SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I have to work today, Superesse and I have a meeting for my son. I may congratulate myself on the beginning of the end with some online shopping - been eyeing an expensive quilt from Anthropologie.

Black Raven, as I wrote the other day, mine was sexually abused, as are way over 75% of all SAs were. However, It does us very little real good to feel pity for them. Our understanding and accomodating their history While waiting and hoping does NOT effect a change in them! So even if/when this comes out with your SAWH, please, please guard yourself against doing what I did, and thinking he can shuck off that FOO like an old coat, if he really wants to. It just isn't that simple and they have years of therapy ahead, with probable slips.

This is the part that can get you stuck. Some of them truly had horrible trauma as children and you can feel so much sympathy for their childhood selves. The children they were deserve all of that pity and should have gotten more help. We are not dealing with children here, though. We are dealing with adult men who, maybe even through no fault of their own, go around passing out trauma to others. They become abusers, because a sex addict is an abuser no matter how sweet they seem. As a spouse of a SA, we suffer emotional abuse (lies and gaslighting), sexual abuse (we certainly didn't consent to whatever relationship we were in), and physical abuse (risk to our health). Men who hit women were often also very sad abused little boys. Child rapists were sad abused little boys.

In many ways, they still are those hurting little boys, but now instead of trying to become good men, they choose to hurt the ones who love them the most. They act out in ways that damage us profoundly. There is nothing any of us can do to fix any of this. It is just a sad tragic life lesson.

I don't want to die early from stress and trauma. I don't want to develop psychological problems because of someone else's actions. I don't deserve to be punished for what someone else did to a child. I won't stand for that. I won't tolerate being someone's "collateral damage" because everything about me is as important as any other person, addict or not. You can't be a human bandaid. It won't work and it's not your job to be such a thing.

Some of them truly had horrible trauma as children and you can feel so much sympathy for their childhood selves. The children they were deserve all of that pity and should have gotten more help. We are not dealing with children here, though. We are dealing with adult men who, maybe even through no fault of their own, go around passing out trauma to others. They become abusers, because a sex addict is an abuser no matter how sweet they seem

Yes, Superesse and Dee - it's a trap to get caught up in the little boy who was abused. My STBX has about as horrific a childhood as you could imagine. However, as you are so wonderful at articulating, Dee - our humanity is no less important because they are abuse victims. We weren't put on this planet to martyr ourselves for someone who's abusing us. Why? Why would you give up one person's life in a futile attempt to heal another's?

I do believe stress kills - my mother, after 17 years with my controlling disordered father, finally left and a few year later was diagnosed with stage 4 metastasized breast cancer - she was only 42 years old. She was one of healthiest people I knew - clean diet, tennis 4x a week, thin, no drugs or drink or cigarettes. The stress of both living with him and a very ugly divorce and custody battle, ate her up. She lost custody of her youngest, my brother, because my scheming idiot father worked the system. It was the greatest heartbreak for her.

My children need me - they're adults - 21 and 32, but they rely on me. I will not leave this earth prematurely and deprive them of my love and support so that this loser can drag me around like road kill. Fuck. That. Noise.

You all have been so wonderful and wise. I wish for all of us to have the joy and peace we deserve.

My children need me - they're adults - 21 and 32, but they rely on me. I will not leave this earth prematurely and deprive them of my love and support so that this loser can drag me around like road kill. Fuck. That. Noise.

Preach, woman. You are worth soooooo much more.

Skeeter, ROCK ON, You BadA##!!! I busted out laughing reading your news there....hahahaha, I knew you'd have to peek....that doesn't COUNT as "Contact" so you're still good for another cookie....and Ice Cream, what the Hey....

Oh Dee, how eloquently you express these truths: "...instead of trying to become good men they CHOOSE to hurt the ones they love the most. They act out in ways that damage us profoundly."

