SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

For the BS:
1. How did you react when you were told that your WW told AP countless times that she loved him?
2. Was any of you told by your WW that you were "invisible" during the affair? Why were you invisible to them?

WS (please be as honest as you can):
1. Were the words "i love you" to AP 'honest'at the time? Did it come from the heart? I' m not asking what you feel now, but what you felt then, even if they were 'lies' to yourself to keep AP going, did you 'honestly' think and feel that you loved AP?
2. Did you make BS invisible? Why did you need to make BS insignificant? Did you not love him? Even if you loved him before and after the affair, did you love him during? (please be honest with this)
3. If it's a LTA (3 years plus), how can you not plan on leaving BS for AP? It's ridicilous that youve already built another (secret) life with AP for years but not plan on leaving your BS - really unbelievable.
4.If you were not caught or thrown by AP under the bus, or if AP was the ideal perfect man (aside from being in an affair with you), would you have continued 'loving him' until you got old, or even pined for him for decades? Or downright choosing him instead if BS?
5. For those from LTA, and who have children with BS during the affair, especially small ones/toddlers, would you have left your BS for AP if you didn't have children?

I just need perspective to decide if I want to believe some things my wife has been claiming.

Sorry if i'm asking too much, it isn't easy for me either

Also, why do my WS have occasional panic attacks when we talk about what they did with AP more than 1 year after dday? Are they panicking because they know that, in truth, they liked the sex so much more than what they were telling me?

If you don't get responses here, you might try the ICR forum and the BS questions for WS thread.

My situation is not the normal situation. My XWH is a diagnosed covert narc, and I was discarded. XWH was at the point where he didn't speak to me. I was no longer useful.

Did he love the AP? Yes, I knew. My XWH was adopted. Reunited with his biological family and slept with his sister. I would have thought that they would have kept to brother/sister love until I uncovered my XWH was heavy into incest porn, even before the A.

It wasn't a LTA, so I can't help there. My XWH didn't have panic attacks, but did have lots of eye rolls.

As for the panic attacks by your WW, what does your clinical training tell you?

ConfusedMD:

WS (please be as honest as you can):

1. Were the words "i love you" to AP 'honest'at the time? Did it come from the heart? I' m not asking what you feel now, but what you felt then, even if they were 'lies' to yourself to keep AP going, did you 'honestly' think and feel that you loved AP?

I used the words and at some point I thought I meant them. But looking back I see it was more "limerance" and "new relationship energy" than anything. I said it before she did. I believe she meant it more than I did.

2. Did you make BS invisible? Why did you need to make BS insignificant? Did you not love him? Even if you loved him before and after the affair, did you love him during? (please be honest with this)

BS was invisible while I was in active contact with AP. That is, while on dates with AP or communicating with AP. I simply compartmentalized BS out. I did love BS before, during, and after. I just shamefully wanted more. For me, A's were a matter of "more."

3. If it's a LTA (3 years plus), how can you not plan on leaving BS for AP? It's ridicilous that youve already built another (secret) life with AP for years but not plan on leaving your BS - really unbelievable.

I didn't even think about this until Dday when I had to make the choice. And it was 100% obvious to me that I had no intention of trying to start a new life with AP no matter how good a fit we were and how much we claimed to "love" each other. I think AP and I truly knew only about 20% about each other. Getting together and learning the other 80% would have probably blown it all up.

4.If you were not caught or thrown by AP under the bus, or if AP was the ideal perfect man (aside from being in an affair with you), would you have continued 'loving him' until you got old, or even pined for him for decades? Or downright choosing him instead if BS?

I was caught. I threw AP under the bus. I feel almost as badly about that as about what I did to BS. I still think about AP but I do not pine. Nor do I wish I had chosen her.

I'm a BS.

I dont have answers to the two questions for BS's because they didn't happen to me.

Hello CMD:

I find it helpful to keep in mind that we humans tend to act in our self-interest. Or, more precisely, individuals behave in the manner they perceive to be in their best self-interest in the situational context of such behavior.

