SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Even after so many years past DDay my husband still can’t verbalize why he cheated?
It had nothing to do with me but some emptiness inside of him.
It began on the computer and spiraled out of control
A fantasy world where he was powerful and sort out
Totally pathetic but somehow this quiet intelligent middle aged man lost his mind and was totally addicted
Our lives hurled into chaos and heartbreaking reality that the once safe world was destroyed
Rebuild and survive
Now years later ironically he is slowly loosing his memory

Did you ever really find out Why?

We did. It helped to understand the circumstances...but it still didn't make sense as to WHY he was willing to destroy what we had. NOTHING about an A makes any sense . He THOUGHT he could take his "dirty little secret" to his grave. He thought WRONG.

I would NEVER want an A to be a part of our marital history...but it is...and I can't change it...so I am adapting to it. What we have NOW is WONDERFUL so I'll take it . NOW is what COUNTS !!

You can't start the NEXT chapter of your life if you keep re-reading the LAST one. This was a quote the adultery co-conspirator sent my H...you know...to help him see that it was time to move on to better things . I let her know in an email...with THIS quote...that WE were going to do just that !!

Now years later ironically he is slowly loosing his memory

Whatever time is left...I hope that YOU will have GOOD memories of Y'ALL (((HUGS))).

Hi- I am a ws.

I just want to say there isn’t a why that will ever justify what he did. The whys are really for us to dissect and figure out what is missing in is that we need to work on to become a safer partner.

The ws is often trying to fill a void, in an unhealthy way where they are getting validation often for something they are not. We have to work to see better ways of getting that fullfilment. My affair had nothing to do with who my husband is or who he is not. It was about who I am and who I am not.

But often bs wants some sort of reason that makes what they went through make sense. The only this that comes close to that is that the ws works to change and does so profoundly that it’s unmistakable they are remorseful and have done a lot of introspective work.

I don’t think of them as reasons to cheat, I think about them as circumstances inside me that made cheating possible. I had to reform people pleasing because it got in the way of my own fulfillment. I had to look at my integrity and how I was willing to compromise it. I had to look at my justifications and the entitlement it took to do something so horrible without any consideration of the man I just spent 20 years having a good marriage with.

The answers you are seeking don’t exist because nothing about it is logical or would be sufficient for the suffering you endured in the aftermath. I think the answer has already been given, but did he do anything about it is what is better evaluated.

Nope, ex never dug in to figure out her why. Claims she is this time super for real going to.

I think "why" is because it feels good and they wanted to. I don’t think it’s more complicated than that.

Sure lots of nuances about thoughts,immaturity, delusion, etc.

It feels good and that they want to keep feeling good

I don’t disagree with HNHF.

But as a ws if I just said "because it feels good and I wanted to" then nothing would change.

I have to go from someone who finds pleasure from doing the wrong things to a person who lives wholeheartedly and derives pleasure from healthy, non destructive things.

However, it does describe a scenario where my integrity fails, right? So if it feels good and I want to then I justify my behavior to the point my integrity feels less important.

Going from ws to non ws means inspecting this, replacing thoughts with better ones, maintaining my integrity has to be seen as feeling the best thing over other choices.

For a bs maybe that is the answer you are looking for- he wanted to so he did. But I don’t think that reaches below the surface at all. There is something fundamentally wrong with someone who just does things because it feels good and they want to without any regard for anyone else.

I agree with you Hiking,

That’s the switch though that many WS can’t make. I agree my statement is probably surface level, but it is also such a deep and demanding part of their personality. I mean all of us have that desire, and given the right circumstances we can over indulge. Booze, food, sex, exercise, gaming, gambling, the list can go on and on.

So, I don’t know, now that i write all of this out I need to reconsider a lot. I actually don’t have a good counter point for you Hiking. You, as always bring up very keen insights. It is a shame my ex couldn’t make that transition into herself.

That’s okay HNHF- not at all debating you. What you said is accurate. I am also very sorry that your wife hasn’t moved past the surface level- it’s not your job to do that anyway. I am more familiar just because it was my job. Keeping you and your kids in my prayers.

I often think that the answer to why is that they didn’t care enough about their spouse.

I guess it would be presumptive to assume this is the answer for everyone but it looks to me like it is frequently the answer.

I guess that leaves the BS to try to figure out whether they care enough now. Care enough to not cheat. Care enough to support your healing. Care enough to be worth devoting the rest of your life to.

