SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I’d like to invite WOES to respond and clarify her comment and then politely ask the T/J to end. Anyone is welcome to start a new thread.

Thank you, IH. I'm sorry for participating in the T/J on your happy post.

Inkhulk,

I too, apologize for the TJ. I get so heated when I see someone raining on one’s good days that sometimes (okay often) I struggle to stay quiet. That being said, I am so happy you had a positive breakthrough with your wife. I hope the bad days are less and the good ones increase in frequency. 👍

All infidelity is real, I’m fairly certain every living BS on the planet understands that. I know I do.

Here is what I also know, every A is built on a house of lies. WS, AP lie to themselves, to each other, to their spouses and whoever else gets in the way during the A.

So maybe instead of dying on a hill of semantics — maybe words better utilized are healthy v. non-healthy relationship and be substituted for "real" as needed.

That aside, I don’t know a single person who tells people it isn’t real to make them feel better. I know, because even when I knew the A was built on bullshit, it did NOT make any of my very real pain go away.

For that tiny percentage of A’s that become healthy and they stay together, it doesn’t get healthier until they ditch the people they’re married to.

Not many healthy A relationships overall, I know my wife’s A was both real and very hurtful and again, extremely unhealthy.

Ultimately, when I say the A wasn’t ‘real’ I mean, it wasn’t anything either of them could brag about. If they thought they were being good people, they wouldn’t have hid away from the world.

Healthy relationships live in the light, infidelity is all about pretending it doesn’t exist.

I think we're all getting hung up on the semantics.

Yes.

And none of it matters.

What matters is..his wife is becoming brave,and honest. And, it return, IH is finding peace.

That's what matters.

How come it's always InkHulk's posts that blow up?

You’re the OG, you tell me

What matters is..his wife is becoming brave,and honest. And, it return, IH is finding peace.

I agree.

Any moment that allows IH to heal some is a good one.

Oh, lord. I'm never going to escape that moniker, am I?

Oh, lord. I'm never going to escape that moniker, am I?

Not as long as I’m around, anyway

In order to take the plunge, a WS has to trust their AP on some level, even if that trust is misplaced.

Fair enough.

It is funny (strange not haha) how we can who and what we trust and manage to justify it during an affair. I didn’t and felt I couldn’t trust my husband when he told me he loved me, yet I trusted someone very untrustworthy, justifying it by thinking my husband was obligated and the AP was taking huge risks to be with me therefor I could trust in what he said.

In the end, my judgement was completely backwards and I think that the trust had in my AP would have been short lived. Any fears and insecurities that kept me from trusting my husband would trickle to anyone else I would be with until I could fix me.

The bromide that "affairs are not real relationships" is just Happy Talk that too many WS use to minimize their actions in some way. It's Wayward Thinking. It is also the type of thinking that too many BS use to try to justify R in their minds.

You are insulting me and the work we have done to reconcile. I might take offense but I understand that the bar you expect of WS’s is far too high for a human to reach. That’s ok, it wasn’t for you. I only ask that you respect that others are working to try to reconcile. It’s not "Happy Talk" or fodder that gets them through it.

What I mean by not a "real relationship" is that I am able to see it for what it was. It was secretive and toxic in every way. That specific pairing would have a difficult time surviving the light of day. I think most affairs would. An affair does live inside a bubble. The only way out of that bubble is to expose the affair. There is only so far it can go. It either stays stagnant as an affair or gets exposed and ends or the two APs try to make a go of it. You can not advance the relationship unless it’s exposed. But I believe these are semantics. The point was trust and I feel that it’s impossible to have the same level of trust with an AP than you do in a healthy marriage.

I believe that Ink Hulk and the Mrs. are trying to work towards a deep and meaningful trust vs a blind trust or just throwing caution to the wind.

That takes time. That takes consistency. That takes vulnerability.

Being able to recognize moving in the right direction is a good step towards that goal.

My apologies Ink Hulk. I do find it frustrating at times when thoughts, intentions, and words are projected onto your wife. I feel she is very much trying to make positive change.

My one goal on here is to convince BHs away from making a decision that will ruin tye rest of their lives, such as staying with a woman who has already proven herself severely disloyal. And part of this includes calling out wrong takes. There are just way too many sad threads in this forum written by too many sad men.

I'm not here to make friends or to not offend anyone. So if anyone finds what I say insulting or offensive then perhaps don't bother engaging with me. It probably wasn't really meant for you anyway.

Anyways InkHulk I will do my best to respect in my posts that you are in R, as much as I can (see my top paragraph)

As always, I appreciate hearing all the thoughts you all care to share, no apologies were needed here. I love the opportunity this forum gives us all to talk and work these complex thoughts out.

My personal take is that WOES’s first hand descriptions of her experiences have been some of the most helpful in me understanding the non-logical (no offense, WOES!) thought processes happening in real time during an A. I think we should see it as a gift that she (and others) have done the work to see it, describe it, and make that known to us. It does no good to try to retrospectively try to apply logic to it, not when she is telling us it was super illogical in the first place! So thank you again WOES for your wisdom and bravery here.

And WBFA, I continue to invite you to boldly speak your mind. Your level of respectfulness is "good enough" for me I will say that in your passion for protecting BH’s from pain, it seems to me that you are not taking into account the beautiful stories of R that are told here. OldWounds just posted a heart warming long term update. I’m not denying the existence of the heart wrenching "I’m back" threads, my heart breaks for them and they give me a healthy fear as I move forward. But pain and agony are not guaranteed to be the end of an R attempt, and if you can’t genuinely acknowledge that, I’d challenge you to investigate your own confirmation biases. Cause tough love goes both ways.

