This is by far the best article on affairs, I have ever read. It is in three parts. It addresses everything that I have been going through but from the side of a therapist speaking to people who are or were cheating.
https://www.affairrecovery.com/newsletter/founder/31-reasons-to-stop-affair-part-one
Last Sunday I was acting as Allie’s realtor and showing her houses. I got a bit caught up in her manipulation and began to dream a bit with her about buying a house together. I know it’s stupid, but breaking free from Narcissistic abuse is tough. It felt like almost a relief to dream with her. Weird I know, but since finding out about her affair with Mark nearly six months ago, I have not been able to daydream or plan any sort of future. My mind just simply wouldn’t go there. So Sunday felt kind of nice. Almost serene.
The next morning, on Labor Day Monday, I opened her phone and saw a text she sent to her boss Derek. It was on August 20th while I was visiting a friend in New Jersey. The text was off-color. Not something that you would send to the guy you work for. Not flirty, just outside of professional context.
Rewind to last year. I noticed some texts to Derek last September-ish which were flirty and attention-seeking from Kelli to him. I questioned her about them and she got defensive, but a few hours later apologized saying that I was right and that she had been seeking attention from him. She claimed it was because of her being new at her job. She promised that there was nothing there and that it was wrong. (Stupid me believed her)
Over the course of this past year, I have probably revisited the question of anything between her and Derek two or three times. She always adamantly maintained that there wasn’t.
So on this past Labor Day (2018), I saw that text to him and asked her again, “Did something happen with Derek.” She said “no.”
I headed out to my workout class and she called twice in the five minute drive, so I picked up. She told me over the phone that she and Derek did in fact kiss. I skipped my workout and came home. When I got home, the story grew more and now they’ve not only kissed but had met several times in his clinic. She claims that they were physical but didn’t have sex. Only the two of them know the real truth.
She said that she was infatuated with him because he was nice.
Finding out about yet another affair is the knockout punch for me. Any small spark of hope was extinguished with this new discovery. She says that the two affairs meant the same thing, but to me they don’t. They are simply more and more times where she chose betrayal over loyalty. Lying over honesty.
The affair with Derek was about four months long (according to her) while the affair with Mark was two months. So, literally since we moved into this house, she has been in an affair, hiding an affair, been in another affair, and now supposedly recovering from the affairs.
We’ll be divorced soon.
I thought I would share a note Allie wrote to our counselors today. I still have the password to her email and saw this in there. She’s changed all of her other logins so that I can’t see those.
I will breakdown her email as I go below. See what you think.
I know this relationship is not healthy. I’m still grieving the loss of what it could’ve been and what it was. I’m so upset because before he found out about Derek he wanted to stay married to me and really work on the marriage. If I had been able to keep the idea of Derek from him even for five years and then confessed to him later, maybe we would’ve had a thriving marriage.
Okay, let’s stop there for a second. She is so upset that I had hope before I found out about the third affair (chronologically second affair). She says that if she had been able to keep the idea of Derek secret for five years, then she could just tell me after we’re strong again. Basically, trick me, lie to me and betray me some more so that she can confess it later. Are you guys reading this the same way I am?
Or if I had told him at the beginning of counseling which would’ve been even better, I think that we would still be married today.
How about NOT HAVING FUCKING AFFAIRS IN THE FIRST PLACE? Then, we’d still be married today.
I’m grieving because he now says he has no choice. I’m grieving because he feels like he doesn’t have any options. I grieve the fact that he doesn’t want to work on us. I grieve the fact that he doesn’t want to work on him. I grieve the fact he doesn’t care about how much growth I have made. I’m heartbroken that he doesn’t see my heart.
The old adage is true here. Actions speak louder than words. Her actions of betrayal, lying, cheating and intercourse outside of marriage shows me her hear at that time. No amount of “working on me” is gonna change that.
I’m heartbroken over what we’re losing. Will you please just speak to that somehow? When I try to talk to him we just fight now. He tells me he doesn’t have a choice and takes it back to the stuff I did.
“Takes it back to the ‘stuff I did” The “stuff” you did was flirt, lie, betray, have sex, tell someone you love them, cheat, etc. That “stuff” is 100% what my decision to divorce is based off of.
