SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I am a sahm so I will answer as to what I would feel receiving those cards.

Pity.

They wouldn't bother me simply for the fact the he would want them to bother me.

I would see him for what he is.

A sad, bitter person who deserves my pity and nothing more.

The BW in Analyst's case most likely thinks he is bitter and ill, maybe even a bunny boiler in her mind.

Her H is maybe doing the work, making it up to her everyday. She would most likely say, if she were here on SI, that her H has received plenty of anger and blame.

So then, at what point has Analyst crossed the line from victim in his own life to perpetrator in hers? I don't think it is a matter of opinion from the court's standpoint; he has crossed it.

You are a victim when you are harmed.

You are a perpetrator when you harm others.

Revenge--if harmful--is illegal. You are a perpetrator.

Karma will come back around for Analyst for the negativity and hurt he is putting into the world, there is no doubt about it. I am not hoping for it, just speaking of natural consequences. When you are hurt and choose to handle your emotions by acting out against others--unless your life or another life is in imminent danger and you are acting in self-defense--you are putting more evil into the world. Two wrongs do not make a right; they make two wrongs instead of one. And karma, in all its strange and abstract ways, is often simply the increase in your pain as you feed the negativity and hostility inside you--ponder it, marinate in it, lose hours and minutes to it. You become what you feed.

Healing is an inside job. Always. We do not heal ourselves by increasing the hostility or negativity in the world; we merely turn ourselves bitter and cold.

I wish Analyst well.

He is clearly suffering.

Looking inward would help.

That's what IC is for.

Honestly, sometimes I do not know myself. I know for sure that I want him to pay for what he did and I really do not care about the costs. This is at maximum. At minimum I want him to live in a miserable marriage and not enjoy his holidays because his wife is unhappy. "Happy wife - happy life"

Analyst - There is no action you can take to make things even. An affair is unfair. What your wife and OM did was unfair and hurtful to you. But nothing you do to either the OM or his BS will take away your pain.

You can spend all the time in the world thinking of things that might hurt OM and do them all but it will never make what they did to you okay. It will ALWAYS be unfair. I'm so sorry. Sometimes life isn't fair in all sorts of ways and all we can do is accept it and move on.

Good luck. I hope you will consider letting it go. The best revenge is living well.

Steady

Analyst, you say IC isn't worth it because of your heritage. Why not give it a try?

The reason why I do not believe in IC is not just cultural (or better said only about 60% cultural) but also because I see the incentives of IC are very much misaligned.

For example, let's say you have a toothache and you go to a dentist who fixes it up. You can clearly see the result and next time you come only when you have another dental issue. With counselling (IC or MC) the counselor gets paid only while you are attending these counselling sessions. There is really no incentive or even an objective measurement of the progress. As such, I have observed people keep going to IC months after months until they run out of money and cannot afford to pay for those sessions...

I am not implying that counselors are unethical. All I am saying is that their incentives are misaligned to keep you in those counselling sessions. I am also saying that a lack of a clear progress benchmark also does not help.

SilverLinings55:

My primary criticism, aside from vehemently disagreeing with harming the BS to get revenge against OM, is that it appears Analyst is moreso bragging than seeking help ("hero story" about anger sort of thing).

My apologies if I created this impression. There is nothing heroic here.

SCARLETT94:

A sad, bitter person who deserves my pity and nothing more.

As a compassionate human being, would you be able to enjoy your holidays and see your H enjoy his holidays knowing full well that his actions turned a normal human being into a "sad and bitter person" while destroying his marriage? If you cannot do it then what makes you think she can?

[This message edited by Analyst at 2:19 AM, December 5th (Tuesday)]

" his actions turned a normal human being into a "sad and bitter person" while destroying his marriage? "

I would say to myself that at some point another person's healing is their responsibility. someone else's actions turning another person bitter is giving that person WAY too much power in your life. I'd still pity him for wallowing in that.

I do think, perhaps naively, that there are counsellors out there who want to graduate their patients/clients away from them. I believe some of them reduce the frequency of appointments as progress is being made.

I also think that it is up to me to provide strong direction with what my objectives for making the investment would be. I am the CEO of my health care. I think that discussing a treatment plan and expecting evaluation and to be part of the evaluation process is a patient responsibility. And you can fire any consultant you hire including a counsellor.

I do believe there have been many, many people here on SI and others we know nothing about that have benefited greatly from counselling. I know I have. I have fired a counsellor after one session, too. I also need some more counselling and will be arranging that for early in the new year.

What do you really have to lose by giving it a try. If you do you need to be totally honest with the counsellor about the situation and what issues are plaguing you. You also need to give it an honest try - not half-heartedly so you can say "see I tried it and I was right. It's crap". What's to fear?

or you could go into it saying you'll come to three sessions and you need to get as much out of IC in that amount of time.

As a compassionate human being, would you be able to enjoy your holidays and see your H enjoy his holidays knowing full well that his actions turned a normal human being into a "sad and bitter person" while destroying his marriage? If you cannot do it then what makes you think she can?

