Extreme views on infidelity?

[CoolHandLuke76]

yes...cheaters are the worst people on the face of the earth...much below murderers and child molesters.....

 

and yet...you choose to stay with one

 

That's the thing, though. Most murderers and child molesters didn't make vows to their victims before victimizing them. Cheaters did. If the cheater happens to be religious that's even worse. They believe in an omnipotent creator that they took vows before and they still betrayed them. I can't tell you what they were thinking. There's a lot of things I might do in life. I can't say I wouldn't screw somebody over but it never would have been my spouse. I'd leave before I betrayed them.

[tseratievig]

That's the thing, though. Most murderers and child molesters didn't make vows to their victims before victimizing them. Cheaters did. If the cheater happens to be religious that's even worse. They believe in an omnipotent creator that they took vows before and they still betrayed them. I can't tell you what they were thinking. There's a lot of things I might do in life. I can't say I wouldn't screw somebody over but it never would have been my spouse. I'd leave before I betrayed them.

 

So you’re saying that once a person makes a vow to someone, if they break that vow it supersedes the raw evil of a child molester or murderer? It’s all about the vow? Without the vow the adultery wouldn’t supersede the molester’s or murder’s? Is that what you’re saying?

 

I once vowed to my mother (and God) that I wouldn’t take her car out again without her knowing. I broke that vow. Do I fall below molester’s and murderer’s because of this? An act of pure evil supersedes an act of selfishness hands down in my book.

[CoolHandLuke76]

So you’re saying that once a person makes a vow to someone, if they break that vow it supersedes the raw evil of a child molester or murderer? It’s all about the vow? Without the vow the adultery wouldn’t supersede the molester’s or murder’s? Is that what you’re saying?

 

I once vowed to my mother (and God) that I wouldn’t take her car out again without her knowing. I broke that vow. Do I fall below molester’s and murderer’s because of this? An act of pure evil supersedes an act of selfishness hands down in my book.

 

I guess it depends on what you think of vows. Some people take the concept seriously. Others just toss them out there with very little intention of honoring them. C'est la vie.

[tseratievig]

I guess it depends on what you think of vows. Some people take the concept seriously. Others just toss them out there with very little intention of honoring them. C'est la vie.

 

So your answer is "yes", the vow supersedes all. Got it. Hasta la vista.

[Clockwork]

I have several friends in RL who have been touched by infidelity, and I have been aswell. None of our conversations about this in RL are ever as extreme as what I read online. I have seen WS compared to murderers, and even once a pedophile. When people compare it to the pain of losing a child I cannot relate. Watching my mother go through the pain of losing my sibling was horrific and my pain as a BS could in no way compare. When my friends and I discuss the infidelity in our lives it isn't to the extremes that I read about. My H affair was very painful and hard and still hurts sometimes but I can't say it's the worst thing I have ever been through. I also don't believe that all people who cheat are horrible people, I think we are all human and being human comes with lessons and mistakes(yes I know cheating is a choice). In RL the people I know believe As are terrible but they continue on mostly together. Do you find the people in RL you know have similar stances on infedelity as those online? Or is it just easier to voice when one is anonymous?

 

I am sorry, but this post is all over the place. I have no idea what you are saying to be honest. What the heck is an RL, BS or WS? Sorry, trying to figure it out but can't and the post makes no sense without proper English.

[tseratievig]

I am sorry, but this post is all over the place. I have no idea what you are saying to be honest. What the heck is an RL, BS or WS? Sorry, trying to figure it out but can't and the post makes no sense without proper English.

 

RL: Real Life

BS: Betrayed Spouse

WS: Wayward Spouse

[CoolHandLuke76]

So your answer is "yes", the vow supersedes all. Got it. Hasta la vista.

 

To some people vows are very important. Especially if they're religious. I'd say betraying someone you took a vow to is definitely worse than betraying someone you have no vows with.

[Mr. Lucky]

We are all different and I can only speak from my perspective, but I think my M would be far worse off if I didn't and factored in everything I read online.

 

Then why the "extreme" label? If your views are unique to you and based on your perspective and experience, why not allow others the same latitude?

