SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

My experience is that you think you know your cheating spouse better than anyone.

Example. When I told my sibs my H was cheating they told me I was wrong or jumping to conclusions. No one thought he would be that guy. When I told them HE was the one that told me and admitted it, they were shocked beyond belief.

Mistakenly I thought “he told me so he gets some credit “. What I didn’t know was that he was planning on leaving me. So 10 days later he is telling me “I want a D”.

Yes I thought I knew him. Yes I was blindsided by his behavior. He became someone I didn’t know or recognize. I started to suspect drugs were involved (he has never done anything like this).

What I didn’t know was how much of a liar he could be. And a cheat. And a lowlife. And a loser. So long story short months later when dday2 occurred I had no sympathy or tears for him.

I had no problem kicking him to the curb.

Some paths require more time, more commitment, more grace, more tenacity, than others. Some paths don’t take much but a retainer check for a lawyer and a new place to live...

This is such a truly offensive, judgmental, and presumptuous statement and generalization. I could just as easily make as offensive of a statement for those that choose to reconcile, but I won't sink to this level because one bad apple in the group makes the rest of the great folks who choose to reconcile look bad.

It takes courage and strength in mny cases to file for divorce. The hardest thing I ever did was face my fears of being alone, of losing the only man I'd loved for over two decades, of realizing I was going to have to work more than two jobs to be able to afford the same things I'd had with both I comes. You have no fucking clue what I went through during my divorce. None. At the time, I felt like a complete failure for not allowing him to continue to abuse me in order to make my marriage work. Now, I realize I would have failed myself if I'd stayed in that toxic relationship.

I'm not bashing you or others for your choice in staying so shut your mouth and stop bashing me and others because leaving was what was best for us.

When I see a BS on here with a WS that is a complete and utter waste of oxygen, you are damned right I'm going to advise them to stop allowing the abuse. It doesn't come from a place of bitterness. I have never experienced as much happiness while married to my ex fuckwit as I do today. I believe that everyone should follow the route that will bring them the most joy. Some WS earn their BS grace, but many don't. So quit judging those of us who didn't want someone bringing us diseases and putting their hands on us. I was brave enough not to live in denial of my exes utter lack of love. I wanted to continue believing his lies. THAT would have been the easy route.

You have no fucking clue what I went through during my divorce.

You’re right. Which is why I didn’t judge your path. I don’t even know who you are.

The comment that you took such offense to was, deliberately, a generalization, made deliberately to respond to the original post, not to remark upon your specific set of facts. The deliberate juxtaposition of a long and difficult reconciliation on the one hand and a very easy, uncomplicated divorce on the other was very much intentional, but not to suggest that all reconciliations are noble and difficult whereas all divorces are simple and easy. It was also not written to suggest that some divorces do not take a great deal of grit and courage and tenacity. I was highlighting what could be construed as opposite ends of the spectrum. Again, I was addressing the original post, the original question posed here.

You read far too much into what I wrote and read it as if I wrote it to you and about you. I didn’t write it about you. You made it about you.

Back to the original thread.........

[This message edited by Wiseoldfool at 4:48 PM, April 21st (Wednesday)]

Thing is, when is it enough time? How can anyone even know when a WS is R material?

Adultery is abuse, so perhaps a good litmus test to help answer this question is to ask how long you'd give an abusive spouse of another sort? Some people, even in cases of horrific abuse, will continue to give abusive spouses years of their lives. I doubt many of us would say this is a good idea.

Don't spend as much time as I did on my unremorseful spouse I have no idea what I was thinking. I guess I kept thinking HE COULD CHANGE. Damn hopium it did come to my detriment.

There isn’t one correct and instant remorse.

Just like there isn’t one forgiveness or acceptance or understanding.

The remorse a WS feels after d-day is a combination of guilt, justification, fear, shame… the remorse a WS might feel after intense work and reflection is more acceptance for what they did, regret for having dealt with their issues that way and immense regret for having caused the damage to their spouse and the relationship. It’s this remorse that the experienced posters in the Wayward forum have experienced.

Short term remorse, or what the WS believes is going to be short term, is easy. It's today, it's a lot of apologies, it's promises of change. Easy breezy lemon squeezy. Once you don't accept this all at face value and just move on as if they forgot to unload the dishwasher or pick up your dry cleaning, the real work begins. This is when the relationship goes under constant stress. The cheating is a crisis of pain, but the attempt at reconciliation is, "Can this partnership survive?" It's different imo.

The WS thinks remorse is:

"I said I'm sorry. What more do you want from me?"

"It won't happen again because I said it won't. You just have to believe me."

"Are you ever going to get over it? Am I going to be the biggest asshole on the planet for the rest of my life?"

Good times.