They CHOOSE! Don't ever buy the psychological rationale you will hear thrown around in counseling texts, about their "emotionally stunted development," how they can't really help that they're stuck at the age their abuse happened, YA....no. I ain't buying that BS any longer, maybe when we first married and he hadn't killed our marriage with his acting out, but years and years later? It's a bloody CHOICE, when it comes to a 62 year old man STILL "not being able to differentiate" between his incestuous Mummy and his long-suffering American STBXW - on the other side of the world! (I mean, goodness, he ran as far away from HER as he could possibly go on Planet Earth without being an astronaut (his childhood fantasy, by the way) and yet that damned anger and rage he stuffed is still in there? Sucks to be him!

I just can't be a punching bag standing in for HER any more.

And Dee, your analogy to other abusers really makes that so clear to me. In college 11 years ago, I ran a statistical analysis for a court-ordered Batterers Intervention Group Therapist. Out of the 65 males whose cases histories I analyzed, all had been arrested for beating their wives or threatening harm to other family members but I discovered the WORST OFFENDERS had MOTHERS who had also beaten THEM. Now, 100% of the offenders had reported histories of witnessing their father hitting their mother, so the apple hadn't fallen far from the old tree. But the key finding I made was: cases with charges like attempted murder had family histories where the Mother had apparently felt it necessary to beat their Little Troublemaker BOYS, too! Teaching them early that Might Makes Right? Or they were just Bad to the Bone, as kiddos? Regardless, the sicker the family system, the sicker the result.

I discovered the WORST OFFENDERS had MOTHERS who had also beaten THEM.

I'd believe this is true with SA abuse too. My STBX has a horrible mother - married 11 times - basically a sort of grifter who married men to take them for a ride. She was also a gambling addict, very, very controlling and frequently dropped my STBX off with relatives for months or years at a time. He was also sexually abused by his step-mother.

My STBX was clearly channeling some abject rage at me. He would become venomous, particular when the subject of his cheating came up. He was also very skilled at manipulating me and all women - he brings out this motherly nurturing in every fucking woman he meets. It's a magic trick. Black magic. It's quite a toxic cocktail. He uses women to feel validated and abuses them to get even. And because he's very good-looking and charming and can afford hookers he's got endless supply.

But it is a choice. Look, even if they reverted to the age of abuse - my STBX was around 8 - by 8 you can control yourself. Every kid learns to control their behavior if they don't want to be reprimanded. So, unless he's reverting to infancy, I'm not buying. I buy that he's a sick mother fucker who's found a million ways to rationalize his behavior. The SA industrial complex doesn't necessarily help - it just gives him fancy language with which to describe his fuckery and a free pass for "slip ups" - please, spare me.

But...even with pre-verbal age sexual abuse or sick Mother issues, at some point in counseling a SA, the thinking is, there's supposed to be a "breakthrough." Snort....

What I'm saying here is "I am not convinced that nice, tidy Freudian theory of psychotherapy, can be shown to have worked in most cases." Maybe some; but so many fail to make progress.

And I'm going against the theory behind every counseling book I ever bought, read, and passed to HIM. (See who was doing the investigative "work" for the poor boy? I mean the poor 44 yr old man, 18 years ago?!) Most authors I read thought once the SA and his counselor worked hard enough to pull their early trauma memories out of some hypothetical, trauma-frozen, pre-verbal parts of their brains, (the Amygdala, the Hippocampus, the Pre-Frontal Cortex, to be precise) they can put their past "in the past," because Trauma memories are detached from Time. Once they bring them to consciousness, it is thought, they can place them in the PAST, they'll be able to function with normal memory, and thus will be capable of rational, clear thinking about what they've been reacting to, and who they've hurt along the way.

Again, SNORT. To such "experts" I say: PROVE IT. I got 18 years behind my old a## telling me "It don't work like that." These types just have deep-seated issues, psychological; dare I say, even spiritual.

Well, Skeeter. Gotta hand it to you. I am in AWE. You DID IT! Pushed that life boat away from the sinking ship, resuming your own life journey and saying "This trip sucked...better luck on the next." Like a true Sailor.