 

Mr. Lucky

[wmacbride]

So you’re saying that once a person makes a vow to someone, if they break that vow it supersedes the raw evil of a child molester or murderer? It’s all about the vow? Without the vow the adultery wouldn’t supersede the molester’s or murder’s? Is that what you’re saying?

 

I once vowed to my mother (and God) that I wouldn’t take her car out again without her knowing. I broke that vow. Do I fall below molester’s and murderer’s because of this? An act of pure evil supersedes an act of selfishness hands down in my book.

 

I'm agnostic, so my sense of anguish at finding out my spouse had chosen to have an affair was not based on any sort of religious context. They ere based on the vows he made to me that were very personal.

 

it was based on the fat that someone who said he loved me, had promised to do his best to never hurt me, and had sworn to me that he would always be someone I could count on, had made the conscious decision to do something so hurtful. Not only had he hurt me, but he had put the mental health and overall well being of our children at risk. It wasn't an accident or something that "just happened", it was a series of choices he made.

 

In the space of a few weeks, he had turned from a loving and kind man to someone who was cold and cruel, which was not his usual nature at all.

 

To me, it was one of the most painful things I ever had to go through, though I now know why it happened, and given the anguished state of his mind at the time and the work he has put in to himself since then, he has gone a long way towards helping me heal. He is not an evil man, he is a very good man who made some poor choices for which he accepted full responsibility. An evil man would not be capable of doing so. He would seek to excuse his behavior, which is something that never happened

 

I'm not comparing it to the death of a child or the actions of a a child molester as the comparison is not apt to me. They are two different situations. However, I am in no position to judge the depth of someone elses pain.

[Miss Clavel]

i'm here to tell you that i was murdered by my now ex and his "soulmate". and, what's more, it was not only brutal but premeditated.

 

 

however, i don't compare pain, with anyone, it's a waste of time.

[Mrs. John Adams]

To some people vows are very important. Especially if they're religious. I'd say betraying someone you took a vow to is definitely worse than betraying someone you have no vows with.

 

I understand how you feel. Your wife betrayed you....and it is your right to feel the way you do. Feelings are feelings....

 

I agree with you that cheating is a vile and horrible thing...but a cheater is still a human being....with feelings as well. and while cheating is NEVER justified for any reason....there are always some kind of issues...either with both parties or with just the individual. These issues need to be addressed...

What was going on in your wife's mind that allowed her to break her vows and cheat? Why did she make this choice?

 

You come here and share short blurbs filled with hatred and contempt...and I will be honest...I don't think it is a good thing. Anger is certainly justified....and plays a part in healing....

 

But What confuses me is...you also say are in reconciliation with this woman.

 

You cannot possibly believe that this reconciliation has any shot of being successful if you feel toward your wife the way you describe.

 

I am not sure how you stay in the same room with her...much less cohabitate with her.

 

Have you told her how you feel? Do you say these things to her that you say here? Or are you just venting?

 

Are you in therapy? Is she in therapy?

[salparadise]

I once vowed to my mother (and God) that I wouldn’t take her car out again without her knowing. I broke that vow.

 

 

I suspect that one's ability or inability to cope with infidelity is often associated with the completeness of one's individual identity, vs. the degree to which the other is integrated and necessary to complete the betrayed spouse's sense of self. How complete/incomplete a person feels with the other removed is almost certainly going to be a factor in the emotional response.

 

Sometimes it may be mostly a matter of the mental/emotional/personality orientation (incl religion), but it may also be comprised of practical and biological factors. Let's say for example that one spouse is tightly integrated into a large extended family with a strong sense of cohesiveness and identity, while the other spouse has not family of their own but enjoys the benefits of having married into the other's large family. The one who is the blood relative of the large unit is likely to weather infidelity better than the one who risks being excommunicated.

 

It's pretty well accepted that men and women respond differently depending on the type of infidelity. Women may feel more threatened by an emotional affair than by a purely sexual indiscretion because of the risk of losing the resources. Men typically view sexual indiscretions as worse because the parentage of his existing and future offspring may be uncertain, whereas a woman is never uncertain as to whether the baby she's carrying is genetically her own. We've had several threads here recently where this was a central factor.