If the BS does not immediately (weeks, not months) see some actual work, effort, movement, and action away from this defensive (and insulting) WS posturing, imo any additional waiting will be a waste of time. Getting ducks in a row, getting support with IC, recovering a little bit, sure. Take the time. But a WS will do as little as they are allowed to get away with most of the time; change is deeply uncomfortable for someone who has shown they would rather compartmentalize, lie, and betray than face their demons. A BS needs to move at their own speed, but I don't usually see change after the first several weeks unless the WS is suffering some serious consequences. That's what happened here.

Just popping in, didn't read the responses like I normally like to.

I would take a guess that even though those waywards you are reading say it took awhile to get their heads out of their ass, they probably were not labeled as "not reconcilable" material. They probably had indications otherwise. The very fact that they are here figuring it out says something. The majority of cheaters would not do this for any extended length of time.

I remember the awful realization that it had never been in my ex-cheaters character to self-reflect. The idea of him seriously looking at himself in any sort of light where he was at fault was foreign to him.

I think us BS's can take a look at that as an indicator. The cheaters history of self-reflection where they feel a need to improve as a human-being (not career-wise or sports, doesn't count!).

EDIT: I read OP's other after I wrote this. If deleting posts weren't discouraged here, I would delete my reply. Every person should have an expectation of respect and decency as the lowest bar of any relationship.

I think of my marriage in a risk/reward scenario, especially after infidelity; and I've redefined what my responsibilities are in marriage both as a wife and mother and what I'm personally willing to tolerate.

I was unhappy with my marriage about 1 - 1.5 years before my WH's infidelity. I considered divorce. I talked to trusted friends and did a lot of self reflection. My vows and commitment didn't give me the right to put my happiness over that of my children and my spouse at that time. It's for better or worse, not for better or worse unless I'm unhappy. My children especially were a concern. I decided to keep trying to fix things and to put my happiness aside.

Infidelity changed that though. My WH was willing to risk my life through unprotected sex. He was willing to leave our children motherless. (He didn't have unprotected sex if I believe him and his polygraph. However, he admitted he considered his AP safe, and if he had sex, he would not consider protecting himself or me from disease.) He also put an AP, an inherently unsafe and unstable person, into our family's life without any thought of how it would affect us. Permanently. And if I didn't know his thoughts with those actions, what else didn't I know and what else would I be risking?

My first reaction was, "Get the F* out! I don't want you in my life or my children's lives." My thoughts after that were, "Oh crap. I don't have a choice about you being in our children's lives." My father left my mother for the OW when I was around my son's age, and I would have done anything to spare him that experience.

Next thoughts were something like, "Ok. If you want this family and this marriage, then you need to save it. It's your turn." I have a hard time with the concept that sisoon talks about where you need to be vulnerable and open and tell a WS what to do vs. the attitude that a WS broke the marriage and they need to step up and fix it without being told what to do. I understand both sides, but it's just difficult in real life for me.

My prime requirement since D-day is that the marriage, our child, and I have to come before anything and anyone else if my WH wants to stay married. I guess I should add that NC, no inappropriate relationship with women, no lies, etc. are a given in that scenario. I have mostly given my boundaries as deeds and not words. But I watch the words, because they indicate thoughts. There have been set backs and times when my WH has requested to put others first, mostly his family of origin.

This isn't easy, because I have my own patterns and FOO issues that feed into my WHs. We've had to sort this out through IC and MC.

I accept set backs when it comes to my WH's FOO and friends. I accept it because it's hard for me to set boundaries too. As an example, one of my WH's sisters and his mother request favors. If they are denied, they guilt my WH. That's hard for me because I would willingly give those same favors to other family and friends without thought, but I feel his sister and his mother are selfish and asking too much. When my WH denies them the favors since the affair, he tells them it's because I won't allow him to do it. He's not wrong. I want him to deny them because he puts this family first though. I accept otherwise for now though. Before d-day, he would put them first and deal with any consequences. Mostly it was just me being angry.

It's just recently that my WH has started telling others that he won't do things because he wants to be with us instead. I wonder what he would say if his mother and sister asked.

Anyway, it is a risk/reward constantly evaluated. Is my life better with my marriage or not? I am free now of my original vow. My children are almost out of the house, and I realize an unhealthy marriage isn't a good model for them. In the future, if I want a life my WH doesn't, I don't feel bound to my commitment.

[This message edited by humantrampoline at 10:02 AM, April 24th (Saturday)]

Most of the betrayed spouses in the JFO Forum do not have spouses in the Wayward Side. For every new post in the Wayward Side, there are 10 in JFO.

Therefore, it's safe to assume that most of the newly betrayed spouses you see posting in JFO aren't married to the repentant (if not yet remorseful) spouses that you see in the Wayward Side.