SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Alone and Drowning- I’m a BS and my WH also had difficulty performing when he was sleeping with both OW and me. I think it was was guilt. I don’t think it had anything to do with me, since a few weeks before everything was fine.

PM for you Gottagetthrough

GTT... I have a hard time not thinking its about me. That's why I reached out for comfort. I am a 43 yr old, mother of 4... she was pretty and thin... I am not. I have gained some weight the last year... and i am average as they come... I know that our sex life is good now... that he isnt carrying that secret...

Hello WS’s!

What is YOUR Why for having an affair?

Because I could

Because I wanted to

Because I chose to

Because I’m a cake eater

Because my ego is about a mile wide

Because I reconnected with my ex and was too chicken to leave my marriage first, before cheating, but I still wanted to have sex with and “date” my ex instead of waiting to do things properly, so I cheated and cake-ate and fence-sat while I was ostensibly “making up my mind” until I was caught.

Because I (falsely) associated sex with intimacy and nurtured a selfish grudge about what attention should look like- Especially when apart (work took me away about 40-50% of our M.) When I convinced myself I wasn’t adequately loved I let myself supplant it with sex elsewhere. That confusion led me to HEAVY limerence which turned it into a truly vicious EA on top of the PA.

In therapy we discussed my self esteem. His AP was prettier and thinner than me. He said "my wife is beautiful. Everyone says she is beautiful. My wife is far from being overweight"

But he didnt once say I was prettier than her. Yay for honesty I suppose...

So if he thinks his AP was prettier than me, better body than me...

What does he think when he sees me? Sees me naked? Is he comparing her and me?

Do you WS do that?

Thank you so much for answering WSs!

Because:

I wanted to remember what a kind voice sounded like, for someone to desire me, someone to appreciate me. I looked to have my needs fulfilled instead of working to build myself up.

What did I get?

Guilt, regret, remorse, shame, sadness, anxiety...the list goes on.

[This message edited by Hutch at 10:51 PM, August 10th (Saturday)]

Yes thank you for replying WS's. These are probably the most honest answers I have read for a WS why's.

In fact they almost make a good Collective point of ref to print out and stick in my journal.

I think these are all my WS thought processes if he dared be honest enough to admit them.

Hello WS’s, my H and I are in reconciliation. It’s been a long hard road to walk and I still have days we’re I'm crushed and so hurt by his betrayal. My H has days were he is plagued by guilt and regret. I want us to get through this though, so I have tried to be open to intimacy and getting a spark back..... however my H is completely shut down. He says his struggling with it. This adds further to my pain as I know he was so open to it with his affair lover. Is it normal in reconciliation for the WS to have an intimacy block? Am I crazy for still wanting to work on our marriage?

Alone,

I never compared. Reread the thread "Honey, they always affair down" (or search if you haven't seen it yet). Plenty of WS choose APs who aren't as attractive, smart, kind, whatever as the BS. That's because the A really is not about the BS. It's about the WS, as reflected in the admiring (or allegedly admiring) eyes of the AP. Even in cases where the AP is objectively younger, thinner, etc than the BS, it's usually less about that than about the fantasy adoration that the WS received. That was the appeal for me, because my BH was quantifiably better than OM.

Do they miss that adoration? That's a trickier question. WS seem to fall into two categories: those who vilify the BS because it makes them feel better about cheating, and those who compartmentalize and keep their thoughts and feelings about BS and AP separate. I was in the latter category, so I wasn't thinking about OM when I was with BH (and, unfortunately, vice versa.) I can't personally speak to the thoughts of what "Not Just Friends" calls "monogamous infidels," waywards who sought to replace the BH with the AP. But I've read enough here to see that they are just as embarrassed and repulsed by the idea of the AP when they finally snap out of the fog.

I believe your WH does see you as beautiful, and that that's what he's thinking when he looks at you. I'm sorry that didn't stop him, but I'm afraid no level of beauty could have stopped him, because his A was not about you.

For those who want R but took the affair underground after getting caught - why? Why did you do it and why did you deem it worth it?

Is it normal in reconciliation for the WS to have an intimacy block? Am I crazy for still wanting to work on our marriage?

Hurt- It’s normal for WSs to selfishly withhold from true openness. I would truly caution you against thinking that your WS was legitimately open with his AP: It likely felt like openness even to him, but it was likely just a different flavor of lying than how he deceived you during the A. He maybe shared different details than what he shared with you, but it likely wasn’t true openness. The mask he wore, he also placed on others.

Him referencing his guilt and shame appears, to people who have experienced, to be a cop-out as alternative to truly facing what he has done. I pulled this same BS and it really hurt my BW because I basically threw back “my pain” as somehow comparable to hers- Yes it hurts, but it can’t compare. Really can’t.

I WILL tell you I fully expect it to change- IF this is a recent development. When my BW 180’ed I had incidentally arrived at wanting to do the right thing- 6 months post D-Day. If this has been a long, ongoing pattern, I believe he needs to get put in his place and reminded of who is suffering here. This all takes time, and if you can visualize a place where you build a new, safe relationship with your WS, then I don’t think you’re crazy.

