainted by the fact that they hurt me. He’s sorry he did them and wants to make things better.

He also says sex with AP was good at times. He believes it was because it was new and exciting. And because they couldn’t do it often.
It frustrates and worries me because i wish he would say what some waywards here say. Things like i never loved her. It was all bullshit. I cringe with disgust when i think about her and the affair.
Any thoughts?

Hiking out, thanks for your reply. He says very little, as never has been good with talking about his feelings. He does though seem to be trying very hard to stay away from porn and seemed deeply ashamed when I bought the subject up. We have talked about his attitude to W in general as he seems to see them as objects at the minute. I have noticed a n improvement in him trying to be more connected to me as a person in last few days. He could just be faking it it though.

I cannot find a place in the I can relate thread that you can ask questions to BS and WS male and female so I will put one in each. Hope that's oaky with the Moderators.
A question that both WS and BS can answer.
Would it be fair to say that from a woman's perspective of an A the most hurtful part of the A is the emotional betrayal over physical? (Woman being the BS)
And from a male's perspective it would be the physical side before the emotional? (Male being the BS)
The reason that it can be answered by both is getting answers from how the BS felt and what the W learned from their BS about the A.

BSs can’t answer questions on this thread.

At the time of D-day, my H said my lies and associated deception bothered him much more than the sex.

Darkness F

Thats why I put the same question in here and the Betrayed Womens' thread and also in Betrayed Menz Thread. Like I said I couldn't find a suitable place to put this question in the I can relate area and it didn't seem to fit in the general thread ether. Maybe that is where it belongs.

[This message edited by fhtshop at 11:40 PM, Friday, July 28th]

I just wanted to say thanks to those who answered my question about WH having good feelings about AP. It has been helpful to get different perspectives on it. Challenging because he's since said he doesn't have good feelings however it feels this is just to keep me quiet and make me feel better. However I'm noticing that he seems to have finally started saying things that make it seem he realises AP and the A were very much a fantasy in his brain. It's tough. I want to let go but then small things like that make me feel I should hold on and continue to wait for him to fully escape this fantasy land...

Anyway. Thanks again

After separation and divorce, the wayward woman in my life and I started getting closer again, spending time together and with our children. She had done some things to heal like stop drinking, writing every day, yoga, spending time with herself, stopped seeing AP, but still didn't take full responsibility for her actions. And I didn't set strong boundaries and let rug sweeping happen. After some time my intuition told me she started seeing someone again which I thought was the original AP but seems to be a new boyfriend to feed her addiction. I did a 180 and now it's been over a month of almost no contact with her, her number is blocked, she can only contact me by email, and when I picked up the children for the month of July per the custody order I ignored her trying to talk to me and didn't even look at her.

What is the healthiest communication strategy to help a WS face themselves while protecting myself? I do hope for reconciliation. I know there is a lot to unravel for a WS and takes time and is an addiction. And I was enabling it in some way by rug sweeping. I know there is a battle of good and evil going on inside of her and want to do whatever I can to help, the right way, all while realizing we may be unsuccessful in reconciling in the end.

I'm wondering if blocking her and going almost no contact with her is the healthiest route. My anger and self preservation says never talk to her again unless it's a short email about the children. I don't look at her or speak to her in person because she doesn't deserve a word of my breath. If she is the right woman for me she will figure it out on her own and she can send an email that makes it plainly obvious she understands and takes full responsibility for her actions and chooses me and is 100% faithful to me and does everything to make me feel safe. Everything else if ignored.

But then I wonder if this is doing the opposite of what I hope for and by cutting off contact is hurting the chances of reconciliation. Breaking it down, one thing I think is for certain is hanging out with her is completely out of the question if she is actively talking to seeing another man and isn't 100% committed to me. So that leaves the phone communication and in person communication during children exchanges in question. Is having a method of communication during those situations that is more open but fortified with boundaries that only allow for healing a possibility? Is that healthier than blocking and almost no contact? If so how would that look? Or is it a bad idea?

I'm asking this on the WS thread because I think those who have been through this addiction and in that mindset understand what would be best here. What would have helped you the most in this situation? Thank you so much.

Thanks for your replies.

To be honest I wasn't expecting too much if any response to this question because any or the majority of wayward wife's that this would really apply to would not be on this site mainly because they would be way too embarrassed and ashamed to tell their story. They basically got treated worse than a cheap hooker a lest the hooker gets paid for the use of her body.

PS it may come across as I am picking on wayward women. It's not my intention, it's just that I think women relate sex with intimacy and love more so than men which is probably why they are more likely than a male to end up in the situation of my original question.

I don’t think you connected with my response. The AP did treat me like a cheap hooker on numerous occasions. But to say he used me would be a farce. I gave him the opportunity. Someone embarrassed to admit it has t taken accountability for their actions.

