SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I think a lot has been covered already but just wanted to add my perspective as someone who stayed (the first time) and then switched to divorce (the second time).

I don't think your choices are 'arrogance'. We all have a sense of pride or an ego, and cheating leaves that massively bruised. I was blindsided the first time and it HURT. Not because I suddenly wanted him, the love of my life, but because HOW DARE HE DO THIS TO ME?? You have to shift your perspective and realise that you are not on a pedestal for them either. I write this as someone who, prior to all this, had never even been dumped by a boyfriend, I had always been the dumper and never the dumpee....I am also a person who will walk away if people mess me around etc so I recognise what you are saying.

I know (or think) that when I stayed a lot of friends and colleagues looked down on that choice and wondered what I was doing. And I would have thought the same if it was someone else. Nobody was encouraging me to stay. One friend said, "I'll respect your decision but I will tell you you deserve better."

So - the reasons why I was curled up and unable to function. I think it was the shock, and the uncertainty of everything being upended in one moment. I am a person who likes everything to be organised and to know what I am doing, and when, and how much it will cost. Suddenly, I was looking at having to sort out the kids, not having a house, not having a job that I could live on, losing a lot of friends (he cheated with a friend). Everything had gone or was suddenly uncertain. Add to that the injured pride and I was overwhelmed. It had little to do with love, if I am honest.a lot of it was about practical things and uncertainty, and my arrogance/pride if you like.

What changed the second time was that I knew straight away that no matter what, I couldn't do all that again and still be risking a third DDay. I just couldn't. No matter what the financial cost etc. Plus staying the first time didn't, deep down, sit right with me, I WAS hurt by the cheating and I was a bit ashamed of staying.

So - the reasons people stay are varied and may not be obvious. That's all.

[This message edited by DebraVation at 7:51 AM, Friday, July 21st]

It looks like you could be using 'arrogance' interchangeably with 'self-respect'.

I can understand the 'cutting people out' as I have the same behaviour.

Why keep people around you if they do not positively add to your life? Life is already complicated and tough, and there is no need to add additional complications.

I did try R for a short while, but had an epiphany that I do not need/want to have people who have betrayed me in my life. Nobody needs that kind of disrespect in their lives.

If the betrayer wants to be part of your life, they should earn it.

In my opinion anyone who commits adultery deserves to lose their marriage. It’s the price they pay for what they did.

This is spot on.

There are some things to some people that are unforgivable.

[This message edited by The1stWife at 10:36 AM, Friday, July 21st]

What was your marriage like before?

The reason I ask was the fact that no one close to you, not even your kids, pushed for reconciliation. This makes me think that there might have been a lot of conflict between you and your wife before the affair, which made the decision to end everything totally obvious.

Or perhaps the reason will be more clear when you post your story, if the circumstances were exceptionally egregious.

May I ask why you tried at all for the five years between d-day and divorce? I’m not questioning your choice, just wondering where your mind was at then compared to where it is now.

Good question. I was a guy who just wasn’t used to be made a fool out of. Pride kept me from revealing the affair to our friends and family. I raged for a good year. Honestly, if I wasn’t going to divorce and get outed, treating her badly was going to have to be the punishment for turning me into a joke. I clearly see now that this was a stupid reason and caused immense harm to both of us. After that, I think it was still pride and not wanting to lose to this guy, and the fact that we had such a long history, and she was working so hard kept me there. In reality, the marriage was doomed the second time she slept with him. I really think that with time I could have gotten over a one time thing. I had come close myself to that, but a second time was not some heat of passion thing. It meant she thought about it and sex with him was more important than me. You have regrets about leaving right away, and I envy you that you followed your moral code and did what you needed to do right away

Maybe this is all just pride, and that feels wrong as a reason to end a marriage. That makes me feel severely flawed. That’s not a lesson I would give my kids.

