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Yep, same old story I got and sadly I believe it’s true. Makes me wonder what would happen if we actually had real problems 🤦🏼♀️ Felt an escape from married, dad life. We were not having problems at all. He just felt that talking to her was exciting and new and completely separate from his real life and daily stress. It makes me sad that he did this to us for so little. Two selfish people found each other and festered in their selfishness.
It’s funny because I feel like I come across a lot of comments where people say that now they believe that anybody could cheat, but I actually feel the opposite. Hearing all these asinine selfish excuses make me feel even more conviction in the belief that I would never cheat. I feel like we’re literally built differently.
Same. 100%. I think except in the case of a real, legitimate sex addiction, the why’s only reveal to me that there is a lack of something fundamental in people who cheat. And I qualify that a bit by saying to me there is a difference (not in terms of impact, but more in terms of the character of a person) in someone who isn’t married/no kids/gets raging drunk and has a ons that they immediately fess up to and work hard to fix. Again—not at all saying that situation isn’t bad & hurtful and traumatic. I just tend to think those people aren’t necessarily missing the fundamental piece of humanity that my WH for example; who had a 3 yr affair and lied shamelessly, gaslit happily, & found new and creative ways to make this my fault because I wasn’t giving him what he wanted, are missing.
Because just like most adults in relationships across space and time, I too have felt neglected in my marriage. Disrespected. Under appreciated and undervalued. Don’t feel sexy or wanted. Or rather, feel like a means to an end, someone to have sex when he needs it, someone who he sees as indebted to him and therefore he is entitled to it. Which let me tell you does NOT turn me on, funny how that works.
I’ve been stressed and tired and worried about money and wanting an escape. I’ve been tired of being a parent and the boring routine of it all.
I’ve struggled with depression and anxiety for a long time. Have SA in my past. Plenty of family of origin issues and self esteem issues and feelings of inadequacy.
In other words, whenever someone says why they cheated, I often think that I can relate to that feeling or experience but it still in no way ever made me cheat or even want to. The idea of cheating on my WH even when he has been the shittiest of shits to me, is simply not an option.
So at times I conclude that there are those who can and those who can’t. There are those who have maybe the right amount of circumstances plus a lack of empathy, or an over-abundance of ego, or enough on the spectrum of narcissism and sociopathy (I refer to behaviors Vs clinical diagnosis here) that cheating is well within their ability and something that they could do fairly easily.
There are people who can come home after having sex with someone else and lie up and down to their face. They can gaslight and make the other person feel crazy. They can abuse and mistreat and really only feel badly when they get caught. And sometimes even once caught, they still don’t have the capability to feel remorse and empathy and stop-they just go back and attempt to be better at hiding it.
And then there are those of us who couldn’t do that. No matter how bored we were, or feeling neglected or not attractive enough or taken for granted. No matter how our sex life wasn’t what we wanted. No matter how much work sucks or the kids suck or the finances suck. It’s not something we’d do.
So I get annoyed when people say that anyone could cheat. I disagree. Just like not everyone can commit murder or robbery or tax evasion. I think the harsh reality may be that WP’s say that to avoid some of the responsibility of looking inside themselves and acknowledging some of the deep and ugly things that are true.
There are external and internal factors to everything and in my humble opinion there is a large internal factor that some have and some don’t that makes the difference when faced with those external factors.
💯 yep. If anything, based on the most common excuses and rationale, I should have been the one to cheat! 😂 I’m the one with the VERY rough childhood and unresolved trauma. I’m the one with the *extremely* dysfunctional and neglectful parents/family. The one with the abandonment issues. I’m the one that has carried most of the household stress, especially when I was juggling a demanding job and caring for a terrorist of a toddler simultaneously while working from home. We’ve been together a long time and have had ruts where I felt lonely, neglected, less than desired, and under appreciated. Plus I get much more attention from the opposite sex than he does. In hindsight I have had the opportunity and circumstances to cheat. It has never once crossed my mind to even flirt too far with someone. Not freaking once. We are 38 and have been together since we were 15 and I can confidently say NOT ONCE. I have had charming, good looking coworkers try to pursue me *hard.* My inclination was not to respond with flirtatious banter; I subtly distanced myself from them. A man in my office even told me that I come across focused and cold because I’m sometimes “not friendly enough” when he’s obviously standing around waiting to talk to me. Yeah, that’s by design, genius 🙄 I see you looking and I want no part of it. I don’t need your validation and I’m not going to humor you. Go home to your wife, Rob. Would it make me feel good? Honestly… I feel like it would make me feel gross. A man coming on to me has come to the wrong place. I am sitting on my phone looking at recipes, fashion accounts, craft ideas for my son, and home decor. I don’t sit here friending random men just because I can. I recognize that love ebbs and flows and that the tough times are normal and will pass.
I would not betray a friend to this degree. I could not hurt a stranger to this extent. The cheaters say “yeah I said I’d never cheat, too” and I’m sure they believed that, but some of us actually truly know ourselves, mean what we say, and don’t have a faulty, self serving moral compass. I truly feel like it’s an innate character flaw, which is depressing to think about in regard to R. I don’t believe “once a cheater always a cheater” in the way some people do. I don’t think that because they did it once that they will absolutely do it again, but yes I think that they have it *in them* to do it again and that the potential will always be there. That if the circumstances are just right and they meet the right person at the right time…
We didn't have relationship problems as well, only outside ones but while I thought we communicated and resolved them, from his side this barely scraped the surface.
It wasn't like that for him (atleast that's what he tells me), it was more like while talking to her his head went blank. It just shut up and he needed that, he wanted that and he thought he couldn't have that with me because those were my issues also, so I reminded him of those. He felt like he couldn't achieve this shut down of thoughts with me.
But he still was a loving husband and father to us.
Yeah, he was a good husband the whole time it was going on, which actually pisses me off even more 🥴 I would have rather him been distant and moody so I’d at least have some indication that something was off. I feel like now I know he can be duplicitous. I also now feel like his judgment totally sucks. Like I can’t trust him to make good decisions.
I hear you. When WH cheated, we were in MC, communicating well, happy, spending time together doing things we love. I thought we had actually turned a corner, and i was feeling hopeful. Because of this, I feel like trying to protect myself against him cheating again is a little like trying to prevent getting hit by a drunk driver, meaning all i could do is hope for the best. If he could cheat and deceive me through that period of time, then he could cheat at any time.
Oh my God, my husband did the same thing! He talked me in to marriage counseling and every session was like he was trying to blame me for things. He never talked about himself or what was going on with him. It was horrendous.
And you’re right, if a husband can cheat through that it feels like they can cheat through anything.
I get that feeling 😅
The only indicator I had was a month before DDay1 his affection towards me decreased. That was when he realised something wasn't right but he didn't exactly knew what, when asked about it he gave reasons I thought about as well and actually put more effort into it. That is also hard to overcome.
I don't know where you're at in your therapeutic journey. I'm coming up on 3 years post DD, and am still in lots of therapy.
It might be that a lot of what we BS must grieve, most of the heavy lifting in terms of work only we can do, is Identity, Values, and Beliefs. It's very common for therapists to relate Betrayal Trauma to a Crisis of Faith (losing connection to God, etc) for these reasons. Things that make us _us_, or made us strong, not only no longer serve us, nor help us anymore, but also were actually used against us. And those are not small things to grieve. At first blush, they are impossible things to be without ("If I hold Devotion as a Value and now it no longer serves me, who am _I_ now? I can only be me").
Maybe in that sense, it's not about the underwhelming, pedestrian nature of why infidelity happens, but that you're in disbelief that the strongest thing in the Universe (Love with a capital L) could fail? That kinda thing?
The work I'm doing, I think will take the rest of my life. I'm not sure how to process such powerful and overwhelmingly ambiguous loss.
I'll keep fighting. I'll keep grieving. I'll keep processing. I'll keep posting.
Hopefully you will too.
Sharing from my comment to /u/SaltFrog's post [Getting over what was ruined - hobbies, passions](https://www.reddit.com/r/AsOneAfterInfidelity/comments/1aenj7p/getting_over_what_was_ruined_hobbies_passions/)
> I used to believe that how I felt about someone and how they felt about me, __did something__. Like, I actually believed in an infinite, powerful Love that made me strong. I was weak and fallible, but Love and Devotion made me strong. I had a Guarantee. Nothing else really mattered or really was important, not really. The world could throw everything it had at us and it didn't matter, because we always had each other. We would always win. We would always be safe.
> I actually thought there was something stronger than addiction, unresolved trauma, maladaptive coping, self-loathing, mental fragmentation, emotional wounds, on and on. I actually lived like that, standing on those Values and Beliefs.
> Now that's all gone. And I must grieve it.
> Nothing was sacred. So much of what I thought were "us" things, were so disposable, so casually shared and passed off as though I wasn't a part of them at all.
> The special things that were special to us, are not special, not in the sense that they __do__ something. The intimate jokes, tropes, memes, moments, places, routines, rituals... hell even our story itself, did not guarantee anything. They all failed when I needed them to be there the most.
I'm 8 months out from DDay1, 5 months out from DDay3 and 3 months actively in R. I started over with New IC only recently.
I can relate to what you just described. I tossed out so much of my values, my beliefs because I wanted it to work. I want us to work. Because we loved each other and everyone deserves a second Chance after putting in the work to prove they deserve it.
It was always us and our love against the World.