So your WW told the AP that she loved him. Countless times. Clearly she meant it. However, she "meant" it insofar as she perceived, in those moments, that telling the AP she loved him was in her self interest. Which begs the question, what was the perceived self-interest that she would have been serving by saying that?

The AP wasn't, to my understanding, providing her with sustenance (roof over her head, food, parenting for children, none of the usual family contributions a man confers to his wife and family). Spouses tell one another that they love one another to preserve and affirm this bond, but that's not the case with your WW and her AP. Telling him that she loved him didn't serve that interest.

Perhaps he gave really good dick. Or at least that was her perception. Keep in mind that the biggest sex organ lies between the ears. Sex is great when we perceive it to be great. It is often the case that the thrill and lure of illicit sex is like a drug. It feels really good, and that good feeling in turn enabled your WW to feel as if she had some sort of affirmation of her attractiveness as a sexual woman. So she told him she loved him when, in reality, she loved the feeling she had when being naughty.

Or, perhaps she really did love him.

Similarly, you should examine the self-interest she is now serving by making efforts to preserve a marriage with you. It's possible that she really does love you. Based on what you have posted, however, it strikes me as more likely that she wishes to avoid the shame and scorn that she thinks would inure if you were to divorce by reason of adultery. Her self-interest is advanced by preserving the institutional marriage. Something to consider.

In a sense, cheating was always part of my W's character because she lived in fear, and one way to deal with (perceived) threats is to lie - to cheat.

OTOH, when she revealed her A, I saw her as sick at heart. Since I saw her as heartsick, I placed no credence in anything she said to, heard from, or did with ow. Professions of love ... I always saw that as more worthless than shit. Shit, at least, can help plants grow. The only thing that was half-way useful in the A was that it was my W's rock bottom - it was what she apparently needed to get her to deal with her fucked up view of life.

I saw the professions of love, etc. that W gave to ow as just more symptoms of her sickness. It's been 12+ years since d-day. In the early days, I tried to take a different view, but I kept coming back to seeing her A as a sickness.

*****

W saw her future to be one in which she'd somehow love both ow and me and split her time between us. That was so far from what her reality would have been, if she hadn't ended her A, that I laugh when I think about it. It's not a friendly laugh exactly, but it is a laugh.

*****

Abstract questions provide some help. Specific questions provide a different kind of help. My reco is to consider asking both types of questions. I suspect specific questions about what one's WS said and did may be more helpful, but that's just JMO. YMMV.

1. How did you react when you were told that your WW told AP countless times that she loved him?

For whatever reason, her telling him that she loved him had very little effect on me. Maybe if she had only had an EA that would have been the worst part of it and I’d feel differently. But given a full blown LTPA that didn’t specifically register for me. The sex and lies were the things that rocked me to my core.

And at this point, any “love” she may have experienced was as shallow as a mosquito infested puddle. They didn’t know each other except the for the completely filtered versions that they learned kept the dopamine fueling compliments flowing. I still love that the first real conversation they ever had resulted in a crazy blow up, both of them screaming and threatening each other. A pair of liars, lying to each other, using each other to get a high out of a real life devoid fantasy. A little bit of reality was like sunlight to a vampire.

[This message edited by InkHulk at 5:46 PM, Saturday, March 4th]

Hi,

Ws here.

Yes, I thought I loved the AP. Who I had an affair with for 2 months and who was twenty years older, and not nearly the person my husband is.

The problem is my definition of love was only about feelings. Feelings are fleeting things. Someone you love you don’t help them destroy themselves and their family. Love means you want the best for someone. I didn’t care about him past getting my ego stroked.

Did I love my husband? Same thing. I had feelings of love but love is an action. My actions were not loving.

So it depends on what a person believes love is but I think that I wasn’t actively loving anyone not even myself.

My husband wasn’t completely invisible but I understand that statement. It’s called cognitive dissonance. Look it up. When you are doing something terribly wrong you tend to dehumanize in order to cross the boundaries to do it.

I did not have an LTA. I didn’t have a plan to leave, I never had a plan past the day I was on for the most part. Why? Because reality ruins the fantasy world that an escapist ws wants to live in to avoid their own pain.

I blew up my marriage and still wanted it. None of this is logical. That’s why even if your wife tells you the truth there is nothing that will make the affair show any logical sense.

