SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Totally unrelated thought, has anyone heard from Owl6118? I always appreciated his input and itd be great to hear from him if hes still around here.

Does that imply that we’ve learned that it wasn’t worth it? Genuine question, I’m really curious how others might see this dichotomy

It depends on entirely on each person's circumstances. If sticking it out, even with an unremorseful spouse, meant holding it together for long enough to see kids off to college or provide a sense of peace after "trying everything", then I suppose it would be worth it.

But if you wasted valuable years of fertility (like me) or stuck it out only to be rewarded with more Ddays, an OC, STDs, etc.... then no, I don't think the "wisdom" incurred from going through this experience is worth the price paid for it.

It depends on entirely on each person's circumstances. If sticking it out, even with an unremorseful spouse, meant holding it together for long enough to see kids off to college or provide a sense of peace after "trying everything", then I suppose it would be worth it.

I guess we are never in the same place twice in life. As hikingout said, we are less likely (though not impossible) to have all the shared history or even kid considerations in the same way for a second betrayal. I don’t know, maybe when we tell ourselves we’d never do it again, maybe we are wrong and it’s all just fucked up and messy no matter what.

TrayDee

The BS has to attempt to process emotions that they'd rather run from. Hurt, anger, betrayal, disappointment, disgust, frustration, resentment, sadness, pain, fear, just to get an attempt at R off the ground. A BS is exhausted as soon as the work starts.

They have to do this in the presence of the person who they believed would not hurt them in this way...the person who they vowed to spend the rest of their days with, and care for until life ceased...at a time when they have recently discovered that this same person had hurt them and betrayed them in the most calloused manner imaginable.

True that. AND you have to try and keep it together for your profession and continue to function in other rolls like parent if you have kids.

there still is a high likelihood that the BS will NEVER fully recover. 

I agree with this. The way I refer to recovery/healing is " majorative healing/recovery". I dont think you ever heal 100% The hit is just too traumatic. There is a poster here who said that he would still have flashbacks a couple of times a year, thirty years after Dday. The best you can hope for is majorative healing.

Here is the crux of the issue.

A newly betrayed spouse, who is living in a completely distorted reality, not knowing who the person is that they have dedicated their life to..not knowing what has happened to their bombed out and depleted existence, not sure which way is up and which way is down....CANNOT POSSIBLY be able to count the cost of what R takes.

They can not count it years out. A new BS wants to get in a fix things without knowing what needs to be fixed and how much it costs. Most of us have had things in life we desperately wanted but could not afford the cost to obtain. R is no different.

The way I think of this is being at base camp at the bottom of a major mountain that youve never climbed. There is no way you know all its going to cost you in effort, exhaustion, mistakes, resources, etc. All you know as you stand there looking up is that you are up against the biggest challenge of your life and that it will take gargantuan effort to attempt the climb.

[This message edited by DobleTraicion at 3:40 AM, Thursday, July 25th]

Ink - I think it’s just like you say fucked up no matter what. I mean no one wants a divorce, even with someone you haven’t spent decades building a life with.

As for this:

our experience has shown us that the tribulation of trying to R isn’t worth the prize on the other end when factoring in the higher than we’d like probability of failure

I am not at all disagreeing- reconciliation can be a gamble. But my experience was it was worth the prize.

Not my cheating of course. That I would take back.

But sticking with it worked for us. I can d
Fully recognize it doesn’t work for everyone, and also the state of mind you must be in right now.

I think it’s probably the other for me- it changed me. And not just that, it’s just not how I want to spend the rest of my time on earth. I have learned peace is the best wealth a person can have. I am just no longer willing to sacrifice that to stay in a relationship. Some of that is probably age too, I think more things than just the infidelity have changed me and grown me.

our experience has shown us that the tribulation of trying to R isn’t worth the prize on the other end when factoring in the higher than we’d like probability of failure

I am not at all disagreeing- reconciliation can be a gamble. But my experience was it was worth the prize.

I’m going to do my best to tread lightly here, please forgive me if I execute it poorly.