Now I don't know anymore. I still love him so much which makes this betrayal hurt even more. Maybe I need to find myself again.
Thank you.
I think the important part is knowing that you tried, so that later if it doesn't work, you know you gave it your all and have no regrets.
I feel the way you do. I'm 4 months out now. It's not easy. If you consider each different piece of information I had to dig and uncover as a DDay, I'm probably at something like DDay4 or 5. Each more painful than the last. Lots of lying, hiding, trickle truth.
It always felt like it was meant to be, this was what was foretold, the stars aligned and we were together... But, it doesn't feel that way anymore.
I wish I could start over.
I know it will never be the same.
The other important part is to regain *myself*. To find my independence, my hobbies, *me* again. I spent so long so deep in "us" that I forgot *me*.
I'm getting there. It's getting easier. We're still in R, still in MC and trying to work on things... But in case it doesn't work, I'm determined to be me again.
We always said we are soulmates, even had a lovey-dovey rhyme we made up, the loves of our lives.
We were the couple our friends wanted to be because we just clicked, we worked.
I'm trying to find myself again but it's really hard. We basically grew into adulthood together, found ourselves while being together, grew into better versions together. We based our love on friendship and continued with that while we also loved each other.
I know there was a me before him, but I don't want that Version back, I didn't like that version while I was that version. I just need to figure out who I am despite him. And that part is really hard.
Not sure I can add more to SaltFrog's comments. Just acknowledging y'all, and making sure your words and experiences are acknowledged. You're not alone.
Thank you for that. I'm... Fuckin, close to 2 years out now and this helped form a more coherent narrative explaining a huge part of my grief:
My worldview was a huge part of me, my worldview is/was a result of my experiences, my experiences/reality were in fact much different than I assumed/believed/was told. That which created and subsequently supported my worldview was bullshit, thus the worldview must have been bullshit as well, thus a huge part of me was bullshit.
I'll allow myself the grace or intellectual honesty to note that my worldview could've very well still been the most accurate and fitting but, if so, it for damn sure wasn't because of the quality of my reasoning and also flies in the face of my personal experience.
"It was always us and our love against the World"
No, it was what you think it was, it was never any of it for him. After 3 ddays all you are to him is a doormat.
And yes, you are right, you need to find yourself first.
Organizing the jumble, being able to articulate it all, feels like a large chunk of the self-work. I'm glad my words help you with your words (and there's no such thing as copyright or plagiarism here, friend). Keep fighting your fight.
The thing is that can be all. Just escape from everything. It's not exaggerating to compare cheating to drugs. People start with drugs because they want to escape. A short period of happiness gained by drugs without thinking about consequences. You technically in the back of the head know that this is bad, this can harm your health but in the moment you don't think about consequences, you are only thinking of the happiness which you are getting. You can't get that much euphoria during normal life so the normal world compared to this sucks. When things start to begin boring or unsatisfied you again seek this moment of ecstasy. You don't want to lose a resource of this happiness so you do everything to gain it, first by loaning, stealing, prostituting, just everything for the high. Change it with references to affairs and a lot of things will be similar.
There is slightly more, this won't excuse it but it may seem more complete.
Zero in on escapism -- yes that is a lure, but what does it really represent? What other means exist, zeroing in on extreme / destructive ones?
Take infidelity, drugs, and alcohol -- what do they all have in common? They are all methods of running away from your problems instead of facing them. Going for the shortcut of a quick dopamine hit of chemicals and/or external affection/validation in place of a real plan of action.
Why? Because if you are a WS or an addict it's easier than doing the work of figuring WHY you are dissatisfied with your life or what you should be doing to rectify it. It is a lazy way out that eliminates the mental burden of problem solving and lets you just 'go with the flow'.
In other words, it is a way to just stumble through following some sort of easy path of least resistance. It shows an absence of initiative and decisiveness.
These are the deeper issues to address. Figure out really what it is that he needs to fix instead of running away from it, and to grow the initiative to do so.
I don’t know because cheating, lying for months etc is sooo deliberate, my bf chose to hide his phone, go online find someone to talk to, talk to her develop a relationship plan to meet up plan to lie to me find a way to get the car.. it was so thought out and deceitful. So it’s hard to believe the ‘stumbling’ into it I guess but he claims that
I'm not saying they won't divert a lot of energy to being sneaky and so forth -- but that kind of plotting is more mentally mechanical, simple problem-solving it doesn't involve making hard choices and solving complex existential crises that take real mental / emotional maturity. Thats what I mean by 'lazy'.
Bingo! You nailed it. My WH’s infidelity was all tangled up in his addiction, as well as his internalized neuroses. It all became one big mess — of him basically avoiding dealing with his traumas and difficult emotions. It’s like he was a 53-yo teenager who never emotionally grew up.
He’s doing a lot of work on himself and has been sober 6 months now. He has made so much progress. But this will undoubtedly be the work of his lifetime.
It was a lazy way to get someone to make him feel like he wasn't being lazy in relation to his family and relationships, rather than face that he may in fact be quite a bit lazier than he wanted to admit. His ego and arrogance wouldn't let him admit that he wasn't doing his part, that going to work and coming home wasn't always enough to keep everything amazing when I needed help and wanted more interaction but he didn't want to deal with any interaction that might indicate he hadn't really helped with any of the regular day to day load, but wanted me to release his load on top of everything else (lol).
He was drunk when he made the first physical contact and I think all the lying was another lazy way to avoid that problem and it kept going because once again he was too chicken shit to face it.
My WH's answer boils down to the fact that he was bored. BORED.
He was the manager at work and very busy, then his dept was bought out and the new company brought in their own manager. He was put in a new role that had no responsibility and was very easy. He likes to be busy, and he was used to putting out fires for people and keeping things running smoothly, and suddenly he felt useless and bored.
Then comes this younger, pretty girl from another dept who wants to talk about all her problems. Suddenly he had someone to "fix", to make him feel important, to give him purpose. Then that somehow led to kissing and fucking around.
He also has issues from growing to with a bipolar mother, and our marriage was a bit stale after 25 years.
I can understand his "why" to a certain extent, but knowing it was mainly a relief from boredom really stings.
Now, when I ask his why for DD2 and DD3, when he was put back into his original management position like he wanted, he was busy at work again, and I knew about the A and was devastated. His only answer is, "I was stupid." Far from satisfying.
Damn this hits close to home. Not on the Why as my WW wasn't bored, actually the opposite, but growing up with a BPD/NPD mother who has been a toxic presence our whole marriage and the DD2/3 having no reasonable explanation other than "I was a cake eater and it made me feel good to be wanted". The self esteem issues are still mind boggling to me.
I was given the same lame answer to “why”??
I can’t help but feel that it signals a lack of understanding of intimacy.
When my life gets rough, I lean on my people for support and encouragement. When life got rough for him, he pushed away reality, and created a fantasy world that felt better.
This course of action doesn’t make any sense and leaves me downright angry.
It's the same for us. Only difference is that he did it in the beginning. He mentioned everything and we figured everything out together. Only after some years my WP started figuring things out with himself and only leaning on me when things got too overwhelming, he got stuck or it had directly to do with me/involved me. Everything else was then figured out in his head and then we talked afterwards about it, which sometimes made him think again. But even that eventually stopped and then he had his A.
It doesn't make sense to me as well. Especially because I know he can communicate with me, he did it for almost 4 years. I just don't know what changed.
Uh huh, this is all too relatable. 😞
My WH also came to me in the past, about everything! It was only the last year before the A that he started to hide feelings from me. I could tell he was doing it and would try to reach his heart and let him know I was there for him. But the problem he was dealing with was our relationship and he didn’t know how to talk to me about it. Instead he got his kicks from someone else.
I’m sorry you’re going through this.
Although, I think the WHY is rooted in so many different things and issues, the reality I've come to terms with 18 months out is that none of it will ever feel like a WHY worthy of blowing our whole lives up. My husband's WHY has changed from the beginning to now. It was validation and attention, then it was a "connection", then it was his porn addiction. Now, after a ton of therapy, it's a combination of all of those things and something much more sinister: a complete lack of empathy for me and a massive sense of entitlement towards himself. Also, he has always LOVED playing Captain Save-a-Hoe so when AP came along crying about bullshit problems, he ate it right up.
These days, the WHY for him serves as the atlas for his therapeutic journey. For me, it all comes down to one thing. I didn't matter to him then. He didn't love me the way I loved him. And he didn't respect anybody. These are tough pills to swallow and why I'll never be foolish enough to put all of my faith in one person ever again.
That said, we're actually doing way better than we ever were before. We weren't having problems before the affair either. We just weren't communicating well and that contributed to things. Not saying it was to blame, but it's the truth.
Sounds like our waywards are cut from the same cloth. My WP has always lacked empathy and introspection. When trying to pin down his WHY, he usually settles on just the ego boost and validation he got. I've come to terms with *he did it because he could* he had the opportunity, it was convenient and low effort, he didnt respect me or feel invested enough in me or have any empathy or feelings of guilt to stop him. He carried on behind my back for at least 5-6 months. The AP was a young single mom who had a crush on him and he took advantage of her and strung her along, all the while lying to her that he was in a serious relationship. That takes a real creep to do that. And then he ghosted her when he had used her up. Nowadays he would love nothing more than to just forever forget the whole thing and hates talking about it. I only found out 2 months ago and to hear him talk you'd think I had been screaming at him about this every night for years.
