SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

So do I get to troll you on your thread? wink laugh

#fairsfair

Why the hell not....I want to have the honor of writing a thread that gets a lot of responses. Help me get there! Already on the second page!

Naw Friend just joking, as long as this thread is helpful/carthartic to anyone else as it was to me writing it.

[This message edited by WontBeFooledAgai at 1:02 AM, Thursday, December 7th]

You and your spouse have this bank account together that represents your life savings and your life's work, all your plans, hopes, and dreams. Your WS goes--behind your back--and takes all that money and gives it to someone else in return for happiness for the rest of her life for HER (but not you Bub you're now out in the cold!)

Alright, I’ll bite and bump up your counts.

I think this is a helpful way to look at this. In fact, it’s basically the same stage setting as the story of the prodigal son. [Disclaimer: I have no intent to make this a religious discussion] For me personally, that story has helped me retain a belief that even in the face of horrible betrayal, the primary relationships in our lives are foundational and solid in a way going off and acting a fool can never be.

Since my wife committed Adultery (I dislike the word Affair, also), I've disliked it being called a fantasy.
To me, the word fantasy is not something that actually happens, it didn't really happen.
It wasn't a fantasy in my mind, it happened, she did it, point finale!

what if after DDay, WP and AP actually decide to give it a go? What if it is AP (but not WP who really intended on following through on running away with AP) who decides to end it after DDay?

On DDay, I do think my H intended to give it a go with her, based on how I was told: "I'm in love with someone else." When reality hit - both the repercussions for him and a clearer picture of her manipulation and motivation - he started to wake up.

I truly think that if my H had moved in with AP or dated her openly instead of his feelings for her slowly starting to fizzle, I don't think I would have wanted to R. Had she dumped him instead of him pulling his head out of his ass, I'm about 99% certain that I would not have wanted to R. To be 100% honest, a small part of the desire to R for me was beating that bitch at her own game. As Rizzo would say, sloppy seconds ain't my style. I think a lot of us experience that.

SacredSoul33, sorry to tell you but it was Danny Zucco calling Rizzo "sloppy seconds" in response to her saying "Eat your heart out." Still applies to your situation, though. ;-)

DANG IT! You're right!

Bite the weenie, Rizz. With relish!

I think, if a WS wanted to convey the sentiment of "the affair was not real", or "the affair was only a fantasy", a much better way (but still not perfect), I feel, to do so would be to put it like this:

'Yes the affair was real in that I gave all my emotions to AP, and maybe I even had every intention of leaving BS for AP. And now thanks to my actions my BS is destroyed on a fundamental level and doesn't even know where up is anymore. But I soon realized after DDay that even if AP had stuck around I would have woken up and realized what I had thrown away with my BS by getting with AP, and not because my BS was the safe or respectable choice.'

(ETA: Now, I DON'T think most affairs are like this, I really think that is just a bunch of Happy Talk peddled too much on SI. But maybe it was try of this particular WS or something..)

Now that of course would be an extremely tough sell and WOULD PROBABLY take a superhuman effort by the WS to convince, as I think it SHOULD take a superhuman effort on WS to convince BS of this....but I think something like this is more honest and real.

[This message edited by WontBeFooledAgai at 5:40 PM, Thursday, December 7th]

'Yes the affair was real in that I gave all my emotions to AP, and maybe I even had every intention of leaving BS for AP. And now thanks to my actions my BS is destroyed on a fundamental level and doesn't even know where up is anymore. But I soon realized after DDay that even if AP had stuck around I would have woken up and realized what I had thrown away with my BS by getting with AP, and not because my BS was the safe or respectable choice.'

This is a spot-on description of what happened with my H. Not exactly a tough sell for me, because I lived it. It's exactly what happened.

