Compartmentalizing? How does it work?

[Popsicle]

Does your MM compartmentize? I think mine does and I'm wondering how this works. Do they just completely block out the wife when they are with you,and completely block out you when they are with the wife?

[C00kie]

My xMM did that. When she was home, he wouldn't call me, not even log on the internet. This could last for 2 or 3 days.

 

When he was with me on holiday, days would go by and he wouldn't contact her. I know this for sure. His cell would be off and we never accessed the internet. I don't know how he could pull this off.

 

I saw sms from him, to her, saying how much he loved her and she was the most amazing woman in the world. He'd tell me the same.

 

So yes, he compartimentalized. I don't even know how this is possible, I wouldn't do this to anyone, I mean, I wouldn't even be able to do it. I guess their need to keep things at peace with everyone and their selfishness is what causes them to do it. Still...baffles me.

[DKT3]

Hope you don't mind a male response.

 

When women are teenagers there are outlets for her emotional being when it comes to relationships. Be it with parents, siblings, girlfriends or even the guy she is involved with. This brings about a balanced and stable emotional person.

 

As a teenage male those outlets are unavailable. So in turn we start to show our emotional being only to the females we are involved with. Girls show the whole range of emotions at this stage of life and with who isn't really important. For males we have to have two faces showing one face to the female and a much stronger less caring face to everyone else. Here is where the male ability to compartmenalize is born. When I'm with my girlfriend she is the best thing in the world and I care so much for her. Yet when I'm around my friends man I don't care about that girl tell go talk to these other girls.

 

So the two sides under the same roof is in place as we start to enter mature relationships. Because the sides are so disconnected its easy to truely believe we feel the same way about both sides without one having a negative effect on the other.

 

This is harder for women to understand because in my opinion women work with the replace method. As she grows closer to one side she withdraws from the other this comes from being more emotionally free and unable to maske them from one side to the other.

 

So OP most men have this deeply rooted, and can easily become involved without it having any negative effect on his relationship with his wife. He still views and loves her as much as he always has, over in that side of the house. On this side he cares very much about you.

[Realist3]

Very well said, DKT3.

 

I would suggest learning to compartmentalize may begin earlier than the teenage years, but that doesn't matter much to the overall premise.

 

Look at the professions that require compartmentalization: police, firefighters, EMS workers, soldiers, funeral directors, doctors, even lawyers; all heavily male dominated.

[Realist3]

Interestingly enough, each of those professions rank very high on the likelihood of cheating list.

[Owl]

I agree with what's been said so far. I think men typically are more capable of compartmentalization because it's a requirement for them to be able to do so.

 

Realist's list is pretty spot on as well.

 

I was a soldier in the US Army...I'm a vet. The person I was then...the person I had to be to do much of what I had to do...is/was a far different person than the one who came home, fell in love with a woman, and started a family.

 

She doesn't understand...nor truly believe me, I think...when I tell her that I would have absolutely zero mental anguish if something happened and I had to kill to defend my family. I could do so, and and sleep soundly that same night. But I had to learn how to reconcile those two halves of myself long ago.

 

It IS a form of compartmentalization, for sure.

[Realist3]

This soldier is battling his ability to compartmentalize.

 

NSFW.

 

KORENGAL CLIP: Brendan O'Byrne reflects on war on Vimeo

[Owl]

This soldier is battling his ability to compartmentalize.

 

NSFW.

 

KORENGAL CLIP: Brendan O'Byrne reflects on war on Vimeo

 

I'll check it out this evening, Realist.

[Bittersweetie]

I hope you don't mind a female perspective...

 

I compartmentalized when I was in my A. One could say it was a little "easier" for me as my H and I were living in separate cities at the time. But even so, I kept my worlds apart. I even used one internet browser for A stuff and the other for normal stuff. When I was with/talking to my H, I focused on him. When I was with/talking with xOM, I was with him. I did not talk about my H with xOM at all. And overall, it meant that I didn't invest fully with either person (or even myself).

 

In certain situations, like PPs mentioned, it could be a positive trait to have. Unfortunately I didn't use it that way.

[iris219]

Sure he does. I assume people in affairs have to, including you.

 

Are you thinking about his wife or him with his wife when you're with him? If not, that's compartmentalizing.

[still_an_Angel]

I see it this way, MM's life as a whole, and then there's me that he holds in a special box. I am in the same sphere, just not in the open. I think every person has a part of them that they do not show to the rest of the world anyways, its like being focused on your professional side at work, we don't always share our personal stuff in that arena. I think its not just MM who compartmentalizes his life as the same goes for me.

[SoftViolin]

I think so too - they do compartmentalize. I think not only in relationships, but even at a workplace. Often men are completely different people at work, than what they appear at home to their families.

