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Here is hikingout's food analogy for validation. In real life food is a requirement and the undesirable scenario resulting from a shortfall of food is starvation or death. So naturally there must be some analogous undesirable scenario that you guys feel could and should be avoided by not requiring external validation. What is this undesirable scenario?

My analogy is still food related, but a bit more specific: chocolate. Technically, you can survive eating nothing but chocolate. It has calories that your body can convert to fuel. However, you're not going to be or feel healthy. You'll be riding a constant roller coaster of sugar highs and lows; you'll be deficient in certain vitamins and minerals; you're probably going to get bone and muscle loss from lack of protein. And it gets addictive; you can't get the same dopamine high from it without consuming more and more extreme amounts.

This doesn't mean that all chocolate consumption is harmful. In small quantities, for people who are not inclined to overindulge, it can be delightful. Some people may not like it and not want to eat it at all. Some people are satisfied with just a square every once in a while. Some people may have to fight a constant craving for it that gets in the way of more healthy goals for their lives.

As someone who has difficulty moderating once I start, I very rarely eat chocolate at all. It's easier to avoid it altogether than it is to consume it in a safe and healthy way.

There’s a second responsive cheating, cheating effects aimed not at her, but at myself.

1. Restore my self-confidence, my masculinity. Show myself that I can, indeed, provide a sexually and emotionally satisfying experience.

2. Improve my security. Know that, if my WW took the next step and left me, I could find female companionship in the future.

3. Provide some sense of justice. If she could have the no-doubt pleasant experience of someone else, why not me? After all, our relationship is never going to be quite what either of us wanted.

I'm a madhatter, and these were the exact reasons that my husband (boyfriend at the time) exercised a hall pass. It was a shit show for most of the reasons listed here. He ended up feeling guilty about using another person as an emotional tourniquet. It didn't make him feel any safer about losing me, because he didn't want her or anyone else, he still wanted me. It set us back in the work because I felt more entitled after he had "leveled the playing field." And despite my permission, he felt awful because he knew he was hurting me. The most baffling part of my affair for him was that he couldn't understand how I could have deliberately discarded him in the moment. He gained no insight on that in the other woman's arms while knowing I was in tears at home.

I don’t have anything to add to BSR’s explanation. She is dead on. It’s the unhealthy hole inside that a person is supposed to work to find fulfillment. But because they don’t, they consume anything and everything trying to fill it. The more someone looks externally to fix the issue the more they come up empty. So instead of consuming healthy things in this space they just keep upping the amount of chocolate mindlessly until they have to find new sources for the chocolate.

It’s within, all the answers really can be solved by you if you would stop looking for the chocolates and figure out a better meal
Plan.

Alright so the analogy would be addiction and thus the dire consequence would be withdrawal symptoms or maybe desperate(and perhaps illegal) actions taken to stave off withdrawal symptoms. Being healthy then, would mean that when you abstain(or are forced to abstain) you suffer no ill effects or minimal ill effects to the extent that your daily life and your over mental health is not disrupted. Ok, sure.

Still though, I think the definition is too strict and it misplaces its emphasis. I don't think that the core concept is wrong, but I do think the way it's delivered is. Here's the original quote plus sisoon's modification:

any need(or assumed need) for external validation in an adult is unhealthy.

This then is saying that to be healthy, an adult should suffer only minimal adverse effects even in the complete absence of external validation. That would mean that a person should be able to deal with:

no hugs and kisses from family

no "I love you honey/daddy/mommy" from family

no "thank you"'s from anyone

no acknowledgements from bosses or coworkers or anyone else

etc.

and still be able to maintain their mental health with minimal fuss; otherwise they aren't healthy. I think it should be pretty clear why I think this goes too far. I do think it is ok for a healthy person to need some minimum level of external validation and I'm pretty sure most (if not all) of you agree on some level.