What would the shorthand for this be? "Not real" isn't quite right. Delusive? Flimsy? Chimeric? Unsubstantial? Can you tell I've broken out the thesaurus? lol

ETA: Our situation is a little different because my H had already had two other As and was active in his third when he confessed. (I found out about all of them on DDay.) He was already of the notion that I would not want him once I knew the truth, and had this mindset for years - even before he embarked on A#3. He was already out the door when he confessed and was preparing to lock it when he realized that I was still open to letting him back in because suddenly, everything made sense. Suddenly, we were getting real. He finally told the damn truth.

[This message edited by SacredSoul33 at 6:02 PM, Thursday, December 7th]

@SacredSoul33, there are some situations where shorthand just isn't applicable or appropriate. I really think this here is one of them.

Anyways it sure as hell would have been a tough sell for me! I am NO ONE's "sloppy seconds"! And that is EXACTLY what I would have felt like to me. No thanks!

And I would edit what I wrote above to:

'Yes the affair was real in that I gave all my emotions to AP, and maybe I even had every intention of leaving BS for AP. And now thanks to my actions my BS is destroyed on a fundamental level and doesn't even know where up is anymore. But I soon realized after DDay that even if AP had stuck around and did not have his other disqualifying flaws, I would have woken up and realized what I had thrown away with my BS by getting with AP, and not because my BS was the safe or respectable choice.'

[This message edited by WontBeFooledAgai at 6:21 PM, Thursday, December 7th]

I mean, knowing that WP would be at least giving it a go with AP except AP ended it/disqualified herself, I don't think a BP should ever get past that. That BP was second choice and was lied to all this time....It's extremely real in every sense of the word. I don't think it is really relevant that WP was in lala-land.

That looks like the crux of the OP.

I equate 'get past' with 'heal'. And I equate 'should' with 'some asshole is telling me I have to _____'. And I equate 'the A was fantasy' with 'I would consider a fake relationship to be one where inauthenticity is so significant that there really is virtually nothing there when you take the fakeness away' (from Stillconfused2022).

I recommend taking 'should' out of everyone's thinking. You want to heal? Then heal. You don't want to heal? Don't heal. But don't screw yourself up with 'shoulds' that you put into in your own head. (You had help, of course, but in the end, you choose to accept the shoulds and you can make a different choice today.

And I recommend not locking yourself up by ignoring that words are metaphors, and many words have multiple meanings. Of course the A relationship exists; it's real in that sense.

But aps are generally in the As to deny their realities. They're telling myself things like,

I'm not hurting anybody
Nobody will ever find out
I'm OK because my ap loves me ... or do they?
This relationship is so special, so fated by the universe/God/twin flames/fate/love/etc/, etc/, etc.
... other untruths that we all can list....

I'd call As unreal because they're rooted in lies. You don't want to call them 'unreal'? Fine. Just don't deny that they're rooted in untruths.

The one you love leaves for an ap? Now THAT gives you revenge without needing to take any action yourself.

If the ap ends the A, that could mean a number of things. Your WS may, in fact, consider BS to be a boobie prize. OTOH, the WS may always realize they had seriously fucked up and at a gut level the BS is what they really want. And that's just 2 of many possibilities.

If the WS leaves, the BS HAS lost the ability to decide, but the BS still has decisions to make - what does the BS want, given the new sitch? What is the BS willing to do to get what they want, given the new sitch?

In many respects, though, the BS has the same power and the same necessity as they have in any failure scenario. They have to choose between letting the failure define them for some part of their future and picking themself up, learning from the failure, and putting it behind them.

*****

Many propositions - like 'the A relationship is unreal' - can be used both as an escape from reality or as a way of getting closer to reality (and in other ways, too).

I have no doubt that the fantasy aspects of an A are used as part of denial. Very soon after d-day, my W told me that both she and ow told each other they would never leave their Hes. I was initially elated ... until I realized W had left me every time she thought of ow, talked to ow on the phone, tested or read a text from ow, had to take a nap because she lost sleep over her discomfort with her A, actually left the apartment to be with ow .... She actually did leave me to focus on ow. IOW, what started as elation because she wouldn't leave me pretty quickly turned into, 'She DID leave me.'