[Lady Hamilton]

That's the thing, though. Most murderers and child molesters didn't make vows to their victims before victimizing them. Cheaters did. If the cheater happens to be religious that's even worse. They believe in an omnipotent creator that they took vows before and they still betrayed them. I can't tell you what they were thinking. There's a lot of things I might do in life. I can't say I wouldn't screw somebody over but it never would have been my spouse. I'd leave before I betrayed them.

 

But if you get divorced you're breaking vows too. So now are people who file for divorce worse than child molesters and murderers? Same vows, same God, one party is almost inevitably going to fight it because they don't want it when the other does... It makes no logical sense to say if you break the vow by cheating it's different than breaking the vow via divorce.

 

At the end of the day, life isn't a cult. This isn't the Masons, the Stonecutters, or the Skulls. Marriage vows aren't slave papers. Personal vows are made as much for the person who made them as the person they're made to. If they decide they don't want to follow it anymore via divorce, separation, adultety, then that is their right. You may have some recourse and protections against it should it happen to you but ultimately it is the right of somebody to exit the oath they self-constructed and entered into at any point they are now unwilling to honor it. There are worse things in the world than somebody who decides a vow they made they don't want to honor anymore.

 

And I might add that when it comes to rape, murder, molestation, torture, we do live in a world where there is an implied acknowledgement (legally and socially) that you aren't going to do things that violate people's personal sanctity. It is very much a violation, again, socially and legally, if somebody commits a crime against you. Who cares that specific person never promised you as a specific person that they'd never specifically physically harm you? The implied protection of it is laid out in basic human rights allowances granted by a functional modern society. It's almost more of a violation to break an implied inherent right that is bestowed on everybody for simply existing than it is to break a direct and intangible vow that you only have to follow per your own choice. The loss of an inaliable right is way different and way worse than the loss of a personal vow that is designed be exited at any time.

 

Honestly, I think this is one of those shock value statements and not a true statement of belief anyway. You come home to find your wife and kids murdered, something tells me that you wouldn't look at the person who did it and say "but at least you're not an adulterer so you can take the sin high road over that segment of the population."

Edited May 30, 2016 by Lady Hamilton

[Red123]

Then why the "extreme" label? If your views are unique to you and based on your perspective and experience, why not allow others the same latitude?

 

Mr. Lucky

 

I give others lots of latitude, I think extreme is a valid word for cheaters being compared to child molesters. Sorry if you don't agree, your opinions/views are yours. I called it extreme because I feel it's extreme. That's all.

[CoolHandLuke76]

I'm agnostic, so my sense of anguish at finding out my spouse had chosen to have an affair was not based on any sort of religious context. They ere based on the vows he made to me that were very personal.

 

it was based on the fat that someone who said he loved me, had promised to do his best to never hurt me, and had sworn to me that he would always be someone I could count on, had made the conscious decision to do something so hurtful. Not only had he hurt me, but he had put the mental health and overall well being of our children at risk. It wasn't an accident or something that "just happened", it was a series of choices he made.

 

In the space of a few weeks, he had turned from a loving and kind man to someone who was cold and cruel, which was not his usual nature at all.

 

To me, it was one of the most painful things I ever had to go through, though I now know why it happened, and given the anguished state of his mind at the time and the work he has put in to himself since then, he has gone a long way towards helping me heal. He is not an evil man, he is a very good man who made some poor choices for which he accepted full responsibility. An evil man would not be capable of doing so. He would seek to excuse his behavior, which is something that never happened

 

I'm not comparing it to the death of a child or the actions of a a child molester as the comparison is not apt to me. They are two different situations. However, I am in no position to judge the depth of someone elses pain.

 

^^Exactly this^^

[CoolHandLuke76]

And I might add that when it comes to rape, murder, molestation, torture, we do live in a world where there is an implied acknowledgement (legally and socially) that you aren't going to do things that violate people's personal sanctity.

 

Betraying a person you took vows to does not violate their personal sanctity?

[66Charger]

 

It makes no logical sense to say if you break the vow by cheating it's different than breaking the vow via divorce.