I don’t think he will ever see it any other way. But I do pray that he will.
Nope. I won’t.
I grieve that he will be all alone and that our dreams have been shattered.
I won’t be alone. I have friends. I will have women in my life. Maybe not right away, but I will. If I want devotion, I will get a dog. Our dreams were shattered by her choosing to have affairs.
I really do believe that we could pursue our dreams together if he was willing to forgive and see the growth and make his own growth.
So, let me get this strait. She breaks every vow, every covenant, every commitment, every ounce of respect or honesty and I have to be willing to forgive?
Am I asking too much?
Yes.
Does that sound like entitlement?
If you have to ask…..
I found out about the 3rd affair she had (or may still be having) with her boss. That was stings a lot because of the combination of betrayal and deception. She purposely hid things with him and even when directly question, lied through her teeth. When people show you who they are, it is our job to believe them.
But I digress.
This post is about love. What is love? What does it mean to have someone love you?
For me, my wife swears that she is madly in love with me. Yet, she had two affairs within the last 12 months. So, I have a really tough time believing that she loves me. But, for argument’s sake, let’s say that she does in fact love me. Then what does that say about love? Doesn’t it say “if someone loves you, they will betray you, lie to you, cheat on you and blame you for it”?
So, I have a best friend of 30 years. He was there for me when Allie had her first affair.
I sent him a text yesterday just to tell him how Allie and I had a little verbal exchange and one of the things that really still gets to me.
While we were arguing, Allie exclaimed, “I was getting my needs met!” She was referring to affairs #2 and #3. This always gets to me. It bugs me because there is a place where she feels justified in having an affair. Imagine me having an affair after our kids were born simply because my sexual needs weren’t being met by my wife. There’s about a 6-week window where the vagina just isn’t up for any action.
So, with Allie’s theory I could simply say, “I was getting my needs met” and she should be okay with it right? I mean, we have three children so that’s about 12 weeks total where my needs weren’t getting met by my wife. So, I should have the liberty to get laid outside of our marriage with no consequence right?
I send the text to my friend and he replies with this:
Apparently she doesn’t like to be reminded she’s wrong or not perfect. She can’t handle the rejection. Or what she thinks is rejection. Her vision of herself is one of perfection. This goes right to what you’ve been saying, that she needs validation. She needs to be right. It is important to her. So important, that she will risk (and lose) everything for that validation and need to be right. If you remind her of a fault or a time she was wrong, you become the enemy. Allie has a screw loose brother. I think if you take out the sex and really assess your 20 years together, you will find a lot of fighting, arguing, finger pointing, inability to meet in the middle. My guess is that you are always wrong. (in her mind)
She thinks validation is a perfect husband. Fit. Earner. Boy Scout. You said both times you gained weight, she strayed. She wanted you to be like Mark. She laughed at your career choice the other day. Bottom line, she doesn’t respect you or how you look, or what you do. Hence the affairs. Respect, keeps her home, faithful. Lack of respect puts you on the curb like trash. This is getting easier to see and diagnose.
This is the MOST insightful thing I have ever read on what is going on. My friend is absolutely correct on all counts. She literally expects perfection. She loves to judge others. And especially me. I have often felt like I was walking on egg shells around her. Not accepted for who I am. But having to squash myself in order to not rock her boat.
My buddy also nails it when he says “Respect keeps her home, faithful. Lack of respect puts you on the curb…”
She really doesn’t respect me at all.
Wrote a note to Allie that I never sent. She said that I was choosing women on Facebook over her.
If you’re just tuning in, Allie had three affairs. This entire blog is about my process through this after finding out on March 20, 2018. Wanna read it? Start here instead.
Here is my response to her that I wrote but never sent. I sent a much shorter response.
The only person I am choosing over you is me.
I am choosing to draw the line and commit to myself. The line is saying that where you went is not okay. What you did, even if it was a symptom, was so destructive that I need some space and time.
I am working on me, my healing, my desires, my dreams, my life, my values.