I think should you choose to go deeper in the process of trying to save it you will find that if she does the work, the logical parts that will ring true is when she has deciphered it for herself.

I can only tell you it’s a long hard ride, and the ws needs to be all in for a long time before you feel like you even have a foot in. My h cheated on me, and I have seen that from both sides.

Despite some of the recent posts I have seen, R is real, and it does happen. Our marriage is so much richer and deeper today, and we both have a completely different perspective and set of values.

I know you don’t want hindsight but that’s all I have. I can’t wax poetic about the man I had an affair with. He was mostly made up in my mind anyway, we didn’t know each other for real. We only knew the pretend island of make believe where we were fabulous. It was all lies and horseshit.

[This message edited by hikingout at 6:24 PM, Saturday, March 4th]

For the BS:

1. How did you react when you were told that your WW told AP countless times that she loved him?

2. Was any of you told by your WW that you were "invisible" during the affair? Why were you invisible to them?

WS (please be as honest as you can):

1. Were the words "i love you" to AP 'honest'at the time? Did it come from the heart? I' m not asking what you feel now, but what you felt then, even if they were 'lies' to yourself to keep AP going, did you 'honestly' think and feel that you loved AP?

2. Did you make BS invisible? Why did you need to make BS insignificant? Did you not love him? Even if you loved him before and after the affair, did you love him during? (please be honest with this)

3. If it's a LTA (3 years plus), how can you not plan on leaving BS for AP? It's ridicilous that youve already built another (secret) life with AP for years but not plan on leaving your BS - really unbelievable.

4.If you were not caught or thrown by AP under the bus, or if AP was the ideal perfect man (aside from being in an affair with you), would you have continued 'loving him' until you got old, or even pined for him for decades? Or downright choosing him instead if BS?

I’ll take a shot at these. I’m a BH, WW had LTA with my best friend. It was revealed five years after it ended and he’d been out of our lives for five years.

As to the questions posed to the BS:

1. My WW told her AP "I love you with all my heart" and confirmed just after their EA became a PA too that she planned to divorce me and be with him. I’m certain the "I love yous" continued between them for the full EA/PA LTA of 3+years.

How did I react? Honestly, like InkHulk, that sucked but it is not the part that is where the scar is found. Of course she "loved him." That’s the necessary prerequisite for the PA to begin. If she didn’t "love him" then she wouldn’t be doing all the rest of the stupid shit she did. If the EA had been only an EA perhaps I’d feel differently, but I’d gladly take 10,000 "I love yous" if I could just zero out the multiple episodes of bareback sex.

2. I was not "invisible" but I was "excluded" from their affair bubble. Perhaps that is the same thing, or similar. My WW maintains that they constructed this little zone for themselves where inconvenient truths simply did not gain admission. It’s baffling to me. I was literally in the same room with them hundreds and hundreds of times during their EA/PA and yet somehow I had no role in the bubble. I imagine, to my horror, that they repeatedly mocked, diminished, insulted, and criticized me with their texts, their little jokes and innuendos. She denies it. She says they had to push me out of the bubble and keep it sterile because if I appeared in the bubble they could not pretend what they were doing was not the most despicable double betrayal imaginable. Its hard to believe and if its true its mind boggling distortion of reality. Whatever, that’s the answer she has.

For the questions posed to WS, I’ll tell you what my WW says.

1. Yes, she believed it, felt it at the time when she said "ILY" to him. At least until the affair unraveled. They really did have a bona fide emotional connection, even if it was forged in deceit. She believed it fully, which to me is a "perception becomes reality" scenario.

2. My WW says she did love me even during the affair. I point out to her the very real behavior that she engaged in, not just in the fucking the AP but also in the countless ways she was contemptuous, mean, hateful, selfish, disrespectful, greedy, manipulative, and deceitful to me during the affair. It horrifies her to know my experience was the opposite of being loved despite her claim that she "never stopped loving" me. I just have to take that one for what it is.

