SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Did many of you get the "We never wanted to, or meant to hurt you" comment. Sometimes the more I think of this the more pissed off I get. My heads response is "Right, but you two sure as shit didn't give a rats ass what it would do to me". No real reason for posting this other than to vent. Thank you all for being here in support of all we deal with on a daily basis.

Yes. My WH says that still, a lot.

The thing that bothers me in my head about it is that it makes it sound like it was an unintentional thing. But it wasn’t.

I explain it to him like this- (my convo with him) you are not safe because when you are anxious or sad or whatever, you unloose atom bombs on other people. Your lack of intent does not affect the fact that you unloosed an atom bomb on me.

Perhaps you think the lack of premeditation makes it a lesser crime, but it does not. It just proves you are even more unsafe than a premeditated murderer. Because you lack insight into your destructive abilities to ruin my life.

Until you make me feel like your first thought is my safety, even when you are feeling your feelings, my safety must be your obsession and preoccupation at all times and this must be said to me preemptively when I might be feeling unsafe- until you present things with my safety foremost in your mind to me, you will be unsafe.

Because your lack of insight makes you unsafe and uninsightful as well, which is even worse than just being an asshole. You are also unaware that you are an asshole. I would feel that I have more to work with when you have a basic understanding of your character flaws.

So now I’m the idiot whisperer, both having to describe your hurtful behavior to you because you don’t see it, as well as offer suggestions of how to fix it.

That’s unfortunate because I’m not sure I have that amount of work in me to feel safe. Easier instead to just remove the idiot with the atom bombs in his pockets who drops them with no notice on a random impulsive whim. I’d almost rather be with someone who premeditatively ruins my life. At least they are aware that I am a person with feelings.

Good luck. It’s your WS trying to minimize and avoid accountability. And that’s bullshit.

Introduce his feet to the fire.

The only response to that is, "OK, so what would you have done if you meant to hurt me? Because it couldn’t possibly be worse than this."

Whether it was a murder, or a manslaughter doesn't really matter to the dead person. It only matters to the perpetrator. It's like dropping a bomb on a street full of people, then saying "I didn't mean to kill anyone". It's like driving under the influence, then saying "I didn't mean to cause an accident". It's like starting a fire in a forest on a dry, windy day, then saying "I didn't mean to cause a wildfire". Well, maybe you didn't mean to cause all of that. But the real problem is, you didn't mean NOT to cause that. While I do believe many WSs really don't want to hurt the BSs (actually, they are so self-centered that they don't even consider the BSs), the real problem is that they don't want NOT to hurt the BSs.

Intentions are lies, they are stories we tell ourselves to reduce accountability. No one can see what our intentions are. The drunk driver who killed somebody never intended to kill them.

Actions speak louder.

I don’t tolerate when WW says "I never intended to have an affair" or my favorite "I never intended to go back to him". I tell her that her actions prove her wrong and she needs to own, and that both statements aren’t true because her actions prove her true intentions.

While I agree, the pain exists no matter what, for me, it did help knowing I wasn’t intentionally hurt. For example, my father was killed in a car accident. The other driver was at fault. He was emotionally absorbed in his day and sped through an intersection. He has to live with that forever. Had he intentionally killed my father I’d absolutely wish he’d spend the rest of his days in emotional and physical anguish. The fact that yes, he chose to drive while being an emotional basket case, but had no desire to hurt anyone gives me compassion and forgiveness for him. I know many disagree with me and that’s okay. I was told " I never wanted it to hurt you and hoped you’d never know. And it had nothing to do with you or our relationship" And oddly, it did help to know that it was just a huge flaw in him. Don’t get me wrong, I needed to see work completed on that flaw before any form of trust was to be rebuilt, but again, that had nothing to do with me. My self esteem never took a hit.