I am always curious about Hiking Out’s take so I wonder if she would agree with this.

Losing one’s memory can make a person even more careless so I imagine that is a challenging situation for the original poster. I wish you the very best ❤️

One of my WH's Whys is that he was raised in a zero conflict, parents-are-always-right household. The way that the kids would then get their own needs met was by doing things secretively or selfishly (or both). So my H and his siblings all live selflessly much of the time and then selfishly at other times, see-sawing back and forth without ever learning conversation or compromise. They are all massively conflict avoidant to this day (my H has grown in this area).

None of this justifies the cheating and lies, but it does begin to explain it. The Whys showed my H what he needed to realize about himself and change. Human beings need to have their needs met in one way or another, so he had to understand that people pleasing and conflict avoidance were actually causing him pain. It was not "fine" when he didn't have a voice. The pain of ignored needs called for attention! So enter porn... which escalated to real life. He used these secretive things to soothe all the giving he felt he was doing in his life.

A healthy person has boundaries, can say No without fear, and can ask for what they need. Then there is no pain, no pain to secretively soothe.

If you never get into the psyche and figure out what makes you tick, you never truly understand why you make any hurtful or destructive choice. The Whys are the roadmap for improvement. Other than a WS talking about what they are learning and working on in IC or something, they would never be mentioned or flung about as some type of "but I..." justification. Um, no. There are no Whys that come into play during those times.

I can only speaks for what my H and I have discussed. I am 9 months out and at first my H was very defensive and blamed his A on the marriage , on his need for more of an emotional connection, no one "appreciated him", we all wanted "something from him". We didn’t "support" him.

As time went on and he had to face himself in the mirror, when he really had to sit in counseling and hear himself talk is when he started to really discover his "why’s". When he had to see the damage he created at home , when he saw his mom cry and tell him she wouldn’t blame me for leaving him , he dug and he dug hard.

1. He had piss poor boundaries. He would call waitresses baby or babe same with coworkers this opened up so may shitty doors.

2. He was a people pleaser , he cared about pleasing everyone other than me and the kids and if he did have to do things for us he would silently resent us because we didn’t feed his ego.

3. He has been a standup comic, a musician, a pool player , all to impress other people. He needed that external validation and when other people let him down on his team the kids and I became where he took his frustration out on.

4. He needed that external validation because he wasn’t making enough money to be relevant at home, he refused to get off of his ass and get a better paying job to help his four kids, his "dreams" came first

5. His priorities have been garbage and he’s been immature in his thinking.

6. He turned his back on God and all of his morals (this one is def one I know isn’t for everyone but it is true for us).

He avoided church and would hide in the bathroom the few times he went during the A.

All of that left him vulnerable. They weren’t "reasons" he cheated , they are all broken parts of him , created by him and the A as used to try to patch all those holes, I can see now it never would have worked.

We were reality at home; we were REAL PEOPLE with real needs and she was a trashy escape they expected nothing but lies and fake compliments that fed every piece of his and her broken ego , created exactly by himself and he could have avoided this if he would have stopped trying to fill that void with outside sources.

ETA. His dad has been a womanizer his whole life. Was concerned about his kids being “gay” so women were shoved in their face from a beey young age. He can’t even watch a commercial to this day without talking about fing her. So enter porn at 12 years old…

[This message edited by Groot1988 at 9:51 PM, Tuesday, July 23rd]

HNHF - I do agree with you. WH searched and searched for the why’s and at the end of the day - he likes sex, I was not giving him much, she offered it on a silver platter, he took it. For him it was this simple. That’s why he could so easily dump her arse the moment I found out. There was no emotional connection at all.

But like what Groot has described my WH has shitty traits that made him not give a shit about the consequences of the affair. He has an arrogance about him that if he wants something he takes it and doesn’t give a fuck how it will affect anyone else. So it’s these behaviours - lying, being selfish, lack of communication he is now working on.

I am always curious about Hiking Out’s take so I wonder if she would agree with this.

I think it’s a fair assessment, but with some nuances. The number one being that it had way more to do with my internal lacking than the relationship or my husband.

I have heard that consideration is the highest form of love. I did spend 20+ years considering him in all my decisions. But, I certainly didn’t consider him at all by cheating on him.