So 'fantasy' can help during the denial phase, and it can help during other phases of recovery, if it is used as a healing metaphor rather than a denial metaphor.

But here's the thing, part 1: I found it natural to see the relationship as fake. I found it natural to see my W's A as a symptom of 'heart-sickness'. That was basic to my wanting R. I strongly recommend that you don't try to tell me I was wrong - I was here with her; you weren't.

Here's part 2: Other people see the real aspects of the A as much bigger than I do; to me the fantasy is paramount. Some people see the cheating as primarily an attack on them and/or their M. I'll insert myself to let those folks know they have choices, and I may give them feedback on what I think they're doing, but I'm not going to tell them what or how to think, and Im definitely not going to tell them what they should think or are thinking.

IOW, we can read a post and decide it we think the poster is in or out of touch with reality, and it makes sense to provide feedbak, but none of us knows if another poster is denying or accepting reality.

******

If you're infuriated by the proposition that 'As aren't real', I recommend looking at why you're furious over an idea that has a base in reality. Does the fury help you comprehend something in your sitch? Does it prevent you from comprehending something in your sitch? How does the fury help you recover/heal from being betrayed? What does the fury do for you?

I can almost guarantee this: if strong feelings are associated with an idea, one will benefit from figuring out the triggers.

And I can almost guarantee this: one is much more likely to identify and implement good solutions when one isn't losing energy to triggers.

That's JMO, but I've got a lot of experience.

Sisoon, your whole post was excellent. Thank you.

But here's the thing, part 1: I found it natural to see the relationship as fake. I found it natural to see my W's A as a symptom of 'heart-sickness'. That was basic to my wanting R. I strongly recommend that you don't try to tell me I was wrong - I was here with her; you weren't.

Bam. Yes. My H was heartsick, soul sick, in a seemingly eternal shame spiral - and had been long before A#3 started. Finally getting real and raw was a beautiful thing.

Anyways it sure as hell would have been a tough sell for me! I am NO ONE's "sloppy seconds"! And that is EXACTLY what I would have felt like to me. No thanks!

I said it was exactly what happened, but I didn't absorb this part: "But I soon realized after DDay that even if AP had stuck around..." The AP did stick around. She tried to break NC for a couple of years. She's STILL hung up on him 19 years later, as evidenced by her Pinterest board with 900+ memes about unrequited love and the one that got away. Like I said, if she had dumped him, and if that had been the catalyst for him wanting to R, I truly don't think I would have wanted him. To me, in that moment, right or wrong, I wanted to WIN. I don't know how many people are really honest about that aspect of R, but I really strongly wanted her to eat her friggin' heart out.

But there are people here who have R'ed after the AP dumped the WS, and I don't judge them for it. Every story is different. Like sisoon said, we're not in it. We don't know all the tiny little nuances.

'Yes the affair was real in that I gave all my emotions to AP, and maybe I even had every intention of leaving BS for AP. And now thanks to my actions my BS is destroyed on a fundamental level and doesn't even know where up is anymore. But I soon realized after DDay that even if AP had stuck around I would have woken up and realized what I had thrown away with my BS by getting with AP, and not because my BS was the safe or respectable choice.'

WTBHA – In my view, this is a common sentiment of remorseful WS who has managed to come out of the fog and are trying to R. Like, I think we actually agree on this. You and me.... agreeing. Amazing right? I wonder if the disconnect is that you hear the term, "the A relationship was a fantasy," and you hear it as a minimization, like that is *ALL* it was. Or maybe you hear reconciling BS say something like that and because it doesn’t ring true for you (and your experience), you think they are just telling themselves what they want to believe in order to justify staying.