Dee, somehow I skimmed over this earlier and it really must be a haunting thing for you to process, I would imagine!

He looked at me like I was the only person on earth, just love shining through his eyes. I thought of them as struggles that we could get through, not indicators that he was a really fucked up person.

It does worry me that someone this damaged could fool me so profoundly.

Wow, yes, how could you have known?

Truly they may have a "split brain." There is such a thing, supposedly. We all have right and left halves of our brains, and some research has been done about how independent the sides operate. BUT was it an ACT, do you think now? Or....like that poor woman in D/S asked today, did some part of them feel you were their love object?

The theory of Object Constancy in human development is fascinating, but I don't even pretend to understand it. Supposedly, the infant initially bonds with the mother's breast (!) then that bond will soon extend to the mother's voice and face, but then the time comes when Mother isn't available for the infant, and the infant at first concludes the missing "Bad Mommy" is a different person than the Love Object Mommy ("Good Mommy").

In healthy development, babies soon learn to TRUST that the 2 Mommies they have learned about are not DIFFERENT, but just sometimes Mommy is right there, and sometimes she isn't right there...but she will be, soon. When the baby has successfully figured this out, it's love "Object Constancy." The theory behind Borderline Personality Disorder is that they failed to achieve Object Constancy.)

But again, we know these SA's are not all BPD, by any stretch!

[This message edited by Superesse at 9:42 PM, September 4th (Friday)]

Omg Superesse - love this!

"This trip sucked...better luck on the next."

I need an anchor tattoo to celebrate my sailor bravado.

The concept of a breakthrough seems very suspect - making some intellectual-emotional connection that sets you free. I would argue that most change is born of action - living differently, making different choices, filling the voids left by the old choices with healthy behavior, faking it till you make it. My STBX is incredibly bright. As evidence by his occasional fake shows of remorse, he gets all of completely -all of it. He just doesn't care.

Trauma changes brain wiring. I was reading about personality disordered people having reduced neural pathways/development in the empathy part of the brain. Trauma at an early age impacts brain formation. That's why it's so hard for these people to change. Maybe some figure out it's more trouble than it's worth and put it aside and others age-out. Dicks stop working, health impacts their ability to run around humping strangers like it's their full-time job, maybe a fixed income knocks them out of the whore-game. But, I don't believe they don't quit because it's the right thing to do or because they had an aha moment in which they couldn't bear hurting their partner any more, or, an aha moment in which they released trauma from childhood abuse. That doesn't physically rebuild or re-wire the brain. It's just a moment, a flash of understanding and it wears off.

They are cyborgs. Acting out was never about us and stopping wouldn't ever be about us either, if it actually happened. They aren't fully human for reasons we had nothing to do with. They have disorders that are largely considered untreatable. So despite the things that are nice about them they are trauma spewing machines.

I read this online and it's a pretty fascinating explanation of the split personality phenomenon.

The way criminologist and domestic violence expert Donald Dutton describes it, many batterers have a sort of split personality. One therapist I worked with went further and explained it’s more like the personalities are separated by office partitions rather than floor to ceiling walls. Unlike someone with dissociative personality disorder, many abusers know they have different “faces” and tucked within the mess is the original victim self that may respond quite sentimentally to certain triggers. The crying/emotional display looks genuine because, on a certain level, it is. But the “victim self” is not the ruler of their characters even if it originates from genuine childhood experience of victimization. Instead a central, organizing, evil persona is in control.

The “victim self” may randomly surface and it can give seeming depth to the initial displays of empathy that abusers show their targets in the lovebombing stage. They’re great at playing rescuer because they really do understand the victim experience which is why all BSs should guard against any subsequent suitor who’s too “rescuey” post-betrayal. Sometimes the rescuer is the real deal but quite often it’s just another abuser. Again, that empathic/rescuer persona seems real because it once was real. But the victim self can also get trotted out at will like how the innocent looking member of a crime gang is sent to approach the bank teller. The victim self can also be put aside and silenced at will in a process of selective empathy.

