SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

BackfromtheStorm recently started a thread wondering what character traits, if any, most or all betrayed spouses had in common.

I've wondered about this notion for most of my time on SI and I've yet to identify any one trait that we all share.

A few moments ago, I was encouraging a new member to trust his instincts when I had a "light bulb" moment.

(Yes, even I have them every once in a while)

Our instincts are powerful. It seems to me that our subconscious minds might very well be far more cognizant than we give them credit.

How many times have members berated themselves for missing red flags, feeling "stupid" for not trusting their instincts?

It seems ubiquitous.

Now, granted, this may very well be just another aspect of the human condition, perfectly applicable to all sorts of situations in life, not just in regards to infidelity. Still, I'm curious.

How powerful are our instincts? Did you listen to them? Did you ignore, dismiss or otherwise minimize them?

[This message edited by Unhinged at 2:10 AM, Monday, June 29th]

A long time ago I worked for a private investigator and he gave me the best advice. He said kid, if something seems off it probably is.

So I had have had off feelings that I can’t explain. Then I found if I didn’t listen to them I get sick. But couldn’t figure out what it was until I found it, or go looking. Each time I’ve found something to support my gut feeling even though it was there I chose to believe WS then my own brain. With things in front of me I still allowed him to convince me I was wrong or it wasn’t what it looked like. To the point I was assessed for postpartum depression, which I obviously didn’t have just high anxiety levels.

Example today no reason at all I woke up and had the same gut feeling and I’ve not been well so I checked out WS iPad and he had forgotten to delete texts between him and OW from last week!

So I’d say I know when something or someone is off, I stupidly chose to ignore it. But won’t ever in my life again never trust my own instincts. And I think I will always tell people if you feel something if off it definitely is!

I went into a strange mental state about half way thru my exWW’s 3 year affair. I understood it at the time that it was Retrospective Jealousy about a previous lover of hers. But I now believe it was me perceiving something and misdirecting the focus.

Not sure if this sort of thing would count as a "character trait", even if it is a fairly common experience in betrayal. I might guess we’re a fairly trusting group, maybe.

A lot of the book of proverbs in the Bible is dedicated as a warning against adultery. It talks about adultery as the penultimate example of foolishness, and it talks about foolishness as one who will not listen to outside perspectives. The contrast is wisdom is manifest as a person open to learning and correction. Regardless of religious origins, those categories seem useful to me. It is wise not to shit where you eat.

My radar got pinged a few times, but I ignored it because I trusted my wife. Any red flags barely even registered. "Hm, that's strange... oh well." Afterall, there's no way she would ever cheat on me. Right? R-r-riiight..?

When it turned physical and the signs became pretty obvious I followed my instincts and caught her not quite in the act, but I found out where she was and drove there to confront her. That's the night my whole world fell apart. That was well over a year ago, but the pain from the memory is still strong enough to almost move me to tears. Even just sitting here typing it out. It's one of the shittier d day accounts I've read about. Not the worst, for sure, but it's up there.

That does seem to be a theme tho. Blind trust leading to being blindsided and tendency to ignore red flags, but like you said, that could just be a part of the human condition. Plus I don't really know if it could be considered a character trait that would correlate to there being a "type" that gets cheated on. I think most everyone has an extraordinary level of trust for their spouse. It's more likely a certain character trait among cheaters that correlates to them to take advantage of that trust.

That really hurt, and I've had many conversations with my wife about it. Her taking advantage of my trust. Blind trust is shot now and she knows it.

Psychiatrist told someone I know that we have a built-in ability to read the room. If we don’t, it’s because of one of two reasons. We have just learned to ignore it so well over the years that we have forgotten to look, or we were one of the few who were not born with it at all, which makes the world dangerous. I never had any red flags with my husband because he did everything out of town and came home and was the best husband and father you’ve ever seen. I don’t know how I could’ve read anything into that. Thank goodness it was short term and we moved on and that’s been years ago.
My red flag was a woman I was friends with who got angry over something so simple and would give me the silent treatment periodically just to keep me in line. I wondered what it would be like to be one of her children and I found out because her middle child ghosted her.

I have a hard time with instincts…

I think we need to accept them for what they are – indicators, rather than facts or conclusions. We would be foolish to ignore them, but need to understand what they are.

I’m sensitive to the smell of smoke. A candle burns out, someone blows on a match… I will smell smoke, and I will find the source. My family makes fun of it, and sometimes it bothers them when I walk around the house trying to discover where that smoke-smell originates. I remind them of the time our house caught fire…
So my instinct is to connect smoke with a bad experience. However – not once that I smell smoke in the last decade has there been any major issue. I find out that a candle burned out, or that my wife used a match to light up a candle. I have learned that although my instinct makes me search, then I can find a reasonable cause and after that I can’t be spending time trying to find a fire.

I find that often on this site we have posters that come here due to instinct reactions. Valid issues that common sense suggests we find the answer for. But we also have to be open to that the instinct might be off, or is triggered by something other than infidelity. I find that we – as a site – tend to be reluctant to do so, and seem to want to find infidelity in every instance.