I thought I was completely in love with him. He could have felt that way about me or not, all evidence points to not, it’s my responsibility to say "why did I do what I did, and why did I allow myself to be treated that way?"

And often the answers there have a lot to do with why I cheated in the first place.

The reason you can’t connect with my answer is because I have healed from all that. Healing is taking those whys and putting yourself back together differently.

Did the aftermath of my affair come with tons of

Humiliation and shame? So much. But again, putting the responsibility on being taken advantage of would never have let me move forward in how I needed to be different.

If someone treats you like a hooker and you go back for more, that is on you for not having boundaries or respect for yourself. And cheating on my husband or sleeping with another woman’s husband has no honor even if he treated me like a queen.

[This message edited by hikingout at 6:14 AM, Sunday, July 30th]

Lineage gold,

Tough questions.

My feeling is yay with her reoffending, it’s best she understands you are serious about taking care of yourself moving forward.

But you can’t fake this, you must put yourself first here because a) it’s what you can control, and your healing has to be your priority over what she is doing.

And what she should be doing is everything she can.

You aptly say addiction, I had the addiction for sure. And just like a drug addict or a gambler the stakes don’t matter in an addiction. A drug addict or gambler will keep getting their fix to great detriment of themselves and their BS, children and others.

Unfortunately, I’m these cases, they have to do the same thing - they have to hit rock bottom.

My advice is whatever boundaries you feel you need, do it. If you need IC, go. You can not enable her, you have to empower yourself. You can always say what you require before she comes back to your door. You can’t control her by things you do, so focus on what you can control.

lineagegold

You seem to have a wonderful heart, and it is a shame that a heart like that was treated like crap. But people with big, wonderful hearts are the ones who often get hurt the most. Wanting to help your ex-WS is what makes you a good person. But it's also what keeps you most vulnerable to being hurt again.

She had done some things to heal like stop drinking, writing every day, yoga, spending time with herself, stopped seeing AP, but still didn't take full responsibility for her actions.

Lots of criminals... murderers, rapists, thieves... go to jail, and then try to improve themselves. They find religion. They get in shape. They read a lot. They develop new skills. And all those things are wonderful. But if they don't take accountability for their crimes, then they aren't really doing the work needed to heal their "soul", their integrity, their own ability to be a good person, to rebuild trust or help heal the ones they hurt. Getting a gym membership doesn't heal infidelity. If you take a pile of dog poop and decorate it with icing, it's not a cake. Until you work on the core problem, you are just putting icing on the problem and hoping others will eat it.

What is the healthiest communication strategy to help a WS face themselves while protecting myself?

There is a very old saying about leading a horse to water... At the end of the day, there is NOTHING you can do to help you WS face themselves until they are willing to do so themselves, and even then, it still takes dedication, drive, determination, effort, courage, fortitude, and a willingness to fail a thousand times, in order to heal.

Think of what it is like to heal from a shattered knee. Would it heal any faster if 1000 doctors were on the case? Would it heal any faster if you put a million dollars into healing it? Would it heal any faster if you loved the person as much as you can? The truth is, a knee heals at its own pace. There is nothing you can do to change that. Now, that being said, there are lots of things that can be done to slow or stop the healing. If the person keeps trying to walk on it anyway, they'll just keep re-injuring it. If they don't go to therapy and do the work, it could heal incorrectly or not at all. Not acknowledging and owning their infidelity is like not acknowledging that a knee is broken. It can't heal, even at its own pace, until the damaging behavior stops, and the healing behavior begins. That's on your WS. In order to heal, they have to work at it, every single day, and put up with the fact that it will still hurt for a long time, that it will have days where it feels worse rather than better, days where you want to give up, days where it seems hopeless. Taking ownership of that healing is the only real solution.

I'm wondering if blocking her and going almost no contact with her is the healthiest route.

. If she is the right woman for me she will figure it out on her own and she can send an email that makes it plainly obvious she understands and takes full responsibility for her actions and chooses me and is 100% faithful to me and does everything to make me feel safe.

Until something changes, then nothing has changed. You hit the nail on head all by yourself here. She is still NOT safe to be with, for the simple fact that she has not acknowledged and owned who she really is and what she's done. I think your second quote here is perfect. I'm not sure what is best or safest for her, but I can clearly tell you that she is not healthy or safe for you, and so keeping a healthy distance is the only way to help ensure your own safety.

Look, you can be her cheerleader. You can maybe even be her coach. You can send her articles, recommend a new therapy group, praise her for the progress made, etc. But what you can't do is go down the rabbit hole with her. In another recent post, I compared it to sending in a check to save an animal in a shelter. It's one thing to say, "Aww, poor puppy" and send in a check. That's a way of helping the puppy without getting too involved. You don't go down to the shelter and clean the dog's crap out of the cage. You don't hold the dog when it cries. That's too much, that's too involved. It's the same here. Encourage your WS, and let them know what YOU need from them in order to even consider letting your walls down a little. But that's it. You protect yourself, and let them do the work needed.