When I needed you most, during a painful journey with my mom, you abandoned me for Derek. You piled on blame and confused me with your deception. You covered your tracks with lies and betrayed me while breaking our vows and the promise you made me six years ago.
I haven’t even been able to fully process my experience with my mom dying. I wanted to write a small memoir to her but I have been more than distracted by your affairs. I fear by the time I get to really pour myself into grieving her it will be too late.
Then, to make it even worse you added an affair with Mark. You gave yourself fully to him. Fell in love with him and repeated and expanded the betrayal, lies and deception.
And you tell me that I am the one giving up? That it isn’t personal? That it isn’t against me?
I am destroyed by this. So it really feels like it is against me.
I have forever changed. I have lost the ability to believe. Lost the adoration and admiration I had for you. You were better than how you decided to behave. And I deserved way more than how you treated me.
Blaming someone else makes you a victim. Victims are powerless people. Being powerless means that you have no control over a change. Therefore you’re at the mercy of the other person changing to get your need met. In order to get the other person to change, you will manipulate or try to control them. So, you introduce destructive behaviors into a situation in order to get your need met.
Cheaters blame the other person often. Non-scientifically, I would venture to guess that when someone is unfaithful to their spouse, they will 100% blame the other person in one way or another. I wrote about blame some time ago. Basically, the cheater will make a lot of “you” statements. Sounds a lot like these:
There are much better, non-blaming, non-controlling ways to say these things. There are ways to go about expressing feelings, needs and emotions without damaging the relationship
There’s not much more than disappointing than finding out that Allie, my wife of 18 years, had an affair. Allie’s first affair happened just after our 12 year anniversary. Then in March of this year I found out about another affair just after our 18th anniversary. Since that day, it has been a true roller coaster ride of emotions, doubts, fears, questions and hurt.
After her 2nd affair with a guy named Mark, we decided to hire some top counselors. Why did I hire them? Why didn’t I just divorce her and save the money?
I hired them because I wanted to make sure. I wanted to live with no regrets whatsoever. Basically I needed to know that I did everything in my power to consider the marriage before divorce.
During counseling, we made some gains. Allie’s position has been that she wants to work on our marriage. Seems completely unreasonable doesn’t it? Yeah, it does to me too. So, she sees herself in the last 6-7 months as working really hard to become a different person, a better wife, etc. However, she was skipping exercises that the counselors would assign and she wasn’t doing the homework that they say would be required to get better.
I also knew something was missing. Call it intuition, call it suspicion. But trust your gut right?
When people cheat, they are very, very manipulative. They tell you what a horrible person you are to justify what a horrible person they’re being. It’s projection, manipulation and totally not authentic.
So, we had a great meeting with counselors the Friday before Labor Day. At that meeting, I wrote her a three or four page letter forgiving her of the affair with Mark. I let go of everything I could think of that I was holding onto.
So that weekend, I had a real moment (day or two) of beginning to trust her again. It’s been six months post affair at this point. On Labor Day I was going to my work out. I asked Allie about her boss just before leaving. I have had a suspicion about something happening between them. She denied it. Then on the four minute drive to my gym, she called me and admitted that the two of them had in fact kissed. (see the whole story here) Of course it was much more than a kiss and that day, I sank…again.
I sank with disappointment. It stomped out any hope I had for salvaging our marriage. It wasn’t much hope, but I had some. Like a tiny ember that “might” start a fire if tended to. Crushed me. Again.
After reading about the disappointment, I want to bring up the other part of the title of this post. Affirmation.
When you’re making the biggest decision of your life, you can hear all of the advice you want from friends and family. But largely, a decision to divorce doesn’t really affect them. Especially my closest friend of 30 years. So the advice they give has to be taken with a grain of salt. No, this choice is yours and yours alone. (unless of course, she’s already left you)
But with Allie asking, practically begging, me to stay with her, this choice had been weighing very heavily on me and my thought life. I was completely consumed by this decision as it would have profound impact on me and my three sons.
That day, however, the decision was made. I am fairly certain I had made the decision back in March of 2018, but today it was iron clad. The information about the 3rd affair was the straw that was piled onto the already broken camel’s back. It affirmed my decision, strengthened my resolve and solidified the choice that I was so damned afraid to make. Basically, when you question if you’re making the right choice, something can come along and say to you, “you’re damned right you are!!”
