SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

HouseOfPlane

Here’s a big one. The amount of information that we really know as truth is pretty sparse. A huge amount of what we "know" is really based on culture and belief. On stories that we have told ourselves.We tend to see what we think we see.

Agreed, and I’d like to add, that we hear what we think we heard.

Where that really gets revealed by the affair is how we think this person is one thing, and they’re completely another. It’s pretty rare that there aren’t actually signs of an ongoing affair, but none are so blind as choose not to see. We have in our minds this person that we think the WS is, and that’s not who it really is.

So very true. There were signs, but I’d like to rephase your words to fit how I interpret my reaction to the signs. It wasn’t that I chose because I didn’t want to see but rather because what I thought I knew about my wife did not fit what I was finding off center so what I chose was to believe her over myself.

The WS, who is living in a world of lies, will take advantage of that. And of course they will, as they attempt to manipulate things and fill that hole in their self.

When you hear phrases like "I can’t believe they did that" or "that is not like them" then you can see it in action.
If they did it, then they did it. There’s nothing to believe.
If they did it, then it is "like them". You are what you do.
And yet here we are denying what is right in front of us, because we cling tightly to that person that only actually truly existed in our head. It correlates with what is in front of us, but it’s not the same.

On this, we depart somewhat. I think it is risky to lump motives on any group based on individual’s actions. I don’t believe my wife…Crap! I started to push back against your thoughts here but then I had to remind myself that she did take advantage of my trust. She did manipulate me when I asked if something was developing with her affair partner that wasn’t honorable and she gaslit me by saying I was seeing something that was not there. So, I stand by my thought about lumping but upon trying to separate my wife from your idea, she fell firmly into the group and I fell into a man that doesn’t want so see my wife in that light. I don’t think she is like that today, but I will never trust that I know that as a fact. As you have stated, I must stay present and make judgements based on current events, not past not future.

So when practice, I’ve learned to work at unknowing people. To work at forgetting everything I know about them, and seeing them with fresh eyes, as they are right here right now in front of me. Really, to just actually see them. When you do it for a while, you’ll become aware of how much preconception we carry around with us. It can be jarring too, like that movie Field of Dreams where all of a sudden people see a baseball game going on where before all they saw was a Field of Corn.

This is a very interesting and forien thought, one that gives me pause. I’m going to have to pause and rethink my current ways of "knowing people" and give this room to root.

When you do this, when you really actually see the person while they are in front of you and talking to you, and you pay attention to it, you’ll see it affect the person. It might even freak them out a little bit.

I’m not sure what this means but then again, it is new way to process that is going to take me some time to understand and decide it I want to incorporate it.

In interactions we count on people believing things about us, and we can’t help but take advantage of it at least a little bit. Your mom thinks you’re the brightest kid in the class, etc. Just the same with a WS, they can’t help but use that mental model you hold of them to try to gently manipulate the situation. When truly being seen, it can feel like someone staring at your sou

No matter the method is used, I’m not sure anyone can truly see another. It is difficult to impossible to know oneself let alone another. This puts me a bit at odds with the idea you are presenting. Maybe more fairly stated, as I interpret your idea. I’m open to discussing this more.

I do have a few questions. If it is true that one can never know another and that my task is to "unknow" what I think I know of my wife, then where and how does "trust" fit into this equation? What is it built upon? Where is its foundation if everything is unknowable? And if a spouse proves who they are by lying and cheating (as I understood you to say) is that it? They are forever liars and cheaters or is there a way for them to change? And if change is possible and they do, how am I to know if my understanding of them is "unknowable? I know ( no pun intended) that I’m missing something here, so help this novice out, please.

P.S. I’ve looked into The Book of Not-Knowing by Peter Ralston and am fascinated by the reviews I’ve read. I am traveling in Europe at the moment but will order the book and read it once I’m back in the States.

Asterisk

Trumansworld

Having to ask each day, who really is this stranger I chose to wed, isn’t a bad thing.

You may have a point, especially considering HouseOfPlane’s suggestion of

a person is never able to actually know a person.

Asterisk

Bos491233

All of those things created an environment where there was not much time for "us". NOW, that does NOT excuse the choice or where the blame should fall but it was important for me to recognize that the situation we were living in contributed to this and "helped" make the choice easier.