I was careful to add the element of probability in my comment. I know you and others treasure the relationship that you painstakingly rebuilt, and no matter my mindset I would never want to disparage that. And yet, even with that treasure that you have experienced in first hand, you say you wouldn’t risk it again. My conclusion is that you (and others) are making some conscious or subconscious calculation that incorporates the goodness of the prize to be won, the pain of the path to get there, and the odds of picking the right door. (Where is This0Is0Fine when we need him?) And for as good as you find your marriage, that in itself is not enough for you to say you would enthusiastically do it again. And that says something to me.

I have learned peace is the best wealth a person can have. I am just no longer willing to sacrifice that to stay in a relationship.

And I love this. Perfectly said.

[This message edited by InkHulk at 3:55 AM, Thursday, July 25th]

And yet, even with that treasure that you have experienced in first hand, you say you wouldn’t risk it again

.

I think maybe I missed expressing a nuance in what I was trying to say.

I was acknowledging R is a risk. It is. The only thing we can control is ourselves and we can’t will another person to love us properly or fix their broken parts or even become more self aware.

But I wasn’t really saying I wouldn’t risk it again. I was saying I won’t do it again. To me the first statement is about calculating a result. Instead I am saying I don’t want to spend the time and energy again. Even if I thought the chances of reconciliation are high - it’s a huge commitment to go through. Time. Money. The long arduous talks where you want to pull your hair out.

With my husband, if he did it again that’s not even the same risk as I took the first time. (same can be said in reverse obviously)

The first time the possible rewards were high enough. I knew we are compatible, shared history, having our family time not be split, and I still loved him. The risk portion felt somewhat manageable: he had a great track record prior, he was remorseful, was doing the work, I felt pretty comfortable that he wouldn’t do it again (eventually). There was a lot to salvage in my mind. In fact, I felt I had nothing to lose because my life already was a dumpster fire. Perceived riskwas probably minimized through some sort of weird coping mechanism (or guilt or even maybe intuition- time will have to prove that)

So if he did it again, the risk of it happening again would seem higher, while the rewards would feel lower. Rebuilding trust would be infinitely harder, I want to barf trying to think about going back to marriage counseling, and honestly after all we have been through he will have lost all my respect. He still had some of it last time. The reward for staying doesn’t look as good in that scenario.

I think about what if something happened to him would I want to remarry,? That’s something I realize I have no way to predict. But I believe probably not. That is not really about infidelity, I don’t think I am afraid that will necessarily happen again. I don’t feel so jaded that I believe there are no good men left. I know lots of them. (Friends, family, etc) I think I am just more inclined to believe maybe I would find a companion, but one that likes to live at his own house. So when I think about that, no I don’t see a reason to go through it again to keep that sort of companion. Move on, there is no marriage, no shared address, maybe I love him and it hurts a while that it didn’t work out.

It’s less about the risk and more about the years of dedication and effort and pain. The feeling like you are with a stranger for a good portion of the process.it’s exhausting, and I think my willingness to put energy into that is simply depleted.

I absolutely think the results I got this time around was worth it. I just have a hard time envisioning another scenario in which it could be I guess. We have been together 30 years. That’s is more than half my life. Being able to stay with my person and find happiness is something I am proud of, excited about, and very very grateful for. It’s a chance I shouldn’t have had, and we have to remember that in the equation too. That I caused a lot of this.

I feel like I am just recently (maybe in the last year) getting to feel happy, free, and peaceful following six years of being consumed with healing and navigating in the muck. It simply feels like I have done my time and now that I am in this better place I treasure it too much to get back on that path again. I am good and whole on my own if that’s what is needed in order to keep that peace that I now value so much.

So not really risk, moreso life is short and it’s only getting shorter. I have a clear vision of trying to enjoy the rest of it as much as I can (in healthy ways of course :-)

[This message edited by hikingout at 6:26 AM, Thursday, July 25th]

DT- thanks for the kind words. It is salve sometimes to know that I helped someone because it takes a bad part of my life and at least gives it some purpose.

