A General Question About A's...
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| Tue, 01-18-2005 - 11:12am |
Ok, maybe not exactly a question, but just some ramblings...
I have been posting and responding on this board for several months now. Before my A, I thought people who cheated were 'bad'. I thought that people cheated because they were jerks, or they were lacking something in their marriage and just to chickensh*t to do anything about it.
I remember when that movie Unfaithful came out. I thought there was no way someone who had a pretty good life and loved their S would cheat.
Now I find myslef on the other side of the fence. I had (have) a great life, loving S...and yet I cheated. I don't think I am a 'bad' person, and there was nothing really lacking in my M - hell, I had only been married for a year when my A started (day after my 1 year anniversary to be exact).
Most of the people I have met on this board seem to be smart, nice, good people. People I would be friends with - people I HAVE become friends with.
I know everyone's situations are different, but I am just amazed at the amount of intelligent, caring, giving people I have met here who somehow became 'caught up' in an A. I have to believe there is hope for all of us...but it still scares me to think of how many of us there are out there...
Diva

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Diva,
First, I have read many of your postings and I hope you are doing well. Second, In my opinion- smart people make bad choices all of the time. I appeal of an affair is fantasy. No daily responsibilitys. I think it makes people feel "young and free", pehaps takes them back to a simpler time in their lives. I also think that when you are younger, your views are definate. Age shows you that it is possible to love more then one person at a time. Add sexual chemistry and a bit of attention...... and your hooked.
I have to admit, I did have an affair,an emotional one(we agreed not to meet), from someone in my past. I miss him daily.
:) Murf
Hey, I was the voice against affairs only 5 short years ago. I would go on and on to my H how crappy it was that men (of course I only saw it as something men did), could be so selfish and go out a sleep with another woman, then come home and tell their wives how much they love them. I would get downright passionate about my feelings against affairs.
I, too, have a good marriage with a loving H. Never, never, never did I think with how strongly I felt about cheaters, that I would be one...and not once, but twice. I never made excuses why I did what I did. I never blamed my H or my AP's.
So now, although I still think badly of cheaters, I can at least understand HOW affairs happen, and why people don't just end their marriage before going out and having their flings. Always sounded simple to me before.
I have thought about the same thing myself. Also makes you look around and wonder what secrets everyone out there in the world has. Probably lots. Not just about affairs, but all kinds of things.
I really do think its a self control issue. Similar to an alcoholic or an overeater. You know you shouldn't, but somehow the scale gets tipped over to allow you to go ahead with it. I would say some of us that cheated took a lot more convincing. Some were so OK with it that they were the one's doing the convincing. I imagine that alot of people are capable of having affairs, weather or not the circumstances present themselves is another question.
As for the state of your marriage. You talk about your husband as being good and loving, but I have to ask - Are you satisfied? Something must have been missing. Some needs you had unmet. Ot was it an escape? The answer is in you - not your husband or marriage. Why did you go ahead? It is so important to figure this out.
There are different facets to a persons personality. A seemingly low key person can have that little bit of them with a wild side that on occasion rears its head. Could it be that component of you that was attracted to OM - that same component that wanted more than your husband? (Not that I mean you exactly, you don't sound like a low key person)
All things to think about...to figure out. Sometimes I feel like the sadness in me now will never end. Hopefully once I get all my answers it will at least deminish...
Troubled,
<>
I am going to assume that you are having a moment of temporary insanity. What's wrong with it? Where do I begin....
*First, how would YOU feel if you were the spouse being cheated on? Would you be perfectly ok with your H having his "cake and eating it too"?
*Your H may not know now, but that can change in the blink of an eye. A email accidentally left open, someone spotting you going into a hotel, your H's payroll check falling out of your purse in a Hotel room, and a subsequent call to H's work (THAT happened to me). Cell phone bill....the possibilities are endless. How would your life change if your H found out? You say he would divorce you, are you ready to go through the throws of an ugly divorce and find yourself a single woman either stuck in a going no where A, or all alone with no one to share your life with? What about the financial devastation that happens many times as a result of a divorce?
*What about the hurt, pain and anger you will cause to your H, a man that you have shared many wonderful memories with and vowed to spend the rest of your life with. Are you ready to absolutely tear his world apart?
*What about trust and honesty, do those things mean nothing to you?
*What about integrity, self worth and pride, do you posses any of those qualities? If so, they are not compatible with exra marital A's.
*What about common decency and the devastation your actions will cause to everyone in your life who loves you. Mom, Dad, sister, brother, children? Don't think that THEIR world won't be torn apart as well.