What would have helped you the most in this situation?

This WAS us. My wife did everything she could to help me heal, to her own detriment. The more she tried to heal me, the more excuses and justifications I came up with, and the more she got hurt. Her willingness to try and help me heal, in my mind, only made me think that there was really nothing wrong with who I was or what I did, and that's not a recipe for accountability. Instead, it prompted me to blame shift, sometimes to her, sometimes to my health, sometimes to other things going on in life. It wasn't until she detached from me, and did a 180, and kept at it, that I started to change. It left me feeling alone, and scared, and that was awful, yes. I saw her not only healing on her own, but moving on with her life without me, and that terrified me. It made me face the fact that I had to change something. She certainly wasn't going to stay with me if I didn't change. And if she did leave, and I hadn't changed, then any future attempts at relationships would be just as broken. To be honest, I was terrified at the thought of being alone for the rest of my life, I was terrified of destroying a new relationship, and I was terrified of her staying and me destroying her even more. There was no "winning" path forward, other than healing. So it became a "do or die" situation for me. (To be fair, I was proud of her for moving on. Even in my broken state, I knew she was healing, growing, and living her own life and finding her own joy. I was envious of that, and wished I could do the same, but I never blamed her. I knew deep down inside that nothing she was doing was what she would have chosen to do had I not cheated. I could either accept that, or do something about it. That was what drove me then, and to some degree, what still motivates me now.)

But then I wonder if this is doing the opposite of what I hope for and by cutting off contact is hurting the chances of reconciliation. Breaking it down, one thing I think is for certain is hanging out with her is completely out of the question if she is actively talking to seeing another man and isn't 100% committed to me.

Let's be honest here. Her seeing another man is what is hurting reconciliation, not cutting her off.

Another old saying is that, "Being angry at someone is like drinking poison and then waiting for them to die". That's not how it works. Similarly, leaving the door open to an actively cheating spouse and hoping they'll suddenly see 'how much you love them' and change, never, ever works. It just makes you a doormat. Imagine if your boss kept paying you even when you stopped working, hoping that one day you'll tire of getting free money for nothing and see the value in working hard again. It will never happen. If you stop working, your boss fires your ass, and you'll never work there again without giving them a damn good reason to even reconsider it. Same here.

I would suggest that you put your efforts into living your best life, into finding joy again, into leaning into loving yourself and moving on. The marriage is over. Period. Done. And if a new relationship is to ever exist between you two, it will HAVE to be on her to make the necessary changes first. I'm sorry if that thought is hurtful. It sucks. This whole thing sucks. The best motivation that you can offer her is to simply model for her what a healthy person, who has integrity and who loves themselves, does to heal and move forward. If she was putting in the effort to be a better person, we might not be having this conversation right now. If she wants to be together again then she'll need to step up to the plate and catch up to you where you are at first. But don't let that deter you. Sleep well knowing that you've done all you can for her, and have nothing to feel shame or blame about. Joy will come again when you love yourself even more than you feel sorry for her. Since she's busy with yet another AP... sounds like she's making her choice already.

hikingout

You’re one of the most helpful posters here for me in being a fWW that has deep clarity on the condition, what it all meant, and healing yourself. Thank you for your reply and all your posts.

DaddyDom

I’ve read a few of your posts on this site and you also have obviously done so much work as a fWH. Thank you so much for your reply.

——————

I’m sticking to keeping her blocked, email only about children, and ignoring in person during the quick children exchanges. What you both said is on point and helped assure me in the choice I’ve made. I do feel strongly that this almost no contact IS the healthiest form of communication for me and even her. It’s been only been a month and half since DDay2 and I’ve have had a lot of ups and down emotionally which is normal. This 180 I’m doing is a detox for me and I will be steadfast and patient in the healing that is taking place. Great things to come and greatness is already here now because I’m getting better now.

Many many thanks to you both.

After more marination and clarity I am letting it go. I am unblocking and allowing communication via phone, text, and in person again. Keeping her blocked only focuses and keeps my anger active and brings major disappointment when it doesn't do what I want. I let go of my wanting to be with someone who actively hurts me. I am in control of myself and I keep myself protected during communication so I am not hurt anymore. I love myself and take care of myself and support myself.

Do you think that in most cheating pairs there is usually one person who would like the thing to move into an actual committed relationship (either in the present or the future) and one person who is content for things to run their course and end, or just continue on while they have cake and eat it too, but not advance any further than just cheating?

