For anyone who doesn't consider A's wrong

[OWoman]

Here is the flaw I see in your logic. You seem to think it is the sex, the falling for another, the jealousy that is what hurts people and you seem to think you are not vulnerable to that because monogamy is not important to you.

 

You are wrong. I did not state that anywhere - that is entirely your projection.

 

And I certainly don't consider myself "invulnerable" to anything. Every R can be vulnerable (to infidelity or anything else). A post-A R may be less vulnerable because the issues which led to the infidelity elsewhere have been surfaced and addressed - and continue to be addressed in an ongoing manner - but that does not render them invulnerable - any more than a M which has been recovered after infidelity is invulnerable. Believing otherwise is mere foolishness, IMO.

 

What about honesty? The biggest part of an affair and the part that many can never get over is the LIES, not the sex, not the falling for someone else. People can even have open marriages but not get over an affair because of the lies? You pride your relationship of it's honesty and openess. you believe he will remain open and honest with you but in affairs that is the first thing that goes. No matter how much you share and talk the openness and honesty erodes because they HAVE to lie to have an affair. They think they are protecting you while exploring sex with another so they lie.

 

Or, as in my H's 1st M, they simply don't talk. If there is no culture of communication, then opening up communication about ANYTHING is difficult - far more so about something so fraught. If the communication is long gone, or - as in their R - it never existed, lying is unnecessary.

 

You may think you are invulnerable to your husband not being monogamous but what happens if he stops taling becuase he is so stressed and tired from work and just wants to sleep and not even chat and think...then what happens?

 

As I've said, I don't consider myself (or my R) invulnerable to anything, but nor is the scenario you've painted likely. My H is a talker - he deals with stress by talking it through, again and again and again. I'm the one prone to withdrawal under stress, something I work actively to address. There is a far greater likelihood of the scenario you sketch applying to me than to him...

 

That's why many times a spouse can take the cheater back. Besides the years and years of an honest fulfilling past relationship with them the cheating spouse proves once again that they want to be open and honest and spill alll about their time with the other woman. When they won't be honest it ends...it's the lies and deception not the sex.

 

Nothing I've said disagrees with any of this.

 

Your husband and yourself have a very proven track record of lies and deception...

 

OTC. Our R has always involved total honesty and transparency. We have always been honest with ourselves, our friends, family, colleagues and neighbours. We were always an open couple. That his xW refused to know for so long had nothing to do with deception and everything to do with separation of lives and worlds. Even when she was told, she chose not to believe. If someone sticks their fingers in their ears and hums, you cannot accuse the person trying to tell them something of lying simply because the person with their fingers in their ears prefers their denial to the truth

[OWoman]

Wasn't your now husband and his exwifes relationship begun as an affair?

 

It was. But unlike ours, which featured openness and introspection from the start, and which featured a good deal of counselling and addressing of issues i the run up to their split and our moving in together as a family etc, theirs was conducted in secrecy (because of his age at the outset) and did not feature any kind of stock taking after the A - or indeed at any other time until their first separation, when my H made it a condition of taking her back.

 

So your husbands relationship with his wife began as an affair and yet you believe they never had communication?

 

I've read the letters from their early days, I've seen the emails from their latter days. It's pretty clear what went down - she was broken, she needed someone to make her feel better about herself. He was a kid, flattered by the attention from an older woman. It was all "do you think I'm pretty?" on her part, and "I enjoyed ****ing you last night" on his. He lacked the maturity to be reflective; she lacked the honest self-awareness. She witters on pretentiously about poems she analysed in class (she returned as a mature student) but she never discusses anything of import. His letters are the sexual fantasies of an adolescent - which he was.