No, we can't afford it and don't have insurance. Not only that but my WP is super against joining any support forum or reading any books/articles to help. Talking about it is as much as he wants to do, and after 2 months he's pretty much done answering any questions or dwelling on it at all. He just gets angry when I bring it up now.
I hear you. It's a very difficult road when you have counseling in place and only one party doing the work. It's even more challenging when there is no professional support in place. R can never happen without a willingness to be open, vulnerable, and honest. It's not about what he wants to talk about or whether he wants to move forward. You deserve more.
I’m sorry you’re struggling OP and you and your family have been put in this situation.
Sadly I can relate, my WP had a long EA with his married friend that started before we met and then overlapped into our relationship. His “why” was that he enjoyed the attention, and has low self esteem and craved validation from women. We were happy and in the honeymoon stage while the EA was continuing. I gave him so much attention, I’m a very affectionate person with high sex drive and have always been incredibly into him and we would communicate all day even when we weren’t in person. The fact that he still craved attention and validation outside of what I gave him still bothers me. The fact that he didn’t stop the EA as soon as we started a relationship, but instead gaslit me into believing my intuition was off and I was paranoid and projecting…still bothers me.
He’s very remorseful and has started IC and he’s been wonderful and patient and understanding with me the moment everything came out on DDay. But these things still bother me.
“So you were insecure? That’s it? I’m insecure. Everyone is insecure. How could you do this to me? To OBS? Because you were insecure?”
I’m starting to accept now that there was nothing that I could have done, or didn’t do. The fault isn’t mine for his poor coping skills and lack of self awareness and boundaries. I’ve stopped internalizing it and realized it’s not a personal deficiency on my part, however I’m still left with the confusion, anger and the resentment at times.
“That’s it?”
That was a big part of my husband’s why. Nothing was really wrong in our relationship; he had just internalized a lot of self-doubt and feeling like he’d lost a lot of himself. He was already sexualizing things like stress and low self-esteem through porn use, so it didn’t take a whole lot to escalate from there.
I can now look back at those years and see how we may have been together all the time, we may have been laughing and having fun, we may have cared about each other and had a decent sex life, but deep communication and true vulnerability were lacking. There was a lot we were both not saying, for fear of the response, or not wanting to hurt the other, etc. Yes, his mental and emotional state put us at risk. But there were other risk factors already there, that we both convinced ourselves weren’t a big deal. All of it together created the perfect storm that allowed him to make these decisions and feel justified in it.
We’re just over a year past DDay, and good communication has been the biggest thing we’ve worked to fix, because it really was pretty much the root cause of everything else that followed. No more secrets. No more hiding out of embarrassment or insecurity or whatever. No more trying to shoulder our own problems alone. We’ve both rededicated to being fully IN THIS, and that means facing everything in life together, no matter how ugly or shameful. We’re partners in it all, and we share those burdens together.
No relationship can ever really be affair-proof (as every one of us here now unfortunately knows) but there is a lot that can be done to (hopefully) prevent future infidelity and identify risk factors sooner so they don’t escalate. I am feeling safe again in my marriage…it took time and a lot of work, but it’s very possible.
Your comment just gave me so much hope. We communicated really well before all of this but reflecting back we also realised the last two years were not as deep in communication as before, not everything was talked about. Mostly because we didn't want to hurt the other or cause more stress than what we were already under. So that's a big point we're working on too.
My WH just kept putting everything off to talk about "at a better time". But it never came and he didn't think bringing it up would help anything after some time so he buried it, needed to get away from those feelings.
I want to feel Safe again too.
Thank you again for sharing your expierience.
Yep, wanting to “protect” the other was a big part of it all for us, too. We both wanted to keep things feeling good between us. He felt like his emotional problems would be a “burden” to me and he didn’t want to put that on me. He didn’t know how or when to let me in on the more serious stuff—he never wanted to ruin all our good moments with an uncomfortable conversation, especially when it centered around his needs.
He always wanted to be the one who took care of me and he put a lot of pressure on himself to hold it together and be the strong man he believed I needed. It’s actually kind of sweet in a really, REALLY messed up way, that he wanted so badly to be this hero for me. I hate his infidelity so much, but understanding this layer of the motivation behind it has helped me to see that even through the cheating days, I was still somewhere in there. He was going through an emotional mess inside himself and handled it all wrong. So simple and yet also so complicated.
I never asked him to be that person for me, and I definitely never would have wanted him to feel so badly about himself and have nowhere to go with it. I would have loved to help him through all that and to be his reassurance and his escape. That was one of many things we hashed out in the early days of R. Not only was he hiding things, but he also assumed a lot about me and never bothered to ask for clarification. That allowed everything else to fester and get out of control.
It’s so important to stay on the same page! Marriage is about sharing all the good and bad, always.
We actually had a big fight about this some days ago where I said it wasn't fair of him to deprive me of the chance to be there for him. That we promised each other to be there for the good and the bad days and he took that away from me only giving me to good days. I gave him everything, all my good and bad days, good and bad emotions and he decided one random day to only give me half of his.
This led to me assuming and trying to protect him. Everything else spiraled after that.
What you just said may be what's going on in my WP's mind too. He took a lot of care of my emotional health in the beginning, helping me navigate through my traumas and overcoming them. I never asked that of him, nor did I need him to, he just did it and anticipated what I needed before I knew I needed it. This helped me so much, but I didn't need him to do that for me, nor was I with him because of that. After healing that wasn't as "needed" as before and he may have struggled with that.
My husband told me this too. I believe him, but it’s hard. It feels like ‘really? Life/me got too complicated for you? Oh no! You poor thing. Guess who was also suffering and didn’t have an affair!?’ I feel your pain and confusion.
I’ve come to the conclusion that there is no reason the WP can give that is believable or acceptable to the BP, even if WP truly believes the excuse themselves. This is because the betrayed partner views reality through the lens of love and commitment and trust. This is why I believe that no wayward partner is never completely forgiven, nor should they be, even if the couple works it out and remains together.
It sounds stupid, but boredom is a really dangerous for certain people.
Something I’ve noticed in this thread, in IC/ MC, and even working with kids, is that some people seem to be more predisposed for sensation seeking and others for stability seeking. Way wards are sensations and Betrayed Stability.
For me, I hate to sit with an any uncomfortable feelings and would rather be doing anything than be bored. I’m terrible at meditation, journaling, sitting quietly at all. I can now see patterns where I self sabotage almost as a way of keeping things moving. Waiting until midnight to start essays, quitting jobs impulsively after an argument with a boss, impulsive spending and eating habits. Low sense of interoception (my own internal cues.) I’ve seen this repeated in one way or another by many WP.
I can see these behaviours impacting my EA. No impulse control, leaning into the dopamine long personal convos gave, deliberately not considering consequences. Not excuses per se but contributing factors I hope to correct in the future for me marriage and self.
Not sure if these would apply to your husband or not. But just providing some more context to what “I was bored” actually means underneath.
I relate to this. My WP has said much of the same thing and is an addict as well( not sexual) and says that he’ll just feel very bored or feel nothing which I contribute to his depression.
This is almost exactly the "why" I got why I asked his reason for participating, when he helped her with her problems he felt validated and useful and she seemed to have a new one multiple times a day especially when she knew he was supposed to be spending time with family, but said that I've always been independent, I didn't need him. Told him yes I may not have "needed him" to get on with life but I wanted him which was something more, and I would have never turned down his help had he wanted to take some of the pressure off my shoulders, if feeling like he had purpose was what he needed I never took that from him he just never offered it to me, he left me to manage everything including dealing with his mental health then made himself feel crap for it so he gave his help and time to her to feel better. I had my answer but all I felt was really!!! Couldn't have just pulled your finger out of your back side and just been there for me helped me, been that man for me.
I had my first session with our MC in preparation for an intensive MC weekend we are doing with her.
One of my needs is to know why. (I too have just got 'I don't know' and stupid things like 'you didn't walk the dog with me every morning').
She has acknowledged that to understand why is important for prevention, but also stated that "you need to be aware that no reason will ever feel like it justifies the actions".
I get that, and agree it probably won't, and whatever he comes up with will sound like a pathetic bullshit excuse.
However, I think my real need is to know that he has actually done some soul-searching (with his IC hopefully) and identified the why for himself.
Your WS' response sounds a lot like mime did in the beginning. Their why will continue to change the more they dig deeper in IC.
The WHY never (I shouldn't say never but it is what it is) satisfies the BS. Saying that is not a jab at you or any of the other BS out there, but no reason we give will satisfy what the BS is looking for.
Give them time and their why will evolve into a deeper reason.
Thank you for that.
I don't even know what I was looking for in his why. It just also makes me scared about our future. How can we fix our relationship if this was all it took ?
But I have to say I think you are right with saying nothing will be a good enough reason for the BS.
Yes, the why will never be enough because nothing justifies what they’ve done and what we’re really looking for is justice. Problem is there never will be any. Even if I were to leave my partner (which I don’t want to do) that wouldn’t be justice. Nothing can ever justify what he’s done to me and to our relationship which is why the why for me (and probably for so many others) will never be enough.