Since we have the addiction analogy and also because what we're dealing with is, to a great(if not full) extent, an addiction problem, the message should be more like:

"Healthy adults don't addictively(or destructively) pursue external validation"

This allows for some base level of satiation of external validation while still communicating that needing far more than normal, or need ever increasing amounts, or being unable to properly deal with shortfalls, is indeed unhealthy.

I also have some other nitpicks against it. It doesn't parse well on first glance because it flips "want" and "need" from their typical presentations. "Need" is typically the legitimate desire while "want" is typically the superfluous one. And it comes across as elitist because it raises the bar of "healthy" so high.

Now for most people here this isn't really a problem because we've been here a while, we kinda all know what the meaning is even if the semantics are off. The reason I'm not just letting this storm peter out in the teacup is because I think this is more counterproductive than it first appears.

IMO SI and other places like it have 2 primary functions: provide information to BS/WS and provide external validation to BS/WS... and maybe some external invalidations to WS's in the form of 2x4's.

We even have a slogan for this:

"You have been heard"

Furthermore one piece of advice that we always provide to newcomers is: "keep posting". So unless we consider ourselves to be a whole bunch of external validation drug dealers(which actually describes AP's pretty well), it is appropriate for people to need some external validation and even moreso during times of crisis.

Imagine what happens when a newly betrayed comes here, posts in JFO, then while waiting for responses wanders into this thread and sees

any need(or assumed need) for external validation in an adult is unhealthy.

at best they'll be confused and at worst they'll feel ashamed for reaching out. If they stick around then, yeah, it'll all get sorted out, but why deal with that? why not just replace it?

[This message edited by mardandra at 7:13 AM, Wednesday, February 19th]

I think everyone likes or even looks for some

External validation. Who doesn’t like an atta boy from their boss or words of appreciation from their spouse.

I think the addictive nature comes from having low amounts of self assurance. So in other words, without your own validation, you can’t fully believe what comes from

Otherwise you become this needy person who keeps consuming something that is actually fairly empty in hopes the next thing will hit the spot.

When you have your own self worth, external validation becomes like the cherry on top. You believe what they say because you can recognize good things in yourself.

When I had an affair I wanted to be younger, sexier, more interesting, funnier, cooler, etc. but all I was doing was mimicking (very poorly) what someone with those traits might look like and he was the audience validating all my magic. But then I still didn’t believe it and kept looking for more and more from him. I had assumed my husband had grown to see me who for I really am (which insert a list of negative traits that I never say anymore to myself nor would I write them here).

He was part of my condition, my circumstances, and fairly easy to ignore because he was building a business and never available.

Someone more self assured would have put her foot down and feel secure in myself enough that I could say no. I could say I need x,y,z. Since those didn’t seem to be on the table I read it as he no longer loved me. It’s all so stupid the way you twist your own story to support the things you want to get. And that in itself is an addiction that has manifested in my life numerous ways before the culmination of the affair way.

[This message edited by hikingout at 6:48 PM, Thursday, February 20th]

This then is saying that to be healthy, an adult should suffer only minimal adverse effects even in the complete absence of external validation. That would mean that a person should be able to deal with:

no hugs and kisses from family

no "I love you honey/daddy/mommy" from family

no "thank you"'s from anyone

no acknowledgements from bosses or coworkers or anyone else

etc.

and still be able to maintain their mental health with minimal fuss; otherwise they aren't healthy. I think it should be pretty clear why I think this goes too far. I do think it is ok for a healthy person to need some minimum level of external validation and I'm pretty sure most (if not all) of you agree on some level.

Ummm ... depends somewhat on your definition of 'deal with'. If an adult is not getting the attention they want, the adult needs to get the issue recognized and resolved.

"Healthy adults don't addictively(or destructively) pursue external validation"

That looks good to me.

It doesn't parse well on first glance because it flips "want" and "need" from their typical presentations.

