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Hmmm, I am still wondering how this specifically relates to you and your experience. Why is this important to you? I mean, I'm curious about a ton of things and how people think of them sure. But why this? Have you asked yourself why you concentrate on this and not the birds in your yard or whatever?

When I say I am introspective, I mean I am thinking about myself and how I react and who I am. Introspective means I and internal to me. I'm still wondering how you feel this relates to you.

In any case, I'm not sure my boundaries on actions of a cheating spouse would be different than before I found out. Maybe. There's definitely a slow burn of trying to absorb and understand as described. I still can't help wondering why you need to know what I think mine are. Why does that matter? I'll still think about that and get back to you.

The other interaction I can recall is about why I would forgive my cheating spouse, but not forgive others. Or why I would not want to have anything to do with him if I didn't forgive in a future circumstance. I'm not sure what the discussion was. Anyway, I don't think what I said made any sense or helped you with whatever issue you were dealing with nor did anything else anyone said in that discussion. I think you might get a helpful response if you could form the discussion better.

But hell, I don't know dude. This all hurts and is confusing.

** member to member **

life is too short to keep patching a life raft with holes in it.

I'm not aware of people who have R'ed and who report they 'keep patching holes in a life raft.' Most of the people in R don't seem to give 3rd chances. Some people report doing some rug-sweeping and having that bite them years later, but that's not R, even though some (many? most?) experts recommend that approach.

Yes, to R, we all have to run a risk of our WSes repeating a betrayal - but everybody has to run a risk of being betrayed by new partners.

Yes, my W & I both have to work to maintain our M. Does anyone know someone who doesn't have to do that work?

I feel that people show you what they think of you, what you mean to them, or what their priorities are, and I pretty much take them at what it seems to be.

That reads as if it comes from a belief that the A(s) are pretty much about the BS. IMO, Affairs are about the WS's issues with themself, not with the BS or the M. Too many really great people are BSes for me to blame them for their partners' As.

In this case I was specifically interested in the reasons why some acts were unforgivable to some people and other acts were forgivable. Trying to gauge any logic or rational for these decisions. I think getting to the root of this could actually be quite clarifying.

You don't seem to accept the logic of R, which is one form or another of, 'i thought it was my best option.'

Maybe if you change how you formulate your questions, you'll get more out of the responses.

Hmmm, I am still wondering how this specifically relates to you and your experience. Why is this important to you? I mean, I'm curious about a ton of things and how people think of them sure. But why this? Have you asked yourself why you concentrate on this and not the birds in your yard or whatever?

Me, too.

I'd be interested in your answer, but that's irrelevant. You are the beneficiary of answering these questions for yourself.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 5:06 AM, Friday, August 22nd]

Dr. S,

I’m not saying we all don’t have lines.

I just don’t think we know where the line is until we come to it.

(And I’ll mention that in the Roman Empire days, sex between men and boys was, reportedly, not a line.)

In my case I did not confront. From the little I knew the behaviors happen while he traveled. He had lots of very attractive women in his orbit. Who knows. What happened to me after I was told was a slow erosion of being "in love" any more. We continued our marriage as he had no idea I knew anything. By the time I confronted we had both grown up. The rose colored glasses have been off permanently which I think is healthy. We both see each other realistically. Marriage does not support the euphoria cheating does. It should support a strong, quiet love that means spouses become advocates, friends, and nurturing. My marriage does that for me. I really do not hold a grudge about it, for some reason. My job as a social worker has introduced me to the full spectrum of how people inflict pain on each other. It makes me appreciate my husband.
I should have continued to say cruelty, long term affairs, chronic lying, allowing the AP into the family bed, money spent on the AP, are things I think are unforgivable but I don’t have that as my history so I don’t judge someone for staying.

[This message edited by Cooley2here at 1:34 AM, Friday, August 22nd]

Apparently I once told WS that my only deal-breaker was infidelity, but I had said that before we had a child. My preference at DDay was to try R so we could preserve the family structure. I didn't think I had a line in the sand, but in hindsight, I think the discovery of false R was definitely one of them. The trouble was that it took me another year and a half to realize that the line existed and that we'd crossed it.

Then again, as I introspect further, I think WS being in love with someone else for 3 years is also something I'm unable to come back from, but it's hard to say if that was true all along or it's just what I think now because he didn't do what I needed in the intervening 2.5 years to keep my feelings for him alive. There's no way to prove the counterfactual (if he'd been better about R right away, would I want to stay with him?).

Patterns in the sand are impermanent. It's always amused me that sand is the metaphor we use when it's so easily washed away. Shouldn't our lines be set in stone if we really cared about them? I think sand fits well for the people here because for many of us, our lines do shift with time and circumstance.

I agree 100% with the concept that there can be circumstances where certain affair details are so hurtful to the BS that the BS simply cannot remain in a functioning relationship with the WS no matter how much energy and heart the WS invests into the process of healing and reconciliation. However, these matters are personal and subjective to each BS.