 

In the emails she sent during the D, she accuses him of many things, including the fact that they were never able to communicate. (She just never considered his opinion on anything worth hearing - she would belittle him publicly, so he kept his mouth shut around her.) She hated that they could not analyse Lawrence or Proust and that he did not share her taste in choral music so that they could agonise over performances together. She hated that his career took off despite her - that he used it as an escape from her and that it wasn't something she shared in. She resented that he did not find her own middlebrow career exciting or even interesting enough to hang on her words when she held forth to his family. She hated that he did not feel blessed by her specialness, that his life was not testament to the gratitude she felt she was due for plucking him from an ordinary youth and dragging him into a heady rush of adventure and excitement. She hated that her life was not more like the novels she'd studied.

 

kind of like him and his exwife then?

 

Not really, no. I have nothing in common with her (except perhaps for our being of the same species) and our R has nothing in common with theirs.

 

I wonder why she found it so hard to believe you were with her husband and vice versa?

 

She was convinced no woman would ever look at him - he was too inferior, and he was lucky to have her. She did not believe he would have the guts to break free from her control, to assert independence and forge a life that didn't centre around her. She did not believe he would willingly cede the great prize - her - that he'd been blessed with.

[Silly_Girl]

She was convinced no woman would ever look at him - he was too inferior, and he was lucky to have her. She did not believe he would have the guts to break free from her control, to assert independence and forge a life that didn't centre around her. She did not believe he would willingly cede the great prize - her - that he'd been blessed with.

 

I recognise that and it turns my stomach...

[Silly_Girl]

Honestly I just do not get it. Why would you be reading their private correspondence from when they first began seeing one another? That is just wrong on so many levels and such an invasion of this woman's privacy.

 

If they're HIS letters it's up to him. I've looked at ex-stuff with a partner before. As things have cropped up when sorting the loft or garage. I don't see an issue with it and I'm fully aware that chances are some other woman has seen things I've sent. It's how I felt at the time, I'm honestly not worried about it. To safeguard ourselves from these things we must never document intimacy with a loved one, and that just isn't practical.

[OWoman]

Honestly I just do not get it. Why would you be reading their private correspondence from when they first began seeing one another? That is just wrond on so many levels and such an invasion of this woman's privacy.

 

It was in a big pile of stuff she left here when she moved out - the entire place was a tip! There were also photos and documents in the box. My H asked me to go through it and to dump the rubbish, which I did. I found them and showed them to him, he wasn't interested but told me to read them "to get some sense of what we're dealing with" and so I did. The emails during the D he showed me, asking me for advice on responding to them each time.

 

If she hadn't wanted them read, she would not have left them in a heap on the floor (on the very top - she wanted them found and read. Probably by him, hoping he'd feel some kind of nostalgia, but she played that one badly). She ripped up cards he'd sent her (the pile of ripped paper was there, too) so she could easily have done the same - or burned them, or taken them - but she chose to have them read.

 

If someone exposes themselves on the high street, and someone looks - is that still an invasion of their privacy?

[OWoman]

If they're HIS letters it's up to him. I've looked at ex-stuff with a partner before. As things have cropped up when sorting the loft or garage. I don't see an issue with it and I'm fully aware that chances are some other woman has seen things I've sent. It's how I felt at the time, I'm honestly not worried about it. To safeguard ourselves from these things we must never document intimacy with a loved one, and that just isn't practical.

 

This is also true. When I left my xH he wrote me some pretty bizarre letters. I kept them in case they might be helpful in the future to the kids in understanding the split (they've never shown the slightest interest) but I found them when I moved, and I showed them to my H (he's met my xH). Why not - it's a part of my history, and part of who I am. I have nothing to hide.

[Silly_Girl]

Seriously? that's okay with you? To sit and read someones old very personal love letters without the autho's knowledge? Why? Again are you serious? You would not put in writing your intimate feelings for a loved one for fear they would one day be shared with another?

 

I am just shocked and appalled by this and I guess it just shows the degree in which our boundaries are so vastly different when it comes to relationships.

 

Yes, I would share my personal belongings with my loved one, if the situation felt right. Just recently we went through some of my teenage diaries, and found some cards from when my ex-H and I got engaged. Cards between us. That is SO far in the history now, and I know my ex-H wouldn't care a fig. He and my boyfriend natter on for ages and get on great. It's a part of life. We all have histories.

