Slightly nuanced for me.
When I began to get a more accurate picture of what actually happened (rather than the sanitized Disney-fied version) it hit me square between the eyes:
I was an attractive young woman and opportunities and interest abounded.
I was *so very careful* NOT to create doubt or any reason for mistrust within our marriage even though sometimes it felt like life was literally raining dicks.
And even my husband clearly articulated that fact during our 'discovery process' (the excrutiatingly painful trickle truth phase) when he said, emphatically and without exception nor embellishment: "You've never done anything like what I did."
(That statement was, in fact, one of the first 'closer to the truth' descriptions out of Husband that indicated to me that *something of substance* had occured.)
And when that realization hit me, it was followed by a jolt of white hot rage.
Here I had been *so careful* and *so mindful* for years and years,
and my Husband was entitled and careless and gave himself all kinds of permissions up to but not including infidelity until he finally crossed *that* line as well.
He flirted with inappropriate situations until he finally got himself/put himself in a situation where he actually crossed the line.
And then he hated himself for it...
... but by that point we'd been having arguments for years about his 'agency' vs. appropriate behavior vs. me lying alone in the dark, staring at the ceiling, wondering why in the hell he had to close the bars down and some every time he went out with his friends.
But he wasn't doing anything wrong, he insisted...
Until he did. =/
And even after that, he *still* could not be the married man who broke off and headed home at a decent hour.
We struggled with agency and boundary issues vs. appropriate behavior for several more years.
We struggled with maturity and entitlement.
Husband comes from a deeply narcissistic and dysfunctional FOO.
I do not believe that he is a narcissist himself but he had deeply dysfunctional points of reference and definitions of what it meant to be an adult: "I get my way! I am the boss of me!" (... and the boss of you too, given half a chance.)
I'd mollycoddled him for decades just to go along and get along because he was a hot mess and a pain in the ass when he didn't get his way.
Fortunately, except for a few notably inappropriate behaviors and a few repetitive situations, 'his way' was generally appropriate, acceptable and responsible, so overall it was OK enough to let him have his way and to let him feel satisfied that he was having his way. It greased the wheels and made life easier so, for the most part, why not?
Years later, when I found out that he'd actually cheated, oh boy. The wheels flew off in every damned direction.
For *months,* about the most articulate sentence I could spit out in my white hot rage was,
"DO YOU HAVE *ANY IDEA* HOW MANY TIMES I'VE SAID NO??? DO YOU??? BECAUSE I DO NOT. I LOST COUNT DECADES AGO."
To add insult to injury:
I *finally* saw clearly that for years I'd been arguing with him that a married man staying out with single friends in the bars until 4am (when every bar in the city closed at 2am by local ordinances) was inappropriate and disrespectful to me because it was causing me stress and injecting doubt where there was no useful or even acceptable reason to inject doubt, hell, this wasn't even a 'working late' excuse,
and all I'd get back was some version of,
"I'M NOT DOING ANYTHING WRONG ERGO YOU HAVE NO REASON TO DOUBT ME ERGO THERE IS NO REASON FOR ME TO CHANGE MY BEHAVIOR, SO I'M NOT CHANGING MY BEHAVIOR! DEAL WITH IT!"
And I'd look at the faces of our two young children, and my own experiences as a child from a broken home, and the fact that the 4am forays didn't happen all that often, and that on the balance when Husband was stubborn and willful it was about overall productive and positive things, and nobody is perfect,
and I dealt with it. =/
Yeah, finding out years later that he'd been arm twisting me over 'trust' he'd already busted, that if I'd known what he'd already done, there was no way in bloody hell that I would have laid in bed alone, staring into the dark until 4am, wondering where he was and what he was doing...
... that was a watershed moment in our marriage, to put it lightly.
Before I could even think clearly enough to articulate it, I believe that it slapped both of us in the face about the same time:
The days of me being the actual adult in the marriage for *both* of us were OVER.
I was stick a fork in me DONE with being responsible for my own part *plus* compensating for *his* entitlement, selfishness and lack of maturity.
All of the sudden, the implications of me behaving in the same self-centered, self-serving, inappropriate, entitled, give myself all sorts of latitude and excuses manner in the marriage as he did,
...registered.
He kept playing with the margins and the boundaries until he got himself in a situation in which he tripped on a crack in the sidewalk and a naked woman fell into his hands.
I'd spent years keeping myself and the marriage out of trouble while it was literally raining dicks.
Hey Asshole! I'm a WOMAN! Statistically my opportunities are about double yours on the worst day! ALL I HAVE TO BE IS AVAILABLE!
And, furthermore, he himself had given me every reason to want to 'even the score.'
At that point, years down the road from the actual infidelity and years into the marriage and decades into my own life?
By that moment I had enough years on this planet that I knew better than to complicate my own stew.
Furthermore, as we've all said, there is an innocence robbed in a marriage first visited by infidelity that cannot be approximated, much less replicated, by a 'revenge affair.' The shit has already hit the fan.
On the other hand...
The shit had already hit the fan.
And he did it.
No, we're not going to 'lose the innocence in the marriage again' if I do *exactly what you did,* so why not?
If the bed is already crapped... ???
If he's set the standard, why must I hold myself to a different standard, in this marriage?
Per above, the days of me protecting the marriage for both of us were and are OVER.
Why That Didn't Happen:
I have lived too many years on this planet while being careful and protective and self-respecting of my heart, my soul, my mind, my body and my general peace to throw all of that into the lap and hands and mouth and dick of some random dude because my immature, selfish, dysfunctional husband punched the fool button years ago.
I don't need the validation.
I won't make myself chattel to his stupidity.
I don't need to sacrifice and violate my most intimate privacy to make a point to him.
And I have no desire to use other people.
Still, to this day, to this moment, *he* lives with the less than comfortable reality that he created, not only in a moment of foolishness years ago, but augmented and reinforced by years of myopic willfulness and selfishness.
For us, so much of the post infidelity/post DDay unpacking had more to do with the FOO dysfunction, the self centeredness and entitlement that plagued our marriage and informed the infidelity than the infidelity itself.
"I see how men look at you."
I won't exploit that, nor other men, nor their partners, nor their families, nor their lives.
I won't exploit Husband's vulnerability.
I won't exploit my own damage and pain as an excuse to do something further damaging and stupid.
But I'm no longer taking his shit either.
Open season on my boundaries is over.
I cannot say that I'm completely unhappy that he experiences a bit of unsettledness as a result of his own actions.
[This message edited by marriageredux959 at 11:47 PM, Friday, January 27th]