I’m certainly someone who readily say that my H’s A wasn’t a "real" relationship. When I say, I don’t mean that is something that just happened in his head. Of course the A was real in the sense that the sex happened, and so did the lies, and the feelings, and the sneaking around, etc. etc. I’m not delusional, and trust me, I did not minimize what he did one little bit. I also think that the degree of reality vs. fantasy can vary depending on the type of affair. Obviously someone in a multi-year longterm affair where they spoke or saw each other regularly and had the opportunity to see different sides of a person in various contexts, has a different sort of ‘relationship’ than the person who had a short lived but very intense weekend away with co-worker who subsequently transferred to the office in another country so they pine for each other from afar, believing one another to be the one that got away. That said, in both cases, when the A is carried on in a secret, special, A-bubble, full of romanticized projections and safe from the realities of life.

For me, it’s easy for me to describe my husband’s A relationship as a fantasy because they weren’t in love and never planned to be together. His was a cake-eating escapist affair, not an exit one. He and his AP were friendly and flirted at various events, but they didn’t ever really get to know one another, and they had carefully curated the persona they were presenting to one another (some of which did turn out to be lies – which obviously changes how they look back at things, but doesn’t change the ‘reality’ of what was going on in the moment). They were both acting totally out of character – essentially playing a role – and that was a large part of the appeal. It was fun, and sexy, and exciting and it allowed my husband to feel powerful and alive while avoiding the stress, negative emotions, responsibilities, and mundanity of ....well….. reality. It was textbook escapism. It's part of the reason why it was so easy for my husband to drop his AP literally the day D-day occurred. My husband told me after the fact that he didn’t even like her all that much -- and I actually believe it (not just because I wanted to). He obviously didn’t dislike her (at the time), and he obviously liked the way she made him feel, but that was more about HIM than it was about HER. He knew even during the A that he felt she was a bit boring, shallow, and a little selfish but he was able to minimize those feelings about her because he was so motivated to continue his fantasy. I agree with you though - in a lot of ways understanding that made me feel WORSE, rather than better. Like, he was willing to throw everything we had away for someone you didn't even love/want to be with?!?!? But again, I'm not saying this to minimize, I'm just describing how things actually were.

I believe that a lot of As contain some element of escapism, but I appreciate that not every A looks like my husband's. In most cases, I kind of see an affair relationship being real in the same way that I see reality tv being real. Like it really happened, and can have consequences on your real life, but it’s not really real life, you know? Sticking with the analogy, on Big Brother or Survivor or whatever, people often get into "showmances" where they apparently develop ‘real feelings’ for someone they met only a few weeks prior. Those feelings may FEEL really real at the time but a lot of that is manufactured by the super specific, artificial scenario they are in. They may kiss and bond and really like each other in real time, but it’s typically in a very artificial context where everyone is lying to everyone for all sorts of strategic reasons (or maybe for camera time) and you never really know who to trust or what people’s actual motivations are. Again, that’s not to say that those relationships were not real, but the fact is that most ‘showmances’ don’t’ last once the show is over and those people go back to their real lives and try to see how that person meshes well when there are jobs, and responsibilities, and friends, and families, and bills, and all the other things that are absent in their reality tv bubble.

Similarly, the stats show that not many A-relationships succeed outside of the A-bubble either. As compared to the reality show relationship, relationships that started as affairs don’t have the cute origin story that reality show relationships do. They also have to deal with things like fallout of lies, divorces, split custody, and justifying their actions to family and friends. All of that said, I would argue that those relationships that actually do give it a real go out in the open real world, DO actually become "real" relationships in the way we're describing real here.

WTBHA, you don’t talk about your story much but I recall you saying previously that your WP left you for her AP. So it wasn’t a cake-eating escapist fantasy like my husband’s was, it was probably an exit A. I have no idea whether their relationship succeeded when it was out in the open, or whether it crashed and burned or fizzled out like most A relationships do in those circumstances. Regardless, it sounds like it ended up being a ‘real’ relationship, and given that this was your experience, I understand why it might be hard to wrap your head around the mindset of a different type of cheater or the experience of a different type of BS. I appreciate you've probably never had the same conversations with your WS that a reconciling BS has had with their WS. I also don't think there are any WS that post here that left their BS to be with the AP who have been able to explain their thought processes. All of this might make it difficult to SEE your story in the narrative that other people tell. But just because their experience is not yours, doesn't mean that it's just "happy talk".