I couldn’t agree more. Infidelity does not occur in a vacuum. This is why I often maintain that it is important for me to recognize my role. In doing so, it gives my wife and myself the grace necessary for her and me to change so that reconciliation has a chance. And as you stated, this is not relieving my wife of her conscious decision to cheat, that is fully on her. But, the environment she was attempting to navigate, which I was a part of, played a role as well.

Asterisk

Oldwounds

Blame doesn't solve much.

I don’t know, is that really true? Isn’t justifiable "blame" nessissary in order to ferrit out the behavior that is inappropreate? And in the process, isn’t very important to discover one’s own blame? Not in blame as in it is the betrayed’s blame for the decision of a wayward only, as shared so elegantly by Bos491233, they were part of the equation that led up to infidelity? But maybe you are saying that at some point it becomes unhelpful for the reconciliation to continue the blame game. From that point of view, I completely agree.

Among the damage to me, I know my wife failed herself too, now what?
As I've noted, none of my wife's choices reflect on me, but my choices in R do.
Too many people stay in an M and stay miserable.
If I'm going to stay I'm going to look at being in the best possible relationship or I need to move on.
Best possible R, best possible relationship includes what I can do to be better and do better too.

Yes, yes, and yes! Spot on, I fully agree with the above statements.

Asterisk

If it is true that one can never know another and that my task is to "unknow" what I think I know of my wife, then where and how does "trust" fit into this equation? What is it built upon? Where is its foundation if everything is unknowable?

I don’t know, it’s hard to explain what I’m thinking.

By unknowing, or not knowing, I am really saying, drop all the conceptual narrative baggage and just see the person as they are right in front of you. Don’t fill in the gaps, accept that there are things you don’t know.

If you google on "Consciousness Weekly 4 Conceptual Influence on Experience" hopefully you’ll hit a page with this…

The beliefs upon which self and culture stand are not easily recognized, nor are they easily discarded once we identify them. Remember that both culture and self are created in much the same way—they’re the products of many foundation assumptions. These assumptions—accepting particular ideas to such a degree that they become taken for granted realities—give structure to our lives. They are the backdrop for our sense of self and reality, and they offer what seems like solid ground in a world of uncertainty. We may benefit from such a structure, but we need to recognize that our assumptions are also responsible for most of the limitations and suffering that we experience. What generally goes unnoticed is that they are not facts but merely beliefs and conceptual inventions, and since they are conceptual in nature, they are not necessary in and of themselves.

And

When you interact with others, consider how much your concepts influence your experience of them. Do you actually see them or do you see your concepts about them? Try to notice the difference between your concepts of others vs them.

This all sounds sort of abstract and out of the ether until you go back to D-Day, and how all of those assumptions were blown up by the reality of what stood in front of you. How much did the concept of your wife influence what you saw of her while she was having her affair? What would you have seen if you had actually saw her, not-knowing all of those assumptions you carried in?

By unknowing, or not knowing, I am really saying, drop all the conceptual narrative baggage and just see the person as they are right in front of you. Don’t fill in the gaps, accept that there are things you don’t know.

Difficult to do in practice, but the closer one can get oneself to this ideal, the better.

Finding out the real person is part of what wise people do in finding a partner. The potential partners talk to find out areas of likes and not-likes, agreements and disagreements. They probeto verify what they perceive and stay together or split based on whether the fit is good enough.

So I think it's probably better to say something like, 'One person can't know another completely. There can always be a surprise lurking, and that surprise is likely to come out when the person is stressed in the right/wrong way. Just as important, people change over time.'

Hey Asterisk -

Great question.

I don’t know, is that really true? Isn’t justifiable "blame" nessissary in order to ferrit out the behavior that is inappropreate? And in the process, isn’t very important to discover one’s own blame?

Let me amend my first statement of "blame doesn't solve much" since my actual approach to life is, in the history of humanity, blame has never solved a single thing.

To clarify, assigning blame is easy and we always know fault when we see it.

Cheating is Universally wrong, in every faith, every culture and even the most secular among us understands that when a relationship has troubles, cheating doesn't help.

My wife cheated. Blame isn't going to solve her problem or mine.

Let me add the first 35-years of my life were fairly miserable, I lived on blame. It was my go to answer for everything wrong in my life. My bumper sticker was, "life sucks, then you die" -- pretty close to the "we are born, we suffer and die" conclusion we've seen in the forum already.

I lived the blame game.

My childhood included one alcoholic biological father who abandoned us when I was five and he was replaced with a step-father who beat me like a drum. I learned to take a literal gut punch at nine-years old. Being able to take punches as a kid may or may not be the skill set I was looking for, but it did help me during my six years in the U.S. Marine Corps.