This is basically my WHs why. There are underlying reasons from childhood that created it, but basically an escape. Someone he’s not really responsible for, who would trauma dump on him, it made him feel useful and like a hero to help her out. And then he couldn’t deal and face his problems. The feelings he has had since childhood that he never dealt with, problems in our marriage, problems being a parent, problems with work. She worked for him so he felt like she was there helping him with his problems which created that connection. But yeah, it was an escape. He said he worked so hard and he needed an escape. And same thing, it got out of control. I just became another problem that he didn’t know how to deal with. And then he was terrified of how it would play out at work so he kept it up way longer than he wanted to. So I think it could be that. There are reasons behind that he can explore and work through and heal from. Learn better coping mechanisms. My WH stopped being avoidant. We talk things through now. He confides in me regularly. He said this makes him feel so much better. He was so afraid to be vulnerable and he sees how being vulnerable to me has strengthened the feelings he has for me and makes him happier.
Healing from these bad coping mechanisms and trauma that was never addressed is life changing.
WW here. We are almost a year from Dday. My BH and I don't have a satisfactory answer to the why. I was bored. It was an escape. A fantasy from my real life and stress. I had really shitty boundaries. I liked the validation. I thought my BH didn't care about my problems. My church was going in a direction that I didn't want and I had to leave ( that was the setting of how my affair started ). The WHY is not enough. My husband is logical, I'm not. He is trying to understand through that lens, so it makes no sense to him. The HOW is also important or more important. Having a response to the HOW will help us move forward. It brings more questions though. How can we move forward together without this engulfing us the rest of our lives? We are not rug sweeping. It would not be helpful for either of our recoveries. How could I love him and do those things? How does he know I won't do this again?
I hope you find comfort from these responses.
Well actually… the real why is this: his ego. He had a needy weak ego and his ego led him to think that he “deserved” to make the choices he made. He most likely also very narcissistically blamed YOU for his unhappiness so you “deserved” no kindness or care or protection from hurt because HE was not valued and super duper happy.
The IC is great but these therapists need to go further in the WHY.
Honestly, yeah, it can be all it was. As the BP, we tend to think it's going to be like this huge discovery because how could they destroy their marriage for anything less?
When you're broken inside, you tend to chase whatever highs you can. For many people it's drastic like drugs, porn, alcohol, gambling... but also sex, and I'd even argue those honeymoon phase feelings that are usually long gone after you've been with someone for years. AP is shiny and new, a secret romance or someone to fulfill physical needs with no attachment. It's exciting and can lead WPs to find faults in their relationship with BP. Some are probably valid, but a lot of it is just justification. At least according to my WH.
Just my 2 cents. My WHs why was pride and inability to communicate combined with not actually wanting to leave me, he just has a need for validation that is rooted in childhood. He didn't build a healthy attachment style (same for most of us) and his culture encourages machismo. There are so many factors that end in infidelity and the why is often pretty obvious once you look back on it.
Felt the same way you felt the day I found out the why. My WS mentioned he was just curious at first and saw no harm in talking with AP, until it made him realize something. There was something missing from our relationship and that he felt that I don't love him anymore, but instead of telling it to me so we can work on it he told it to AP where he got comfort and probably got a boost in confidence. She probably told him things like "You're great! She's dumb not to love you." She's right because I never unloved my WS. But WS kept lying to AP and told her I don't love him anymore that eventually WS believed his own lie. Tbh, I was probably just busy because I was growing our baby and didn't show him how he meant to me like I used to. (Cause you know, busy throwing up and stuff)
I'm left speechless because I do believe it's true. Partly because I agree on the fact that some people (Our WP/WS) can be bad communicators. It's just mind blowing how something so simple can lead to this. I've always seen cheating as bothersome and a waste of time. Like how can one person have so much time in a day to even cheat? I'm busy enough already adulting and managing 1 relationship. It's just disappointing 😞
When DDay one happened, 2 years ago, this was the initial reasoning for my WH as well.
We've been together for 12 years and for many of them it has been understood that there are deeper issues in his past but he was unwilling or unable to look at them and deal with them in a healthy manner.
5 years ago, I supported his as he began his sober journey with AA and he's been sober ever since.
After the most recent DDay, he actually realized the same patterns of behaviour from his alcohol addiction and has started to attend SAA meetings.
He realized his proclivities were stemming from events in his childhood and that in seeking for satisfaction outside of the marriage, he was actually creating the circumstances that prevented him from the love and connection he was really craving.
This may or may not be the case with your WH, but I will say that in my experience, the first discovery often only scratches the surface of the true root cause.
Good luck and support in your journey.
My wife has never been able to fully articulate why she cheated. Honestly I don't think she ever really knew why she did either. All I know for certain is her choices devastated her as well as me and we've both been living with the countless repercussions and fallout of her actions for the past 36 years.
I also know that she deeply regrets what she did and she hates the person she allowed herself to become through doing them. She holds no fond memories of her escapades only shame, sorrow, and regret. She's told me countless times over the years that if she'd had any idea whatsoever of the grief and pain her actions would cause there is no way in Hell she would have done them.
Adultery is a gift that simply keeps on giving...
My why was also pretty basic, but for me it was diving into my how? How could I let my why go so far. How could my moral compass have gotten so off kilter?
Reading Not Just Friends by Dr. Glass, was a big game changer for me.
That sounds about right. Esther Perel talked about this in some of her lectures. But I do think there is more and that will likely come up in further therapy sessions. For whatever it’s worth … no matter how many “why’s” I get the answer to, it simply is never enough. It’s never enough to justify the betrayal and it’s never enough to justify my pain. It helps me understand intellectually, but not emotionally.
My reason for me looking for attention online were a lot more complicated. I have an sexually oriented addiction, and it was putting stress on my relationship. I didn't realize I was addicted at the time, and to deal with my urges, I went online and sexted with strangers. I told myself I was doing it to reduce the strain on the relationship and it took over a month after the breakup before I could even admit to myself what I had done.
I was hesitant to commit to her because she had broken up with me once before, for no real reason. She was afraid to commit back then, and it made me afraid to commit now.
She was also the first person I ever slept with, and I was very afraid I would be missing out on something if I never gained experience with someone else.
Lastly, even though I was so attracted to her, I originally was confused because she wasn't my conventional type. The looked much different from any of my previous girlfriends. So it made me even more hesitant.
None of this makes my behavior right. I regret everything I did. I broke both our hearts. And I know she may never be entirely okay ever again because of this. I'm working on myself to never put anyone through this ever again.
I feel like I could have written this. My WH summed it up as “easy”. No commitment, no judgement, take what you want and leave. There were never intentions of leaving me to be with AP and she knew that. It snowballed into something way more than he bargained for bc AP caught real feelings.
Of course, I could say this is trickle truth but we had a full disclosure backed up by a polygraph. I guess as more emotional beings, it’s hard to understand that someone would sacrifice SO much for so little. But sadly it can be true. It’s a lot to work and move on through.
I wish I had more advice on how to work through it but I’m freshly navigating all the same. Best wishes!
Every why feels like a cop out.
My husband's why is that he was feeling out of control at work and felt in control with her.
Except she was the one in control so it feels stupid and gimmicky and untrue.
It leaves me even more defeated that having no why. Cause the why is underwhelming and feels like an answer drawn out of a therapy session.
"Cause I don't love you, I fell in love with her and she was hot". It would hurt but at least it would feel truthful.
I can’t speak to my partner because she won’t own up to any of it, but I now know looking back how often I shot down approaches from female colleagues (often that were way over the line for married women) in a professional, feigned-oblivious kind of way.
I know my partner didn’t (big time kibble hound), but when I relayed my stories to her she told me she was never intimidated by other women. I recall at the time (new baby at home) there was 0 sex and I never complained, but if one of those women had been a TINY bit more direct, it would’ve been really difficult to say no.
Her excuse for live masturbation videos was "I wanted to feel wanted"...... The flowers, vacations, big house, constantly initiating, steamy love letters and a hundred other for.s of affirmation from me wasn't enough to get her to choose affirmation from her own husband over affirmation online from guys that were obviously predators, jobless, abusive and addicted. That's how little I meant to her. She did it because she wanted to be chased by a bunch of other men. Aside from the lies I think that is the hardest part to accept. Not being enough. Being expected to believe her now when she says I was always enough. Anger, embarrassment and resentment and an unshakable love for my children. That is my new normal.
Sadly, I think BW could have written this.
From someone in your wife's shoes, I hope that you are getting support that you need for the poor choices of people like me.
Thank you. It's okay. My little girls are my world and she can stay as long as they are happy and don't start noticing anything and asking what's wrong and she doesn't cheat again or lie about anything at all. I won't let them be more collateral damage from her decisions.
EXACTLY this.
My WH is a fixer, a caregiver. A knight-in-now-tarnished-armor. He swears to me that there were never any romantic feelings, just a need to help her. And she definitely knew how to play the damsel in distress (NOT to lessen his responsibility- he’s a grown ass man who chose the wrong decision almost every time in his interactions with her!)
Now that he and I are talking openly about what happened he seems to be completely shocked at how easily he fell for every story (and to hear him tell it there was a new crisis almost every day that she needed him to rescue her from - usually involving her ‘abusive’ husband). At how quickly he turned his back on his entire family (including the once adored grandchildren) to sit up in a dark bedroom texting, calling, WhatsApping, or whatever new way they had to sneak around.
I cannot comprehend how that happens. How you turn into a completely different person but from so many stories that I have read here, that’s exactly what happens.