I know I couldn't live with being party to destroying a marriage or family like that. No amount of IC or praying would help me come to terms with that. It must take some really selfish asshole to be a part of destroying a family and say, fuck it, I still have mine.

Analyst- i fear that frankly, you will carry your bitterness and hatred, taking time away from your own pursuit of happiness, in perpetuity, until the OM suffers a slow painful death. But you can’t make that happen, so YOU will suffer slow and painfully instead. I get it, I really do. I don’t blame you for what you wish upon the OM. I don’t blame you for having no regard for his life or existence. But i hold you accountable to be a better man for his spouse. Show her what real compassion and empathy is. Send her a letter or an email explaining that while you will always hold a deep hatred for her WH, it was wrong for you to hurt her to make that point. And most importantly, you need to move beyond it, not because they deserve anything from you, but because after your betrayal, YOU deserve everything from you. Heal, find better, and rub his and your ex wife’s faces in it if you must, but after you get to place where you can actually say your life is better. Show his wife that unlike her WH, there are better men in this world. Don’t prove to her that your no better than him

I've been pretty hard on you, and want to say I am sorry, because I too did not really consider the amount of pain that would lead to the kind of behavior you've described.

I want to take another stab at this, though. Your statement below:

As a compassionate human being, would you be able to enjoy your holidays and see your H enjoy his holidays knowing full well that his actions turned a normal human being into a "sad and bitter person" while destroying his marriage? If you cannot do it then what makes you think she can?

Please don't tune me out when I say this: No one has the power to turn you into a sad and bitter person. That is a choice you are making. I know you don't believe that. I know that you want to believe that these people (your XWW and her AP) made you bitter. But can't you see how you are granting them power over you? And I'm telling you (along with multiple other people) that there is no one with that power.

I understand. Probably better than most. I want to share some of my background so you might believe that I'm not just telling you something I read or believe. It's not pretty. I'm going to be very, very explicit because it's important to me.

My mother is mentally ill. I grew up in a chaotic and abusive home where the threat of her suicide was a constant and real fear for me every single day. I can remember being in primary school, 7 or 8 years old, and riding the school bus home with a knot in my stomach, convinced that today would be the day I would find her dead and it would be my fault because I wasn't cute enough or funny enough or smart enough or "fill in the blank" enough. When I was in 3rd grade, my mother allowed her pedophile brother to move in our house in exchange for him providing free "child care." What he provided was a year of hell for me and my sister. I have a very clear memory of hiding under my bed as my uncle tried to pull me by my feet, and my mom coming to the room and yelling at me for waking her up.

He abused me in just about every way short of penetration. When I was 19, I lost my virginity to a friend of my brother's. I was almost comatose from the first time I ever drank alcohol. Consent was not possible. I was "awake" but had virtually no control of my body. I found out I was pregnant 3 weeks later. This guy then proceeded to tell horrific lies about me to escape responsibility. (This was before DNA testing and he claimed I'd been a willing participant in sex with multiple men and his commanding officer found that story "much more believable" than a 19 year old virgin.) I gave my child up for adoption at birth and spent the next 21 years trying to make all that pain go away. In the meantime, I got married to a sociopath who abused me mentally and cheated on me, leaving me with a newborn son who I raised alone until I met my current H, who also cheated on me multiple times.

I drank and drugged to try to make all that pain go away. I behaved abominably at times. I lost my nursing license for a year and ultimately almost went to prison before I finally did the work of recovery and got sober in 2008. I DESPISED the words "surrender" and "acceptance". And those words are thrown around a lot in recovery. I will never forget sitting in rehab and pouring out all of this stuff to my counselor. I told her I drank and drugged because of the pain of my past. She looked me dead in the eye and said, "HF, you don't have a past. Every bit of this stuff is in the present because you carry it around with you in a suitcase like some kind of treasure you don't want to put down. You will never get sober until you are willing to put this stuff in the past where it belongs."

Boom.

See, what happened to me as a child, and as a young woman, and as a wife was unacceptable. It was horrible and wrong and not one thing about it was fair. I was a victim and had no power in any of those situations. But every single time that I used that stuff as an excuse for drinking, using, treating people badly... every time I did that I was willingly placing myself back in that victim place. By using that pain as an excuse, I was ALLOWING THE ABUSE TO HAPPEN AGAIN. (emphasis intended. Not yelling.) What your XWW and AP did to you was inexcusable. Wrong. Horrible. But every time you act out in anger and pain you are inviting and reliving the betrayal. And this time, you are not innocent. It's your choice.

Back to those 2 dirty words. "Surrender." F*ck that. I don't surrender. I fight. I don't back down. I don't give up. That's how I felt. And then one day in 2008 I heard someone say, "Surrender is nothing more than joining the winning team." And that made sense to me. I was so damn tired of losing. Tired of hurting. I was ready to win. And one of the hardest things to grasp is that we win when we quit fighting. We win when we give up the idea that we can make the other person lose.