I have three brothers, two of them are still miserable and continue to blame my mother for their childhoods and their misery.

All that and plenty of examples of how blame throttled productivity or team chemistry at every job I worked.

My third dad, the step-father who stepped in at the end was a pretty decent guy. Although, tended to hire friends to help with home repairs as professional tradesmen tended to charge too much. One such friend replaced a broken pipe, didn't clear the dust from the crawl space, and the embers from the soldering iron burnt our house down.

The first example I saw, my step-dad knew his friend didn't do it on purpose. We all knew who to blame, but suing a guy just as poor as us wouldn't give us a place to live.

That example was, I saw my step-dad jump to solutions and didn't spend a single second blaming anyone. I saw the lesson then, but it took me over a decade to understand it and apply it to myself.

House is gone, now what?

My wife cheated, now what?

Spending time blaming my wife doesn't heal me.

So, it is simply a solutions based approach to life. I can say the day I stopped blaming anyone or anything external for my misery, it was a pretty good day.

I'm responsible for my happiness. Sure, my family can amplify or detract my feelings, but I'm in charge of how I feel.

This foundational shift was definitely blown up on dday. My wife taking full responsibility helped us move forward, but some emotional trauma takes a lot longer to process.

To me, blame is waste of my time and energy.

If I do something wrong, I own it and figure out how to solve the problem. If someone wrongs me, and they don't own it, I have to either cut that person out or help them solve their issues, based strictly on how much I want the person around.

The difference is, when I blamed everyone for my misery, I found I could be as miserable as I wanted for as long as I wanted. When I owned my misery, it went away.

As my counselor noted, we feel what we feel, but at some point, we can influence and change those feelings.

It doesn't mean I am happy 24/7, I don't think we're built that way. We have all the feels for different days and different reasons. However, I found that being responsible for me and how I feel turned out to be empowering.

The thread has mentioned the person in front of us and trust -- well, I trust me. I know what my wife's good habits look like and her bad habits, and well, poker face -- I can tell when she is struggling to tell me something. I trust me to chase the answers I need to be in a safer environment.

Everyone asks about the worst case and she cheats again.

Anything is possible, but I know me. I will be fine. I'll be on the next solution.

In the meanwhile, I own my happiness, and as such, it helps the M, since I am not blaming my wife for my feelings, it helps her heal too.

These days, I find life is far too short to waste on things that don't make it better.

Nice post, Oldwounds

Hey HoP -

Nice post, Oldwounds

Thank you kindly, but it was sponsored in part by your recent post that included a guy whistling happily in Hell. Likely an old Far Side strip by Gary Larson.

It was a great post, since I see myself as that guy.

It took me a couple days to figure how to explain in words how I grew into being that guy -- happy as is possible, regardless of the environment around me.

There's a difference, IMO, between blame and 'assigning responsibility.'

Blame brings out defensiveness and anger. Assigning responsibility can lead to creating and implementing remedies. It's easier to solve problems if responsibility is assigned correctly.

HouseofPlane

I’m much more tuned to the fact that most people are leading deep, secret lives behind their façade. Lives of quiet desperation. I’m better at watching for signs.

I agree with this. In the beginning of the chaos, at one point we ran into a couple that was celebrating 50th anniversary together. All I could think was that pretty remarkable. But also, at the same time I wondered what kind of struggles that must have gone through. For some unusual reason, I pictured couples that lasted that long or longer as never having "issues". But while going through this site, MC, and even IC. And then reflecting on my own, I realized that many people both as individuals and as couples up this facade to everyone.

No one is perfect. No one has a perfect relationship. And it doesn't help with social media and people who encourage this massive lie that their life is absent struggles of some sorts. The more you actually look at, and I mean really look at them. There is so much there that they hide.

HouseOfPlane

I’ve been reading short transcripts and listening to several short versions of this idea of unknowing what you know and find it fascinating and something worth, in moderation, incorporating. but I’m also feeling a bit uncomfortable when I follow the branches that sprout from Peter Raiston’s tree of thought. "Things like, stop desiring and suffering will end." I’m sorry, but that gives me pause. Is my life desire to stop desiring to avoid suffering? Is stopping any form of suffering by not having a desire for anything a life worth living? I desire to be a better human being, isn’t that worth taking some risk of future suffering to accomplish that goal? Honestly, I would rather suffer over not desiring.