Owl is a wise man. He has never been a big poster. He is more of a lurker, but I too am fond of what he has to say. He came out of lurking a few times for me while I was trying to sort things out and provided me with direction. He is a deep thinker, and I do imagine he is still around at least some times. But if you look at his post count (I haven’t for a long time) my guess is despite his long presence here it wouldn’t surprise me to learn he hasn’t broken 50. I am gonna go look that up now because I am curious.

I stand corrected- he has 347 in the 10 years since he started. I know when I had exchanges years ago he was at a handful. Great poster.

I'll start where I'll end:

In posting on SI, it's best to share one's experience without projecting that experience onto someone else.

That point is not the probabilty of successful R, but rather, if you do attempt R, what is the long term probability that you can achieve and maintain an acceptable level of joy, happiness and fulfillment personally in the relationship. This is the crux imo.

our experience has shown us that the tribulation of trying to R isn’t worth the prize on the other end when factoring in the higher than we’d like probability of failure

My bet is that 'prize' should be 'price'.

Probability of R is absolutely irrelevant.

In the first place, we can't know probabilities unless we have good statistics, and we don't have good statistics, so no one knows the probabilities of success/failure of the various outcomes of infidelity. No one even knows how to define success and failure - you may think you know the definitions, but I'd bet you'd get disagreement if you laid yours out. (Back to: don't project!) Each of us has to define success and failure for themself.

Much more important is the fact that probabilities refer to outcomes of a large number of cases. Probabilities say NOTHING about individual cases. Each of us needs to look at our specific situation in all its qualities and make one's own specific decisions. There is no one size fits all. Sometimes, a one in a gazillion probability actually occurs.

The sooner a person remembers that probabilities do not affect specific cases - does not affect their specific situation in particular - the better for that person.

This is why I say that D should be the FIRST option considered, not the ONLY option, but the first.

What difference does it make what the BS considers first? I can't see any difference here. What's important is to consider as many options as one can think of, IMO.

The thing that most WS can not possibly understand, no matter how remorseful they are, is the Herculean, superhuman effort that it takes to even ATTEMPT to navigate R for a BS.

The BS has to attempt to process emotions that they'd rather run from. Hurt, anger, betrayal, disappointment, disgust, frustration, resentment, sadness, pain, fear, just to get an attempt at R off the ground. A BS is exhausted as soon as the work starts.
They have to do this in the presence of the person who they believed would not hurt them in this way...the person who they vowed to spend the rest of their days with, and care for until life ceased...at a time when they have recently discovered that this same person had hurt them and betrayed them in the most calloused manner imaginable./quote]

For me, R was much easier than I think D would have been. If I had thought D was easier, I probably would have chosen D.

I accept that recovery is difficult and extremely painful. Recovery requires processing and resolving emotions we'd rather run away from. But recovery is something we all have to go through no matter what resolution we choose.

Consider this: Because I stayed in the presence of my WS, I got support when I needed it. I got constant confirmation that she cheated because of her issues. I got constant confirmation that she loved me - confirmation that came via actions. I got answers to my questions, whenever I chose to ask. Also, I didn't have to go far for pleasure. None of that would have been available to me if I had dumped her.

there still is a high likelihood that the BS will NEVER fully recover. 

I dont think you ever heal 100% The hit is just too traumatic.

Well, what the fuck is 'full recovery? What the fuck is '100% healing'?

I expect we all experience multiple traumas in our lives - losses of loved ones and injuries at the very least. My W's A is one of several traumas I've had to process. Different triggers bring up memories of different traumas. I'm OK with saying I'm not 100% healed from my W's A, as long as you realize that's true for every trauma that I remember. Isn't that the nature of trauma?

The fact that the traumas are different isn't all that important to me. They all hurt. They all cause pain without end. Memories of any trauma can trigger at any time. Thankfully, the pain diminishes over time. My W's A is the worst thing I've had to deal with, but not by much.

YMMV - but that's my point. I chose R as the easiest path for me. If you don't see it as your easiest path, don't choose R. But recognize that your experience is yours. It will be similar to the experiences of many other people - and it will be dissimilar to those of many others. Don't project.