We have very few needs - water, food, shelter in most parts of the world, mentoring - after all, someone has to take care of us after birth until we can take care of ourselves. The problem isn't flipping wants and needs. The problem is the typical presentation.

IMO, we pretty much need to reset everything we ever believed after being betrayed....

[This message edited by SI Staff at 9:07 PM, Wednesday, February 19th]

I am late to the conversation and catching up. Also, I don't always follow and respond promptly anymore due to other commitments. Sorry for that.

numb&dumb and waitedwaytoolong on page 4 have talked about their experiences and how they felt about revenge and those feelings. I don't want to quote it all, but they basically said they felt they missed out on the "fun" of the affair.

Their feelings are not how I felt as a BS, but I am trying to understand. I have questions. waitedwaytoolong and numb&dumb, if what you wanted after the affair was a fun, sexual extra-marital experience, or many of them, why didn't you do that? waitedwaytoolong in particular, because I think I know more about your story, it sounded like your WW was open to keeping the marriage and allowing that, maybe even an open marriage. Maybe it was not optimal but still ok to her. If it made things in the marriage suitable afterward, why didn't that just work out ok in the end? Even as recently as your daughter's wedding, it sounds like your WW was hoping you would accept a big hall pass and get back with her.

I personally feel more like ThisIsFine where a revenge affair doesn't make sense logically. hikingout and mardandra used the analogy of two people slapping each other, but that doesn't seem like an apt analogy for my feelings. Infidelity was a psychological pain. It hurt because I valued marital fidelity and we agreed on that, and then my WS clearly showed he did not. I just don't understand how cheating on him would be revenge. Why would he suddenly care about marital infidelity when it was me doing the cheating instead of him? Honestly, I was hung up on that for a while. If there was a gender divide I noticed here and on r/adultery, mostly WW were (or would be) upset if their BH's cheated. (As an aside, I understand your position much more hikingout. That seems a different circumstance.) I did ask a WW here once, and she replied that it hurt because she was only human. I felt it touched a nerve and offended her unintentionally, so I didn't pursue the question.

Similarly, a hallpass seems offensive in that same way. It's like saying, " Hey. It doesn't matter. None of this matters. Try it, you'll see that it's fun". Maybe it's my personality, but it would piss me off to be treated like bold]waitedwaytoolong was at his daughters' wedding. It trivializes the infidelity. Like saying, "Ok. You've got sleeping around out of your system like I did. Now we can go back to our great marriage."

Maybe this is a gender divide too, but as a BW I didn't ever feel any scarcity of male attention. I always felt I could have as much sex as I wanted. I don't consider myself a great beauty - maybe a 4-7/10? And I'm near 60. It just always feels "there" for the taking. I assume(d) it is for my WH too. After D-day, I wore my ring even when separated, but I felt offended and angered when men flirted with me. I felt they could see my ring and didn't respect my marriage or me or my commitments to my marriage. Before D-day, I didn't feel that way; but I hate being flirted with in any professional setting. That seems disrespectful to me personally.

I also find myself confused about why my WH didn't just divorce me and move on if he wanted more or different sex. What the heck? We had enough money to both live the same after a divorce. He'd have more time and opportunity. I still don't get why he wanted to stay. His early reasons were disappointing.

The one thing that seems to get glossed over is that if the sex in an RA is good, or in my case positive sexual experiences being amazing during the separation, it does help in the self esteem in getting the mojo back. My guess is that the sex however in a RA is not as likely to be as good. Guilt by the BS, and the fact that the AP in an RA, isnt a good person either. But in my case it was great, and I don’t regret it.

I don't understand this. If I wanted better physical sexual experiences and not the marriage and family, I would chose that - with divorce and absolutely no regret. My WH didn't seem to care about the effect of breaking up a family on our child, which was a HUGE factor for me. His first book he chose to read after the affair was from a couple about why divorce isn't so harmful. I think it's called Sacred Cows, written by a tech guy and his wife.

