Staying married to a cheater

[Spark1111]

kitsune, you are mistaken...this is NOT the "other woman board"....

 

one more thing...as much as it may annoy you, the feelings and opinions of those you want to dismiss because they do not support your choices are valid, even if you do not agree with them.

 

About emotions not being "neat and tidy"...I am not a child, nor am I a fool, I know that they are not. I also know what is like to be in the place his wife is in...she's hurting and very much in need of support herself. I am not trying to run Rick down for how he feels. rather, I am trying to say that it IS possible to move past an affair if one wants to. It seems he wants to, and I am trying to offer him some advice on part of the equation that he may not understand, as he has not been a betrayed spouse himself.

 

with respect to Ricks marriage and his spouses feelings, the other woman's feelings are irrelevant. She is not ( and I don't think she should be) part of the equation at all. If his choice is to stay wth his wife, then that should be his focus. I think he already knows that.

 

I agree FS!

 

If Rick has re-committed to his marriage, that is where his thoughts, focus and actions should be.

 

Kitsune, if your MM commits to you, finally, and it is what you had wished for with all your heart, and you instinctually know he is with you but now pining for the wife who threw him out......

 

How LONG could your ego handle that? Realizing you may have been his default choice while he really loved another?

 

How soon before you found a better man?

 

No one here is spewing evangelical and bitter advice. We are trying to save Rick heartache down the road as many of us our happily reconciled BS.

 

We know how hard and painful and ultimately rewarding the road can be -- but NOT if our love is missing someone else.

 

You surely have to understand that, don't you?

 

Rick has a brief opportunity to fly right. No one is negating the feelings he thinks he has for his fOW, but she is gone and moving on, and really presents as a very, all for herself woman; maybe even a woman who played him for her own selfish pleasures and ego boosts.

 

How long could you sit around knowing your MM, who declared his undying love to you and moved in with you after DDAY, was pining away for the wife he claimed to have never loved all that much?

 

Not too long, I would guess.

 

Posters here are trying to give Rick a reality check.

[RickFox]

And reality checks are always welcome and is sometimes why I post, simply because I know perspectives from others can help 'slap' some sense into me.

[donnamaybe]

OT but I can't help myself. :D That was quite a dressing down that you gave to the Infidelity section of LS. Speaking of bitter, well your rant portrays you as such.

 

Not to mention a harsh dig at our overworked, underpaid moderator...

[SouthernSunshine]

Well, i just left my bf because he was cheating on me. It ate me alive. I tried so hard to think "logically" and question why on earth he would cheat on me, seeing how everything about our relationship was really good! But the days he came home from work happy yet detached & nervous... just fidgety behavior, with the smell of sex on his breath, and the lack of interest in sex... far outweighed my feelings of love & security. The doubt in my stomach ate through my heart, and I ultimately despised him.

[SoMovinOn]

maybe what you say re: grieving is true, but how long is it fair of him to expect his wife to wait for him to "grieve" and figure out if staying with her is what he wants?

 

For better or for worse, in sickness and in health....

 

If we apply your question to other situations, does the answer remain the same?

 

How long is it fair for a spouse to wait for someone with a serious illness? ... an addiction? ... depression? ... lost their job? ... any other "for worse" scenario you might imagine?

 

Honestly, I am not sure how I'd answer that question. I see the pros and cons on both sides.

 

I think the problem with a question like that is the concept of something being "fair". It is a concept that is brought up often, but really has little to do with reality. Life isn't fair. Life isn't about being fair. Doing what is right isn't always fair. I think throwing the concept of fairness into the equation just muddies the question.

 

In any "For worse" situation, it's really only for each individual to decide what they can manage.

[donnamaybe]

Trying to compare something bad that happens to someone with the choice to do something bad to someone else is disingenuous and way off the mark.

[SoMovinOn]

SMO,

I define blind trust as an innocent, very naive, inexperienced kind of trust.

 

Well, that would explain the gap between us. To me, blind trust only can exist in the exact opposite situation - it's trust because you *know*. In an R, you give blind trust because you are certain that person would not do anything to hurt or betray you.

 

In a case of someone covering your back, military, law enforcement, firefighting, etc. ... blind trust is based on knowing the guys who have your back are as trained and capable as you are (or better).

[SoMovinOn]

Trying to compare something bad that happens to someone with the choice to do something bad to someone else is disingenuous and way off the mark.

 

"any other "for worse" scenario you might imagine?" ...