Just to add the reason the marriage ended was not your pride, it was that she willingly chose someone else to have sex with. She had to have known the consequences and did it anyway.

She is responsible for ending the marriage, not you

A couple of thoughts.

Reconciliation is hard work. It takes both people wanting it because it’s a mountain to climb to get to the other side. I have seen many ws try and reconcile with someone for months and even years with a bs for whom this is a deal breaker. The dragging it out often causes more harm moving forward in their coparenting relationship than good.

However, you don’t seem to express grief here. What I mean by that observation is even if the marriage is over for you, the healing that needs to take place is often still there whether you divorce or try and reconcile. The stages of grief will oscillate for a long time.

My concern for you is whether you are suppressing your emotions. This will catch up with you one day. I don’t wonder if you did the right thing or not, I wonder a little bit if you are masking your feelings because of pride, your programming as a male, or possibly something else.

I am not alarmed that you are decisive. There are many benefits of that, but I do wonder if you have the capability to be emotionally vulnerable or not. And that is something you should look into just to make sure that you deal with this now and are put into alignment with a healthier relationship in the future. I think you should absolutely look into that.

My husband reacted differently on the surface- he tried with me but turned around and had a long term affair of his own. But the source of that had a lot to do with suppressing feelings which he had done our entire marriage. We all have our things but men especially are given a view of masculinity, and it can be toxic for them when a major event occurs.

No one here can say you did the wrong thing in divorcing but to say it doesn’t come with grieving and vulnerability over those choices would be misleading you.

Also I don’t think the fact no one tried to sway you in your decision to divorce may have nothing to do with the wife. It can be 1) a lot of people view cheating as a dealbreaker, it wouldn’t be weird that you have friends who share your values and moral beliefs. 2) it sounds as if what she did was an especially bad specimen of cheating 3) your friends may know that you would be incapable of moving on in the marriage and saw no reason to question you. And being incapable of that is not a flaw. There are many who arrive here that feel the way you do. That’s a natural consequence when someone has cheated.

[This message edited by hikingout at 2:43 PM, Friday, July 21st]

I would diagnose you with a healthy level of self-respect, not arrogance. If someone had handed me a lump sum of money, I'd have been out on that very day myself. There were practical concerns that I wasn't prepared to address on the spot. I reacted with rage, cheating back immediately, and being often very unkind in the aftermath. 8 months later I was out, but the best scenario would have been me doing what you did and that would have felt much more in line with my own standards.

There's nothing whatsoever wrong with you not having a desire to reconcile with someone who cheated. That shouldn't be an expectation. They knew what they were doing was marriage-ending even if they pretend they didn't. The onus is never on the BS to even consider reconciliation. I loved my XWH deeply, but DDay killed something. It crippled the love. I lost all respect for him and could never have loved him the same afterwards no matter what he did. A lot of what he did in the aftermath was textbook what a WS should do and yet I was not remotely suited for reconciling. My personality doesn't allow for moving past a betrayal of that magnitude. Yours doesn't either. That's okay. That is not unhealthy. I'm envious of how you handled it.

At the same time, you probably do have some huge emotions that you need to allow yourself to feel now that you're safe. You took yourself out of danger and plowed ahead like a champion and good for you, but you have to let yourself feel the hurt at some point so that it doesn't damage you further.

Thank you for the example of your mom. Not talking to family members for over a decade is something I understand. What do you think is happening inside her regarding the pain they caused? Does it come out in other ways?

On the personality test, it’s been a while since I took one, but, I remember being between feeler and thinker. See my Jekyll and Hyde comments. I feel like a feeler in relationships. When there’s a betrayal, I flop to the Hyde side and cut them out. Even if my d-day approach differs from others, I feel great empathy for the posters on SI – mainly BS, but, as a BS, I suppose that’s expected. I have often tried to imagine what a WS feels, not as successfully.

