SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

In this thread, let's attack the unmet needs model for A's.

What wrong with the unmet "needs" model for A's ?

It blames the BS 100%.

People be like "well the BS had it coming......."

It makes the WS out to be the victims.

People be like " The poor WS wasn't getting their needs met at home."

I'll start.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

I’ll continue with the pictorial response invitation. A little Guardians of the Galaxy reference. It’s the same as saying a person is justified to steal from somebody because they weren’t happy with what they had (needs not met). Sure, we take into consideration if a person steals to just survive vs steals to get rich, but neither truly justifies the crime.

I don't know how to upload photos so I'll just make my response brief.

If "unmet meets" were a valid excuse, I should have been the one who cheated in our marriage. My WH traveled all the time, when he was home he ran a part-time business at least two nights a week. This business also took him away for a couple of weekends per year. Basically he was living the single life traveling the world, going out to great restaurants, ball games, etc.

I was working part-time, going to school part-time, managing a household, taking care of my three boys, each one of them went to different schools in different communities so most days of the week I was in my car for at least 1.5-2+ hours dropping off and picking up, add in their school activities, homework, bills, housecleaning and cooking/laundry. I felt like I was on a merry-go-round that never stopped, I was always exhausted with hardly any support from him. He squeezed in helping me when there was nothing else going on in his life. I never, ever had time to myself. Not a single minute. I'd be up at 4 am. doing my homework and hit the sack around 10 when everything was done while he was out with colleagues socializing. My social life was meeting my classmates on campus to study for an upcoming exam.

So unmet needs IMO is a bunch of bullsh*t. He cheated bc he wanted to and was feeling sorry for himself when he was passed up for a promotion at work.

Wanted to add: None of our family lived close so I didn't have an outside source of support either. My WH failed me in so many ways.

[This message edited by annb at 2:34 PM, Thursday, February 9th]

Love the visuals!!!

"If "unmet meets" were a valid excuse, I should have been the one who cheated in our marriage."

100% this!!!

[This message edited by Dorothy123 at 3:25 PM, Thursday, February 9th]

I couldn’t agree more with the idea that if unmet needs leads to affairs, it should have been me that cheated. My wife has been terrible at meeting my sexual needs over the course of our marriage, and she has been emotionally unavailable. My two most important "needs" by far. I clearly voiced those needs many times over the years and she wouldn’t budge, took offense to the idea that problems could be linked to her. So I learned to live with it because I took my marriage vows so completely seriously. I never came close to cheating.
I can believe that being unhappy in your marriage increases the risk of looking outside it, but in my case my wife was being made miserable largely by being locked in a cage of her own making. I think that is related to significant trauma she has experienced, but hurt people hurt people and it doesn’t excuse it. And I’ve read enough stories in the Wayward section of people report cheating in happy marriages. Hell, my wife told POSOM at the beginning stages that she was happily married. And we were pretty good, could have been great if she would have come to the table instead of leaving the ranch.

We all have unmet needs. No one relationship can provide 100% of everything we need.

"I chose to cheat" is the only acceptable answer.

Everything else is just an excuse.

If the WS had an affair because the BS wasn't meeting their needs, then it begs the question of what unmet needs the BS had that caused them to refuse to meet the needs of the WS. :-P

Either everyone is responsible for their own behavior or no one is.

She’s the one that checked out of the M. I was busting my ass to make things better. I had many unmet needs, but I didn’t decide to fix it with nudity and someone else’s privates 😀

I had many unmet needs, but I didn’t decide to fix it with nudity and someone else’s privates

*Dorothy be like *

[This message edited by Dorothy123 at 6:08 PM, Thursday, February 9th]

My mother in law and my wife’s sister both responded to my wife’s confession with something like "it’s understandable", and that will likely be problematic to me for the rest of my life. Especially my MIL who has claimed to be a real mother to me. I get comforting your daughter, but at my expense? I was there when my wife’s brother got cheated on by his wife. I can guarantee you that they were not talking about how he deserved it. Makes me realize that even after 20 years together that family lines that seemed blurred and gone can snap back with an affair. And on my side, all my best friends and family that I’ve told have not attacked her. But I’m at fault, and WW’s best friend calls me "controlling and manipulative". Sucks getting kicked while your down.