Years of going along to get along led to a lot of unconscious resentment. It lead to my heart being callous. By the time I cheated, I felt like he wasn’t considering me. I dwelled on all the ways that it had been a pattern our whole marriage. I made myself the victim rather than seeing myself as a grown woman who could use her words and learn to set boundaries. I personally was out of balance. That was more the how’s and whys more than anything.

I think you know I regret what I did deeply, but when it comes to the question of loving him- I think of the affair as short a period in our almost three decade long marriage that I wasn’t loving towards him and was willing to throw it away. I am not trying to minimize it because even though it was a short period the fact I cheated on him subtracts a lot from the times that were richer with love. I am mostly saying it this way because I did love him very much before the A. And we have had a bumpy road since the A’s but I love him and appreciate him more deeply now than I ever have. I wish I could take back what I did but I can’t.

I think what I am trying to express here is I agree I dehumanized him and stopped considering him. I justified things through the lens of a victim. I just also want to express on the other hand that my doing that had nothing to do with how lovable and worthy he is, not does it remove the fact that I have loved him most of our marriage.

It’s not the honorable things I wish I could say like being able to say I was faithful to him the whole time or that I never hurt him. I don’t want it to come across as "oh well" or that anything makes up for that lack of judgment, that lack of consideration. But, Love is a choice and I should have kept choosing it. It’s not a lesson I will soon forget.

[This message edited by hikingout at 12:14 AM, Wednesday, July 24th]

HNHF - I do agree with you. WH searched and searched for the why’s and at the end of the day - he likes sex, I was not giving him much, she offered it on a silver platter, he took it. For him it was this simple. That’s why he could so easily dump her arse the moment I found out. There was no emotional connection at all.

All ws can say this. "The ap gave me the attention I wasn’t getting at home" sex can be a form of the attention.

His work is the same work as any other ws - why was the response cheating? There were other options. That’s what I mean about going below the surfaces.

Also I am going to guess you weren’t giving him sex because he wasn’t giving you what you needed to want to have sex with him.

The whys are about accountability in the state of the marriage and also taking accountability that there were many other responses one could give for their problem with lack of attention.

And of course you are still pointing at the supporting factors- his selfishness, lack of communication, etc. these are the whys that I am talking about. People can be dissatisfied with aspects of a relationship but cheating is an extreme response.

Hiking out, I’m so bad at writing. I never seem to be able to get across my points at all.

I agree with all of what you say and agree all WS say that about the sex. But it’s not wrong. He wasn’t getting sex. And because of his shitty emotional intelligence and lack of communication skills (plus other issues) he took up the other offer on the table, which as you said was extreme. We have discussed how his lying to me in the past about other things (example buying a big tv without telling me and then hiding it in another room) was kind of the same thing but a less extreme version.

Does this make sense?

Yes, it already did make sense. You said everything just fine! All I mean is "it felt good and he wanted to" is still only the surface.

I wasn’t disagreeing, I was saying that even for someone who literally just wants more sex has whys and issues that are deeper. There are lots of people who want more sex. I was just saying don’t let him make it that simple- most ws have similiar issues- entitlement, focus on lack, not really communicating. I was mostly agreeing but rephrasing it. Lots of men go without sex and don’t cheat. I am pretty sure those men like it as much as your husband does. Hood his feet to the fire. I am guessing there was even validation involved "I have still got it" sort of thing.

At 9 months post Dday I don’t think any "why" that my WH has given me (or could ever give me) will help make me feel better or provide me with the understanding I need to ever make sense as to why he did what he did … I just don’t see it happening. I’m still personally trying to buy into the "digging deep" concept because at the end of the day it’s still an excuse (maybe a less shitty one, but nonetheless an excuse). I get it … we had a shit M, the love and connection fizzled out, there was no communication, excessive porn watching to escape reality, recent discoveries of abandonment issues from friends/family in early adulthood left my WH scarred and then these feelings were stirred up again by resentment from me/his children, people pleasing turned into poor boundaries, etc.

I have a friend that has abandonment and people pleasing "issues" … she’s never cheated in any of her relationships. With that said, I guess that’s a good thing my WH has made this discovery about himself, but they didn’t cause him to cheat and it’s not why he cheated. He cheated simply because he’s a loser, horndog that had reached a point in his life where he just stopped caring about reality and he actually had to justify to himself his shit actions because he knew what he was doing was wrong … but did it anyway because he’s scum. As Webbit describes … it was offered to him on a "silver platter" and just like that he threw away everything for nothing. He can dig deep and yack away to me about all of his "whys" … but at the end of the day it’s the choices he made that are really telling.