My mom feels the sadness and pain of cutting people off, but she is resolute and righteous in her indignation, which overrides all other emotions. Pretty sure she would have gone to the grave not speaking to her siblings had she and my aunt not encountered each other at a family wedding. (My FOO is VERY invested in being polite and not acknowledging anything negative, so I'm sure they "fake-niced" each other back into a relationship.)

She's a feeler, though, and loves her people fiercely. She doesn't care much about strangers. If you're one of her people, though, she's invested in you -- unless you piss her off. Once that happens, it's very hard to get back "in" with her.

Thanks again for responses. I want to make sure something is clear here. I don’t think less of anyone that was more visibly affected by infidelity than I was. No one here has made me think that, but it’s important you know I don’t judge that. Worry that would come across is why it took me longer to post. My confusion is over why I did not feel those things, and is there something messed up inside of me that could impact my kids later, along with my well being. Maybe this was already obvious to everyone, but I needed to say it explicitly. Again, compared to the pain on this site, my whining a year later feels almost petty.

Posting, and reading, is making me think, and I keep coming back to the night and day versions of me before and after betrayal. SacredSoul33’s mom sounds a lot like me. I would kill for the people I love, but if they screw me over, they become a non-person to me. I cut them out and basically just forget about them. I tried the same here, but maybe this is just too extreme of a case. I am thinking there’s more happening inside me than I’m willing to acknowledge, as HikingOut, DevastatedDee, Sisoon, and others have suggested. I know what indifference is supposed to be, and I feel very anxious around my XWW, not indifferent. Maybe a fight or flight? WaitedWayTooLong, it's a similar anxiousness I feel ever time I see a post from you knowing your back story. You, and others, have been a great help to many, but every time I see your user name, my heart spikes remembering your situation.

Thinking about the lack of reconciliation suggestions, I remembered more about d-day. After my XWW left, I called all relevant parties to set the record straight. Told her parents I would respect the grandparent/grandchild relationship they had, but I needed them to do the same regarding this situation with me and their daughter. I suppose that was a veiled threat. Something similar with my parents, and others. I was cold and business about it, like wrapping up a project. It felt like closure at the time. Maybe I was marking my territory with everyone and daring them to step across it? I asked a buddy yesterday about why he never suggested reconciliation, and he said "would you have listened?" I had no response.

I want to believe my reasons for D were the right ones. I know my pride was severely bruised though and I had DebraVation’s "how dare they" response. I also wanted my WS to hurt. I knew the effect my immediate and persistent NC would have. Even with the betrayal, knowing the kind of person she was, I knew this would be cruel to her, and I wanted that cruelty. My "how dare you" was "HOW FUCKING DARE YOU" although I never said it.

There’s a big sex component to this that I've avoided getting into. I’ll follow this post up with my story in a few minutes. I’ll also post a sex question topic. It’s going to make this more complicated, but I’d like to hear initial points of view on that before weaving it into the rest of this.

Okay, here it is. I’m uncomfortable telling this story. It feels like a past that I’m trying to forget, but I know it’s important to give context for some of my questions. I met my XWW years ago through some friends. I could see some self-esteem issues with her, but I also saw something that was so special, I knew I wanted to be with her. I thought the issues could be worked out. We both had dated people before, so I wrote some of that off to just having a past.

After a few years of dating, we got married and started regular life. We had two children, brilliant, sassy, and beautiful. It felt like a great marriage. I made a point to address my XWW’s self-esteem often, telling her how much I loved her, how special she was, and our sex life was strong and passionate. Looking back, maybe my arrogance just assumed I was making her feel all this. I don’t know now.

She would occasionally talk about how she thought she wasn’t good enough for me, which made me double my efforts to make her think otherwise. I never saw this as a growing problem though, more of a maintenance issue. Again, right under my nose. If there is a pattern, it’s that she mentioned these concerns more after sex (maybe once every couple of months). I thought our sex life was great. Definitely a give and take. We both had multiple partners before marriage, so not a firsts situation.