 

There are worse things in the world than somebody who decides a vow they made they don't want to honor anymore.

 

."

 

I dont understand how twisted a mind must be, in order to not see the logic, that divorcing because one party decides they no longer want to honor the vow of fidelity is different from the infidelity itself.

 

"If I decide to cheat on you, its no worser than you deciding to divorce me because I cheated on you"

 

Sadly, that is the entitled society today.

 

Stoning, is a extreme consequence of infidelity. Getting shown the door, is not.

Edited May 31, 2016 by 66Charger

[understand50]

I give others lots of latitude, I think extreme is a valid word for cheaters being compared to child molesters. Sorry if you don't agree, your opinions/views are yours. I called it extreme because I feel it's extreme. That's all.

 

Red123,

 

You have a point. Infidelity does not compare to Murder, Rape, or other things. Loss of a child, would be much worse, for me. BUT, I would say for for most people, they do not have murder, rape or the other things happen to them. Infidelity is the worst thing that has happened to them, so for some, as they are in the throes of it, it is a pain that will not go away. It effects each in a different way. I was physically sick, threw up all the time, others go into a deep depression. So for the here and now, and for those it effects it is the worse thing that is happening to them right now.

 

For myself, it was the worst pain I have ever felt, and it still can hurt, if I let, after all these years. Time does dull it, and will for most people. Now, I have been lucky in life. Children are all grown and healthy have their own kids now, and they are good as well. I have my health, and I have my marriage to my lovely wife, so life is good. If we had divorced, I am sure, that pain would have been on the same scale.

 

So, we look at this as something as a great betrayal, and we see those that are struggling, both Betrayed and Wondering Spouses, as people that are looking for answers or a place to talk about what is happening to them. They need to understand, why, how, and just believe that things can and will get better. I have never told anyone what happened, nor am I sure my wife, we keep it locked inside. Love Shack, allows me to talk, and maybe to help others with what I went trough, or not. Maybe I flatter myself, but it has helped me to finally talk about it. So do folks get "extreme" about infidelity? Yup, as it is the worse and "extreme" thing that is and has happened to them. Let's hope this is the only "extreme" thing that visits them in their life.

 

The population on LS, would also have this on the brain. It is where people go to disuses this as it is happening to them. I think you would find the same mind set on a cancer board, or a site that deals with the fall out of major crime. In the end, your thread is most helpful, or in my opinion it is. Sometime, we do need to be reminded that there are other things in life that are worse. Death, terminal illness are worse, but the fact of that, will not take the pain of being betrayed by your loved one, or of having betrayed the one you do, or once did, love, go away. Only by your own actions, can you begin to repair your life, and once "repaired" the shadow of the pain you felt will remain. How you deal with that and how, to come to terms with your spouse, will decide if you can reconcile, and how "good" it is.

 

My two cents........

[Whoknew30]

Some people are emotionally & mentally stronger than others, that's why everyone experiences are different. My brother Inlaw & my husband's Uncle both committed suicide after catching their wives, the women in my family yelled & cried after catching their husbands.

 

There just so many factors, does the BS already have some kind of depression & or mental illness already. Yeah it sucks when your spouse cheats but to compare it to losing a child or wanting to harm one self over it, IMO I think there was more going mentally than just the cheating. I loved my brother Inlaw but 2 men, same family, I can't believe it was just bc of cheating. My H family refuse to ever get mental help for anything. My H was the first in his family to ever go to a therapist. I'm thinking there's a lot of families like his, things are hidden, & no one ever really teaches the younger generation about what to do if things go wrong (life in general not just cheating)so when big things go wrong, like as in my H family, theyre not equipped to handle it.

[Mr. Lucky]

I give others lots of latitude, I think extreme is a valid word for cheaters being compared to child molesters. Sorry if you don't agree, your opinions/views are yours. I called it extreme because I feel it's extreme. That's all.

 

You're confusing the perpetrator with the effect.

 

If I say the pain involved in the betrayal of infidelity is akin to the violation of abuse or molestation, I'm not labeling the WS as a child molester.