A newly betrayed spouse, who is living in a completely distorted reality, not knowing who the person is that they have dedicated their life to..not knowing what has happened to their bombed out and depleted existence, not sure which way is up and which way is down....CANNOT POSSIBLY be able to count the cost of what R takes.

You're implying that they CAN count the cost of D. I disagree totally - if a new BS can't count the cost of R, they can't count the true cost of D.

There are many attempted Rs described on this site, and frankly, many are gut wrenching enough to have made me consider D as more palatable if I were reading them as a newly betrayed H.

I don't see any problem with that, unless one makes their decision entirely on the basis of what other people say.

IMO, you'll heal a lot faster if you go for what you actually want than if you go for what other people tell you you should want.

I was acknowledging R is a risk.

D is also a risk.

I'll assume you're saying that it's very possible that R will not lead to the life you really want. IMO, one runs a similar risk with D and with deciding not to decide. Life is risky.

*****

I'm all for R, in theory. If R scares you, I think your best bet is to resolve the fear before making a decision, because I believe fear is a trap. I'd say the same - and said the same - to those who won't D because they fear it.

But if R doesn't seem worth the price, don't choose R. If R means swallowing excrement, don't choose R.

*****

Share your experience. Share your calculus. Share the value you place on specific behaviors or conditions or boundaries or whatever. All of that helps readers discover their own values and calculus and make their own decisions.

Just don't assume that your calculus works for other specific people.

*****

I'll apologize in advance for my own projecting. If you see it, confront it.

Hikingout, I appreciate your clarification as to not being willing to go through another hypothetical future R. Very understandale since youve walked through it twice both as a WS and BS. I am happy for you that youve reached this place:

I feel like I am just recently (maybe in the last year) getting to feel happy, free, and peaceful following six years of being consumed with healing and navigating in the muck. It simply feels like I have done my time and now that I am in this better place I treasure it too much to get back on that path again. I am good and whole on my own if that’s what is needed in order to keep that peace that I now value so much.

As to Owl, I have real appreciation for his posts that I that I have stumbled on over the years, none more than the one I posted on the Duplicity vs Cognitive Dissonance thread when I was trying to wrangle that one to the ground (you and others helped me there too). I ran across a post of his on another thread and quoted it on that thread. In it he was trying to give perspective to a WW and it both resonated and stuck with me to this day, so much so that I am going to repost it here as it may help someone who runs across this thread. He posted:

I'd like to offer you some things I learned the hard way that may be of help to you.

The first is the idea of compartmentalization.

When we give ourselves permission to do that which is deeply wrong and harmful to ourselves and those around us, we do so by putting it into a compartment. We wall off that self and what it is doing off from the rest of us. We put all the bad, secret stuff in the bad self compartment, and we pretend that compartment doesn't exist when we are in our normal life. We pretend there is no connection between the two. And we focus on all the good things we do in our normal good life to reassure ourselves that we are a good person.

Part of the work in front of you is tearing down your compartments. This is hard work. You built them lovingly, brick by brick, and put a lot of energy into maintaining them. Even now, when you are under such terrible stress, you are going to turn to them for comfort. The line of thought is, "but I was a good mother, a good friend, a good business partner. All the good stuff has to outweigh the bad."

And you will also think to yourself, now I will just throw out the person in the bad compartment. She will go away, I will be again and only the person in the good compartment, and that is how I will change and be safe.

It is important that you start to work against this line of thinking.

The hard truth is there never were two compartments, two yous, a bad secret you and a healthy real you. There was only ever you. The hard work now is accepting that all of it, the bad as well as the good, was you. Your choices, your needs put first.

One of the biggest reasons that you have to fight with yourself to tear down this wall between the compartments is becuause that wall does not exist for your husband and your kids. They are going to be struggling to understand how you could "pretend," as they see it, when you were with them, to be someone you weren't really. They will not accept any answer that starts with "that was not the real me." They will want to understand how you could live with them while hiding so much, that would affect them so much when the truth came out.

The only way to answer them is after the compartment comes down. It won't come overnight. Your consellor will help you.