I think more than anything people change and evolve as they get older and as life goes on. One minute you’re young and carefree and then before you know it you’re middle aged with a mortgage, stressed out about kids, bills, etc. and some people don’t adapt very well to life’s curveballs.

I’m sorry your H is losing his memory, especially if you’re still hoping to gain some sort of clarity about the past. None of this is easy.

Let's say someone is having issues, whatever they may be. And they are looking to escape, to feel good, to forget, to compartmentalize, to get some type of high.

Why do some...

Become drug addicts, pills or otherwise?

Become alcoholics?

Become serial cheaters?

Or porn addicts?

Gamblers?

Anorexic or bulemic?

Cutters?

Shop lifters?

Extreme overeaters?

Adrenaline junkies?

Are you better if you choose to cut your body up instead of watch porn twice a day? Are you better if you are drunk all day long but never cheat? Are you better if you spend all the family money at the casino but maintain your marital vows?

To me, it's all the same--selfish, entitled behavior that is callously oblivious to the consequences on loved ones, on finances, on health. I cannot distinguish any of these as being better or more moral or more personal or more of an attack on loved ones, no matter the feelings of those suffering the fallout. So simply "wanting to get laid" or "liking sex" seems as ridiculous as saying that a gambler just "loves football" or a 600 lb bedridden adult just loves pizza. That is absurd. That is clearly not WHY this person is blowing up their life! An addictive behavior is something done regardless of the negative consequences. The participant is actively hurting themselves but does it anyway. You can bet that whatever the motivations, they are deeply entrenched in the psyche.

Getting to the Whys is so critical. (Groot, your WH's list shows excellent progress.)

[This message edited by OwningItNow at 10:25 AM, Wednesday, July 24th]

I often think that the answer to why is that they didn’t care enough about their spouse.

This is pretty obvious! However in my husband’s case, but probably in many others’, he didn’t care about life. He just had enough of everything and the POS FB gave him a spark in his dark existence. They were away often on business trips and she was an easy target, she was in a sad matrimony and they just saw an opportunity to enjoy life to the full and took it.
It started as a game and then it created addiction. She fell in love, divorced and pushed my husband to do the same.
He didn’t need another wife, he never wanted to divorce (although I am sure he thought about it!), he just wanted a wh*** because he could and because she was stroking his ego and was experiencing all the things he never had in his youth since his parents kept him a prisoner during his adolescence.

He had never travelled and could travel with her, have sex (we had two children so sex was not easy and surely quiet and fast) and drink alcohol, a thing he never showed interest in before. And he also did a lot of running because she is addicted to it.

I honestly think the luxury he was experiencing in top hotels and his career made him feel powerful and entitled, so all these elements combined made a total mess of his life. And mine of course!

This: It started as a game, and then created addiction. For sure.nobody, or precious few.think of the " banquet of consequences" that awaits them, and everybody else hurt by their supremely selfish and unimaginably destructive behavior.

This is what he wrote to me when I asked that infamous ´why’ question:

´Boredom, fear, old age, attention, energy… I did not intend to start any affair. WE started talking at yoga, she was attentive, interested, interesting. I have NO excuse other than I was insecure and frustrated. I had resigned myself to a life without sex, passion, intimacy and even physical comfort.

I kept telling you, my mom, the kids, and even me, that I was very happy (and I was) with my life. I loved our house, us, my time off, the work, tv, wine & beer with you, skiing, traveling… but fearing the next 10 years started with her.

I always loved you, I knew I would be hurting you, us, and everyone in our circle of friends & family. I was annoyed, that we could not have a terrific loving, sexual relationship. Everytime I would see a speech, thanking his wife for her support and "being there"… I would be jealous. I KNOW you always were there for me/us with work and the emotional support I needed for work.
But man, I wanted a sensual, sexy relationship. I wanted you to want me! I wanted you to surprise me with offers, invitations, flirting and adventures. I know it’s not all on you.´

You can all draw your own conclusions. What he did not say was how his excessive drinking drove a wedge between us but it drew him to her as she also was a functional alcoholic.

So there it is straight from the horse’s mouth. This was his mindset as he was asking me for a second chance once he started living with her as a couple.