There are common themes that one sees. Perhaps the most common is where a WS who invests more energy, imagination, enthusiasm, and/or brio into sex or romance with the AP than the WS ever invested into the same with the BS. The paradox created by this is that trying to recover is a lose/lose for the WS. If the WS returns to "business as usual" with the BS in terms of sex/romance, the BS will forever feel they are "less" in the heart/desire of the WS. Conversely, if the WS tries to engage at that level with the BS only after Dday, never having done so before, the BS will feel the effort is insincere and ersatz. It's hard to take pleasure in a partner who is faking it.

What one sees very often is that the BS doesn't realize the line has been crossed until some time after the fact. I think the storyline of Waitedwaytoolong exhibits that. He tried to R for some years, and his WW threw herself into the process, but at some point he realized he could not look at her with the eyes of love that he felt a husband ought to have for his wife. The injury from the way she threw herself into an intensely sexual affair, with some very awful details, was just too great.

I know of circumstances where the AP possessed certain personal attributes, such as a physical build (an AP with big boobs or exotic ethnic appearance or a ton of money or power or big muscles) that the BS does not possess. In those cases it's very difficult for a BS to not feel like the WS is actually attracted to them. The breadth of human experience is wide. Double betrayal. Long-term affairs that were deeply immersive to the point that the WS took a lot away from the marriage in order to create space for the A. There are probably a scrillion variants of this theme in real life.

[This message edited by Butforthegrace at 3:59 PM, Friday, August 22nd]

"Specific Sexual Acts: What if the wayward spouse engaged in sexual acts with the affair partner that were always denied to you?"

Precisely my WS with 5 AP's in 5 years.

"The Setting of the Betrayal: Would a betrayal that was conducted in your own home be too much to overcome?"
Again, where do I start. Our house, my car, a strip joint.

"The Nature of the Betrayal: What about instances where the wayward partner seemed to fetishize the betrayal or enjoyed the deception itself?"
I'm sure she got off on the taboo of it all.

"The Affair's Modality: Did you reconcile because the affair was "emotional only" or "physical only," and would the reverse have been a deal-breaker?"

I'm still here nearly 20 years later and still struggling with it.

"Length of the Betrayal: Many seem to find it easier to reconcile after one night stands or short term flings where it appears longer term betrayal seem to harder to forgive."

It was multiple ONS over 5 years. I personally think I could have better understood an affair than the cheapness of the ONS that she was willing to risk everything for.

I know I'll never get over it, if I was going to get over it I'm sure it would have happened before now.

I think the storyline of Waitedwaytoolong exhibits that. He tried to R for some years, and his WW threw herself into the process, but at some point he realized he could not look at her with the eyes of love that he felt a husband ought to have for his wife. The injury from the way she threw herself into an intensely sexual affair, with some very awful details, was just too great.

I hit pretty much all of the markers. The type of sex was really hard for me to get over. The one act she did more times with him in a few weeks than we had done in 25 years of marriage. The act itself was upsetting, but more so the fact we didn’t do it as it was something she truly didn’t enjoy. So for her to bend over backwards (a bad attempt at humor) so many times knowing she didn’t like it meant two things. Neither good. Either she was so determined to please him she put aside all her obstacles like pain and being uncomfortable just to make him happy, or she really did like it. Just not with me.

The other things all factored in. The fact she did it in our bed, set me up to listen to his business pitch and watched while I shook his hand, and she seemed so happy while all this was going on.

The other driving factor was they did it like rabbits. I’m a big boy. I can see how a ONS or a one time event could happen. I recall after DDay being at a convention and having a really young hot women practically beg me to go back to her room. People make bad choices. But there is a huge gulf from a one time decision to repeatedly making that choice. She woukd still be Mrs WWTL if if were a one time thing.

While remorse is good, sometimes it just isn’t enough to paint over the stain.

But I do agree with others. Details matter

the role of affair details in the reconciliation process. Is it all about the mindset of the betrayed partner and the subsequent actions of the wayward spouse, or are there some details that are simply too damaging to overcome?

I think people's tolerances for details are all over the board for many reasons. The biggest factor in my case was maturity. Having come from a chaotic home full of upheaval with a resulting developmental gap, I was in no shape to deal with the details of the affair in any measured, rational way. Combine that with the utter shock all betrayeds deal with and you have one messed up situation. The fact that it was with my then best friend put me on tilt for a long long time. She was in not much better a place going into it all. As younger spouses and parents of small children we were woefully unequipped to deal with this trauma. The details, particularly sexual/physical were nails in the coffin for me. I stubbornly stuck with it "for the kids" but it was a frankenmarriage from that point on. I really shut down and stayed shut down for years. It was very sad really. Kind of like ghost walking through the marriage until it ended. I deeply regret staying in it, but again, didnt have the maturity nor the tools to come to grips with it all.

Compare that to today and the level of transparency my wife and I have now and its night and day. We have both discussed our prior betrayals in detail, holding nothing back. Id like to think that, god forbid I ever faced something like this again, Id be much more decisive but I never want to find out and thankfully neither does she.