Bigger, I also have a really strong sense of smell. I told my husband that was a fire he trusted me enough to get out of bed…it was our furnace on fire. I knew he had a gas leak in his car that he couldn’t smell and there was one. I have never ever had a smell that was I was wrong about. So I trust that.

The instinct discussed here are very subtle signs that we are so busy in our lives we don’t notice. Of course we notice if someone keeps their phone turned face down, but that’s too easy because people now have many ways to sneak conversations without us ever finding out. The subtle signs, the very small subtle signs we need to start paying attention to….less eye contact. A little bit late coming home maybe not much, just not normal. The idea that you have to run errands more than normal. There are thousand ways our significant other tells us something is off. Because we are busy we trust them and we are assuming that’s just life, even if we HAD enough recognition to even make an assumption. I think always the signs are there. When I look back at what my husband was doing, he was flirtatious. It bothered a friend of mine a lot more than it did me because I had known him that way from the time I met him, but she picked up on something that was not normal to her, and she talked to me about it. If we had not moved shortly thereafter, I probably would have started noticing more, but the temptations were gone because he was no longer traveling. He bought a business that he ran with me even though I also had a full-time job, but there was no time that I did not know where he was. My friends radar was better than mine.

The problem is a SO who belittles our worries so we ignore them.

Unless we live with a sociopath there are always tiny clues.

[This message edited by Cooley2here at 3:50 PM, Monday, June 29th]

I think the problem can be expressed well in the saying "when you see hoof prints, think horse, not zebra".

By nature of us being here on this site, we are zebras.

Add on top of that that humans can convince themselves that they can find patterns in randomness, and one needs to be thoughtful.

That said, I will continue to tell someone dealing with a known liar to trust their instincts. While instincts aren’t perfect, they are better than an intentional deceiver and it shields against manipulation and gaslighting. But before you are dealing with a known liar, it’s just more subtle.

Gut instinct is inherent to our survival. It’s been ingrained in us for as long as homosapiens have existed. It’s what tells us when we were out hunting with a spear at night, that there is something else nearby us without seeing/hearing/smelling it.
I know that before being cheated on, I had it and could use it to feel dangerous situations forming around me. And I think that during and afterwards being cheated on I used that gut instinct in this new way to determine what this new, non life threatening danger was.
Nowadays I believe it is been trained and honed moreso than before.
I do think that gut instinct and situational awareness go hand in hand. I have plenty of people in my life that have either no or next to none of any kind of situational awareness. I would suppose that their gut instinct is nonexistent or dormant, whatever.

WRT my W's A, I had a mixed experience. OOH, I saw an unusual pattern in W's work. I knew the patterns fit with an A.

OTOH, I had seen 45 years of fidelity, of shutting down flirtation. At one gigantic indoor-outdoor party, albeit in our 1st year of M, I was maybe 10 yards from her and moving towards her group, a guy stopped me and told me she was a cold bitch. He then complained she turned him down in no uncertain terms. And she had told me she thought about sex with men, not about sex with women. The troubling work pattern was with a woman. Finally, I asked if she was cheating, and she told me she wasn't - 3 times, IIRC.

So my instincts were mixed. I had to make a judgment and made a mistake. Not the first time; not the last. Sometimes I get it right.

How powerful are our instincts? Did you listen to them? Did you ignore, dismiss or otherwise minimize them?

I've never been good at listening to my instincts, and I don't like acting quickly, so I stop to think first, and then I overthink, and that gut feeling is repressed by introspection and second guessing. There have been plenty of occasions where my gut instinct was wrong about something, so I think I learned not to trust it.

I knew something wasn't right between me and WS, though, and there were multiple times that I pressed him for explanations (including a memorable incident where I cried that he didn't love me anymore). He lied, deflected, or gaslight me every time until dday1. I never thought it was because of an affair, though.

The one time I did listen to my "spider sense" was what led to dday2, when I discovered he was still talking to AP.

OTOH, I had seen 45 years of fidelity, of shutting down flirtation

.

This was along the lines of what I was thinking.

I had no inkling whatsoever. In fact, at the peak of my husbands affair I thought we were reconnecting. I saw no signs.

My husband knew I wasn’t right, but that had started long before the affair and I think it camouflaged it.

I also think some instincts are natural and some are learned. I feel like maybe you have experienced cheating from either end there are things you take away from that which might strengthen those instincts.

But getting back to what I highlighted that Sissoon said. I think our instincts are sharper with someone new than someone who has become predictable over time. The only problem is that people change over time or under duress or things that seemed simple (oh she is so accommodating) turns into something else over time that you can’t see coming. Sort of a frog in a boiling pot.

And when you are operating honestly, we project that on the people we love.

Whether or not you feel your instincts are strong or weak or somewhere in between, I think it’s a strength to be able to trust and be vulnerable. I believe part of our purpose in life is to remove our barriers towards love. I see many bs here being nothing but what they should have been, be careful not to make lack of seeing it as your deficit. That person likely gave you all the right patterns and who wouldn’t trust in that after a long consistent period of time?