 

Losing your job can be due to choices made. Addictions start with choices. There are other "For worse" scenarios which are caused by or predicated by choices made.

 

... and really, the point of the post was to question whether fairness is an issue and to make the point that each individual can only decide what they can handle.

 

Do you disagree with the main points of the post, or just dislike some of my examples?

[donnamaybe]

"any other "for worse" scenario you might imagine?" ...

 

Losing your job can be due to choices made. Addictions start with choices. There are other "For worse" scenarios which are caused by or predicated by choices made.

 

... and really, the point of the post was to question whether fairness is an issue and to make the point that each individual can only decide what they can handle.

 

Do you disagree with the main points of the post, or just dislike some of my examples?

A scenario which involves ONLY choices made which would knowingly hurt the other person would apply. None that involve things beyond one's control.

 

However, this thread is called "staying with a cheater." Any other subjects would be off topic.

[goldengirl86]

Rick needs to be able to feel these emotions and grieve them, ultimately it is what he does in regards to how he acts upon them that matters. I think if Rick does not grieve these emotions and accept them than it will do more harm than good. If he lock apart of himself away it will ulitmately eat at him and destory not only him, but his wife as well.

 

Telling him he should not feel this or that is probably not the best thing to do, these feeling are apart of him and should be expressed.

 

 

I think ultimately for most people who stay with a cheater, there resentment would eat away anything good and ultimately lead to hatred. Once the relationship is tainted by infedility or any other unforgivabale act there is no going back and it a slippery slop to the end. However, the rare story of success or true success is great, but its still tainted too me, the relationship purity is gone forever and its never coming back.

P.s i think it also applies for the AP who stays with the cheater too.

[seren]

I wonder if part of Rick's problem is that reconciling is not just a case of deciding to stay after infidelity, if only it was so easy. It requires an awful lot of honestly looking at the marriage, warts and all and also an awful lot of looking at yourself (general), as the BS understanding what your contribution to the marriage having problems were and for the WS, why cheating was seen as the way to go.

 

I don't think anyone wants the label of cheater, most of us hold honesty and that much debated word, integrity to be part of our personalities and while we might be all those things in other aspects of our life, there surely can be nothing more telling than making a decision to be dishonest to the person who trusts us to have their back and in many instances, has ours.

 

The one thing that I simply do not get about A's, is that anyone thinks that they have carte blanche to do something that they know will have such damaging and hurtful consequences to another and that they are able to do it because they are believed and trusted. Yes, in many instances, trusted blindly and trusted simply because they are loved so much.

 

Staying married to someone who cheated takes a lot of change, not just to the marriage, but those in it too. It can and will never be the same, but in many cases that is no bad thing. I too had blind trust, I trusted my H with all that I had, I shared all my insecurities, fears, bad memories and most importantly, my trust with him and because I believed I could trust him with that, I loved him, married him and even when times got tough and when it would have been nice to have stepped out of some of the crap happening, I stayed and worked at it, fought off a whole load of his demons, simply because I had his back and believed he had mine. Naive? possibly, trusting? absolutely and why? because I thought we were working together with shared goals and understandings of what was OK and what wasn't.

 

My H struggles with the A, even after 4 years he still hates what he did. Self forgivness is a very hard thing to do, as a BS, I can only give assurance that I have forgiven him and that he is a good person who made a bad decision. In our case, the A was not for love (were that it was) nor was it one which was particularly healthy for either of them. But it was what it was. Obsessing over the why's and how's does, at some point lessen and instead of looking backwards and all the, if only I had done X,Y or Z it becomes we need to do A, B or C and if we decide to reconcile, to address what was broken, look at what we have, could have and set to achieving that.

 

I wonder Rick if you are wondering how your wife can love you and if you are, if you love yourself. There comes a time when you either resolve to put all that you have into making it work, not as a default, no one should stay in a relationship by default, but because the alternative is for you to divorce and for her to make a new life. D Day's level the playing field, the BS has made her informed choice, WS theirs and if the opportunity to make a new future is bogged down by what if' and if only's it is doomed to fail before it gets off the ground.

[PinkInTheLimo]

How long is it fair for a spouse to wait for someone with a serious illness? ... an addiction? ... depression? ... lost their job? ... any other "for worse" scenario you might imagine?

 

For me there is a huge difference between drama which you have no control over (illness, death, losing your job because of the bad economy, an accident, a natural disaster) and the drama you cause yourself.