 

I have two friends that have recently lost siblings to untimely deaths, one killed by a texting 17-yr old driver and the other shot by a jealous BF. While I'd guess the pain is similar in both cases, I don't think the distracted teenager is a murderer...

 

Mr. Lucky

[Raena]

I know from my own personal experience there was only one person in real life that I said the truth about my feelings to when I had to deal with infidelity in my life. My best friend... and it was over text messages. I think in person I probably wouldn't have been so open or forthcoming about how it made me feel, even to her. To everyone else in my life, they knew I was upset and they knew what happened, but I didn't talk about it much unless they asked and even then I didn't talk about how I felt about it, I talked about the events that happened... not the feelings. Everyone is different... it's not that I'm not authentic in my dealings with people... I just happen to find it easier to open up and communicate when I'm typing versus talking. I have more time to think about what I want to say when I type and I can get out everything I need to say without interruption. It's not even the anonymity of posting on here that does it for me, it's having time to really think about how I feel and tell the unfiltered truth about my feelings.

 

And yes, I'd more likely say on here that my ex is a narcissistic douchebag with mommy issues than I would ever find myself saying that to him or to anyone else in person. In person, IRL it makes me look like a bitter ex. On here, it's the unfiltered truth about who he is that he will never be able to see about himself... but other people who have been through it get it.

[Lady Hamilton]

Betraying a person you took vows to does not violate their personal sanctity?

 

The personal sanctity that's violated in a rape or murder is an inaliable sanctity. One that one has at all times, in all manners, regardless of who they are, simply because they are alive.

 

Marriage vows are not an inaliable sanctity. You are in them and stay in them of your own free will. You can exit them at any time, legally and socially. Nobody has the inaliable right of marriage.

 

Yes, both are violations, but neither are the same.

 

Are you really saying here that you'd rather your child be molested, your spouse be raped or murdered, than you being cheated on? That those things are decidedly better than an affair?

[Lady Hamilton]

I dont understand how twisted a mind must be, in order to not see the logic, that divorcing because one party decides they no longer want to honor the vow of fidelity is different from the infidelity itself.

 

"If I decide to cheat on you, its no worser than you deciding to divorce me because I cheated on you"

 

Sadly, that is the entitled society today.

 

Stoning, is a extreme consequence of infidelity. Getting shown the door, is not.

 

I'm actually not the one saying that the "breaking of a vow" is the worst thing one can do. That's the other poster. And the discussion was divorce in general and the awfulness of breaking the marital vow, not leaving cheating spouse.

 

The assertion is made that "breaking a vow" is worse than rape, murder, and child molestation. I'm asking that poster of that holds true when one breaks a vow via divorce... Which they haven't answered.

 

No need to call me names because you're jumping in 2/3 of the way through a conversation and don't know what we are discussing.

[waterwoman]

At the very beginning when I was struggling to cope, I would honestly rather have been dead at times. Oblivion was preferable. However I would never feel that I'd rather my child or anyone else I loved was killed or seriously hurt in any way. I don't understand that sentiment at all. My children are my life. I'd do anything to keep them safe and happy. Perhaps the final legacny of infidelity is that I don't feel the same way about H any more - but perhaps i never did.

 

I suppose my experience was better than most. Short affair, H ended it instantly, was remorseful etc. Maybe that makes a difference to how I feel but I don't really understand the more extreme reactions if a wayward is prepared to do what is necessary, or even to leave to be with the OP (if they do it respectfully and as kindly as possible).

 

If I am honest there are still small scars on our marriage but they may well be related more to the people we have become as we age than with the aftermath of the affair.

 

But in the immortal words of Sid the Sloth 'I'm too lazy to hold a grudge'

[elaine567]

I don't think anyone can presume they know how a person feels and put them on a scale of hurt, with grieving the loss of a murdered child at the top, suffering child abuse or rape way up there too and being betrayed by a WS way down on the list of potential events that cause a person to be hurt.

 

My contention is that it all depends on the person involved. Some people lose children and hardly turn a hair, but then commit suicide when their wife cheats on them, it is not a simple scale.

There are usually many complex factors involved.

"Hurt" cannot be so easily quantified.