We live in a neighborhood that shares a Facebook page. Last year, the OBS of a couple I barely knew posted that her WH and my XWW had been having a PA for two months. She included a couple of snippets from text messages she found on his phone. Nothing pornographic, just enough to substantiate the affair. My XWW was clearly the aggressor and almost pathetically desperate to impress her AP. The post was taken down soon after, but not before a ripple through the neighborhood, that even my children became aware of.

When I got home, my XWW looked shellshocked and was crying uncontrollably. I asked her if it was true. She said yes. I took her phone and went outside by myself to read messages. I came back and just stared at her for a while. There were some false start comments from her about how it meant nothing, she wanted to feel desired, and some choice comments from me about wanting another dick, which she denied, but it didn’t matter. I could see the blood pumping in my eyes, but stayed calm. I then packed her bags and asked her to go to her parents. I filed soon after, and the divorce was final a few months ago. I’m no saint here. I hinted at possible reconciliation so the divorce would go uncontested. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t screw her over in the settlement, just wanted to get out fast. Other than the kids, essentially maintained NC with her this whole time. She pleaded to talk lots of times, and threw out occasional comments during brief interactions. I always stopped her, and said divorce first, but that’s all I wanted from her at that point. I got a house in the same neighborhood to be close to the kids, and I avoid seeing my XWW as often as possible. I still consider us to be co-parenting well, but it’s a business partnership to me.

Although it was more public than I would have wanted, I don’t blame the OBS for how she exposed. She dealt with her pain her way. She saved me from needing to make decisions about exposure. I spoke with her a couple of times, more for her benefit, and got more information on the affair, but I can’t say it was information I wanted. My XWW was the aggressor and seemed desperate to go all out for the AP.

I never felt emasculated by this. I felt like a fucking fool for not realizing what was going on, so emasculated that way maybe, but not about the sex. The AP wasn’t much to look at, and seemed subpar in other ways. Based on what I’ve learned, and reading here on SI, seems like that made him a candidate for her, affairing down. She needed someone to think she was special. She didn’t believe I thought that about her, or, maybe she did and those feelings faded. I don’t know.

Where I’m the most dumbfounded by this is that I thought I was addressing these issues that likely drove her to do this. That comes back to my arrogance, and what made me come back to SI. Was I just such a cocky bastard to not see this, and to think I had fixed her myself? I feel stupid for that. That then makes me feel worse that I could be more upset about my pride, than my XWW fucking someone else.

Shit, shit, shit. Am I just a fucking control freak who thought he could fix his wife without therapy, give her everything she needed, and then couldn't face it when it all tanked so I jettisoned her from my life? Does that make me some kind of covert narcassist?

I think you are being way too hard on yourself. It sounds like you did your best in your M to be a caring partner and meet what you perceived as your Ex-WW’s needs. You were not a perfect partner. No one is. But your story is an example of the truism that we can’t control others, all we can do is our best. Your Ex-WW has her own demons that drove her actions. The irony in this I would guess is that whatever feelings of inadequacy your Ex-WW had before her A, have multiplied a thousand times with the public exposure of her infidelity and her divorce. There are some people who are simply driven to self-destructive behavior. I am sorry to read you were caught in her self destructive decline.

Also, I did not read your actions as arrogant. You have a set of values, and when betrayed by anyone you remove them from your life. I would say simply accept who you are.

We are all different. Just by way of my experience, I reacted very similarly to you when my fWW confessed to me on our DDay. We separated almost immediately and I started the D process shortly after. But I was not angry really. I did not hate my W. I was young, and I was coming out of a horrific family experience with my parents growing up. I had spent so much of my life in a dysfunctional family, I just decided I would not live that way as an adult. I would be fine being alone. As it worked out after several months my fWW convinced me to talk and we took it slow. I needed to see if her positive changes were real. Eventually I called off the D and I have never regretted that decision. So I don’t see your actions or attitude as arrogance. We are all different. Good luck.