Great post Sisoon.

We were all lied to during the affair. Does that mean,during that time,my marriage wasn't real during the affair?

Hmm.

Well, isn't some version of that notion written here all of the time?

"You're grieving who you thought you knew"

"The mask has come off, now you are getting the real person"

"You don't love your spouse, you love who s/he pretended to be"

In other words, yeah, the lies make the marriage "fake," per numerous posts here.

It cuts both ways.

[This message edited by TheEnd at 7:32 PM, Thursday, December 7th]

In most cases, I kind of see an affair relationship being real in the same way that I see reality tv being real. Like it really happened, and can have consequences on your real life, but it’s not really real life, you know? Sticking with the analogy, on Big Brother or Survivor or whatever, people often get into "showmances" where they apparently develop ‘real feelings’ for someone they met only a few weeks prior. Those feelings may FEEL really real at the time but a lot of that is manufactured by the super specific, artificial scenario they are in. They may kiss and bond and really like each other in real time, but it’s typically in a very artificial context where everyone is lying to everyone for all sorts of strategic reasons (or maybe for camera time) and you never really know who to trust or what people’s actual motivations are. Again, that’s not to say that those relationships were not real, but the fact is that most ‘showmances’ don’t’ last once the show is over and those people go back to their real lives and try to see how that person meshes well when there are jobs, and responsibilities, and friends, and families, and bills, and all the other things that are absent in their reality tv bubble.

That's a great comparison. These romances aren't covert, obviously, because they're happening in public, but the two people involved are in a similar sort of bubble. It's interesting to me that many people who get into showmances have relationships outside the house before they go in. Can you imagine watching your partner cheat in front of the whole country? Yikes.

I think its mental gymnastics some BS use,in order to make reconciling with their WS,more platable.

I also feel if a ws is able to sell this to their BS, it minimizes their accountability.

Sure. I suppose that maybe this is true in some cases, but do you really think it's true across the board? The fact that some BS delude themselves into believing something that is not true because they are desperate to R, doesn't mean EVERY BS who has R'd has done so, right? Because if you're saying this is always the case, you're saying that you believe that the BS is capable of living in a fantasy, but that the WS never was.

Lot’s of replies AND an Emergent text wall!

#status

StillConfused’s description of "fake relationship" together with Sisoon’s category of "heart sickness" have significantly enriched my own understanding and vocabulary of my own experience. Really great discussion here.

Whether an affair is a cake eating physical thing with someone you would never acknowledge publicly or a star crossed romance, either way the WS has little to no regard for preserving their marriage or their children’s emotional wellbeing. The BS’s essential nothingness and irrelevancy in either situation is still awful.

[ t/j. As for my husband being a sociopath, I’m feeling like I need to follow in InkHulk’s footsteps and at least fairly represent his level of badness. He was working on moving her to work for someone else so the only downside to her would be she would be away from him. It is still mean. A sociopath has no conscience. My WS felt only too guilty about "being a cad" at the time and after she was gone. In fact, I usually find his level of guilt toward her more annoying than anything. He used her physically, made out with her in the office at least ten times. I agree it’s scummy, but a sociopath? She was no saint, she requested the job then made a physical advance on a married man with 3 kids, refused to leave b/c what his wife didn’t know shouldn’t hurt her and had absolutely no remorse, so I’m not really crying any tears over her)]

Thank you ink, thats nice :)

Stillconfused, Inkhulk's post made me go back and read your first post. It really was quite good - sorry I missed it. I agree totally about the fake relationship thing. When I say my H and his AP were playing roles, this is the kind of thing I'm describing - different circumstances obviously, but they were both pretending to be the person that the other person wanted so they could get what they wanted out of it all. Like mirrors for stroking one another's ego.

HikingOut, who was actually involved in an escapist exit A (or at least believed that at the time of her A) describes herself as having been playing a pretend part in her A too.

Sisoon - lots of good stuff in your post too.