Grieving's post resonates so much for me. I feel like my personal sexual growth is stymied. I think that's maybe why I keep coming back. It reminds me of a conversation with a friend on her sister's divorce years ago. She said it was taking her sister a long time to divorce because she had to mentally separate from her husband. That she had to force herself to mentally fall out of love. My friend said she had to do the same for her divorce and thought many women had to do the same. While I can fondly think of sex with past lovers, I can't with the two I was very emotionally close to. When they've contacted me, I bring up issues we had. It's to remind me never to go back. I think I've emotionally done the same to my WH even though we are still together. I still hold him at a distant even though I'm coming up on 9 years.

I just want to say I would never really compare this to slapping one another. I was trying to stay in the confines of the examples for the questions I was trying to answer.

However, I agree with everything you said. If you want to be able to sleep with people after your ws did it to you I don’t think you likely want reconciliation. That was the exact conclusion I jumped to and had to spend a lot of time trying to let go. When the person who is telling you that they think you are reconciling, then cheats and says he still wants to reconcile, I just could not get comfortable that he knew at all what he wanted.

So your assessment gets underneath some of those positions I was trying to but more clearly. A spouse who offers a hall pass is likely looking to balance the scales so they no longer have to be in hot water. And if not that then they are just reacting out of shame. In either scenario, it’s very hard once it actually happens to honor your part of the agreement that it was a free hall pass. A ws is most often avoidant, so I think that they would try and busy it but it would come out later there was a lot of resentment, especially when the bs comes back and doesn’t feel any better at all.

We have very few needs - water, food, shelter in most parts of the world, mentoring - after all, someone has to take care of us after birth until we can take care of ourselves. The problem isn't flipping wants and needs. The problem is the typical presentation.

Perhaps this is a generational semantics problem. Health these days(for at least 30 years) is represented by a triangle with the vertices being: physical, mental/emotional, and social. It is this definition of health that I am using. Under this definition there's much more stuff a person can "need" to be healthy because of the expanded scope of the the word "healthy". And that definition is still expanding: in recent years there's been talk about treating internet access as a human right.

This then is saying that to be healthy, an adult should suffer only minimal adverse effects even in the complete absence of external validation. That would mean that a person should be able to deal with:

no hugs and kisses from family

no "I love you honey/daddy/mommy" from family

no "thank you"'s from anyone

no acknowledgements from bosses or coworkers or anyone else

etc.

and still be able to maintain their mental health with minimal fuss; otherwise they aren't healthy. I think it should be pretty clear why I think this goes too far. I do think it is ok for a healthy person to need some minimum level of external validation and I'm pretty sure most (if not all) of you agree on some level.

Ummm ... depends somewhat on your definition of 'deal with'. If an adult is not getting the attention they want, the adult needs to get the issue recognized and resolved.

The problem is that if the adult is healthy under this definition:

any need(or assumed need) for external validation in an adult is unhealthy.

then the adult will 'get the issue recognized and resolved' by being a bit disappointed for a while.

Consider the example of BraveSirRobin and chocolate. One day BraveSirRobin wakes up to a chocolate rationing law, she can only buy chocolate once every 2 years. Now because BraveSirRobin is healthy she's disappointed for a while but ultimately she adjusts. If she is unhealthy then she'll suffer withdrawal symptoms from the chocolate shortfall.

Now lets do the adult: The adult wants to go around to the other humans in his life to interact so that he can enjoy some love and appreciation(external validation). He finds that he only receives it once every 2 years. Now because the adult is healthy he is disappointed for a while but ultimately he adjusts. If he is unhealthy then he'll suffer mental health issues from the external validation shortfall.

This sets the bar for "healthy" way too high, up to somewhere around the level of paragon of stoicism or zen master. It is saying that unless you can meet that standard, you are unhealthy.

I can understand the confusion.