I do sometimes wonder whats worse, being betrayed early in your marriage and being f'd up for years before you can right the ship, or, betrayal happening decades into the marriage and possibly having more maturity and life experience under your belt to deal with the details. I know its horribly traumatic either way, but I do muse about it.

I say all that to say the the details were absolute killers for me and doomed our ignorant and wrong headed approach from the start. That said, I still HAD to know it all. What a sh!tty lose-lose proposition 🙄.

[This message edited by DobleTraicion at 12:15 AM, Saturday, August 23rd]

Impossible to "know" until you experience it as many in the thread have pointed out.

Prior to my wife's A I would have called what she did a complete deal breaker and I would D her. But I would have followed up with "but I don't have to worry about that because I trust her".

But that's not what I did. This is the "loss of something integrity adjacent" I've written about a few times.

Can the BS frame themselves as flexible and resilient instead of weak and crumbling under pressure? Is that a real framing?

How flexible is too flexible?

I do think there are degrees of betrayal but it's the one that you personally are experiencing that you ultimately have to deal with. My prediction (poor though it may be) is that if my wife's betrayal were a more physical A I would have gone for D If I had known the AP I probably would have D. If she hadn't had any understandable external stressors I would have D. But in all those cases I can't say I really know because I didn't actually have to deal with it.

So yes for each individual there is going to be a degree of betrayal they cannot R through. But it's nearly impossible to say what that is until it happens.

Hi DrSoolers, sorry for the late response and thanks for yours. Yes, respect - especially self respect IS the big issue for me. More than love, more than family, more than anything else. I feel you come into the world alone and go out alone and you have to be able to live with yourself primarily. I could not live with MYSELF if I felt I was compromising by reconciling with someone I thought was shitting all over me. Or had shit all over me. I always understand there are practical situations - I have one myself - where children, financial needs, health needs, cultural norms - even religion for some - might be the dominant factors someone has to bow to and keep a relationship going because they don't know how else to survive in that atmosphere. You do what you have to do to survive and also to keep your children going. To me I don't know if reconciling is the right word for that...I'm not sure what is or if we have one. There's acceptance or tolerance of a bad situation because of survival need issues. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, IIRC. And then there's actual reconciling with someone even though you COULD divorce and survive, or in many cases, do better. You reconcile because you WANT to, not because you just don't have options.

So if I had kids, I might tolerate more things than I would otherwise because....kids. If you don't have options, or sufficient ones, you do what you have to do. To me that is not "reconciling". Even in my present situation, I don't consider it reconciling or recovering or rebuilding the relationship - I think of my husband as my best friend that I do care about. I love him in that way, but I frankly don't have options. If I did, I'd be gone. I don't have romantic or sexual feelings towards him since I found out he was willing to cheat on me. But I do what I have to do to survive. Many of these forums seem to have a lot of middle or upper middle class people in them with more resources, I'm poor and always have been and poor people often live differently because we just don't have options. I'm surrounded by a lot of poor people, they do what they have to do to survive. It is what it is.

But there are things I would not tolerate even if I had to go live in a shelter, and they would be the things that I listed...like cheating with a relative or a friend, cheating in the house, getting an OW pregnant, serial cheating, a long term affair, etc. I would feel I would personally lose all self respect if I did and frankly....I'd rather be dead than live like that. Someone who would do those things does not deserve me and I couldn't fake any respect or love for them. I couldn't "love" someone who treated me like this. And I'd never trust them again, and that's that. I don't want to work for years recovering a marriage that is dead from the inside because someone who loves you would NOT treat you like that so why are YOU bothering so much to revive this dead thing? Let it go. Find someone else or learn to live alone contentedly. I don't understand why people go through this spending years trying to revive something with someone who shit all over them - I just cannot understand that. But that's their choice and I'm sure they have their own reasons for it that are very different from mine.

I think many people are very sensitive about the topic of recon because....I think they probably feel they shouldn't have reconciled and that while they kept the relationship going, they have they also lost something through that process. That's up to them, but some of the stories I've read with various circumstances and I see that people have reconciled, I just have to think...why would you do that? As I say, I understand lack of money, ill health, etc, but I cannot understand the choice to willingly stay with someone who shit all over you especially with so many years and hard work it takes to "overcome" that. If I could, I'd just chuck it and leave them and let them live their own life and me, mine. To me, it seems cleaner and healthier - frankly for both. If someone cheats on you badly and does bad shit to you, how can you ever believe they really love you or it's just not another form of marriage of convenience perhaps for both. I just don't get that.

Yes, absolutely the details matter. Reason being is the details have meaning, either directly or indirectly. As far as sex acts, a question would be "is there anything still sacred for us?". Emotional details, again, they all have meanings. When a BS is digging for details, IMO it is not so much that they are digging for the details themselves, but trying to see if the WW showed and heart for their BS amongst the chaos. Details matter.