3. I fully believe she planned to leave me and the only reason she didn’t is because there were insurmountable logistical obstacles that kept her from doing so until she realized what he really was, which was a drug addicted, chronically depressed, manipulative, selfish, unemployed, broke, mean, overgrown child with no plan for holding up his end of that very difficult bargain. That clusterfuck of a failed plan died for her long before the affair ended (he was not married or dating anyone - besides my wife - and he had nothing to lose but her if the affair were exposed). For him, when he realized she was not going to leave me, he was furious and burned all the bridges. This is a struggle for me, the which came first: realizing the plan to leave me and be with him could never work in the real world or the realizing she’d made a huge mistake and recommitting to our marriage regardless whether the plan could work or not.

4. My WW’s AP began the affair as a far away (800 miles) digital prince charming who could do no wrong, who was always available to her with sweet affirmation and a listening ear. I was the villain keeping her hostage to a dead marriage. When he moved to our neighborhood, and was 800 yards away, she was forced to measure him as a real, live, three dimensional man against me, and there was no comparison. Her illusion was shattered, the bubble collapsed. There was no pining for him when the affair ended, no delusional "what if" after the fact. It cleared the space for her to be intentional about being a great wife, and she was, except for that part about concealing the affair for another five years and then trickle truthing when it came to light.

Our children were adolescents by the time the affair began, so I have no insight as to your last question, except to say that one of the logistical problems my WW faced in staying or leaving was that there was no fucking way my sons would have accepted "Uncle xxx" as their stepfather, and she knew that. Leaving me for him was literally also leaving our sons for him.

Good luck, confusedmd. This shit is hard.

[This message edited by Wiseoldfool at 6:38 PM, Saturday, March 4th]

Confused. If I recall correctly, the last time you posted you could not get past your WW A and D was the next move.

Dude67 - We are trying to reconcile. She has been doing better and better and beyond - in terms of showing and telling me that I'm the one she wants. At this point, I cant ask for more. I think, for my part, my efforts are lacking due to my sadness and the way I try to analyze her affair. My problem is trying to figure out if what she's saying is the truth. Then, trying to figure out if that truth/facts are unaccepatble/dealbreakers.It's always this 2-way cycle. She tells me she has always loved me, but my mind and heart are unable to accept. She writes love letters, and some of them I immediately throw away without reading them because of my inability to believe her.

Hikingout - did you still feel "love" for AP after dday? Who did you "love" more after dday - was it your husband or your AP? Was there an external reason or factor why you woke up from the fog? Or was it internal, meaning, that you loved your husband above all else all along?

Maybe butforthegrace is right, that my wife's words and actions are all still just lies to keep us from separating and to not hurt her reputation in our community.

If only I had a way to REALLY know her thoughts and motives, I would have an easier and faster time to either separate totally or reconcile wholeheartedly.

The things she has done so far:

1. Apologize all the time for what she did
2. Always tried to talk to me and get me to open up
3. Tried to be intimate with me often
4. Been a good mother to our son
5. Transferred 90% of her money and properties to my name (mostly inherited)
6. Tells me all the time that she loves me

She has repeatedly asked that we try to rekindle our sex life. Even through near total rejection from me, she has hung in there. Many nights she asks if she could do anything for me sexually. I found out that she sometimes waits outside my bedroom door buck naked for hours with a made up bed, ready to be intimate with me if I wanted to.

Having said all that, it seems that I am the problem. I'm not able to trust her anymore. I see everything she does, but I can't accept them as genuine. She's so desperate of even a fleeting look of love from me, she says, but the only look she receives is one of indifference.

I'm not as strong as some here who were easily able to open their hearts to their WW again.

Maybe butforthegrace is right, that my wife's words and actions are all still just lies to keep us from separating and to not hurt her reputation in our community.

I actually said that it's possible she really does love you. OR, it's possible her professions of love are motivated as you describe.

What I mainly said was that people tend to act in a self-interested fashion. If she really does love you, then her self interest is served by the actions you describe.

If she merely wants to save face, her self interest would also be served by the same actions.

Based on what you have posted, I tend to lean toward "preserve her reputation". But all I know about your circumstance is what you've chosen to reveal here.