When we discuss validation we don’t really talk about it deeply. It’s shorthand for what I believe is the darkness of affairs.

A person who is well adjusted, can supply self validation (I did a good job on that. I think my eyes are pretty. I am proud of how hard I try as a parent).it’s not that they aren’t human and could be hard on themselves. They probably enjoy validation from others too because it resonates with how they see themselves. A little goes a longer way with them because their view of thier life has a net positive. They feel fairly engaged with their life and find ways to keep creating happiness.

A person who does not feel good about where they are in life, but still has the ability to see good may also not be susceptible to what I am about to talk about.

I will speak for myself here because I don’t believe everyone cheats out of pain. Where I was at the time of my affair was a lonely, needy person who was walking around feeling like an imposter. And in some ways I really was an imposter. My avoidant nature and people pleasing had gotten so out of control that I didn’t really have a good sense of who I was or what I wanted. I was out of my depths in my career, I was overworking myself due to that and helping my husband get his new business if the ground. My oldest was a senior in highschool and had tons of senior things that I was starting to drop the ball on (and if I ever identified with anything or wanted anything more it was to be a good mom. I hated that I was less available than I wanted to be) I felt like I woke up every day failing at keeping all the balls in the air and doing nothing at all fun or to feed my soul was like depriving myself of oxygen.

The attention the ap gave me at this point in time was like an infusion. The issue is when you are in a hole you don’t know how to dig out of the validation hits more significantly. And that’s not to say every depressed person will cheat. But it definitely adds to that vulnerability if you haven’t a strong relationship to your values. And the depression can also cause that relationship you might have had to your values to seem a lot less significant.

What happens in a limerant affair, is the push and pull of it is what creates the addiction. A more normal, or healthier person my feel flattered someone hit on them even if they just smile and go on about their day like it never happened. Someone who has a depleted feeling of worth will instead want to revisit that reassurance. Eventually what happens is it starts dictating your mood. If the ap draws near, it a high, when they pull away it touches every abandonment wound and takes you to the lowest lows. Then they come around again and the sun is shining and you are high on dopamine. It’s a cycle that over a short period of time become like your new oxygen. It’s an obsession. But it’s not inspired by who is giving it to you, it’s inspired by almost a Pavlov dog dopamine response. What they are saying and how they are acting isn’t resonating so it’s empty so you need them to keep giving it to you so you can believe it for a few minutes afterwards. It’s sad, sick and desperate.

And that is the darkness of the affair. And how that pursuit of your dependency becomes all encompassing.

In other words we are not talking about the good feelings one gets after some form of validation. It’s more the making one external thing the most important validation. And not understanding why it’s never enough.

That’s why recovery of a limerant ws is difficult. It’s a lot of the same steps you see in other addiction strategies. Basically it’s a re-examination of how you talk to yourself, how you view yourself, learning who you are and what you want and pursuing it with resiliency. If that infrastructure is not rebuilt you will find yourself back at square one. I have been back to square one since my affair (because of my husbands choice to have his own) , and at least I can say that would not have been an attractive way to cope with it. I knew I had to spend time again going through the process of okay this support system has changed. Who am I now, what do I want, and I went through the process once again to be prepared to stand on my own two feet.

(This is why I think seriously considering divorce after infidelity is important because to detach you have to rely more on your individual self again.)

So in other words, my new way of dealing with it wasn’t to go back out and look for the external things as a foundation like I did with the affair but to find ways to self validate again. And that’s a strategy that has nutrition in it, it brings healing in, it doesn’t ignore the crisis and hide.

So I think when you see unhealthy we understand there is a gradient but affairs are always an unhealthy choice, even for a hurting BS. Potentially that bs could have that unhealthy balance and latch on to the wrong person and create huge issues for themselves. People who are desperate and down are not going to nurse themselves back to health because someone else claims to like their looks or genitalia or whatever.

[This message edited by hikingout at 4:44 PM, Friday, February 21st]