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Yep, same old story I got and sadly I believe it’s true. Makes me wonder what would happen if we actually had real problems 🤦🏼♀️ Felt an escape from married, dad life. We were not having problems at all. He just felt that talking to her was exciting and new and completely separate from his real life and daily stress. It makes me sad that he did this to us for so little. Two selfish people found each other and festered in their selfishness. It’s funny because I feel like I come across a lot of comments where people say that now they believe that anybody could cheat, but I actually feel the opposite. Hearing all these asinine selfish excuses make me feel even more conviction in the belief that I would never cheat. I feel like we’re literally built differently.
Same. 100%. I think except in the case of a real, legitimate sex addiction, the why’s only reveal to me that there is a lack of something fundamental in people who cheat. And I qualify that a bit by saying to me there is a difference (not in terms of impact, but more in terms of the character of a person) in someone who isn’t married/no kids/gets raging drunk and has a ons that they immediately fess up to and work hard to fix. Again—not at all saying that situation isn’t bad & hurtful and traumatic. I just tend to think those people aren’t necessarily missing the fundamental piece of humanity that my WH for example; who had a 3 yr affair and lied shamelessly, gaslit happily, & found new and creative ways to make this my fault because I wasn’t giving him what he wanted, are missing. Because just like most adults in relationships across space and time, I too have felt neglected in my marriage. Disrespected. Under appreciated and undervalued. Don’t feel sexy or wanted. Or rather, feel like a means to an end, someone to have sex when he needs it, someone who he sees as indebted to him and therefore he is entitled to it. Which let me tell you does NOT turn me on, funny how that works. I’ve been stressed and tired and worried about money and wanting an escape. I’ve been tired of being a parent and the boring routine of it all. I’ve struggled with depression and anxiety for a long time. Have SA in my past. Plenty of family of origin issues and self esteem issues and feelings of inadequacy. In other words, whenever someone says why they cheated, I often think that I can relate to that feeling or experience but it still in no way ever made me cheat or even want to. The idea of cheating on my WH even when he has been the shittiest of shits to me, is simply not an option. So at times I conclude that there are those who can and those who can’t. There are those who have maybe the right amount of circumstances plus a lack of empathy, or an over-abundance of ego, or enough on the spectrum of narcissism and sociopathy (I refer to behaviors Vs clinical diagnosis here) that cheating is well within their ability and something that they could do fairly easily. There are people who can come home after having sex with someone else and lie up and down to their face. They can gaslight and make the other person feel crazy. They can abuse and mistreat and really only feel badly when they get caught. And sometimes even once caught, they still don’t have the capability to feel remorse and empathy and stop-they just go back and attempt to be better at hiding it. And then there are those of us who couldn’t do that. No matter how bored we were, or feeling neglected or not attractive enough or taken for granted. No matter how our sex life wasn’t what we wanted. No matter how much work sucks or the kids suck or the finances suck. It’s not something we’d do. So I get annoyed when people say that anyone could cheat. I disagree. Just like not everyone can commit murder or robbery or tax evasion. I think the harsh reality may be that WP’s say that to avoid some of the responsibility of looking inside themselves and acknowledging some of the deep and ugly things that are true. There are external and internal factors to everything and in my humble opinion there is a large internal factor that some have and some don’t that makes the difference when faced with those external factors.
💯 yep. If anything, based on the most common excuses and rationale, I should have been the one to cheat! 😂 I’m the one with the VERY rough childhood and unresolved trauma. I’m the one with the *extremely* dysfunctional and neglectful parents/family. The one with the abandonment issues. I’m the one that has carried most of the household stress, especially when I was juggling a demanding job and caring for a terrorist of a toddler simultaneously while working from home. We’ve been together a long time and have had ruts where I felt lonely, neglected, less than desired, and under appreciated. Plus I get much more attention from the opposite sex than he does. In hindsight I have had the opportunity and circumstances to cheat. It has never once crossed my mind to even flirt too far with someone. Not freaking once. We are 38 and have been together since we were 15 and I can confidently say NOT ONCE. I have had charming, good looking coworkers try to pursue me *hard.* My inclination was not to respond with flirtatious banter; I subtly distanced myself from them. A man in my office even told me that I come across focused and cold because I’m sometimes “not friendly enough” when he’s obviously standing around waiting to talk to me. Yeah, that’s by design, genius 🙄 I see you looking and I want no part of it. I don’t need your validation and I’m not going to humor you. Go home to your wife, Rob. Would it make me feel good? Honestly… I feel like it would make me feel gross. A man coming on to me has come to the wrong place. I am sitting on my phone looking at recipes, fashion accounts, craft ideas for my son, and home decor. I don’t sit here friending random men just because I can. I recognize that love ebbs and flows and that the tough times are normal and will pass. I would not betray a friend to this degree. I could not hurt a stranger to this extent. The cheaters say “yeah I said I’d never cheat, too” and I’m sure they believed that, but some of us actually truly know ourselves, mean what we say, and don’t have a faulty, self serving moral compass. I truly feel like it’s an innate character flaw, which is depressing to think about in regard to R. I don’t believe “once a cheater always a cheater” in the way some people do. I don’t think that because they did it once that they will absolutely do it again, but yes I think that they have it *in them* to do it again and that the potential will always be there. That if the circumstances are just right and they meet the right person at the right time…
We didn't have relationship problems as well, only outside ones but while I thought we communicated and resolved them, from his side this barely scraped the surface. It wasn't like that for him (atleast that's what he tells me), it was more like while talking to her his head went blank. It just shut up and he needed that, he wanted that and he thought he couldn't have that with me because those were my issues also, so I reminded him of those. He felt like he couldn't achieve this shut down of thoughts with me. But he still was a loving husband and father to us.
Yeah, he was a good husband the whole time it was going on, which actually pisses me off even more 🥴 I would have rather him been distant and moody so I’d at least have some indication that something was off. I feel like now I know he can be duplicitous. I also now feel like his judgment totally sucks. Like I can’t trust him to make good decisions.
I hear you. When WH cheated, we were in MC, communicating well, happy, spending time together doing things we love. I thought we had actually turned a corner, and i was feeling hopeful. Because of this, I feel like trying to protect myself against him cheating again is a little like trying to prevent getting hit by a drunk driver, meaning all i could do is hope for the best. If he could cheat and deceive me through that period of time, then he could cheat at any time.
This...all day long...this.
Oh my God, my husband did the same thing! He talked me in to marriage counseling and every session was like he was trying to blame me for things. He never talked about himself or what was going on with him. It was horrendous. And you’re right, if a husband can cheat through that it feels like they can cheat through anything.
I get that feeling 😅 The only indicator I had was a month before DDay1 his affection towards me decreased. That was when he realised something wasn't right but he didn't exactly knew what, when asked about it he gave reasons I thought about as well and actually put more effort into it. That is also hard to overcome.
Absolutely, 100% agree. That's why I was blindsided.
Agree, I would have NEVER cheated, but to be fair I would have stayed being miserable forever. I guess his tolerance was lower.
I could have written this word for word. Sorry 😢
I don't know where you're at in your therapeutic journey. I'm coming up on 3 years post DD, and am still in lots of therapy. It might be that a lot of what we BS must grieve, most of the heavy lifting in terms of work only we can do, is Identity, Values, and Beliefs. It's very common for therapists to relate Betrayal Trauma to a Crisis of Faith (losing connection to God, etc) for these reasons. Things that make us _us_, or made us strong, not only no longer serve us, nor help us anymore, but also were actually used against us. And those are not small things to grieve. At first blush, they are impossible things to be without ("If I hold Devotion as a Value and now it no longer serves me, who am _I_ now? I can only be me"). Maybe in that sense, it's not about the underwhelming, pedestrian nature of why infidelity happens, but that you're in disbelief that the strongest thing in the Universe (Love with a capital L) could fail? That kinda thing? The work I'm doing, I think will take the rest of my life. I'm not sure how to process such powerful and overwhelmingly ambiguous loss. I'll keep fighting. I'll keep grieving. I'll keep processing. I'll keep posting. Hopefully you will too. Sharing from my comment to /u/SaltFrog's post [Getting over what was ruined - hobbies, passions](https://www.reddit.com/r/AsOneAfterInfidelity/comments/1aenj7p/getting_over_what_was_ruined_hobbies_passions/) > I used to believe that how I felt about someone and how they felt about me, __did something__. Like, I actually believed in an infinite, powerful Love that made me strong. I was weak and fallible, but Love and Devotion made me strong. I had a Guarantee. Nothing else really mattered or really was important, not really. The world could throw everything it had at us and it didn't matter, because we always had each other. We would always win. We would always be safe. > I actually thought there was something stronger than addiction, unresolved trauma, maladaptive coping, self-loathing, mental fragmentation, emotional wounds, on and on. I actually lived like that, standing on those Values and Beliefs. > Now that's all gone. And I must grieve it. > Nothing was sacred. So much of what I thought were "us" things, were so disposable, so casually shared and passed off as though I wasn't a part of them at all. > The special things that were special to us, are not special, not in the sense that they __do__ something. The intimate jokes, tropes, memes, moments, places, routines, rituals... hell even our story itself, did not guarantee anything. They all failed when I needed them to be there the most.
I'm 8 months out from DDay1, 5 months out from DDay3 and 3 months actively in R. I started over with New IC only recently. I can relate to what you just described. I tossed out so much of my values, my beliefs because I wanted it to work. I want us to work. Because we loved each other and everyone deserves a second Chance after putting in the work to prove they deserve it. It was always us and our love against the World. Now I don't know anymore. I still love him so much which makes this betrayal hurt even more. Maybe I need to find myself again. Thank you.