I’m probably making too fine a point of it because the semi-split abusers strike me as the most dangerous since they don’t set off even the most intuitive alarm systems. Those who have been fooled by this type should know that these kinds of abusers fool even seasoned experts. There’s also too little information about the phenomenon in circulation so that victims may be wrongfully blamed by bystanders or less experienced professionals for missing supposedly obvious cues. This can lead to typical assumptions that victims were somehow “drawn to abuse.” Bystanders like to comfort themselves that, if it were them in the same boat, they would have seen through the guise but the scariest part of human evil is that the devil doesn’t always wear horns.

[This message edited by skeetermooch at 9:57 PM, September 4th (Friday)]

Skeeter, my teeth are chattering....brrrrrrrr

You found that online, eh? OMG I think that's chillingly like what I was just this evening telling my STBXSAWH (how's that for a new acronym?) About how his anger against his mother and his own childhood abuse is STILL TO THIS DAY laying deep inside his mind somewhere, coiled up like a serpent. How it lays low, has never slithered off and left him, even after he, I and a dedicated MC got it all out in the open for over a YEAR in intense 2 hour sessions every week. Plenty of time to make those neural connections, if he wanted to heal "us" as he tearfully claimed at the time. But how it comes right back out and hisses at me and strikes like a rattlesnake once I finally "Trust" him enough to get a tiny bit closer, to just START to trust him again, to come closer....Soon as that starts going on in MY MIND, there is always some event that Bombs me back into the Stone Age, as we used to say. Maybe it's my Guardian Angel saying "Don't GO there, NOT safe!" but this yo-yo of me discovering his secrets, has shown up too many times in this relationship. He's never once confessed anything I didn't already suspect. Never.

Then, it takes me forever to get past his deviousness and willingness to cheat, but he does have his good qualities, so I bargain and bargain with myself almost DAILY to try and see that good stuff. We go along in a grim Limbo for years on end...When I finally start to have a smidgen of faith that by some stroke of fate, we're finally putting his ugly behavior BEHIND us, that's when the same old crap he's been hiding gets exposed suddenly, with NO warning, and I'm back where I was.

Thing is with this man, he knows after he displays his "dominance" and "gotcha back, bitch" urges by acting out against Almighty HER, (Mummy) that he'd better dang well tuck in and hide that side of his personality until the Coast is clear and I start to be hopeful, happier, more healed, give him more of my energy...and in our case, this cycle takes YEARS...But then, he always has to STRIKE again.

The length of time between offenses that he can seem like a new man, also never really "fit" the usual SA description of compulsive acting out. But when life throws him enough stress and disappointment, out comes that Primal Rage again. Must all be MY fault, just like it was all Mummy's.

This is no different, is it, than a man who chooses to beat up on his wife to blow off steam, then cries tears of regret. They call that the Cycle of Abuse. And the victims always fall for the Honeymoon Phase, and accept his abject apologies, until their life is put in danger.

You should see his Mug shot. The Inner Monster really was on display, for all the world to see! Seeing his mug shot, I almost DIDN'T recognize who he was - because I never SAW that ugliness on his face in all the prior years - the real SPIRIT driving his behavior. The other 6 men arrested all had just embarrassed or guilty looks, as you would expect. Not him - he was PISSED!

Once, the night before D-Day 1, the last time we ever had sex (and it was a 10, after I'd been grilling him for a month on suspicious credit card bill item and getting LIED TO. Doing that old Hysterical Bonding, I guess), I woke up a couple hours later in "our" bed - the last night we ever spent in "our" bed together, 18 years ago, now, and honestly, turning over and looking at his back through the low moonlight, I actually felt in mortal danger...that I was in fact laying next to some kind of primeval Serpent/Alligator monster! It really made my skin crawl; Next month will be 18 years and I can still remember that night like it was last week. There was this silent but DEADLY THING, RIGHT THERE, and my gut suddenly screamed at me: DANGER! Whooo. Less than 24 hours later, my marriage was dynamited to smithereens.