 

Being together for better and worse sounds nice but the very moment a spouse cheats he loses this guarantee.

 

I don't know how I would feel after 20 years of marriage but in theory I think the marriage would be over for me.

I would in any case totally hate my spouse for putting me in a Catch-22 position where I either respect my principles and have to throw away everything I built up during 20 years or stay and betray my principles.

[frozensprouts]

Rick needs to be able to feel these emotions and grieve them, ultimately it is what he does in regards to how he acts upon them that matters. I think if Rick does not grieve these emotions and accept them than it will do more harm than good. If he lock apart of himself away it will ulitmately eat at him and destory not only him, but his wife as well.

 

Telling him he should not feel this or that is probably not the best thing to do, these feeling are apart of him and should be expressed.

 

 

I'm not saying he shouldn't grieve at all...what I am saying is that it can be very easy to become mired in "grief" so that one can't move forward. It happens often ( just take a look at some of the threads you see dealing with break ups, etc.- people are still stuck in "grief" , some for years, after the end of a relatively short relationship. ) Perhaps grieving is more about the loss of an idea, the loss of a "potential" relationship, the loss of what could have been more than the loss of what was actually there. I know is sounds very callous, but there comes a time when your "grief' can drag you down and becomes counter productive...when it starts to keep you from moving forward, it's time to stop, and you can , should you want to.

 

I don't think Rick is a bad guy...I think he's a guy who made some mistakes and now he can make the choice to either use his mistakes for good or bad, he can use them to learn about himself and what he wants in his life , or he can remain stuck in a bad place and not move forward.

 

The choice is his...but I will say he seems like a smart guy who will hopefully use a bad situation as an opportunity to grow and be a better husband to his wife and a much happier guy all around.

 

rick...ask yourself if your are grieving the idea (potential) of what could have been with your other woman, or are you grieving the loss of the relationship that you actually had with her? Are you mourning the loss of something else? Is your grief even really related to the other woman or is it something more than that? Sometimes when one figures out exactly why they are grieving they can begin to feel better and move forward n their life.

[beenburned]

FS,

This is a very good point!

 

I read on many boards. Some of these affairs are mostly internet, cell phone, long distance, etc., that has very little actual physical time together in real life.

 

But yet the amount of drama, pain, and tears clearly are way out of line in such a minimal time frame of a physical relationship. It almost seems like an addiction to the high of all the drama, rather than the actual OP.(who you don't really know much about on a daily basis)

 

If my FWS had been so grieved over any OW, I would have booted him out the door to go live with her. I'm sure it wouldn't have taken long for all the fantasy to wear off.

[Spark1111]

FS,

This is a very good point!

 

I read on many boards. Some of these affairs are mostly internet, cell phone, long distance, etc., that has very little actual physical time together in real life.

 

But yet the amount of drama, pain, and tears clearly are way out of line in such a minimal time frame of a physical relationship. It almost seems like an addiction to the high of all the drama, rather than the actual OP.(who you don't really know much about on a daily basis)

 

If my FWS had been so grieved over any OW, I would have booted him out the door to go live with her. I'm sure it wouldn't have taken long for all the fantasy to wear off.

 

I did exactly that, and it all went psst in three weeks after almost two years!

 

And no one was more stunned than I was. It is when I got busy learning about affairs; it is how I arrived at LS; it is why I still try to help people heal.

[SoMovinOn]

A scenario which involves ONLY choices made which would knowingly hurt the other person would apply. None that involve things beyond one's control.

 

However, this thread is called "staying with a cheater." Any other subjects would be off topic.

 

Correct, thus the question about fairness in staying with the cheater and dealing with what they are going through, and my response to that question.

[SoMovinOn]

The one thing that I simply do not get about A's, is that anyone thinks that they have carte blanche to do something that they know will have such damaging and hurtful consequences...

 

As is most often the case when people do something wrong, it's the belief they will not get caught, there will be no consequences, no one will be hurt.

[Spark1111]

As is most often the case when people do something wrong, it's the belief they will not get caught, there will be no consequences, no one will be hurt.

 

So does is ALWAYS come back to character?

 

Character: How one behaves when they believe no one is looking (or wn't get caught.)

[SoMovinOn]

For me there is a huge difference between drama which you have no control over (illness, death, losing your job because of the bad economy, an accident, a natural disaster) and the drama you cause yourself.