Yes and most often the one who wants more is the woman and the cake eaters are the men. It can happen outside of Gender norms but women tend to cheat for emotional connection while men for sex. Both usually want to know they’ve still got it, but what signals that to them is different.

Waywards,
Thank you always for your honest responses. They have been incredibly helpful to me.
Question:
Some of you have said when you look back, you realize the affair relationship was a fantasy, AP didn’t really love you and vice versa, and your eyes were finally opened to the reality of the affair. How long after you started R did you come to this realization?
It’s been about 12 months since WH’s affair ended. AP dumped him after 15 months of LTA. He says what he did is wrong. And he’s doing many of right things to heal us. BUT!!! When i ask him about the affair, he says they did have some good times. He doesn’t remember them with fondness but those "good times" haven’t been tainted by the fact that they hurt me. He’s sorry he did them and wants to make things better.

He also says sex with AP was good at times. He believes it was because it was new and exciting. And because they couldn’t do it often.
It frustrates and worries me because i wish he would say what some waywards here say. Things like i never loved her. It was all bullshit. I cringe with disgust when i think about her and the affair.
Any thoughts?

cedarwoods,

I say this gently: It sounds like your husband is being very honest and open with you. As time goes by and he continues to do the work, his feelings about the AP and the A will diminish even more. He'll be able to see that the "good times" weren't good at all, and it seems he is already halfway there, unless I'm misunderstanding what you wrote.

My BW and I just started our 5th year of R. I reached the point a ways back where I wish neither good nor ill toward my APs. Any memory of them passes quickly and I move on with my day. I learned in IC how to handle memories like that. Your WH will reach that point too.

Do you think that in most cheating pairs there is usually one person who would like the thing to move into an actual committed relationship (either in the present or the future) and one person who is content for things to run their course and end, or just continue on while they have cake and eat it too, but not advance any further than just cheating?

Stillconfused2022,

I can only answer from my own experience. I was absolutely a cake eater and so was the last AP I was in a PA with. She worked in my area but lived several hundred miles away. I was her "fun" during the week before she would return home each weekend. Three of the four women I had PAs with fell into this category.

The long-term EAP I was with was more of the relationship seeker. She was the one who outed me to my wife after I cut things off very curtly.

Was there real passion with the ap and you?

I only ask because he just doesn't have any passion for me. I have tried to speak to him about my needs with this. But he says he doesnt feel sexy and so he isn't so interested. When I bring up questions about the A he still feels so guilty and it pushes him back to his guilt and so he doesnt want to. But I need it.

I just dont think he truly wants to be with me. Should I trust that what he issuing above it true? HE just cant get past that? This is such a hard conversation to have so I dont bring it up very often. But then I think he feels like cos I'm not saying anything then I'm ok. Its just so hard.

Has any ws gone through this? my gut tells me its all excuses, him being busy with work, kids stuff.. but he has time to play comp games .. for the distraction...

Was there real passion with the ap and you?

I only ask because he just doesn't have any passion for me. I have tried to speak to him about my needs with this. But he says he doesnt feel sexy and so he isn't so interested. When I bring up questions about the A he still feels so guilty and it pushes him back to his guilt and so he doesnt want to. But I need it.

I just dont think he truly wants to be with me. Should I trust that what he issuing above it true? HE just cant get past that? This is such a hard conversation to have so I dont bring it up very often. But then I think he feels like cos I'm not saying anything then I'm ok. Its just so hard.

Has any ws gone through this? my gut tells me its all excuses, him being busy with work, kids stuff.. but he has time to play comp games .. for the distraction...

Squish,

To me, passion is the self-giving that my BW and I share and it starts long before the bedroom. My PAs were nothing but cheap, tawdry encounters in houses, apartments, and hotel rooms.

So to answer your first question, there was no passion in any of my As. Lust, yes. Passion, no. It was playacting to selfishly meet our sexual "needs" and nothing more.

Guilt is a tough one. I still struggle with it at times, but now I can talk very openly with my BW about it and it always leads to a good discussion, whether about my As or anything else. And it was a struggle to get there. For the first year of R, it would overwhelm me and gradually lessened over time. My BW has told me that there were times she really wanted to bring something up but wouldn't because it would send me into a spiral. What I eventually realized in IC was that I was using it as a shield to hide my vulnerability, which for me was just continuing my wayward behavior. Deflection, wall-building, passive aggressive BS, all of these were part of the toolkit I carried around for year as a master conflict avoider, and those tools needed to be thrown out for good.

I'm not saying this is the case with your WH and I'm not sure how long you have been in R, but I do see some similarities between him and I.

How do you reconcile the person you were during the A?

Do you say "that's not who I am" and try to continuously live a life of integrity?

Or do you say "that is who I am capable of being" and try to stay vigilant on examining yourself for slipping back to that person?