Copingmynrst. You are heard. In the first months after my WW revealed the depths of the betrayal and the decades of toxic secrets, all I too heard from her was " I am so sorry, I hurt you" which to.my ears wss tantamount to saying " I'm sorry that you found out details I could no.longer hide" and with the very real.prospect of dna discrepancies from the Ancestry kit Christmas gift I was about to.mail to.our son, she gave me the abridged and bowdlerized version of her infidelities.
Affairs don't just happen, it's not a passive thing, you actively, knowingly and willingly cross boundaries making lots of small and large decisions which bring you.into a sexual and potentially emotional relationship outside of the marriage.
The I never meant to hurt you crock of crap is more deflection, just another way of saying I don't accept responsibility for my actions. No! Everybody has agency and autonomy, it's otherwise just a pitiful attempt to say that I'm so weak, I couldn't help doing what I did. I don't buy it.Sure, you can feel an attractive and mutual chemistry with another person, but you don't have to act on the urge to connect. On a number of occasions, I too have felt the pull.of attraction to a woman at work, or on a business trip. However, as soon as I realized how close I was coming to.bumping up against a clearly established boundary, I made it very clear I was married and left.

I never got that comment as they (my WS and MOW) didi not care that they hurt me. Instead I got "This wouldn't of happened to you if you..."

Had sex with your husband (I was having sex with xWS a couple of times a week)

AND

If you weren't abusive to your husband ( I was not abusive but we did fight a lot, my xWS was the one who was abusive to me)

What's dumb about that statement is EVERYONE knows cheating hurts the betrayed or they wouldn't be hiding it from them. Is that statement supposed to soften the blow or excuse their behavior somehow. To betray someone is hurtful and abusive and EVERYONE knows this at a logical level otherwise you could be a psychopath I guess.

The phrase that got me from my own xWS was that he thought I didn't love him anymore. Ok so then cheating is the answer?

I won't ever tolerate cheating again. I won't give a first or second chance it will be over. Life is too short and I know what is involved to R and it's just too much.

When I think back my WH has never actually said this to me BUT has said ‘I didn’t think of you at all or what consequences would come from it’. I was not a fan of hearing this either and I think my reply was ‘ are you that fucking dumb’! 🤦🏽‍♀️

This statement alone showed me what a selfish and emotionally void POS my WH was.

I have found it hard to not get really angry at some of the statements he has said post D-Day.

"We never wanted to, or meant to hurt you"

The operative word here is 'WE'. The WS implies that they are still in the same team with the AP.

Actually, however way it is worded, it will always hurt.... They may not have consciously wanted to hurt their BS, but they know deep down in their subconscious that they are hurting their BS.

So the validity of the above quote is bogus (unless the WS are sociopaths, then that would be another whole kettle of fish).

I can understand that.

I don’t think of it as I unintentionally hurt him.

I knew my actions might end my marriage. I should have just asked for the divorce.

However, I did not intentionally traumatize him. I didn’t know it was even a thing. Many ws, including myself convince themselves that their spouse doesn’t love them. Especially when they’re re. Lot of unstated expectations in the relationships.

Today the big thing is to say "if he wanted to he would", and that is the biggest fallacy that I could ever point at if he doesn’t even know what you think he would or should do!

But, I will add that people who have affairs often spend very little time considering their spouse at all. I don’t think most say "I will show him, I will have an affair. He needs to hurt!"

But all actions have consequences and whether the ws kidded themselves or not the consequences are obviously very real.

On a side note, I said something to this effect to someone in a thread the other day about reconciliation. I was talking about his actions when I said "sometimes we all hurt people unintentionally" but I was not referring to myself. I don’t know if this has to do with that but I rewrote that part to be clearer because I was taking about he didn’t mean to do something.

I just want to clarify that I don't believe wayward spouses normally intend to consciously hurt or bring additional pain and stress to their betrayed partners. It's the casual, poorly thought out, often off Tue cuff remarks that hurt the most especially when offered in apology. Sometimes it just would have been a better idea to say nothing at all.
I have asked my WW to never repeat the " I never meant to hurt you" mantra. As Hikingout mentioned, wayward are so absorbed by the excitement and flooded with neurotransmitters that the betrayed spouse barely registers in their thoughts at all.And certainly at the time, my WW was so deeply involved with her AP that whenever she rarely thought of me it was only as an annoying impediment and obstacle to more frequent enjoyment of his company and the sexual.pleasure she experienced with him.
More painful in my opinion was the cruelty, the disdain, disrespect and vilification that she showed me as the affair deepened and grew longer. Stupid naive and ever trusting, I completely misunderstood what was happening. In real time. In many ways, he secrecy and the cruelty are.much harder for me to forgive than the affair itself. The culprit may well be the large drop in serotonin as the dopamine and oxytocin levels increase in the wayward's brain and it.may well be.unintentional, but still sure as he'll hurts a lot, even decades.later.