Which brings me to "acceptance." Oh, hell no! Acceptance? Doesn't that mean that I'm giving all those people who hurt me a pass? Isn't that saying that what they did was okay?

Not at all. Acceptance means I can say "This stuff happened to me and I am okay." It's giving up the delusion that I can make a better history. And the best part of acceptance is that when I accept that no one has the power to turn me into anything or make me do anything, I find my true power. If I'm a victim, then I'm powerless to do anything. But the truth is that I have the power to feel and do and be whatever I choose.

And so do you. You can choose to continue to be a sad and bitter person. Or you can choose to be victorious and content.

Your choice. Your power.

Now, we both agree that adultery is wrong, unethical, deceiptful, lying etc. Do you think there are any CPA who lost their licenses because of committing an adultery (assume for a moment that it did not happen at a work place)?

I was married to one—one with a impeccable record at his last Big Four employer, rare expertise in a small but critical niche of tax law, and many and recent awards for excellence and innovation (and saving billions of dollars).

He was dropped like a hot potato when his infidelity (only very peripherally conducted on company time—as in occasional phone calls at work) came to light. Why? Because of the ASSOCIATED ethical violations he committed.

No one had to send cards or notify the employer—it happened all on its own. Those firms PAY ATTENTION. They are highly attuned to ethics. (I have 6 family members at KPMG or “The Others,” and can give you 100 similar stories; this is not just my personal experience.)

And reputation precedes resumes at lighning speed; my ex found himself unemployable in his mid-forties. All that money he was making? Gone, with zero earning potential.

It happens. And ethics are ethics—whether BS or WS, at work or not (watch social media—they do!)—you will be held to their standards and terminated if in violation. If OBS files a RO or

complains to your employer for harassment, as you did to her family, you could be in hot water.

Maybe it’s time to let go of the machismo that is failing you (and DOES threaten you professionally) and embrace that American thing you scorn: IC with the aim of growth. A counselor specializing in trauma can be a real godsend. For me, it was time-limited, brain-based (not talking and talking and talking, but DOING), and hugely beneficial.

HFSSC, THANK YOU for sharing your story!!!!

I have to say that was one of THE most eye opening insightful posts I've ever read here on SI.

Sorry you had to go through all of that, but you are obviously one tough determined individual and I'm glad to see you in a great place now and more importantly being able to share your journey with others.

Thanks again!!!

WRT IC:

Analyst, You can go to an IC and say, 'I want to change this about myself.'

Then every so often you and your IC can ask if you've met your goal. If you have, you're done.

The reason some courses of therapy go on so long, in may cases, is that resistance to change is very strong, and it just takes a lot of time to get through that. (Of course, greed and/or incompetence can also play a role in making therapy endless.)

You are bitter that they stayed together, for better or worse. What allowed that to happen? A BS with some impetus to offer mercy. You don't know what that was and you can only guess. Maybe you are right, but what if you are wrong? What if his wife knows his why's, he has done the work to be a better husband, and she has given him the gift of R, as many here at SI have done. Does that bother you more?

Why aren't you with your wife? Wasn't that your decision, not hers? Certainly, the OBS does not own any part of your decisions to send your wife away. I am fairly certain that after 3 years your attempt looks a bit sociopathic to them and gets the opposite response from your intent. In my house you would be a joke. There was no OBS over here, but if I was her, I would be sending it back, return to sender. You are lucky she does not forward to your employer with an explanation of your intent for the last three years.

HFSSC, THANK YOU for sharing your story!!!!

I have to say that was one of THE most eye opening insightful posts I've ever read here on SI.

Thank you for that, Booyah.

Sorry you had to go through all of that, but you are obviously one tough determined individual and I'm glad to see you in a great place now and more importantly being able to share your journey with others.

I appreciate that. And I have to share. I'll be damned if I lived through all of that to be the only one to benefit from what I learned.

HFSSC,

You are an inspiration.

I lived only 20% of that, and it was hell.

But yes, it wasn't rehab but instead hours and hours of therapy and shitty relationships to finally hear, "It is absolutely true, you were wronged. Way wronged. Now what? Do you want to hold onto that truth and be angry or let go of it and be happy, lighter, live again?"

I let go.

I did not condone, I transcended.

I did not forgive, I forgot.

I did not feel weak, I was strong.

I did not accept, I rejected.

I did not lose, I absolutely won.

Analyst, if HFSSC can overcome her trauma, you can too.

May 2018 bring you lightness again.

[This message edited by OwningItNow at 9:07 PM, December 5th (Tuesday)]

Who said, "Holding on to anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. " ?

Whoever they were, it's right. Forgiveness and mercy are for YOUR benefit, not the offender.

That much hate will eat you from the inside.

Bump. Analyst, did you give up on this thread? Still reading?

Was just wondering if you'd done any more processing.