*What about self respect?
*What about morals, do you have them and are they important to you?
The list goes on and on. The point is, who cares what the hell they do in France. Affairs are wrong, they are painful and the only thing that can come out of them is absolute devastation.
That better be one hell of a yummy cake to risk losing everything you hold dear in life.
CG
thanks for my listening to my babble, I still cry.
kat
(((CGU)))
Excellent post on all accounts!!!
~Id~
**Id**
Troubled,
Here is a post from free, I highly suggest you take a look at, it just might give you a whole new perspective on your question, "What's wrong with having an A":
A WORD ABOUT ADULTERY
Adultery is the most selfish, destructive and hateful thing a person can do.
It’s funny what you don’t know going in.
Or what you choose to ignore.
And it’s tragic that you don’t realize until it’s too late, until what’s done is done, how utterly wasted a life can be. How hopeless hopeless can become. How the promise and joy of life can slip like water through guilty hands.
Hell is merely realizing what you’ve done.
Mostly to others, but ultimately to yourself.
Hell is the flash of memory, snippets and snapshots of a happy spouse, a newlywed or new mother, pleased and pledged, her future and hopes tied to you. Her whole life in all its stages gambled on you. The very nature, substance and quality of her life, through all its years, depending on a promise you have casually or repeatedly broken.
How you can take an hour or a decade of selfishness and condemn an innocent person to a lifetime of loneliness and disappointment.
How you can steal someone’s dream and leave it tattered and stained, unrecognizable and unsalvageable. And not just any someone. The one person who has given you more than any other. The only one who truly understands you and cares about you, and who proved it by giving herself to you. By having faith in you and supporting you. By taking your name and taking your fate.
That’s the one you destroy.
It’s an emotional murder. The snuffing out of a life that should have been lived. Not the stopping of a heart, but the breaking of a heart. Taking the “happily” out of “happily ever after.” It’s an emotional murder.
And that’s the hell.
For you because you deserve it, and for her because she doesn’t.
Then there are the children.
Innocents whose lives are forever and unfairly changed. Who have a mommy and a daddy one day, but not the next. At least not in a real way. Not in the way they are supposed to. No Christmases and family reunions and weddings and graduations, no family nights around the dinner table or the TV, it’s all just shattered and broken.
You’d kill someone who hurt your children a fraction of how badly you’ve hurt them, and yet you’ve done it, and they tell you it’s OK but you know it’s not and you’ve done it and you can’t run away from it and Humpty Dumpty can’t be put back together again.
And children cry.
When they are young, and decades later when they are old.
The family died, and daddy did it.
That’s the hell.
Realizing that.
Realizing that you did that to them. That you have returned hate for love, betrayal for trust, evil for good.
You have broken the only promise you really had to keep. And in the world of cause and effect they reap the harvest you have sown.
Adultery isn’t something you do with another person, it is something you do to your family. To the hopes and lives of the only people who will ever really matter to you.
It is a blind and hateful selfishness, a universe out of kilter, an arrogance of priority and interest. You are all that matters, nothing else counts, and you have everything backwards.
And it seals you off until you are alone and they don’t have you even if you are in their midst. Ultimately you rot so much that it collapses, the marriage and the family, and out you spin, not realizing a fraction of what you’ve done and who you’ve hurt and what you’ve lost.
But it comes eventually. In the dark of the night, in the realizations of the soul, in the honesty of humility.
And you can’t think about what you’ve lost, because you’re too ashamed of what you’ve taken. Ashamed and anguished and wrong.
And that is hell. The realization of what you’ve done. Of who you’ve hurt. Of the damage you’ve caused. Of the fact it’ll never go away.
That is the lake of fire and brimstone.
You realize that life was a test.
And you failed.
You failed your family.
Adultery brings nothing but sorrow and pain. The likes of which words cannot communicate and imagination cannot conjure.
“Thou shalt not commit adultery” was not a restriction, it was a warning.
Which only fools fail to heed.
Bob Lonsberry © 2004
Edited 1/18/2005 2:03 pm ET ET by cowgirlsup
Crystal,
<<>>
Very good point - very good response in general! Yes, the answer is in me and yes, it is important that I figure it out because I'm afraid if I don't it could happen again. The problem is not w/H but inside me. I am in T now and working to solve that. I still think about xOM everyday. Whne my cell phone rings or when I get an email, I always wonder if it's him. It isn't...but I still wonder. I'm looking forward to the day I no longer do that :-)
Diva
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