 

I'd never read something of my boyfriend's without his permission, however.

[Silly_Girl]

This is also true. When I left my xH he wrote me some pretty bizarre letters. I kept them in case they might be helpful in the future to the kids in understanding the split (they've never shown the slightest interest) but I found them when I moved, and I showed them to my H (he's met my xH). Why not - it's a part of my history, and part of who I am. I have nothing to hide.

 

That's how I feel too. It is a part of me. I don't hide my son in a cupboard when my boyfriend is around because he belongs to a prior romance , it's all part of me and how I came to be who I am.

[OWoman]

I'd never read something of my boyfriend's without his permission, however.

 

Absolutely! Sharing stuff with someone you love and trust is one thing. Snooping is quite another

[Silly_Girl]

omg so now you are telling me you have saved your husbands private letters to you to share with your children? So you think it is fine for a divorcing or divorced couple to share everything the mom and dad have privately corresponded about no matter how it would affect their relationship with the other parent or their feelings?

 

That's not what I read.

[OWoman]

omg so now you are telling me you have saved your husbands private letters to you to share with your children? So you think it is fine for a divorcing or divorced couple to share everything the mom and dad have privately corresponded about no matter how it would affect their relationship with the other parent or their feelings?

 

No, that's not what I think, nor what I said.

 

It was precisely to help them understand their R with their father (should they have asked) that I kept those letters. The courts entrusted me with mediating any R my xH might have with my kids. He chose to be absent from their lives, making contact once every decade or so. I did not want them to feel that this was because they were unlovable. I wanted them to understand that they were not to blame for his lack of interest. The letters speak about them, about his R with them and about his R with me, and about his expectations for the future. Given the unlikelihood of them ever hearing it from him directly, I thought they may benefit from reading it in his own words at an appropriate point in their lives. That need has never arisen, so I've never needed to show them. But should they ask, I would, yes.

[OWoman]

no it's what can be interpreted though when she stated her husband wrote her BIZARRE things and she would show them for the kids to understand the split better. You can interpret that to mean she does not care if her kids see how bizarre their fathers words are as long as they understand the reason she is no longer with him.

 

Wrong again in my world on so many levels. Children should not for any reason be subjected to reading private love or hate correspondence that is personal between their parents. EVER. Where are the parent child boundaries?

 

So now young innocent children are being SUBJECTED to reading love or hate correspondence (it was neither, BTW) :lmao: :lmao:

 

I thought I'd stated, clearly and repetitively, that it was to be available to them at an appropriate time if they asked. They're adults, with strong views of their own - they're unlikely to allow anyone to subject them to anything, as it happens.

 

But it does show how easy it is to twist someone's words or intent when one feels so inclined

[OWoman]

it makes it no more right or wrong whether they are adults or not. omg you do not show adult children letters written back and forth between their parents in the heat of divorce. nothing you can say can make me believe otherwise.

 

There was no back and forth. They were letters he sent - I did not engage with them in any way. It was not an acrimonious D - there is no acrimony in the letters. Nor was it "in the heat of divorce" - there was no heat. I moved out. Years later I filed for D. This was not the War of the Roses. You clearly have some weird idea of what the letters contain that you're projecting onto this, and you're wayyyyyy off the mark!

 

But I reckon this threadjacking has gone on for long enough. Twist away if it makes you happy. Those of us who know the truth are amused, not threatened, by the projections.

[White Flower]

it makes it no more right or wrong whether they are adults or not. omg you do not show adult children letters written back and forth between their parents in the heat of divorce. nothing you can say can make me believe otherwise.

I get the concept GG, I really do. And had we any evidence at all that there was a 'heat of divorce' situation, and had we any evidence of a poster using such letters to sway children away from a loving father, if indeed he was a loving father (again we need evidence), one could see what you're trying to say.

 

But all it really looks like to me is projection on your part. Getting all worked up for nothing only benefits the pharmacuetical companies.