Continuing on: He states that everything in your past is a "LIE" because everyone has a bias as to how they interpret past events. I do concede that we all filter events through our biases and so we must be aware we do not have the full truth. We must be open to evaluating a different perspective. But calling my lack of ability to know all things about all events a "lie" is a lie. I may be in error, and I may need to be corrected or better informed (That is a major reason I’m on this site.) but I am not a liar.

One of the reasons I must continue to increase my understanding and empathy for my wife is because I know I don’t know everything about her or her whys. But the "truth" is my wife did choose to betray me and the fact that it is in the past does not devalue my truth or negate the consequences, on both of us, of her decision to cheat. Though stated otherwise by Peter Ralston, the fact that I don’t know everything does not make my understanding a "lie" at best that is an overstatement at worse it is stating that I am a liar.

Now here is a bias I hold dear. When anyone tells me that if I follow their path then I will have found "enlightenment" (such as Peter says) over, I guess, my implied darkness then I raise up my defenses. I allowed myself to fall victim to that once, when I followed my now ex Christian faith. I thought I was enlightened over others when I was not. Never again will I allow myself to be so deceived as I once did. So yes, my past has biased me against anyone saying they hold the truth, or enlightenment, and I don’t. My bias, in this area is, in my opinion, a good bias to maintain, though I should remain open that I may be wrong. However, I maintain, not all biases are incorrect.

Anyway, as interesting as this is, and I am open for further discussion and insights, I feel we are off task and that I am speaking and commenting on Ralston with very little information therefore I’m ignorantly commenting. Maybe a PM discussion would be more valuable

Asterisk

Sisson,

By unknowing, or not knowing, I am really saying, drop all the conceptual narrative baggage and just see the person as they are right in front of you. Don’t fill in the gaps, accept that there are things you don’t know.

Difficult to do in practice, but the closer one can get oneself to this ideal, the better.

Thank you for your support of HouseOfPlane’s suggestions. I’ve grown to respect you, HouseOfPlane, and some others here so I must be missing something valuable.

Seriously, how does a person "know" someone if they refuse to look at someone’s past actions? How does anyone develop trust, love, compassion, empathy, even distrust, if one only relies on the current moment? And how does that even occur sense the current moment isn’t even a moment, it is a flash so fast that we cannot even recognize it. Once it is said or done, instantly it is in one’s past. That is why the past does matter as so does looking towards (desiring or undesiring) things in the future. To deny the past and refuse to look forward in time is to live only in a blink of time. Clearly, I’m missing something. And yet, that does not mean I do not value each and everyone of the people here who are reaching out to me in the way they believe will assist me in processing and growing.

Asterisk

Oldwounds,

My wife cheated, now what?
Spending time blaming my wife doesn't heal me.
So, it is simply a solutions based approach to life. I can say the day I stopped blaming anyone or anything external for my misery, it was a pretty good day.
I'm responsible for my happiness. Sure, my family can amplify or detract my feelings, but I'm in charge of how I fee

l.

Oldwounds, "Now what" is the question that most all, if not all, betrayed spouses find themselves asking. (And I suggest, so does the wayward.) I agree in heart, mind, and soul with you that when one continually blames one’s spouse, no one heals. However, blame is real and does rightly exist. And yet, I agree, blaming verses understanding is a devils verses angels arm-wrestle a betrayed finds themselves self-fighting. Blaming grants superiority allowing the blameless to feel purer, and yet, understanding has its own type of pain that must be delt with by both the betrayed and the betrayer.

Asterisk

Sisson, Oldwounds and HouseOfPlane,

I am given valuable and needed hope by your support of each other and your support of me and others

Asterisk

Vikrant1993,

No one is perfect. No one has a perfect relationship. And it doesn't help with social media and people who encourage this massive lie that their life is absent struggles of some sorts. The more you actually look at, and I mean really look at them. There is so much there that they hide.

Yes, it is a truism that no one nor their marriage is perfect. And it is human nature to shield our failures and imperfections from others. It is really none of their business.

So yes, I don’t advertise to friends, family or foes about my wife’s affair, not because I’m hiding it, but because my wife and I are so much more than her infidelity. Our marriage is so much more as well. And though my wife’s decision to break her vows was a defining moment it is not what defines her, me, or our marriage. To openly advertise it, gives too much room for others to use it to incorrectly define all involved. Plus, to share openly only serves to grow the injury and makes reconciliation a much more difficult task to accomplish. I am suggesting that they, and I, are not living a lie we are living with our truths.