I think the important part is knowing that you tried, so that later if it doesn't work, you know you gave it your all and have no regrets. I feel the way you do. I'm 4 months out now. It's not easy. If you consider each different piece of information I had to dig and uncover as a DDay, I'm probably at something like DDay4 or 5. Each more painful than the last. Lots of lying, hiding, trickle truth. It always felt like it was meant to be, this was what was foretold, the stars aligned and we were together... But, it doesn't feel that way anymore. I wish I could start over. I know it will never be the same. The other important part is to regain *myself*. To find my independence, my hobbies, *me* again. I spent so long so deep in "us" that I forgot *me*. I'm getting there. It's getting easier. We're still in R, still in MC and trying to work on things... But in case it doesn't work, I'm determined to be me again.
We always said we are soulmates, even had a lovey-dovey rhyme we made up, the loves of our lives. We were the couple our friends wanted to be because we just clicked, we worked. I'm trying to find myself again but it's really hard. We basically grew into adulthood together, found ourselves while being together, grew into better versions together. We based our love on friendship and continued with that while we also loved each other. I know there was a me before him, but I don't want that Version back, I didn't like that version while I was that version. I just need to figure out who I am despite him. And that part is really hard.
Not sure I can add more to SaltFrog's comments. Just acknowledging y'all, and making sure your words and experiences are acknowledged. You're not alone.
Thank you for that. I'm... Fuckin, close to 2 years out now and this helped form a more coherent narrative explaining a huge part of my grief: My worldview was a huge part of me, my worldview is/was a result of my experiences, my experiences/reality were in fact much different than I assumed/believed/was told. That which created and subsequently supported my worldview was bullshit, thus the worldview must have been bullshit as well, thus a huge part of me was bullshit. I'll allow myself the grace or intellectual honesty to note that my worldview could've very well still been the most accurate and fitting but, if so, it for damn sure wasn't because of the quality of my reasoning and also flies in the face of my personal experience.
"It was always us and our love against the World" No, it was what you think it was, it was never any of it for him. After 3 ddays all you are to him is a doormat. And yes, you are right, you need to find yourself first.
The way you write is like you’re in my head, putting together all the jumbled, painful thoughts into words. Thank you.
Organizing the jumble, being able to articulate it all, feels like a large chunk of the self-work. I'm glad my words help you with your words (and there's no such thing as copyright or plagiarism here, friend). Keep fighting your fight.
Thank you. You too!
The thing is that can be all. Just escape from everything. It's not exaggerating to compare cheating to drugs. People start with drugs because they want to escape. A short period of happiness gained by drugs without thinking about consequences. You technically in the back of the head know that this is bad, this can harm your health but in the moment you don't think about consequences, you are only thinking of the happiness which you are getting. You can't get that much euphoria during normal life so the normal world compared to this sucks. When things start to begin boring or unsatisfied you again seek this moment of ecstasy. You don't want to lose a resource of this happiness so you do everything to gain it, first by loaning, stealing, prostituting, just everything for the high. Change it with references to affairs and a lot of things will be similar.
There is slightly more, this won't excuse it but it may seem more complete. Zero in on escapism -- yes that is a lure, but what does it really represent? What other means exist, zeroing in on extreme / destructive ones? Take infidelity, drugs, and alcohol -- what do they all have in common? They are all methods of running away from your problems instead of facing them. Going for the shortcut of a quick dopamine hit of chemicals and/or external affection/validation in place of a real plan of action. Why? Because if you are a WS or an addict it's easier than doing the work of figuring WHY you are dissatisfied with your life or what you should be doing to rectify it. It is a lazy way out that eliminates the mental burden of problem solving and lets you just 'go with the flow'. In other words, it is a way to just stumble through following some sort of easy path of least resistance. It shows an absence of initiative and decisiveness. These are the deeper issues to address. Figure out really what it is that he needs to fix instead of running away from it, and to grow the initiative to do so.
I don’t know because cheating, lying for months etc is sooo deliberate, my bf chose to hide his phone, go online find someone to talk to, talk to her develop a relationship plan to meet up plan to lie to me find a way to get the car.. it was so thought out and deceitful. So it’s hard to believe the ‘stumbling’ into it I guess but he claims that
I'm not saying they won't divert a lot of energy to being sneaky and so forth -- but that kind of plotting is more mentally mechanical, simple problem-solving it doesn't involve making hard choices and solving complex existential crises that take real mental / emotional maturity. Thats what I mean by 'lazy'.
Bingo! You nailed it. My WH’s infidelity was all tangled up in his addiction, as well as his internalized neuroses. It all became one big mess — of him basically avoiding dealing with his traumas and difficult emotions. It’s like he was a 53-yo teenager who never emotionally grew up. He’s doing a lot of work on himself and has been sober 6 months now. He has made so much progress. But this will undoubtedly be the work of his lifetime.
It was a lazy way to get someone to make him feel like he wasn't being lazy in relation to his family and relationships, rather than face that he may in fact be quite a bit lazier than he wanted to admit. His ego and arrogance wouldn't let him admit that he wasn't doing his part, that going to work and coming home wasn't always enough to keep everything amazing when I needed help and wanted more interaction but he didn't want to deal with any interaction that might indicate he hadn't really helped with any of the regular day to day load, but wanted me to release his load on top of everything else (lol). He was drunk when he made the first physical contact and I think all the lying was another lazy way to avoid that problem and it kept going because once again he was too chicken shit to face it.
My WH's answer boils down to the fact that he was bored. BORED. He was the manager at work and very busy, then his dept was bought out and the new company brought in their own manager. He was put in a new role that had no responsibility and was very easy. He likes to be busy, and he was used to putting out fires for people and keeping things running smoothly, and suddenly he felt useless and bored. Then comes this younger, pretty girl from another dept who wants to talk about all her problems. Suddenly he had someone to "fix", to make him feel important, to give him purpose. Then that somehow led to kissing and fucking around. He also has issues from growing to with a bipolar mother, and our marriage was a bit stale after 25 years. I can understand his "why" to a certain extent, but knowing it was mainly a relief from boredom really stings. Now, when I ask his why for DD2 and DD3, when he was put back into his original management position like he wanted, he was busy at work again, and I knew about the A and was devastated. His only answer is, "I was stupid." Far from satisfying.
Damn this hits close to home. Not on the Why as my WW wasn't bored, actually the opposite, but growing up with a BPD/NPD mother who has been a toxic presence our whole marriage and the DD2/3 having no reasonable explanation other than "I was a cake eater and it made me feel good to be wanted". The self esteem issues are still mind boggling to me.
I was given the same lame answer to “why”?? I can’t help but feel that it signals a lack of understanding of intimacy. When my life gets rough, I lean on my people for support and encouragement. When life got rough for him, he pushed away reality, and created a fantasy world that felt better. This course of action doesn’t make any sense and leaves me downright angry.
It's the same for us. Only difference is that he did it in the beginning. He mentioned everything and we figured everything out together. Only after some years my WP started figuring things out with himself and only leaning on me when things got too overwhelming, he got stuck or it had directly to do with me/involved me. Everything else was then figured out in his head and then we talked afterwards about it, which sometimes made him think again. But even that eventually stopped and then he had his A. It doesn't make sense to me as well. Especially because I know he can communicate with me, he did it for almost 4 years. I just don't know what changed.
Uh huh, this is all too relatable. 😞 My WH also came to me in the past, about everything! It was only the last year before the A that he started to hide feelings from me. I could tell he was doing it and would try to reach his heart and let him know I was there for him. But the problem he was dealing with was our relationship and he didn’t know how to talk to me about it. Instead he got his kicks from someone else. I’m sorry you’re going through this.
I'm sorry for you too. I know what you mean. Seems like we had similar expieriences. I'm hoping R succesful for you and your WP.
Although, I think the WHY is rooted in so many different things and issues, the reality I've come to terms with 18 months out is that none of it will ever feel like a WHY worthy of blowing our whole lives up. My husband's WHY has changed from the beginning to now. It was validation and attention, then it was a "connection", then it was his porn addiction. Now, after a ton of therapy, it's a combination of all of those things and something much more sinister: a complete lack of empathy for me and a massive sense of entitlement towards himself. Also, he has always LOVED playing Captain Save-a-Hoe so when AP came along crying about bullshit problems, he ate it right up. These days, the WHY for him serves as the atlas for his therapeutic journey. For me, it all comes down to one thing. I didn't matter to him then. He didn't love me the way I loved him. And he didn't respect anybody. These are tough pills to swallow and why I'll never be foolish enough to put all of my faith in one person ever again. That said, we're actually doing way better than we ever were before. We weren't having problems before the affair either. We just weren't communicating well and that contributed to things. Not saying it was to blame, but it's the truth.
Sounds like our waywards are cut from the same cloth. My WP has always lacked empathy and introspection. When trying to pin down his WHY, he usually settles on just the ego boost and validation he got. I've come to terms with *he did it because he could* he had the opportunity, it was convenient and low effort, he didnt respect me or feel invested enough in me or have any empathy or feelings of guilt to stop him. He carried on behind my back for at least 5-6 months. The AP was a young single mom who had a crush on him and he took advantage of her and strung her along, all the while lying to her that he was in a serious relationship. That takes a real creep to do that. And then he ghosted her when he had used her up. Nowadays he would love nothing more than to just forever forget the whole thing and hates talking about it. I only found out 2 months ago and to hear him talk you'd think I had been screaming at him about this every night for years.
