SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

First of all, what is this AGENCY in the context of infidelity?? What does 'having back your agency' mean in the context of infidelity?

When do you consider your agency was fully restored to make one of the most important and difficult choices of your life, i.e., to choose between R or D??

1. Is it when you found out about the affair?
2. Is it when you gathered enough info/truth about the affair and the nature of it?
3. Is it when you were in the acceptance stage of grief and were emotionally stable because of physical and/or emotional distance from your WS manipulation or gaslighting attempts?

Is it automatically restored, or does BS need to work towards restoring it? If it's the latter, then what should the BS do to restore their agency? Also, what should WS do to help restore the agency of their BS?

In the context of infidelity, I always understood it as having enough information to make informed decisions. For me, it was DDay. My H confessed to three affairs spanning almost the entirety of our marriage. Knowing the truth helped me restore my sense of agency.

The topic of agency was a wee bit confusing to me. I found this on Google and it helped: "A person with a sense of personal agency perceives himself/herself as the subject influencing his/her own actions and life circumstances." Based on that, one could say that agency was robbed from the BS by the WS's deception. Both can work to restore it in the BS by the WS telling the truth and both accepting responsibility for their own choices.

I think a lot of people, particularly BSs, would prefer not to embrace their own agency. They'll wait in limbo to see what the WS is going to do. A few will say that a higher power is in charge of the outcome. They don't want to be in charge.

Interesting topic. I'm looking forward to reading other responses.

[This message edited by SacredSoul33 at 5:23 PM, Wednesday, August 23rd]

Let's say there's this awesome car that you're wanting to buy. It's fast and sleek and it's everything you've ever wanted in a car. The sales guy is saying all the right finger-guns-sales-guy things. You buy the car and it's bliss. But 2k miles later the wheels fall off for no reason. You go back to the sales guy and be like 'Hey what's up with this wheel thing?" and he tells you "oh yeah, I might have forgotten to mention that. It's just a thing with this car that you have to replace all the wheels on it every 2k miles".

Maybe you would still buy the car, maybe you wouldn't. But by not knowing this information ahead of time you were not given what you needed to make an informed decision about purchasing the car and whether or not wheel replacement ever 2k miles is something you are willing to deal with.

In the context of infidelity, all of the lies and half truths keep the BS from having all of the information necessary to make an informed decision about whether they want to stay in the M or not. In my case, my xwh 'admitted' that he had 'fallen in love' with the ap. So emotional cheating right? I was willing to work on forgiving that. Then a while down the road, it turns out he had 'fallen in love' with her AND had been making out with her where they worked. Wait a minute... that's physical cheating, not emotional cheating. I didn't agree to working on that. And the fact that he allowed me to try for R for months while HE knew that it was physical and I did NOT know it - that he LIED to my face for months and months and watched me struggle for months and months and still LIED... that removed my agency to make an informed choice about MY life and what I was willing to forgive or not.

For me? My agency was returned on dday2 when I found out about the physical part. Because in that instant I snapped out of my BS hopium fog and accepted that my M was over. Because I live my life in TRUTH now. My friends, my family, the people I choose to associate with are not ones that lie to me (that I know of, but that's part of the agency too - that if they turn out to be untrustworthy I know I can distance myself from them).

IMHO a ws can't restore the agency they've already taken from the BS, but they can help with it going forward. How you ask? By not lying anymore. About anything.

For the most part this has been about restoring control to me. It might sound like we have an unbalanced relationship because he has given me all this control but he is just a more controlling person than me in general (I always let him pick restaurants, vacations, plans, etc. B/c I tend not to care as much). With this threat to my safety I all of a sudden care ALOT about a lot of things. So we have more balance.

1. He has let me decide regarding telling OBS and has promised to back up all the information so if his OP’s husband wants to hear all of the information confirmed directly from my husband he is willing to get on the phone with them and provide every detail.
2. He supported me taking any steps I needed to confront the OP. Mostly I have just stayed away b/c I consider her pond scum, but when I would have fantasies about confronting her he would always be supportive - whatever I needed
3. He came forward to reveal the cheating had actually been physical (he waited far too long to do this). But, when he came forward there was zero chance I would ever found out about his past actions. He could have let sleeping dogs lie but decided I had a right to know. Agency restored.
4. He frequently reiterates that he is in it for the long haul. He says as long as I will have him he is never leaving. Even when we fight to the point of needing to step away from the argument he reasserts that he is still not going anywhere ever.
5. He « let go of the outcome ». This took some time but after a few months it got to be part of his mantra. I had not really realized how important this was until I noticed that he clearly needed to say it to himself kind of frequently. I didn’t realize before that how much of what he said and did was part of some game he was playing in his head to control the outcome. He had to let that go.
6. He gives me complete access to his offices, can walk in any time. This is helpful because his office was where he cheated, so I can go down a rabbit hole when triggered and feel like he is hiding something if he stays after work for an extra hour or something.
7. Obviously total access to phones, gps, etc. He encourages me to look and ask. He gave me unlimited time on this so that eventually I decided I was sick of checking because I never found anything. If he had pressured me to stop I think it would have taken longer.
8. He proactively approached me and revealed when she made overtures. She tried to send her parents to him as patients and he had to juggle to get them placed with other doctors. She showed up at his office and parked across the street and stared at him so he revealed that to me. This triggered me a lot but he let me decide how we would address it. Ultimately I went with him while he taped a letter to her car saying to stay the hell away from him and his family forever. That gave me some closure.
9. He offers to have « talks » as often as I want. He will inquire whether I want to talk many nights. I will usually set a date to follow up. Like I’ll thank him for asking and arrange to have a talk in the next few nights.
10. He has left it as my choice whether we tell the children or night. He would like to but because I am hesitant on that he is deferring to me.
11. He would like to renew vows but has deferred to me to decide if and when I might be ready for that.

So generally these have all been examples of him putting things into my control. That has been a help. It lowers the temperature in many situations that come up.

He denied my agency for a long time by delaying telling me that the inappropriate relationship he had with his assistant involved physical cheating for 4 months. None of the positive steps he has taken erase that damaging choice he made, but they do give me some incentive to try to work things out with him. We are still very much in the thick of figuring out if we can move forward. He has many wonderful qualities and has tried very hard to recover. But, I came into the relationship with a lot of baggage related to my father and grandfather’s infidelity so I don’t know if I am a person who can move on from this. I truly would like us to stay together, we are great friends, have a great sex life and have 3 wonderful college age children. Neither of us wants to give all that up. But, there is still so much pain when I think of what he did and I don’t know if he can really deal with being with someone who may always see him differently. Just not sure.

Interesting question. For me, agency in the context of infidelity, was when I had enough information about the affair, including a lot of the gruesome details, his feelings about the AP and enough visibility to how he was going to behave after D-Day. Like the excellent car example earlier, this is when I had enough information to make the right decision from my future. It certainly wasn’t every piece and detail of the affair. It just had to be enough of it to know how serious it was, and how long it went on and how many unforgivable depraved actions he committed against me during his affair. Acceptance and all that came later. I was completely unhinged, but I did have my agency, and that’s what allowed me to finally get out of infidelity.

It’s interesting to compare agency versus control. I had the ability to leave that relationship at any point, but it didn’t feel like agency until I have enough information to leave fully informed. And, of course, the longer it took for me to get enough information to have that agency the more likely I was to leave the relationship.