She’s the one that checked out of the M. I was busting my ass to make things better. I had many unmet needs, but I didn’t decide to fix it with nudity and someone else’s privates 😀

Tanner this is spot on.

My H checked out and I just accepted it. Then HE blames me for his unhappiness.

Funny thing when he was begging me to R while I clearly did not want to, I threw all of his lies and excuses in his face.

I asked him why he wants to R when he was "so unhappy" and I was "not supporting him" and "we were disconnected" blah blah blah.

It was fun making him squirm trying to explain that to me and come up with a way out of that hole.

Cheaters are so stupid!

The "unmet needs" fallacy is a load of crap.

I'm going to go out on a limb that no one here said vows to the effect of "I promise to be loyal and faithful to you and only you unless you fails to compliment me 5 times a day and put your dirty socks in the hamper, or unless I do not feel like I'm getting laid enough, in which case I reserve the right to blow my coworker in the backseat of my car during my lunchbreak." Nah, most of us vowed in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad, as long as we both shall live.

The unmet needs fallacy assumes that our spouse's morals or integrity are dependent on our behaviour. That's simply not true. We are not responsible for anyone else's choices. Cheating is about CHARACTER. True character, true integrity is not situationally dependent. It is easy to do the right thing when the right thing is easy or convenient. Integrity is when we do the right thing when it is hard and no one is watching.

There are plenty of terrible marriages, totally void of affection, intimacy, and sex where the parties to the marriage remain faithful. Conversely, there are plenty of perfectly "good marriages" where cheating occurs. Being in a "good marriage" is not some infidelity invincibility cloak. I'm not saying people in unhappy marriages need to shut up and tough it out. Far from it. If you are not happy in your marriage, it is incumbant on you to do something about it. If you feel your needs are not being met its up to YOU to do something about it. When your lawn has gotten messy and overgrown, you mow, water and tend to it, you don't throw a stick of dynamite out the back door and plug your ears. That's like trying to solve a marriage problem by going outside of it.

At the end of the day, "unmet needs" is like saying, I was unhappy and I needed someone else to make me happy. But healthy people don't use other people to self-validate. Healthy people are able to validate themselves.

One of the dumbest things my WW said to me at Dday was "Me and AP talked about why YOU pulled away from the M".

If he truly had unmet needs, it would have been helpful if he would have told me. cant read minds.

Tanner

One of the dumbest things my WW said to me at Dday was "Me and AP talked about why YOU pulled away from the M".

I understand your WW logic perfectly.

You weren't meeting her needs so the poor thing had to go to IMMEDIATELY someone else's privates !

[This message edited by Dorothy123 at 12:58 AM, Friday, February 10th]

It's just a first order blame shift. If it were even valid it would logically follow that you weren't meeting their needs because they weren't meeting yours. Surely if they wanted a fulfilling relationship they should have met your needs better so you would meet theirs! Now it's just a circle that doesn't explain anything.

If he truly had unmet needs, it would have been helpful if he would have told me. cant read minds.

This exactly. The first time I heard he was unhappy at all was the day I began to uncover the affair.

Also, your being unhappy does not entitle you to harm someone else. What if instead of an affair he had decided the thing that would make him happy would be to thrown me down the stairs?

Everyone has unmet needs. As a ws I would say I didn’t try enough to have them met and then built a wall of resentment from them.

However, it has nothing to do with why I had an affair. I had an affair because I lacked coping skills and leaned into escapism when my resentment over my unmet needs boiled over during a period of crisis.

There is no reason to have an affair. The resentments I had were mine, and had gone mostly unstated.

I think affairs are often less about unmet needs from the spouse and more about not following through with responsibilities we have to ourselves. It’s easier to play at being another person and the AP is just a pawn to have that validated or witnessed. We have a responsibility to ourselves to do what we know is right and when we do wrong we actually feel worse about ourselves.

If the AP really met our unmet needs you would see healing. What you usually see is a lot of self defeating behaviors resulting in the ws becoming more lost and traumatized by their own behaviors.