For the short run, I just want you to recognize that all those "but I did this, that, the third thing in my good self compartment" are ultimately not going to help. They will offer you a hit of short-term comfort, but they are not going to help you understand who you really are, or understand what you need to change about yourself.

The other point I want to raise for you to think about is empathy. I sometimes think all affairs are, at bottom, a catapstrophic failure of empathy.

When we are functioning as well-integrated people with a well-functioning emotional range, our sense of empathy is sharpest for those closest to us. A very clear statement of this is the old cliche, "cut him or her, I bleed." When you first bonded with your husband and I imagine for many years thereafter, this would have been and I am sure was true for you too. The thought of an affair would have been repulsive, because the very thought of it would have caused you to feel, like an advance echo, his pain, if you were to betray him. Imagining his pain would have caused you pain. Cut him, you bleed.

In an affair the first thing that happens, long before other boundaries are crossed, is that natural flux of empathy for your life partner gets attenuated. ... You still think of him being cut--that after all is why affairs are kept hidden--but you don't FEEL it. You think of him being cut (if he finds out that is, which you put a lot of effort into ensuring won't happen) but you don't bleed at the very thought. This is the first and greatest betrayal, of your true best self and of your partner. Its the self-betrayal from which the others flow.

In many cases that sense of empathy gets transferred to the affair partner. In some cases, and yours may be one, I think it gets transferred to yourself. You got to a place where she felt only your own pain over something your thought others had and you didn't and no longer had any empathy for anyone who would be hurt by acts you took to address that.

Rebuilding empathy, like tearing down compartments, doesn't happen overnight. It is hard to stay engaged with someone in terrible pain, when you caused it. You will want to retreat, either to close yourself off or to push your shame to the foreground to put the focus back on you and your feelings and needs. There is no quick road. But awareness can help. Be aware that, in a thousand subtle ways, you have been blunting your sense of empathy for your husband. Having it come back is like having pain when a dead or numb nerve comes to life.

Not completely germain but not unrelated to this thread either as many/most BS wonder greatly about this aspect of how their WS could do what they did.

Somehow he saw this and popped in to say that he was glad it helped.

BTW, two of the couples I directed here to read and pay close attention to your (Hiking) posts are still in R years later and committed to fight on (NOT saying that D is still not an option because it very much is, but they have decided incrementally to battle on in R). You and many veteran posters need to hear it.

[This message edited by DobleTraicion at 10:07 PM, Thursday, July 25th]

Sissoon. I need time to process your last post. You packed a lot in there.

[This message edited by DobleTraicion at 10:09 PM, Thursday, July 25th]

That post from owl should be in the Hall of Fame. He is maybe one of the deepest thinkers I have encountered on this site. I truly wonder if he is a writer. I vaguely remember the thread, I should look it up because I always kind of like to see if my thoughts have evolved. They often have and I find myself disagreeing with what I wrote. Then I sort of laugh - I know it means I am evolving but it’s kind of humbling to realize you can’t have evolved too much of you want to argue with yourself. I find great humor in the paradox of the human condition.

Hikingout

That post from owl should be in the Hall of Fame. He is maybe one of the deepest thinkers I have encountered on this site. I truly wonder if he is a writer.

I agree. I have meditated on this many times and it has helped me gain perspective.

Thanks to all who contributed their thoughts to this thread. As usual, youve given me more to think about.

For years I kept the memory of my betrayal locked away. I walled it off for a long time. In truth, (re)marriage, career, child rearing, friendships, etc kept me extremely busy.

When I lost my friend due to taking their life over infidelity, a rage started in me that burned through the compartmentalization and all those memories came flooding back. This began a new search for answers. Oh, I had worked through much over the years post my own betrayal, most of that work guided by an excellent therapist, but most of that dealt with me, my mental/emotional health. Behavioral therapy focused on establishing more healthy ways to deal with issues and let go of the old learned habits of my upbringing. They were a way to survive, not thrive.