For those who want R but took the affair underground after getting caught - why? Why did you do it and why did you deem it worth it?

Chaos,

It’s hard to believe that WS’s really aren’t conscious of the flaming wreckage they’re flinging about everyone’s lives as they continue to make these choices, but in some ways that ignorance truly exists. It comes down to the selfish ability to prioritize what we feel are urgent, legitimate needs. The cognitive distortions that enabled selfish choices don’t immediately go away.

In my case underground was almost instinctive- I violated NC on a handful of occasions and I was consciously choosing, and working to limit that contact. So on some level I clearly KNEW what I was doing. The critical point in this, I believe, goes back to the “junkie mindset” that is sometimes alluded to on here. Until I could truly wrap my mind around how I was rationalizing these decisions, I wasn’t armed to refute them on my own. Consequently, a risk decision like you allude to was impossible because there was a perceived benefit that wasn’t actually there.

There’s no way to ever understand that those of us who understand consequences in normal spheres of life can’t process this risk, but clouded judgment exists in so many places. I think I was afraid of getting caught, I don’t know that I absorbed that I could get caught. I certainly didn’t understand betrayal because of a perceived benefit that took far too long to unmask.

The ultimate answer is deeming it “worth it” needs an informed understanding of both risk and benefit, and those are both drastically distorted in the process of betrayal. I really try to keep from a cop-out on this, eager to hear if others believe this discussion to be so.

edited for punctuation

[This message edited by JBWD at 5:36 PM, August 14th (Wednesday)]

BraveSirRobin.

Thank you for the response. I cant help but feel he did pick her because of her looks.. I know nothing of her personality. I typically say beauty is in the eye of the beholder and yes some people find me extremely attractive. But I just feel like my WS doesnt... I am not his "type" in anyway. I think it just hurts because myself esteem has always been a huge issue (life long eating disorder, cosmetic surgery)... I never feel pretty enough...🤷‍♀️

I hear you, AAD. I usually post from my WW perspective, but I'm also a madhatter. I've always been self conscious about my height (I'm 5'4; H is 10 inches taller than me) and my weight. H described the girl he chose for his RA as reminding him of me, "but taller and slimmer." I was gutted. He admitted later that it was deliberate. He hated the fact that OM was closer to my height and imagined that it might have made physical contact easier between us. It's unusual for a tall man to be jealous of someone shorter, but it killed BH to think that OM might be more what I wanted in any way. So he decided to return the favor. Ironically, I couldn't have cared less how tall OM was.

BraveSirRobin... I just wish she could have been ugly... that would be nice lol. He's always been with extremely attractive women his entire life, so Ive always felt a certain way. Like why is he even with me.

Do you think he thinks of her often? Its been 3 months of NC. He talked to her 2 times the first week after Dday. He said it was to tell her it was over. They haven't seen each other in person in 5 months. He didn't seem withdrawn or sad after it ended. It was like he was himself again... I guess the weight had been lifted. Is this a glimmer of hope that he didnt have any major feelings? He said he didnt love her and that he never said it... but you know... lies and stuff...

[This message edited by AloneAndDrowning at 11:07 PM, August 14th (Wednesday)]

We hear all the time from WS, especially WH, that they don't miss the AP at all. Sometimes, it's like a spell just broke. A few posters here (including me from time to time) read on other internet forums, and you routinely find APs there who are furious and hurt that the WS dumped them without a backward glance.

Has your WH been working on his whys? Without knowing what kind of brokenness he was subconsciously trying to soothe with his A, it's hard to know what he convinced himself he needed from it, and therefore what he might be missing now that it's over. I was using sex to get emotional approval and validation, so I didn't miss the sex, I missed the validation. And it wasn't until I explored my whys (many, MANY years later) that I understood why I found that validation so important.

The whys are also multi-layered. In my case, I originally blameshifted to my BS, because at the time we were dating in a LDR, and he kept bringing up the possibility of seeing other people casually. (It later emerged that he had had a meaningless drunken groping session with his sister's BFF, felt terribly guilty, hid it from me to avoid consequences, and was trying to even the score before he came clean. He also had his own unexplored FOO that made him terrified that I would outgrow him, so he had this strange idea that if he gave me more freedom, I'd be more likely to stay.) I did some shallow digging and concluded that I cheated because I felt insecure about BS not being committed to me. It was an easy answer, but it didn't explain my ongoing emotional attachment to OM after the truth came out. It's only in the last year that I've explored how my childhood abuse and body image issues made me use sexual validation for proof of my own worth, long before I even meet BS. It was hard to see OM for what he was because that meant admitting that his admiration was ersatz, meaningless, and had little do do with me.

Anyway, you can't learn what really motivated your WH if he refuses to explore it for himself. None of his whys will ever excuse what he did, but the answers can help both of you heal, or possibly help you decide if the A was a deal breaker for you.

You're in charge here, AAD. I know you've never felt less like that in your life, but you are.