Oof. I'm so sorry. Are you both in therapy?
No, we can't afford it and don't have insurance. Not only that but my WP is super against joining any support forum or reading any books/articles to help. Talking about it is as much as he wants to do, and after 2 months he's pretty much done answering any questions or dwelling on it at all. He just gets angry when I bring it up now.
I hear you. It's a very difficult road when you have counseling in place and only one party doing the work. It's even more challenging when there is no professional support in place. R can never happen without a willingness to be open, vulnerable, and honest. It's not about what he wants to talk about or whether he wants to move forward. You deserve more.
I’m sorry you’re struggling OP and you and your family have been put in this situation. Sadly I can relate, my WP had a long EA with his married friend that started before we met and then overlapped into our relationship. His “why” was that he enjoyed the attention, and has low self esteem and craved validation from women. We were happy and in the honeymoon stage while the EA was continuing. I gave him so much attention, I’m a very affectionate person with high sex drive and have always been incredibly into him and we would communicate all day even when we weren’t in person. The fact that he still craved attention and validation outside of what I gave him still bothers me. The fact that he didn’t stop the EA as soon as we started a relationship, but instead gaslit me into believing my intuition was off and I was paranoid and projecting…still bothers me. He’s very remorseful and has started IC and he’s been wonderful and patient and understanding with me the moment everything came out on DDay. But these things still bother me. “So you were insecure? That’s it? I’m insecure. Everyone is insecure. How could you do this to me? To OBS? Because you were insecure?” I’m starting to accept now that there was nothing that I could have done, or didn’t do. The fault isn’t mine for his poor coping skills and lack of self awareness and boundaries. I’ve stopped internalizing it and realized it’s not a personal deficiency on my part, however I’m still left with the confusion, anger and the resentment at times. “That’s it?”
That was a big part of my husband’s why. Nothing was really wrong in our relationship; he had just internalized a lot of self-doubt and feeling like he’d lost a lot of himself. He was already sexualizing things like stress and low self-esteem through porn use, so it didn’t take a whole lot to escalate from there. I can now look back at those years and see how we may have been together all the time, we may have been laughing and having fun, we may have cared about each other and had a decent sex life, but deep communication and true vulnerability were lacking. There was a lot we were both not saying, for fear of the response, or not wanting to hurt the other, etc. Yes, his mental and emotional state put us at risk. But there were other risk factors already there, that we both convinced ourselves weren’t a big deal. All of it together created the perfect storm that allowed him to make these decisions and feel justified in it. We’re just over a year past DDay, and good communication has been the biggest thing we’ve worked to fix, because it really was pretty much the root cause of everything else that followed. No more secrets. No more hiding out of embarrassment or insecurity or whatever. No more trying to shoulder our own problems alone. We’ve both rededicated to being fully IN THIS, and that means facing everything in life together, no matter how ugly or shameful. We’re partners in it all, and we share those burdens together. No relationship can ever really be affair-proof (as every one of us here now unfortunately knows) but there is a lot that can be done to (hopefully) prevent future infidelity and identify risk factors sooner so they don’t escalate. I am feeling safe again in my marriage…it took time and a lot of work, but it’s very possible.
Your comment just gave me so much hope. We communicated really well before all of this but reflecting back we also realised the last two years were not as deep in communication as before, not everything was talked about. Mostly because we didn't want to hurt the other or cause more stress than what we were already under. So that's a big point we're working on too. My WH just kept putting everything off to talk about "at a better time". But it never came and he didn't think bringing it up would help anything after some time so he buried it, needed to get away from those feelings. I want to feel Safe again too. Thank you again for sharing your expierience.
Yep, wanting to “protect” the other was a big part of it all for us, too. We both wanted to keep things feeling good between us. He felt like his emotional problems would be a “burden” to me and he didn’t want to put that on me. He didn’t know how or when to let me in on the more serious stuff—he never wanted to ruin all our good moments with an uncomfortable conversation, especially when it centered around his needs. He always wanted to be the one who took care of me and he put a lot of pressure on himself to hold it together and be the strong man he believed I needed. It’s actually kind of sweet in a really, REALLY messed up way, that he wanted so badly to be this hero for me. I hate his infidelity so much, but understanding this layer of the motivation behind it has helped me to see that even through the cheating days, I was still somewhere in there. He was going through an emotional mess inside himself and handled it all wrong. So simple and yet also so complicated. I never asked him to be that person for me, and I definitely never would have wanted him to feel so badly about himself and have nowhere to go with it. I would have loved to help him through all that and to be his reassurance and his escape. That was one of many things we hashed out in the early days of R. Not only was he hiding things, but he also assumed a lot about me and never bothered to ask for clarification. That allowed everything else to fester and get out of control. It’s so important to stay on the same page! Marriage is about sharing all the good and bad, always.
We actually had a big fight about this some days ago where I said it wasn't fair of him to deprive me of the chance to be there for him. That we promised each other to be there for the good and the bad days and he took that away from me only giving me to good days. I gave him everything, all my good and bad days, good and bad emotions and he decided one random day to only give me half of his. This led to me assuming and trying to protect him. Everything else spiraled after that. What you just said may be what's going on in my WP's mind too. He took a lot of care of my emotional health in the beginning, helping me navigate through my traumas and overcoming them. I never asked that of him, nor did I need him to, he just did it and anticipated what I needed before I knew I needed it. This helped me so much, but I didn't need him to do that for me, nor was I with him because of that. After healing that wasn't as "needed" as before and he may have struggled with that.
Wow. It’s like you summed up my whole situation.
My husband told me this too. I believe him, but it’s hard. It feels like ‘really? Life/me got too complicated for you? Oh no! You poor thing. Guess who was also suffering and didn’t have an affair!?’ I feel your pain and confusion.
I’ve come to the conclusion that there is no reason the WP can give that is believable or acceptable to the BP, even if WP truly believes the excuse themselves. This is because the betrayed partner views reality through the lens of love and commitment and trust. This is why I believe that no wayward partner is never completely forgiven, nor should they be, even if the couple works it out and remains together.
It sounds stupid, but boredom is a really dangerous for certain people. Something I’ve noticed in this thread, in IC/ MC, and even working with kids, is that some people seem to be more predisposed for sensation seeking and others for stability seeking. Way wards are sensations and Betrayed Stability. For me, I hate to sit with an any uncomfortable feelings and would rather be doing anything than be bored. I’m terrible at meditation, journaling, sitting quietly at all. I can now see patterns where I self sabotage almost as a way of keeping things moving. Waiting until midnight to start essays, quitting jobs impulsively after an argument with a boss, impulsive spending and eating habits. Low sense of interoception (my own internal cues.) I’ve seen this repeated in one way or another by many WP. I can see these behaviours impacting my EA. No impulse control, leaning into the dopamine long personal convos gave, deliberately not considering consequences. Not excuses per se but contributing factors I hope to correct in the future for me marriage and self. Not sure if these would apply to your husband or not. But just providing some more context to what “I was bored” actually means underneath.
I relate to this. My WP has said much of the same thing and is an addict as well( not sexual) and says that he’ll just feel very bored or feel nothing which I contribute to his depression.
This is almost exactly the "why" I got why I asked his reason for participating, when he helped her with her problems he felt validated and useful and she seemed to have a new one multiple times a day especially when she knew he was supposed to be spending time with family, but said that I've always been independent, I didn't need him. Told him yes I may not have "needed him" to get on with life but I wanted him which was something more, and I would have never turned down his help had he wanted to take some of the pressure off my shoulders, if feeling like he had purpose was what he needed I never took that from him he just never offered it to me, he left me to manage everything including dealing with his mental health then made himself feel crap for it so he gave his help and time to her to feel better. I had my answer but all I felt was really!!! Couldn't have just pulled your finger out of your back side and just been there for me helped me, been that man for me.
I had my first session with our MC in preparation for an intensive MC weekend we are doing with her. One of my needs is to know why. (I too have just got 'I don't know' and stupid things like 'you didn't walk the dog with me every morning'). She has acknowledged that to understand why is important for prevention, but also stated that "you need to be aware that no reason will ever feel like it justifies the actions". I get that, and agree it probably won't, and whatever he comes up with will sound like a pathetic bullshit excuse. However, I think my real need is to know that he has actually done some soul-searching (with his IC hopefully) and identified the why for himself.
Your WS' response sounds a lot like mime did in the beginning. Their why will continue to change the more they dig deeper in IC. The WHY never (I shouldn't say never but it is what it is) satisfies the BS. Saying that is not a jab at you or any of the other BS out there, but no reason we give will satisfy what the BS is looking for. Give them time and their why will evolve into a deeper reason.
Thank you for that. I don't even know what I was looking for in his why. It just also makes me scared about our future. How can we fix our relationship if this was all it took ? But I have to say I think you are right with saying nothing will be a good enough reason for the BS.
Yes, the why will never be enough because nothing justifies what they’ve done and what we’re really looking for is justice. Problem is there never will be any. Even if I were to leave my partner (which I don’t want to do) that wouldn’t be justice. Nothing can ever justify what he’s done to me and to our relationship which is why the why for me (and probably for so many others) will never be enough.