It really does seem like something has broken thru for us. We’ve decided that asking and answering questions is best done in writing. It gets the information across but it takes an emotional edge off, for both of us. She answering my questions quickly at this point, including ones with what sexual details I want to know. She is staying emotionally regulated in the face of things that would have sent her down a shame spiral in the past. I submitted the last of my backlog of questions this morning. It feels incredibly hopeful to me this morning. The last time I was anywhere close to this was just before the big lie came out, so I’ve got a sense of foreboding in the back of my mind, but big picture I’m really excited about life right now.
On top of that, I had an IC session yesterday. Started to dive into that sea of childhood trauma for myself. I can see now that my own abandonment trauma acted so destructively in concert with her sexual trauma. Just a perfect anxious/avoidant demon dance. Friends, I’m daring to hope for something so much better than what we had before.

She is staying emotionally regulated in the face of things that would have sent her down a shame spiral in the past.

Not that you or your wife needs my approval, but this, of all the things you've written, is the most promising development, as it shows a willingness to push through discomfort and communicate, rather than igniting a conflagration of her own emotions in order to keep you out. It also shows just how you've been doing at persistently advocating for yourself.

How come it's always InkHulk's posts that blow up?

I actually thought about this and I think it's because your posts always bring up a lot of complicated issues about the nature of infidelity and the course of reconciliation, which naturally, inspire debate.

Friends, I’m daring to hope for something so much better than what we had before.

This may be my favorite sentence that I’ve read today.

IC helped me too. I do think a key to a successful R is making oneself much stronger and as well adjusted as is possible in the modern world.

But when people ask, how can a marriage be better after an A — this is the stuff that makes it better. Two partners who make a choice based on love, and not fear, and rebuild the relationship as healthier souls.

I’m quite convinced that despite my wife’s and my best intentions, pre-A we had no clue what healthy love was — we don’t like that it took the horror show of infidelity to learn about love in the harshest possible way — but it’s the path we’re on.

Very happy your direction has some positive moments to build on!

And WBFA, I continue to invite you to boldly speak your mind. Your level of respectfulness is "good enough" for me tongue I will say that in your passion for protecting BH’s from pain, it seems to me that you are not taking into account the beautiful stories of R that are told here. OldWounds just posted a heart warming long term update. I’m not denying the existence of the heart wrenching "I’m back" threads, my heart breaks for them and they give me a healthy fear as I move forward. But pain and agony are not guaranteed to be the end of an R attempt, and if you can’t genuinely acknowledge that, I’d challenge you to investigate your own confirmation biases. Cause tough love goes both ways.

I am glad InkHulk that YOU are taking my posts in the spirit upon which they are intended!

Someone said on here in this thread that I have a bar of superhuman effort that WS must meet. Damn straight I do. The WS has to convince the BS that he the BS is indeed her first choice, and in light of her previous actions, this is extremely hard and perhaps impossible. I mean, she already broke her vows before, why should the BS believe her this time. This goes double if WS said ILY to AP, and maybe even double again if AP dumped WS after D-Day. How the hell is WS supposed to convince BS, after all that went down, that BS is WS's real first choice, and that BS is not just a backup e.g., second respectable choice? And why the hell should BS even believe WS, after all that went down?

Anyways 'the affair is not real'-bromide strikes me a rationalization and a lie--to give sort of a (false) way out from the above dilemma e.g., rugsweeping of sorts: 'Yeah I said I ILY and AP and I talked about running off together but it was make-believe--affairs are not real!' As if.

Anyways IH I am happy that you are happy! I do hope, that if R is what you truly have your heart set on, that you and Mrs IH are able to be a success story.

[This message edited by WontBeFooledAgai at 7:20 PM, Friday, December 1st]

This seems like a good time to mention that boundaries - setting them and respecting them - are a very important part of healthy relationships.

Someone said on here in this thread that I have a bar of superhuman effort that WS must meet. Damn straight I do.

I get it. I really do. I’ve had all the "do you REALLY love me", and "am I your plan B" that every BS experiences. But honestly man, as someone who might just be coming out the other side of that, it didn’t dissipate by imposing impossible standards on her. From your vantage point, it might look like that is what is called for, even what justice demands. But mercy triumphs over justice. To choose the road of R, for me, it was looking down the road and having a vision of a beautiful future, with both of us thriving and loving. Then the question was, is there a path to getting there? I decided very early on that me sitting on my ass and watching her "move mountains" was not going to be it. I set minimum standards, like NO RUGSWEEPING, real truth, no blame deflection. I decided I was willing to be patient, AND I decided that I was going to partner with her in rebuilding. Not doing it all for her, but I needed to be active. Matching her efforts, giving her encouragement and hope that she it was going to be worth all the shame and humiliation and pain she was going to have to walk thru. This is my opinion, take it for what it’s worth, but to BS’s out there that want to R, I think we need to be more like the welcoming father in the parable of the prodigal son, and not the older brother. She’s coming back from the dead, let’s fucking celebrate.

This seems like a good time to mention that boundaries - setting them and respecting them - are a very important part of healthy relationships.

Would you be willing to elaborate? I’m not immediately following where this fits in.