Ouch. What a way to find out. I understand the OBS’s anger and motivation to out your W, but she should have thought of the innocents.

There is nothing wrong with you. Not a damn thing.

An important lesson: You can’t fix another person’s self esteem. They have to work on their own stuff and fix it themselves, but you’re a good man for trying.

As someone who did not stick around myself when my WP cheated, I can say that there is absolutely nothing wrong with your deciding that your XWW's infidelity was a deal-breaker. In fact, I admire your resolve.

It was nothing you did that caused your XWW to stray. In fact, your XWW's so-called "low self esteem" wasn't really what got her to stray either. In fact, if anything, your WXW felt TOO ENTITLED to break her vows and betray you and your family to get what she thought was her needs met.

I do suspect that you have not dealt with and worked through your pain and grief however. It is there, and you do need to work through it. Rugsweeping--deciding to sweep away bad emotions and events of the past instead of processing them--is bad, whether it is trying to move on from an affair with your WW, or whether it is trying to move on from an affair BY YOURSELF.

I don’t think it is arrogance at all. You were blindsided and traumatized and made a decision you decided was best for you.

Not sure why you question yourself.

The fact that it became public in your community is a hard thing to face. I hope i you can come to terms with your decision and realize that at that time, you did what was best for you. For some people, certain things are real killers.

And a cheating spouse may be just that for you. A deal killer.

If I was smarter I would have D my H after his first affair. He denied it. He stonewalled. He gaslit me. He mocked me. And then it was swept under the rug. Looking bs k I should have D him and stopped allowing his arrogance rule out marriage when it came to his lying and cheating.

Instead I wised up 15 years later and planned to D him after dday2 of his second affair. Point is I struggled for more than a year with R after his second affair b/c it went against who I was and it was torture for me. Luckily it worked out. But I have zero tolerance for any crap and he knows I will D him in a nanosecond (and it does not have to be cheating).

I hope this helps you.

Hi FromADistance,

Nothing you did or didn’t do caused your wife to cheat. I have no idea whether your wife’s self esteem (or lack thereof) contributed to her decision to have an affair, though I wouldn’t be surprised if it did as cheaters tend to be leaky buckets for external validation. I know very little about your wife but if that’s the case, no amount of compliments or reassurance you could have provided would have solved the problem. No one is truly happy if they do not know how to self-validate.

I don’t think your quick resolve to end the marriage, without looking back, makes you some sort of covert narcissist, but I’m interested in why you would worry about that.

I wonder whether you think the WAY the affair was discovered had impacted your response. All D-days are traumatic, but this sounds particularly so, given how public it was made. Your life also appears to have also changed in major ways very quickly. Have you had a chance to process all of this? You don’t mention any grief in your posts.

Hi FAD,

First let me say that I’m sorry for what happened to you and for how it happened, I hope your kids are doing OK all things considered.

My experience with betrayal was years ago and not as traumatic as many here so despite causing me some really raw pain, it faded over time and I recovered relatively quickly. However I had a bereavement in my family last year and some of the things you said resonate with me so I thought I’d chim in. I have been grieving the loss of a parent for a year now and yet deep emotions never really came. I thought OMG, something must be wrong with me, surely!?

Well I don’t think there is, not in a way that I should beat myself up for and nor should you. What I’ve learned in therapy is that I tend to think my emotions, instead of feeling them. I bring them to an intellectual level so I can analize them and find logic in something that has no logic at all. It gives me a false sense of control. Basically my reaction to trauma and the immense pain it brings is denial, avoidance and an ingrained mechanism that protects me to that level of vulnerability. I wonder if this is what’s happening to you too?

I am a fairly introspective person but I never realised how much unable I am to be really vulnerable with myself. To feel my feelings so to speak. This made me question certain dynamics I have in relationships.

