SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I've been tossing this around in my head for a couple weeks now, and I can't parse out any logic from it. Maybe you guys can help...

Rationally, I know that infidelity is a choice, or rather, a series of choices. It is quite simply the truth that it wasn't an accident, a mistake, or something that just "happens" to WS. But emotionally, I am still experiencing a lot of fear of me "slipping up" and doing it again. I don't fully trust myself to make the right choices when faced with the same circumstances and opportunity I had with my most recent A. I guess that's probably for the best, because while The Work is actively in progress, it's far from being finished, and I think I should be hyper-vigilant of myself until it is.

I often describe the inner working of my thought processes as a board room of "committee members" that come and go, observe external proceedings, and make arguments for and against what "we" should do. Then there's a mini-me at the "control board" for the body who listens to and interacts with the committee members and makes decisions about what to think, feel, and do with my body. Typically the committee members will embody different emotions and each have only one perspective, sort of like Inside Out, except only the mini-me is permitted to touch the control board, and the CMs are relatively impermanent.

When my most most recent A was beginning, I felt so out of control. I felt like one of the CMs was sneaking around pressing buttons when the mini-me wasn't paying attention. It felt like this pervasive evil whispering in my ear constantly that I couldn't shake. I remember lying in my rack several nights, staring at the ceiling, feeling simultaneously giddy about the interactions with AP, missing my H, wishing our M was more like it was with AP, and wracked with guilt for these feelings. And I would get up the next day determined to shake myself out of it and not interact with him beyond what was necessary, but then he would come and find me before and after our shift, plop himself down at whatever table I was sitting, and draw me back into those first-date kind of conversations, and I felt like a fly in a spider's web again. The mini-me heard committee members screaming "Stop! Get up! Distance yourself!" and she/I agreed with them, but there was just that one sinister voice saying, "It's just a conversation. We deserve this. Doesn't it feel so good that someone seems actually interested in you? What if you're not imagining all of the little signs that he's into you? Remember when we used to get men eating out of the palm of our hand? And we felt so powerful... We could feel that again. Just a little thrill for now. We don't have to take it home with us..." and it was like mini-me was operating the board in a trance... I have binge eating disorder, and the A felt exactly like a massive binge: completely out of control and sickening, but I couldn't stop. And there were so many moments when I wanted to stop.

I'm not trying to make excuses for what I did. I know it was many choices. I just don't know how to reconcile that fact with feeling so out of control when I made those choices, and feeling scared that I'll make them again. It's not making sense to me.

Seems to me you struggle with low self-esteem and deep insecurity. Welcome to the club, sister. It's a big club, too, so I don't think you'll feel lonely. Research indicates that most of humanity, like 4 out of 5, struggles with the same shit to some degree or another.

Maybe you've got it a little worse than most but not as bad as others. Doesn't change the fact it's a part of being human. And just in case you haven't noticed, being human is fucking hardah!

Trained therapists can help guide us with unpacking all the baggage we tend to carry with us. Most folks are far more willing and able to accept the negative and reject the positive, which sucks! So, of course, we seek out external validation and ignore the simple possibility that loving ourselves, warts and all, is often good enough.

Easier said than done.

[This message edited by Unhinged at 4:44 AM, Monday, June 8th]

You still need to learn how to love yourself.

You might have begun the journey but you aren’t yet present in your full self, you still exist in part in your head where is the "comfort zone" of the fantasy, not in a positive way like a dream, is more a self sabotage sleep walking.

Our self is like an onion, sure there is a core, the real you, the source of the rest if you want, but then there are layers upon layers, emanations of emotions and experiences you had in life that created "personas" call it identities or what you prefer, they are masks that exist there to protect your core self from harm and hurt.

They are filters trying to take the hit instead of our inner self, the got them orbs in her work life is different from the daughter version, the partner, the mother, the sister, etc.

All are emanations, each layer created as a best guess to face the role, protect your emotions from the hits that could come from one specific environment, but the real you is always behind its coming out through the filters but only in the amount the filters allow.

The true you is the child you were born as. You had no words but you had emotions, boundaries and a complete openness to the word.

Little traumas we go through in life change us and we start building that onion shell.

Why are you afraid of slipping back?

Because you built that emanation, the cheater, due to an inner pain that was never resolved. But you don’t like her, is probably a mask that has very little if anything of your inner self, a pure fantasy made up to extract validation from the outside.

But you could feel it was never enough, because it was validation for the mask, not for the real you and you could extract it only from someone who is offering you the same kind of mask. Fake performance for a fake identity. You can tell is transactional and fake, there’s no love there for you only the role playing of a fantasy that is poorly performed by both, and leaves you both empty.

I can feel from what you write that the game is "helping you to feel as", but you are sensitive enough to perceive the fantasy as not real, that is a two way’s deception where you use and are being used as a filler for someone else’s void.

It was just about you feeling as, and the AP was all about him feeling as.
You are being used (and using) and no matter how much the mask is trying to pretend it’s real, the true you behind the filters know the truth and feel sad.

Because it’s still not feeling loved as your full self, no matter how much the mask gets love bombed, you can tell your deception and his deception and that leaves you miserable when the role play is off.