I have to agree with rocketracoon the WE is the major trigger word

There is a sense in which the WW is forever linked to the OM. This varies from one affair to another

My WW has never said anything negative about OM1.

Even knowing that my WW is a people pleaser does not make it more palatable.

Well said, vocalion.

I understand and "get" what Vocalion is saying. I know about the dopamine rush and all of it's effects. But as Survus has mentioned, it's the "We" in that statement that tells me they were a team. And my WW has never said a bad thing about her AP either other than she wouldn't want to be with him because he has his own issues.

[This message edited by Copingmybest at 9:52 AM, Friday, June 14th]

My WW used the "I never meant to hurt you" phrase after DDay. It was her way to absolve and minimize her actions. Adding the "I didn't think you loved me" (despite my actions and words that said otherwise) for the blame shift.
We hadn't discussed the affair until just briefly over Memorial Day. She stated that she "didn't seek him out" and that I wasn't spending enough time with her and the family. 8 years post DDAY and she still minimizes and blame shifts.
I feel your pain and you've been heard.

Copingmybest: the use of the plural "we" in that statement also struck me as a pretty obvious " tell" about the wayward's thinking and priorities. A very, very long time has elapsed since my WW's first and most serious affair in which she truly fell in love with the AP, who like in another current thread in JFO, was a surgeon. Almost predictably, he wss a wealthy man with a deeply engrained sense of entitlement and privilege who went through a series of nurses and other willing females and generated powerful emotions in my WW. IMO there is nothing more despicable and cowardly than a man who knowingly and deliberately creates powerful feelings of love and attachment in a married woman while having zero desire to leave his own wife and family. He is betraying two families for the sexual conquest and thrill of serial.infidelity.
It took a long time for my WW to realize how she had been used for sexual pleasure by a man who despite his affluent lifestyle and wealth, never wined and dined her at exclusive restaurants, never took her on expensive trips and gave her one gift during a 15 month long affair: a cheap set of earrings of a style she dislikes, and would have never bought for her if he really knew her or cared. My WW recently told me that she can't believe she destroyed so.much in our relationship in exchange for so little and how she had so deeply wounded me to be this POSOM's sexual relief appliance in after work hookups in his on-call room at the hospital where they worked in the same department.
Things will never be as good as they could have been between us, even so, I made a fully informed, conscious decision to stay and try to create something new in our marriage. It is a daily struggle, with two steps forward and one back, but I don't regret my choice which was predicated on her giving me the entire messy truth.

What it says is "we were only thinking of ourselves". It’s also minimizing. I told her not to say that to me.

Unless they were walking down the street and their genitalia accidentally fell into each, it was intentional.

Yes, and no in my case.

My FWS said it, and I learned in counseling that this is often true.

She wasn't really thinking about me and didn't care about me one way or the other at first.

At some point there was began a villainization of me, during the cheating, and which continued for years afterward, including in counseling.

Her attempting to explain her cheating/having cheated was my fault, because I was "(BLANK)", fill in the blank with any number of things she said only one of which was actually true, and I deserved what she did, before, during, and after, as well as the pain and stress.

During the affair she said she began to "hate" me.

Mostly, it was "I'm going to have fun, do what I want, you can take it or leave it".

The only thing that was really true that she accused me of?

Being tired on my first day off after a 4 day workweek.

True. I admit it. 4 day workweeks, long commute, and 4 children from age 1 to age 8 really did wear me down. I was such a pussy compared to the AP who only worked part time and wasn't taking care of his kids. I'm so glad they didn't want to hurt me, it could have been very stressful if they had!

The point is not that they did it without malice.

The point is they did it without regard.

We were insignificant. Not even worth the thought. ("I didn’t think…")

And I have absolutely no idea why they think that somehow makes it better.