 

Yes... so let's just address those which are caused by choices - losing a job because of choices, the choices made which lead to a drug or alcohol addiction, or any other possible scenario.

 

The question is, it seems M couples often work through those issues created by one spouse making bad choices, and they are treated much differently than an A. Why are some people so willing to accept those other bad choices and deal with them?

 

Being together for better and worse sounds nice but the very moment a spouse cheats he loses this guarantee.

 

How does that make sense? "For better or for worse, unless it actually gets worse"?

 

I don't know how I would feel after 20 years of marriage but in theory I think the marriage would be over for me.

 

It's interesting when we think we know how we'd react to a hypothetical situation, vs. actually being in that situation. Before we got M, I told my W infidelity would be an automatic, instant deal breaker. When it actually came up, I let her stay, worked on R. Here it is 3 years later, and she's still here.

[SoMovinOn]

So does is ALWAYS come back to character?

 

Character: How one behaves when they believe no one is looking (or wn't get caught.)

 

To an extent, yes. Of course, human psychology, why we do the things we do is always much more complex.

[Spark1111]

Yes... so let's just address those which are caused by choices - losing a job because of choices, the choices made which lead to a drug or alcohol addiction, or any other possible scenario.

 

The question is, it seems M couples often work through those issues created by one spouse making bad choices, and they are treated much differently than an A. Why are some people so willing to accept those other bad choices and deal with them?

 

 

 

How does that make sense? "For better or for worse, unless it actually gets worse"?

 

 

 

It's interesting when we think we know how we'd react to a hypothetical situation, vs. actually being in that situation. Before we got M, I told my W infidelity would be an automatic, instant deal breaker. When it actually came up, I let her stay, worked on R. Here it is 3 years later, and she's still here.

 

About the bolded: That makes you completely normal in the sense that 95% of MW and 86% of MM will take back, initially, a cheating spouse.

 

And if I had a penny for every person who told me the same thing as you, well...I'd be retired by now.

 

What hurt with the infidelity was the lying and deceit. THAT was so damn intentional, as opposed to job loss, addictions, illness.

 

Big difference in my book, and I think, most other's as well.

 

Were they all poor choices? Yep, but I see differences in intent between your examples.

 

Maybe initially my fWS didn't choose to have an affair, but at some point, he had to choose to lie to my face every day for almost two years.

 

Now he never lied about job loss, physical illness and the subsequent pain med addictions; nor the loss of income.

 

But he lied about the affair and the AP.

 

Intent is very, very different in my perspective.

 

My young adult children's too! One of our very first conversations as a family following DDAY was: Why NOT tell the truth and separate and go to counseling and see if we had a marriage worth saving while you explored feelings for another and I would date too?

 

He said: I thought I could control it. I never wanted to lose you. I could NEVER handle you dating another man.

 

OMG. Double-standard much????

[donnamaybe]

Correct, thus the question about fairness in staying with the cheater and dealing with what they are going through, and my response to that question.

But, as others have tried to point out, it is one thing to go through something and quite another to wallow in it and prolong it all, especially when the feelings of the person you already stabbed in the heart are also at stake, as well as the marriage you profess to be trying to save.

[nofool4u]

Again, the point of this thread wasn't to say whether it was a good or bad idea to stay with a cheater, but rather for those that stayed and are trying to get past it, if they look at their spouse in disgust from time to time.

[donnamaybe]

Were they all poor choices? Yep, but I see differences in intent between your examples.

 

Maybe initially my fWS didn't choose to have an affair, but at some point, he had to choose to lie to my face every day for almost two years.

 

Now he never lied about job loss, physical illness and the subsequent pain med addictions; nor the loss of income.

 

But he lied about the affair and the AP.

 

Intent is very, very different in my perspective.

Yes. HUGE difference. Intent means everything, and carrying on a huge lie, or actually a whole LOT of huge lies, over a long period of time is nothing BUT bad intentions.

[Owl]

Again, the point of this thread wasn't to say whether it was a good or bad idea to stay with a cheater, but rather for those that stayed and are trying to get past it, if they look at their spouse in disgust from time to time.

 

And it sounds to me as though the few posters that we have that have reconciled their marriages don't "look at their spouse in disgust from time to time" from the responses we've seen directly answering that question.

 

Doesn't seem to me to be any value in staying in a relationship if you feel that way about your partner...which is why I equally applaud those who realize that they'll always feel that way and choose to divorce, and those who are able to reconcile and rebuild without compromising and ending up with a relationship such as you described.