And the idea the role play keeps you busy in the performance so your attention is fully focused on that, and not on your inner voices telling you what you need when is quiet, can be intoxicating, because those whispers are painful to hear alone.

You created that and that’s how it get into the button room back then. And left you miserable, worse than before its creation.

No wonder you’re afraid it can happen again.

But here is the thing.

It’s your creation not your self. You made it, you gave it energy. The same way you made it you can kill it.

Because you don’t need it, what you need to feel all that you crave is love, and you can have it if you understand that the lovable person is the one behind all the layers of the onion. The scared one, but also the only true one.

When you feel finally that she is worthy of love, all those layers decay and die, disappearing, because they are unnecessary.

You can give love to yourself and the world mirrors it.

Remember how you could spot another cheater or AP by instinct? Because you both mirrored each others. You both knew that the other person is willing to play in the dirt be used and disrespected and perform the role play because there is a mutual transactional validation extraction.

No respect or love, utility for selfish insecurity soothing that later you discover was just self sabotage.

Not the sabotage of the mask, she is perfectly fine, she can do that over and over if you allow her, that’s what she was created for, you created her this way.

The sabotage of you, forcing yourself to become the mask and feel what she feels, which you can’t because what she feels is an act, and you knowing it can always tell the difference.

You are in control, the creator of your armor, when you will learn to really love and respect your self, you will realize that armor is not needed.

Each person is a universe, they can fill your world when you love them. That is why we choose one, o e person is not little, is completely filling and fulfilling if there is love, in a way that just doesn’t leave space for another one. You choose which world, which universe you want to explore in your life.

You can be the best actor you like, but your mask can never equate your real complexity or being a fraction as lovable as you are, because you are a universe too, and even you haven’t yet fully explored yourself.
Every attempt to mimic that complexity is doomed to be just a pale, fake shadow.

The answer may be self-evident... because you know yourself.

Your fear arises because you now know exactly where you fall in the landscape of choices. You have people who are simply incapable of cheating due to their internal wiring, and those who are capable. Within that capable group, there are people who work hard to control their urges, and others who cannot or choose not to.

We often spend a lot of time looking at the reasons why people cheat, but we do not spend enough time considering why people do not cheat. Looked at simplistically, the reasons for restraint are straightforward and fall into four main camps: yourself, your partner, consequences, and practicalities.

"Yourself" includes overarching principles such as morality, integrity, and self-respect. People who do not cheat because of who they are understand that they would not be able to look in the mirror and respect the person they see. They apply the golden rule: they know that if it happened to them it would crush them, and their own character forbids them from doing it to another.

"Partner" relies entirely on empathy. True empathy prevents you from inflicting that kind of agony on someone you truly love. This is not loving someone as a utility, or loving someone the way you love pizza. If you love someone deeply and wholly, you do not want to cause them pain. The absolute opposite should be true.

"Consequences" often seems to be the most effective deterrent against infidelity. To be stopped by consequences, you do not need morality, you do not need empathy, and you do not even need to be a good person. You just need the sheer fear of the fallout. The loss of respect from friends and family. Splitting up a home, losing daily time with your children, and causing them deep psychological trauma. The financial ruin, the public shame, and the wreckage left behind.

Imposing consequences is a standard recommendation for betrayed spouses because consequences are universal; they can keep even a bad person from acting out. It is the exact basis of our justice system. At the point of discovery, a betrayed spouse has no way of knowing if their partner is a fundamentally good person who made a catastrophic choice, or a bad person who is just sorry they got caught. In fact, discovering an affair naturally forces them to default to the latter conclusion. Consequences bridge that gap when trust is gone.

Then, there are the more shallow, practical reasons: a simple lack of opportunity.

To illustrate how these four camps work, consider a completely different context: drinking. I love to drink. I have never had a problem with alcohol, but in an alternative reality, I could absolutely see it happening. I do not have a moral or principled view against drinking, so internal "morality" is not what stops me from doing it every day. My partner has no issue with it and drinks the same way I do, so "partner empathy" does not deter me. What stops me are the consequences. If I drink heavily on a work night, it will destroy my performance at my job and my progress at the gym. The fear of those outcomes keeps me disciplined. You do not need all four pillars to stand upright; sometimes, the fear of the fallout is the only anchor you need.

Your description of a "trance" or a binge-eating episode is simply a description of a failure of discipline. Your "mini-me" did not get hijacked; you actively chose to hand over the controls because the validation felt good. If you treat this sinister voice as an external force, you will remain terrified of your own shadow. It is not an entity possessing you; it is a part of your own ego that you chose to indulge.

If you never want to cheat again, you need to review yourself ruthlessly against these four camps. If you currently lack the internal principles or morality to stop yourself, you must look next at your love for your partner. Remember the pain in their eyes upon discovery and the agony they are in right now. If that does not quell the temptation, force yourself to look at the third camp and count everything you have to lose. If fear of consequences is still not enough to override your urges, then you must resort to the final camp: strictly removing the opportunity. The fly cannot reason with the spider's web once it is stuck; you must physically remove yourself from the room the moment a threat presents itself.

If you do not believe any of these mechanisms will work, you need to consider whether you are fit to be in a relationship at all.

[This message edited by DRSOOLERS at 10:52 AM, Monday, June 8th]