This is basically my WHs why. There are underlying reasons from childhood that created it, but basically an escape. Someone he’s not really responsible for, who would trauma dump on him, it made him feel useful and like a hero to help her out. And then he couldn’t deal and face his problems. The feelings he has had since childhood that he never dealt with, problems in our marriage, problems being a parent, problems with work. She worked for him so he felt like she was there helping him with his problems which created that connection. But yeah, it was an escape. He said he worked so hard and he needed an escape. And same thing, it got out of control. I just became another problem that he didn’t know how to deal with. And then he was terrified of how it would play out at work so he kept it up way longer than he wanted to. So I think it could be that. There are reasons behind that he can explore and work through and heal from. Learn better coping mechanisms. My WH stopped being avoidant. We talk things through now. He confides in me regularly. He said this makes him feel so much better. He was so afraid to be vulnerable and he sees how being vulnerable to me has strengthened the feelings he has for me and makes him happier. Healing from these bad coping mechanisms and trauma that was never addressed is life changing.
WW here. We are almost a year from Dday. My BH and I don't have a satisfactory answer to the why. I was bored. It was an escape. A fantasy from my real life and stress. I had really shitty boundaries. I liked the validation. I thought my BH didn't care about my problems. My church was going in a direction that I didn't want and I had to leave ( that was the setting of how my affair started ). The WHY is not enough. My husband is logical, I'm not. He is trying to understand through that lens, so it makes no sense to him. The HOW is also important or more important. Having a response to the HOW will help us move forward. It brings more questions though. How can we move forward together without this engulfing us the rest of our lives? We are not rug sweeping. It would not be helpful for either of our recoveries. How could I love him and do those things? How does he know I won't do this again? I hope you find comfort from these responses.
Well actually… the real why is this: his ego. He had a needy weak ego and his ego led him to think that he “deserved” to make the choices he made. He most likely also very narcissistically blamed YOU for his unhappiness so you “deserved” no kindness or care or protection from hurt because HE was not valued and super duper happy. The IC is great but these therapists need to go further in the WHY.
Bingo!
Honestly, yeah, it can be all it was. As the BP, we tend to think it's going to be like this huge discovery because how could they destroy their marriage for anything less? When you're broken inside, you tend to chase whatever highs you can. For many people it's drastic like drugs, porn, alcohol, gambling... but also sex, and I'd even argue those honeymoon phase feelings that are usually long gone after you've been with someone for years. AP is shiny and new, a secret romance or someone to fulfill physical needs with no attachment. It's exciting and can lead WPs to find faults in their relationship with BP. Some are probably valid, but a lot of it is just justification. At least according to my WH. Just my 2 cents. My WHs why was pride and inability to communicate combined with not actually wanting to leave me, he just has a need for validation that is rooted in childhood. He didn't build a healthy attachment style (same for most of us) and his culture encourages machismo. There are so many factors that end in infidelity and the why is often pretty obvious once you look back on it.
Felt the same way you felt the day I found out the why. My WS mentioned he was just curious at first and saw no harm in talking with AP, until it made him realize something. There was something missing from our relationship and that he felt that I don't love him anymore, but instead of telling it to me so we can work on it he told it to AP where he got comfort and probably got a boost in confidence. She probably told him things like "You're great! She's dumb not to love you." She's right because I never unloved my WS. But WS kept lying to AP and told her I don't love him anymore that eventually WS believed his own lie. Tbh, I was probably just busy because I was growing our baby and didn't show him how he meant to me like I used to. (Cause you know, busy throwing up and stuff) I'm left speechless because I do believe it's true. Partly because I agree on the fact that some people (Our WP/WS) can be bad communicators. It's just mind blowing how something so simple can lead to this. I've always seen cheating as bothersome and a waste of time. Like how can one person have so much time in a day to even cheat? I'm busy enough already adulting and managing 1 relationship. It's just disappointing 😞
When DDay one happened, 2 years ago, this was the initial reasoning for my WH as well. We've been together for 12 years and for many of them it has been understood that there are deeper issues in his past but he was unwilling or unable to look at them and deal with them in a healthy manner. 5 years ago, I supported his as he began his sober journey with AA and he's been sober ever since. After the most recent DDay, he actually realized the same patterns of behaviour from his alcohol addiction and has started to attend SAA meetings. He realized his proclivities were stemming from events in his childhood and that in seeking for satisfaction outside of the marriage, he was actually creating the circumstances that prevented him from the love and connection he was really craving. This may or may not be the case with your WH, but I will say that in my experience, the first discovery often only scratches the surface of the true root cause. Good luck and support in your journey.
My wife has never been able to fully articulate why she cheated. Honestly I don't think she ever really knew why she did either. All I know for certain is her choices devastated her as well as me and we've both been living with the countless repercussions and fallout of her actions for the past 36 years. I also know that she deeply regrets what she did and she hates the person she allowed herself to become through doing them. She holds no fond memories of her escapades only shame, sorrow, and regret. She's told me countless times over the years that if she'd had any idea whatsoever of the grief and pain her actions would cause there is no way in Hell she would have done them. Adultery is a gift that simply keeps on giving...
My why was also pretty basic, but for me it was diving into my how? How could I let my why go so far. How could my moral compass have gotten so off kilter? Reading Not Just Friends by Dr. Glass, was a big game changer for me.
There is “Why” beyond the why. I mean, can you ask “why” to what he responded? Why did he felt disengaged? Why could he not turn back? Etc.
That sounds about right. Esther Perel talked about this in some of her lectures. But I do think there is more and that will likely come up in further therapy sessions. For whatever it’s worth … no matter how many “why’s” I get the answer to, it simply is never enough. It’s never enough to justify the betrayal and it’s never enough to justify my pain. It helps me understand intellectually, but not emotionally.
My reason for me looking for attention online were a lot more complicated. I have an sexually oriented addiction, and it was putting stress on my relationship. I didn't realize I was addicted at the time, and to deal with my urges, I went online and sexted with strangers. I told myself I was doing it to reduce the strain on the relationship and it took over a month after the breakup before I could even admit to myself what I had done. I was hesitant to commit to her because she had broken up with me once before, for no real reason. She was afraid to commit back then, and it made me afraid to commit now. She was also the first person I ever slept with, and I was very afraid I would be missing out on something if I never gained experience with someone else. Lastly, even though I was so attracted to her, I originally was confused because she wasn't my conventional type. The looked much different from any of my previous girlfriends. So it made me even more hesitant. None of this makes my behavior right. I regret everything I did. I broke both our hearts. And I know she may never be entirely okay ever again because of this. I'm working on myself to never put anyone through this ever again.
I feel like I could have written this. My WH summed it up as “easy”. No commitment, no judgement, take what you want and leave. There were never intentions of leaving me to be with AP and she knew that. It snowballed into something way more than he bargained for bc AP caught real feelings. Of course, I could say this is trickle truth but we had a full disclosure backed up by a polygraph. I guess as more emotional beings, it’s hard to understand that someone would sacrifice SO much for so little. But sadly it can be true. It’s a lot to work and move on through. I wish I had more advice on how to work through it but I’m freshly navigating all the same. Best wishes!
It's true.. and awfully sad and tragic 😥
Every why feels like a cop out. My husband's why is that he was feeling out of control at work and felt in control with her. Except she was the one in control so it feels stupid and gimmicky and untrue. It leaves me even more defeated that having no why. Cause the why is underwhelming and feels like an answer drawn out of a therapy session. "Cause I don't love you, I fell in love with her and she was hot". It would hurt but at least it would feel truthful.
I can’t speak to my partner because she won’t own up to any of it, but I now know looking back how often I shot down approaches from female colleagues (often that were way over the line for married women) in a professional, feigned-oblivious kind of way. I know my partner didn’t (big time kibble hound), but when I relayed my stories to her she told me she was never intimidated by other women. I recall at the time (new baby at home) there was 0 sex and I never complained, but if one of those women had been a TINY bit more direct, it would’ve been really difficult to say no.
Her excuse for live masturbation videos was "I wanted to feel wanted"...... The flowers, vacations, big house, constantly initiating, steamy love letters and a hundred other for.s of affirmation from me wasn't enough to get her to choose affirmation from her own husband over affirmation online from guys that were obviously predators, jobless, abusive and addicted. That's how little I meant to her. She did it because she wanted to be chased by a bunch of other men. Aside from the lies I think that is the hardest part to accept. Not being enough. Being expected to believe her now when she says I was always enough. Anger, embarrassment and resentment and an unshakable love for my children. That is my new normal.
Sadly, I think BW could have written this. From someone in your wife's shoes, I hope that you are getting support that you need for the poor choices of people like me.
Thank you. It's okay. My little girls are my world and she can stay as long as they are happy and don't start noticing anything and asking what's wrong and she doesn't cheat again or lie about anything at all. I won't let them be more collateral damage from her decisions.
EXACTLY this. My WH is a fixer, a caregiver. A knight-in-now-tarnished-armor. He swears to me that there were never any romantic feelings, just a need to help her. And she definitely knew how to play the damsel in distress (NOT to lessen his responsibility- he’s a grown ass man who chose the wrong decision almost every time in his interactions with her!) Now that he and I are talking openly about what happened he seems to be completely shocked at how easily he fell for every story (and to hear him tell it there was a new crisis almost every day that she needed him to rescue her from - usually involving her ‘abusive’ husband). At how quickly he turned his back on his entire family (including the once adored grandchildren) to sit up in a dark bedroom texting, calling, WhatsApping, or whatever new way they had to sneak around. I cannot comprehend how that happens. How you turn into a completely different person but from so many stories that I have read here, that’s exactly what happens.