So my advice to you is to try to suss out her true self interest. I sometimes call it that "ephemeral matter of the heart." Your own heart may be able to discern this truth. What do you feel, in your heart of hearts, to be the truth?

[This message edited by Butforthegrace at 12:11 PM, Tuesday, March 7th]

Has your WW shared her progress with you re her IC?

Did she disclose to you her 'whys' of her affair?

I'm not as strong as some here who were easily able to open their hearts to their WW again.

You’re plenty strong — you’re still standing, trying to figure out a situation you never expected and choices by your spouse you may never understand.

I understand a LOT, but I will never fully understand my wife’s decisions at the lowest point of her life.

At the the TWO YEAR mark, I turned to my wife and we figured we did all we could, but love and empathy wasn’t enough to put us back together again. That was actually the turning point for us. I was able to let go of the outcome. Once I knew I would be great single or married, a couple weeks later, my wife and I kept trying to hold the M together anyway.

Getting back to vulnerable with the person who hurt you is extremely difficult. Not everyone gets there. For me, it became a goal, because I don’t want to be in a relationship without being comfortable being all in.

Going back to your original questions, my wife was certain she loved AP — and it turns out she truly had no idea what love was. Her family never showed her proper love, AP didn’t love her, and that was the wake up call for her. As others have noted, the sex bothered me far more than her fantasy feelings.

My wife didn’t tell me I was invisible during the A, but that is how I felt.

WS have to compartmentalize. They have to rationalize. They have to lie to themselves and us. Because no one wants to be the villain, they generate a whole pile of reasons to justify the selfish choices.

AS a BS, as far as I know there were no I love you's in their 9 year LTA. I was not invisible, but compartmentalized. In his mind, we had nothing to do with each other. When he was with me, he was with me and vice-versa, completely separate.

Answering for my WS, based on what he has told me:

He told her what he told her to keep the sex coming.
He let his resentment over many little things justify his decision to seek affirmation elsewhere.
His 9 year LTA was based on the married looking to cheat model, and he told her from the beginning that he loved his wife and would never leave her, that his family came first. He has told me he has always loved me, before during and after the affair, and he never loved her. But it is clear that he needed and wanted her for what she made him feel, regardless of his warped version of love.
If not caught, they would still be meeting for casual sex and fun times. It was easier to start than to stop I was told. They had become a habit for each other, a secret place to play.
To my knowledge, the shock and horror over being caught prevented any pining on his part for her or for that life.

I know how hard it is to believe a spouse after discovering a LTA. Even harder is realizing they don't know what they believe about themselves any longer. It takes a while for some reality to set in and for them to even see what they have done, let alone figure out who they want to be in this life. It takes even longer for the BS to feel they can know or trust their WS again.

And gently, your follow up question is a sad one. Mine did not have panic attacks, but anger outbursts. It was his way of dealing with the frustration of being forced to face his truth and feel his avoided emotions. I was told repeatedly the sex wasn't that great, but of course it was, and I found the texts to prove it. It was illicit, new, exciting, everything we don't want to hear that it was. You need to let go of the sex comparisons because they hurt so much and are so entangled in self worth issues, and not the most crucial questions in trying to rebuild a relationship. The most important questions for you are how much and how deeply you and your WW truly care for one another, if she can find her way to honesty with you, and if the shared history, life situation and desire to stay together is enough to help pull you through.

Good luck to you getting the answers and the peace you seek. You are early in this process, and it is a long scary ride and lots of hard work for everyone. Take care.

At the the TWO YEAR mark, I turned to my wife and we figured we did all we could, but love and empathy wasn’t enough to put us back together again. That was actually the turning point for us. I was able to let go of the outcome. Once I knew I would be great single or married, a couple weeks later, my wife and I kept trying to hold the M together anyway.

Such a poignant and profound turning point. Have you seen the Amazon Prime series "Modern Love"? Season 1, Episode 4 ("Rallying to Keep the Game Alive") depicts a similar moment. That particular episode does not involve sexual infidelity, but it does involve a husband who has essentially carved out a single life for himself around his career, excluding his wife from that world of his. The compartmentalization and emotional barriers function a lot like sexual infidelity in terms of driving a wedge in the marriage.