 

In an A, they definitely separate the two worlds. Maybe that takes away some of the guilt, if you pretend that the A world does not exist, while you are at home. I don't mean to generalize to men by any means. But that's also how people in A, who are able to compartmentalize like that, are able to sustain the A for months and years, while some of their AP spend time in agony - does they love me, or their BS, will they stay, will they go...

 

Dark places they are, affairs. They mess with your head too...

[Daisy2013]

My MM told me that a female brain was like spaghetti and our emotions are all mixed in and we can't separate them, whereas a man thinks in boxes and can put things away when needed. He would say he was always thinking about me, yet when I asked him how he kept a poker face at home, he said he could put me away in a box when he was at home and do what he had to do.

[Speakingofwhich]

Idk. It seems to me women can compartmentalize as well as men can.

 

I have for my entire life.

 

Have always been a part of a variety of social groups that don't intersect with each other and really like living that way. Have lots of close friends who don't know each other.

 

Never was close to my mom or any female relative growing up. And moved around a lot (every three years or so as a kid) so that I was always having to make a new set of friends and stay in touch with the ones I left who have remained in their own little compartments of my life.

[Ruffian1]

"He would say he was always thinking about me, yet when I asked him how he kept a poker face at home, he said he could put me away in a box when he was at home and do what he had to do."

Just an observation but "compartmentalize" in an A situation is a lot like the "having your cake and eating it too" thing.

[Daisy2013]

Idk. It seems to me women can compartmentalize as well as men can.

 

I have for my entire life.

 

Have always been a part of a variety of social groups that don't intersect with each other and really like living that way. Have lots of close friends who don't know each other.

 

Never was close to my mom or any female relative growing up. And moved around a lot (every three years or so as a kid) so that I was always having to make a new set of friends and stay in touch with the ones I left who have remained in their own little compartments of my life.

 

You must be my long lost twin! Your life seems identical to mine.

[ConfusedMarriedOW]

I think it was the opposite with mine, I could compartmentalize and he couldn't. He wanted to, but couldn't.

[janetl]

I think the OP is looking for a perspective from MMs who can.

 

I have been in an EA for some time with a MM and I can see he compartmentalizes so well. Even he admits to doing so. It's not he is not online or chatting or emailing me when he is home or with him family. But he NEVER talks about them to me when we are together. I never ask either. For me, it hurts sometimes to think that when he is away I am in packed in a box and pushed aside. But he cares for me so much when he is with me.

[BlueBobby]

For me it's not possible to keep things totally separate. But I just do my best to focus in the moment with who I am with.

I kind of think of it as another person having the affair when I'm with my wife, when with my girl I'm more my true self because there is no front to put up and nothing to hide. It's not hard.

[Scorpio Chick]

I'm wondering when the term 'compartmentalize' came into usage regarding men's supposed ability to keep separate their interactions with a wife and a mistress.

 

Because it's not an 'ability' so much as it's a choice. If this is something passive, rather than an active decision on the philandering man's part, and we are all going to accept that only cheating men do it, and women don't, then it stands to reason that the man's brain involved in compartmentalizing, is also and maybe necessarily, experiencing bouts of amnesia precisely at times when he's with the wife and then when he's with the mistress. What a highly selective amnesia!!

 

So, obviously what I'm saying is, pfft to compartmentalizing. We could then say a murderer is compartmentalizing when he's murdering and when he's not murdering. I disagree with it, it is something some of us are being brainwashed into thinking is a passive thing happening to the man's brain, or hard wired into his brain that he cannot control. In short, it's a way to give him a pass on what he's doing. Like it's a magical thing and he just can't help it and oh how interesting they can do it and we can't. It's bunk. He's making a choice to be deceptive. He knows what he's doing and he simply does not want to give it up, so he knows all that he needs to do to keep it going for as long as he can. It's deception, pure and simple.

[fellini]

We all compartamentalize. It's a strategy for organising our sense perceptions.

 

The general idea though, is not IF we compartamentalize, it's WHAT we compartmentalise.

 

As the cliche goes, men compartmentalize SEX from LOVE. Not all the time, but they have this enormous capacity to do so when it works for them.

 

It's not just Wife vs. AP. It's being able to have loveless sex. Now of course men can be in love with their wives, and still have sex with them. They can compartmentalise their sex with their wives and they can compartmentalise their sex with their APs.

 

Women as fully functioning human beings are just as capable of compartamentalising as men. The question is what is their strategy for doing so. Because it seems generally accepted that they do not compartmentalise their APs in the same way men often do.

 

Im not a woman, so I cannot speak for them.

Im not a WS, so I cannot speak for WH's either.

 

But I do know my WW compartmentalised her relationship with her AP from me, so that she did not need to resolve in her own mind what was clearly an unworkable situation that she was facing every day she walked out the door.

Edited June 8, 2014 by fellini