So. Scary.

I also like what you say about breakthroughs being suspect if they're only "intellectual exercises." Smart people like to believe they can WILL things to change (I'm guilty of THAT one!) But as life is teaching me lately, it's really what we get our butts out of bed to DO every day we are given, that CHANGES THINGS! :)

Thanks, Captain S!

Ladies, you're all so amazing!

[This message edited by Superesse at 11:11 PM, September 4th (Friday)]

Dee, thanks for some good reminders.

And believe me, I have no plans to do any of his work for him.

I stood by through his drug rehab 16 years ago, but I threw him out the day after I learned of his affair. The rest has been his. It was his decision to tell me of the other affairs (albeit 3 months later. All-in-all, he had sex outside the marriage about a dozen times with a total of 4 coworkers.) He was faithful the first 10 years of marriage, but he was using (without my knowledge). Once he got off the drugs, he had three affairs over about 5 years, then (again, his decision since I was oblivious to what was going on. ) he took a boundary course, which kept his dick in his pants for 10 years until this year. It was his decision to go to inpatient. And yes, about halfway through the program he recalled being raped as a pre-teen. (I'd known he was attacked, but he'd suppressed the rape memory.) His plan is to do several months of intensive outpatient work when he's released.

My plan is to start working with a trauma therapist and probably move back to my hometown. If he chooses to follow me, he can. But we'd still live separately there.

Is there a part of me hoping for a miracle, that somehow the guy that I thought I married suddenly materializes and sticks around. Of course. Do I think I could forgive him for what he's done. I'm not so sure. Could I ever trust him again. Probably not. Still, as the father of my child, I hope he is successful in finding better mental health and emotional peace. And if all that happens, would I consider reconciliation a few years down the road. I suppose. But if I feel ready to date, I will do so. And if I reach a point where I'm sure that divorce is the right thing, I'd do that as well.

So tell me ladies, with your experience, what are the holes with this plan?

Skeetermooch, holy shit. I'm still processing that.

There are no holes in this plan, BlackRaven. I think this is wise. You need space and time to get away from this drama and stress so that you can think straight. Living with this stuff is madness.

I will never reconcile with my XWH, but I do wish for him to get better and become a good man. His family deserves that. I don't wish him harm.

I've seen the "other face" too. I could not reconcile that with the eyes shining with love face. I never saw that pre-DDay. I guess the game was up at that point.

So, Superesse, what skeetermooch posted might be a better answer than anything I could come up with. I had previously just categorized it with him seeing me as a drug until the high wore off.

[This message edited by DevastatedDee at 12:06 AM, September 5th (Saturday)]

Black Raven,

I hatched a somewhat similar plan along this journey and here were my pitfalls: Even though I wanted to move on, was moving on, had kicked him out, I stayed attached to him emotionally. The level of attachment waxed and waned a little. At times, I was uncomfortably preoccupied with what he was doing and with whom. If I heard from a friend he was out of town or saw him yucking it up on a social media post, it impacted my serenity and healing - who was he with, etc. I was worried he was moving on and dating, etc. if his communications dropped off. I knew I couldn't trust him to be up front with me. It was maddening. I doubt I could've moved on and dated.

My plan may have been hatched under a lot more hope of reconciliation than you have currently, which may be why it didn't last. I think a fresh start, in your home town sounds really good. My impulse for awhile has been to move back east where I'm from.

I'm having a hard time this afternoon. It's hitting me how after this most recent dday, my ex never promised to stop, offered to get more help. He essentially told me he was sorry he was unable to control his behavior and maybe time apart would help him figure it out and maybe if we divorced we could remarry in a year like his grandparents. He added he still wanted to grow old together and loved me and the kids, was lost without us, crying himself to sleep blah blah, crap and lies.

What gets me is that he was willing to lose me rather than give it up. Essentially he chose cheating over me. He didn't even lie and say he would give it up if I gave him another chance - he made no attempt to salvage it. I guess that's why I feel dumped.