Thank you Vikrant1993, for adding your input and support.

Asterisk

Asterisk

I do concede that we all filter events through our biases and so we must be aware we do not have the full truth.

Really, if you just keep reminding yourself of that fact on the regular you’ll have something valuable in hand. Something valuable that you have learned about yourself. We did (and do) "let concepts influence our experience of other people."

I mean, even here on the forum. Do you have concepts for the different users? Do you have a mental image of Bigger as…bigger? 🙂 Does that at all influence your interaction? Just asking the question has value.

If you doubt the idea, the affair is the existence proof. Once you remember just how wrong your conceptual framework was, you can turn that gaze to all of the interactions in your life. With your family, friends, coworkers, the person sitting next to you on the bus. Recognizing you’re dragging that stuff with you and dropping it to try to see what’s true in front of you will change how you interact with people. It will just be more honest. Will those interactions be better? I think so.

All of this eventually rolls back into the most important relationship you have…With your spouse. But that is a knock-on effect, because what it is really about is that you’ve learned something about yourself.

Seriously, how does a person "know" someone if they refuse to look at someone’s past actions? How does anyone develop trust, love, compassion, empathy, even distrust, if one only relies on the current moment? And how does that even occur sense the current moment isn’t even a moment, it is a flash so fast that we cannot even recognize it. Once it is said or done, instantly it is in one’s past. That is why the past does matter as so does looking towards (desiring or undesiring) things in the future. To deny the past and refuse to look forward in time is to live only in a blink of time. Clearly, I’m missing something. And yet, that does not mean I do not value each and everyone of the people here who are reaching out to me in the way they believe will assist me in processing and growing.

I’m sure I did a disservice to some of the core ideas in my previous post! Some thoughts…

100% agree that you have to think about the past, and also the future. The problem arises when you stay in the past 100% of your time, dragging around all the resentment that arises from it. It is also a problem if you live in the future 100% of your time being anxious and fearful.

I heard a great quote one time, "all fear is of the future". We don’t fear what is happening right now, we fear what we think is going to happen.

To the extent that you can be in the present, which is in fact where we actually are all the time, you can drop an awful a lot of the resentment, fear, and anxiety from your life. Visit the past to help you make decisions about your path into the future, make those plans, and then return and stay in the present as much as possible. It is literally where you are.

…is to live only in a blink of time

That is a deep topic. Your current moment…that is the moment in which you are thinking about the past. Or thinking about the future. It is all happening in this moment.

If you ever listen to audiobooks, Eckert Tolle has a killer book called Stillness Speaks. It consists of short concepts for you to listen to and then hit pause and noodle on for the next fifteen minutes to twenty four hours.

Two thoughts to close on; first, the key thing to start with is knowing just how wrong, or just how much we are missing, in trundling through our lives. Living through an affair pounds that home.

If you really want to explore where suffering comes from, you probably need to suffer a little bit.

Once you know there is more, you can look for it. For what is true.

Second, whenever I write these posts on here, I find that I really am giving advice to myself. Writing these posts helps hone my thinking, and almost always brings up something I hadn’t really considered or at a minimum sharpens my view. So… Thanks for your questions!

[This message edited by HouseOfPlane at 10:48 AM, Monday, October 20th]

Always remember, pain makes people change. So don't hurt them when you do not want them
to change. Said every wayward spouse.
Blame isn’t needed when people take responsibility for their actions. My wife for her role in the cheating , mine for my part of the marriage issues. You can’t fix a problem without knowing the facts of the problem.
But when we discussed the affair at the beginning I was getting gaslit. So now I’m making decisions on bad info. Bad info, bad decisions. Blaming her for poor coping and decision making wasn’t going to work but fostering an environment to facilitate a change did. And change is the outcome. And we hate change. Like an animal in the forest when it hears a twig break , our ears,eyes and body get ready for the unknown. In our MC sessions when I was one on one with the therapist he said change will not occur overnight. She has learned some poor methods of communicating and coping. She needs to unlearn them and learn new ways. I needed to learn how to see when she was knocking on the door and needed my attention. You’re not privy to the years before you met your spouse and how events then shaped them. But I am a firm believer in you have agency and you are responsible for your actions. Do not try to shift the blame. Take responsibility for it. I also believe that without pain there is no change. Progress requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle. Not my words. Dr. Kings.