My new search was about her whys and the mechanics of the betrayal with my former best friend. Due to a fractured upbringing, I didnt make friends easily. I didnt love easily. So, when the two people I did open my heart to betrayed me it had a cataclysmic impact on me that took many years to heal and repair from. My search led me to SI and like sites and I read voraciously before posting myself. It helped me clarify certain things, including the premise for this thread, my early behaviors as a newly betrayed that did not stand me in good stead. I listed them, in part, because I have made peace with the young husband and father I used to be, and to pass along that which Ive learned about who I was and what I did back then. Maybe it will help someone.

Decades later, I am in a far better place and have built a wonderful life with my spouse.

Ill close with this, as Bigger enjoined, whether or not you eventually decide to D or R and all that entails, get yourself out of infidelity. Do not stay in tbe no mans land of quasi or false reconciliation. It will wear out your very soul.

[This message edited by DobleTraicion at 3:39 PM, Saturday, July 27th]

Not intentionally bumping this thread, but was ruminating on it this morning and temembeted another facet of my behavior that did not serve me well. It is related to some of what Id mentioned earlier as to me shouldering the majority of the load and white-knighting/white-knuckling it. Big mistake.

The flip side of the coin is that I did not truly grieve and mourn the loss of what was (or, maybe what I thought what was). Years later, I did grieve it all. Deeply. But until that time, I internalized the pain and the grief of loss. I wouldnt allow myself the absolute necessary grief to be able to truly move on. Grief is painful. It hurts so much. Still, it is needful.

I think part of why I did not allow myself to grieve is that, in my mind, if I did so, it meant it was all real. That what we had and the dream of what could have been was dead and gone. I wonder to myself now if this may have been the single most hurtful aspect of my wrong headed dealing with her betrayal all those years ago. Grief and mourning was very much needed. One aspect of tbat loss was that we were "first and only's" and that too was a trauma multiplier.

Anyway, just needed to get that off my chest this mornimg. I will add this to my initial list as an "edit to add".

I think part of why I did not allow myself to grieve is that, in my mind, if I did so, it meant it was all real. That what we had and the dream of what could have been was dead and gone. I wonder to myself now if this may have been the single most hurtful aspect of my wrong headed dealing with her betrayal all those years ago. Grief and mourning was very much needed. One aspect of tbat loss was that we were "first and only's" and that too was a trauma multiplier.

Letting go is *hard*. A freshly minted BS is in no way ready to let go because they do not fully understand what has happened. A BS needs to let go of the marriage -- it was never there. A BS needs to let go of who you thought their spouse was -- they were not that person. A BS needs to let go of how ever many years were involved. These alone are enough to get many BS to lean towards R. Throw in all of the tangible reasons that pop into a BS mind (kids, careers, extended family, friends, ...) and things add up quickly. None of that serves the BS when they are trying to see what their life is (and was), coming to terms with that new narrative and getting themselves out of infidelity.

Letting go is *hard*. A freshly minted BS is in no way ready to let go because they do not fully understand what has happened. A BS needs to let go of the marriage -- it was never there. A BS needs to let go of who you thought their spouse was -- they were not that person. A BS needs to let go of how ever many years were involved. These alone are enough to get many BS to lean towards R. Throw in all of the tangible reasons that pop into a BS mind (kids, careers, extended family, friends, ...) and things add up quickly. None of that serves the BS when they are trying to see what their life is (and was), coming to terms with that new narrative and getting themselves out of infidelity.

Thanks JasonCh. My problem.was that I didnt "let go" for a decade. Call me young and dumb. A "white knuckler" for sure. I had no direction. No one to turn to (or so I thought). Definitely nothing out there then like SI. So.....I just looked to myself and my ow coping habits which did NOT stand me in good stead...at all.

This was part of the reason I started this thread beyond it being therapeutic for me and the learnings from others, maybe just maybe another struggling BS would stumble on this and be helped.

Anyway, thanks again.

Alright this is what I don't get. 'Just kick 'em to the curb' is a pretty standard line of advice in response to infidelity, away from SI at least. And....a lot of people have indeed done that.