I don't know maybe I shouldn't be thinking about all of this. Maybe I don't need to peel these layers back. It's so depressing.

I’m sorry skeetermooch,

Expecting an addict to give up their acting out for love is like expecting a diabetic to stop needing insulin for love. It doesn’t work that way.

No one likes to feel like they’re being rejected. But that’s not what’s happened. It sounds like he was honest with you for once. (We know that addicts are compulsive liars.) He’s told you that he loves you and wants to grow old with you. And he told you that he can’t control his demons. And that’s why you’re divorcing him, because you didn’t sign up to be married to demons. Who knows what he’ll do moving forward. Maybe he’ll hit his bottom. Maybe he won’t. But you don’t need to watch that any more.

And the part about remarrying in a year, that’s him telling you that he’s needy, that he is so full of self loathing that he needs external validation like other people need air. And that can never come from outside.

Go ahead and mourn what wasn’t. That’s OK. But know that you need to protect yourself, because he isn’t capable of doing so.

[This message edited by BlackRaven at 8:35 PM, September 5th (Saturday)]

No, Skeeter, he just said the same as mine recently said when I busted him again: how he knows he isn't worthy of another chance, etc. He is telling himself fidelity to one woman is clearly out of his control; this way he holds tight to his identity or self-image as some kind of hopeless, irredeemable SA.

Yet isn't this sort of still "all about the addict...?"

What you heard sounds to me like he was saying he'd LIKE not to be losing his life this way through his own actions - yet he knows himself well enough to know he is now and likely always will be unable to keep any promise about fidelity he might make. So it's NOT him rejecting YOU, it's him rejecting HIMSELF and the cleaner, better life he knows he is losing. Playing victim to his problem, if you'd rather think of it that way.

And you must have gotten done with your to-do list, to have a minute to think about him, right? Remember that last weekend was difficult for you, too. And here we are a holiday weekend, in the midst of the Covid crap. Make extra effort to DO things for yourself and your son, this weekend! And (((skeeter))))

Edited to second what Black Raven posted while I was struggling to find the same message she powerfully expressed! (I hope you are doing okay this weekend, too, BlackRaven!)

I see we will need the mods to open another chapter, 1000 posts coming up, Ladies!!

[This message edited by Superesse at 8:48 PM, September 5th (Saturday)]

And he told you that he can’t control his demons. And that’s why you’re divorcing him, because you didn’t sign up to be married to demons.

Thx BR. I definitely wouldn't have married him if I knew about his demons. No way. So, now he's honest for once but how awful is that? He put me through years of cheating, one year of absolute trauma and misery post dday 1, and now, he decides to be honest? Now, that he's realized it's too much trouble having a wife while you're whore-mongering.

When I met him I was dating multiple people - trying out the poly-thing. And I would've happily had that kind of arrangement with him but he didn't want it. And when I caught him cheating a year ago, I offered it again. I've brought it up many times in the last year and he insists that he doesn't want to be poly and then cheats on me.

What you heard sounds to me like he was saying he'd LIKE not to be losing his life this way through his own actions - yet he knows himself well enough to know he is now and likely always will be unable to keep any promise about fidelity he might make. So it's NOT him rejecting YOU, it's him rejecting HIMSELF and the cleaner, better life he knows he is losing. Playing victim to his problem, if you'd rather think of it that way.

He's definitely the victim in his mind. Why wouldn't he accept an open relationship if he knows he can't be faithful? I guess because he doesn't want me sleeping with other people. It all makes no sense. I know I'm trying to explore the cave mind of a disordered SA - a fruitless endeavor.

I'm still in that phase where my brain is running a scan of everything I've known against everything I know know and every so often I realize something awful. It sucks. It's like discovering a thorn in your foot - I want to pull it out and look at it and get rid of it. So I keep looking for all the places it hurts and trying to locate what's making me hurt and then it's just another fucked up realization.