To go back to your arrogance and control freak question, I would urge you to not beat yourself up too much and I second what many said, nothing you did or didn’t do caused your exWW to cheat. That’s on her, let her be in control of and accountable for her shitty choices.

However I commend you to ask the question in the first place, I think you are onto something. I’m not particularly concerned by your swift resolve to cut ties after this kind of betrayal (infidelity is trauma and a completely different ball game than other offenses) but if you see this pattern in other aspects of your life, then I think it’s worth exploring.

It looks to me that the D for you was not a choice, just your default reaction and by boxing it up and tossing it away without a second thought you denied yourself closure. Instead of feeling the trauma you just reacted to it. You followed your script. And I think this goes back to a difficulty in being genuinely vulnerable with yourself. Just an opinion from a stranger on the internet, these are all things you really need to explore in therapy.

The things that stood out for me is that you say nobody in your circle mentioned R, however it looks almost like you made sure to scare them off in challenging you in the first place? Or maybe not "challenging" but talking it through?

You wonder if you are arrogant and prideful and that may very well be true (although one could argue that you sound like a caring, loyal and supportive person too), so I would encourage you to look at what that "arrogance" and "pride" you describe really cover underneath. What would happen if you open a line of communication with your exWW, not to explore R if that’s not on the cards, but to bring some closure? What if you show her not the contempt but the hurt she caused you?

The desire to punish who hurt us is normal, however IMO the act of punishing, cutting off people to make them suffer, hold grudges and witholding forgiveness until the end of time is not a healthy way of living. It’s a vicious cycle that gives control over others and a false sense of justice and righteousness. It put us on a pedestal of moral superiority that blinds us from anything else and protects us from our own fragilities. The greater the offence, the higher the pedestal. But other people’s failures do not dimish us, they diminish them. You can be proud of your own integrity and at the same time remain part of the imperfect, flawed human race.

[This message edited by Lalala12 at 2:10 PM, Saturday, July 22nd]

I would just like to point out that a narcissist generally isn't capable of questioning whether or not he's a narcissist.

A narcissist also doesn't tend to try and fix people and make them better. Improving people kinda isn't their thing.

I'm going to venture a guess based on my own emotional switch on DDay. The kind of love I had for him died in an instant. That can happen. When something goes that far against what you will tolerate in another person, your feelings can be extinguished. I could never see him that same way again. He became very small in my eyes. I watched him cry in the fetal position more than once and didn't feel much. I am not a horrible person. I'm not a narcissist. I do have empathy. What I am not is a martyr. I am not mere collateral damage. I probably have a bit more pride than necessary, but I wouldn't change that. It serves me well in situations like this.

You and I both married people who were not psychologically healthy. Low self-esteem is a sad thing and I tried to build up my XWH's self-esteem too. If they don't work on it and develop self-esteem from within, our words and actions are just tossed down empty holes. I had empathy until he decided to take actions (cheating) that threatened to wreck my own self-esteem. That switched him in my brain from trusted partner to a dangerous enemy. He became as dangerous to my survival as a venemous snake at my feet, according to my limbic system. Anything we'd ever had was broken on the spot and it is because of how my mind works. Same for you, I expect. And that, my friend, is a good thing. It's a healthy thing. It's a survival thing. It isn't a psychological disorder.

To help you out with the 'am I a narcissist' question - someone on here recommended a book to me called 'Divorcing a Narcissist'. Part-way through the book it says 'you are probably asking now if you yourself are a narcissist. And then there is a quiz to find out. Questions like 'do you feel secretly please if you beat everyone else in a test or a game?' to which my answer was a definite yes and I started to worry....at the end you get a score and mine was quite high but still in the 'normal' range - basically having a normal sense of self-worth and pride is fine. In fact it's a good thing. And it's normal.

What separates a narcissist is winning at all costs and f*@k everyone else.

It also said if you're questioning whether you could be a narcissist, you probably aren't.