I exhort a lot of new BHs to consider D and in light of the above I don't think that is unusual at all. I have gotten a lot of pushback here for saying this though.

A lot of BHs on the other hand, won't even consider D from their WW, in many instances out of FEAR. Fear and codependence. Why aren't we pointing this out to new BHs more and doing more to encourage them to look inside themselves as to WHY they are so scared of D. I mean, I concede that R MAY INDEED be possible, **but not until** the BH staunches the bleeding so to speak. I think it is irresponsible to be telling a BH that R is possible when he is still being abused (in some instances quite brazenly) by his WW.

By the way, to give context to where I am coming from, there are threads on SI over the years from a few people who have cheated and who have seemingly "gotten it" and have found myself rooting for their R efforts. Thing is though, in EVERY one of these types of instances I can recall, the BH had left and filed for D. They sure as hell weren't sticking around getting breadcrumbed by their WW accepting that 'it takes time'!

I don't know what goes on in the BWs threads as I am hardly ever there.

[This message edited by WontBeFooledAgai at 7:20 PM, Thursday, August 8th]

Won’t be fooled/

I think you conflate saying R is possible as that’s what someone should do.

Most of the people who come to this site are reeling from a trauma, and are often in early stages of grief (namely shock). If they know out of the gate they want to divorce I have never seen anyone disagree with that action.

Even those who have reconciled (like myself) will actively say don’t focus on the relationship, focus on yourself. Make a plan so it can be in place if you want to leave (save money, meet with an attorney if possible, etc) but a lot of BS are not in a place where they just want to end the marriage immediately. Their shock, denial, and bargaining aren’t just a fear to be overcome but a necessary part of their own process.

Some need to go through all the discovery, they need it to play out a little more, they need this for their own comfort level.

I will never discourage someone from divorce and I don’t think there is a poster here that would do that. Rather, I look at what they are saying they want or are trying and give them some of our experiences to help them find things they identify with, options they have as they navigate, etc.

I don’t think a lot of bs’s are only driven by fear, but they can’t shut off love they still fee and their idea of what their future was going to be without seeing if it’s still possible.

So for them we say ,detach, focus on their own healing, think about what they want and need. If they are unable to detach then you can bet they are not even close to ready to leave.

And yes I think the Bh’s and the bw’s are similar in their responses. They may sometimes have differing concerns but you will find there are more similarities than not.

What I usually object to is not that you hope they choose divorce as quickly as they can. It’s that you are insistent that is the only sane choice. It comes across as shaming when the only rational thing to believe is that person is doing the best that they can. You think you can make them mad enough to stand up for themselves. I don’t think it often works. They have to recover enough so they aren’t self abandoning. The anger will come on its own after that.

Also realize, we are not in control of this anonymous person on the internet. Because one of us says "divorce immediately" really has little impact. Just like saying "you should stay" (which I never once remember anyone saying that to anyone.)

So what are we left with if we aren’t saying "divorce immediately" or "you should stay"? Then we have a group of people rolling around with that person in all their humanity encouraging them to act in their best interest as they figure out how to move forward. We tell them what helped us heal, we tell them our stories and what we learned. We can’t really know what’s best for them because we have no idea what they need to learn before they decide on their own outcomes.

Your insistence that people divorce immediately is well placed, it’s what you believe should happen for their best interests. It’s your application of that is one sized fits all that erodes your credibility. Because the truth is no one here knows what’s best for anyone else outside of the idea that it’s best for them to heal and find peace. And that requires looking deeply at themselves - which looks different for every individual here. It’s a journey. Because most people can’t divorce immediately without wondering if there was more that could be done.

I do think you have as good of intentions as anyone else here, and I agree with you on things more often than you probably think. I just think there is more value to healing than pushing for an outcome because of the person can heal the right outcome for them will become clearer.

Also I have seen a lot of couples over time who I thought would divorce and yet they are happy today. I have also seen people I was sure would make it and didn’t. But I have seen MOST of the people who stay and post heal and recover and that’s what I invest my time in.

[This message edited by hikingout at 7:30 PM, Thursday, August 8th]