So if you’re out there reading this know this one thing. You are worth way more than a cheating spouse has treated you. It is going to be lonely and hard, but you have to value yourself more than valuing your insecurities.
I was chatting with one of my FB friends. We will call her Ainsley. She is going through a similar thing with her husband. Her hubby cheated a while back and treated her like shit. Now, she wants out and her husband is being super nice and saying he’s changed.
She messaged me this morning and what she hit on was so profound that I had to write about it.
Any of you who’ve been through having an unfaithful spouse knows the direct blame game that they play. They make a lot of “you” statements and I wrote about blame here and here. In a nutshell, the person who was faithful will often come out blaming themselves for the marital difficulties and even the affairs. Often, the faithful spouse will think, “I could have met their needs better. I could have been a better husband or wife. I could have done better.” That is all complete bullshit. And I wrote about not blaming yourself here.
“You” Statements are a form of direct blame.
There are hundreds more. But they all mean the same thing. “You’re responsible for my actions.” And that shit don’t play. It’s too bad that we will take on that responsibility on ourselves. I did with Allie’s first affair.
Here’s where Ainsley’s messages to me today were so profound. I had a light bulb go off in my head reading through what she was saying.
Ainsley said this to me today.
This is the bargaining tool my husband keeps using too. He has “changed”….they chose to do things that cannot be taken back knowing exactly what the consequences are of that action. So as much as my husband is trying to guilt me by saying he has changed and she [Allie] is trying to do the same. It is not our fault.
For the past several months, Allie has been seemingly remorseful and repentant. She keeps telling me how much she has changed and how her eyes are open to what she did.
Here’s the subtle blame though and the profound part of Ainsley’s message. Basically because the cheater has “changed” they throw a lot of guilt your way because you haven’t accepted that change. You can’t see the “work” they’ve put in to be a better person. Here are some direct quotes from Allie to me via text. See if you can spot the subtle blame in each of these messages:
Keep in mind, I think that Allie believes the things she is saying. But the underlying tone to each of these is quite intentional. They are blaming me for not accepting her back. Heck, she’s apologized. So, what more does she need to do?
She’s loved me and been strong and prayed for me. She’s poured herself out to me and renounced the multiple external relationships with other men. How in the world is it that I can’t accept that and just get over it?
That’s the blame. That the subversive, ugly part of this. Let me break it down to very simple terms:
She cheats and blames me. Then she says she’s sorry and blames me for not being willing to move on like it never happened.
Thank you Ainsley. Your messages over the past couple days are completely eye opening.
Probably the single most damaging thing to a marriage relationship when there is infidelity is deception. You see deception requires an illusion. It requires that a partner trusts his spouse completely. He not only trusts her, but he believes her. He believes that there simply is NO WAY she would be the type of person to cheat. Wouldn’t happen.
The cheating spouse knows that he believes her 100%. She knows that he trusts her which is the ONLY way that deception stands a chance. You see, if someone doesn’t trust another person, then they will do things to guard themselves. If you don’t trust your spouse for example, you may build up emotional walls, you might track their phone, you might pay careful attention to them to see their next move.
But when you believe and trust your spouse, you give them complete freedom and equality. You trust that with that freedom, that openness, and that equality they will take the responsibility to stay faithful.
synonyms:
swindle, defraud, cheat, trick, hoodwink, hoax, dupe, take in, mislead, delude, fool, outwit, lead on, inveigle, beguile, double-cross, gull; informal con, bamboozle, do, gyp, diddle, rip off, shaft, pull a fast one on, take for a ride, pull the wool over someone’s eyes, sucker, snooker, stiff
Without mutual respect, trust, honesty and openness, the relationship is not there. Not really. So much closeness is required to deceive a spouse. The scary part of this is that a husband may give all of his trust and belief to his wife and she’s plotting against him.
Once discovered, the deception can shatter his sense of reality. It is extremely damaging to say the least. The betrayed spouse can suffer from PISD (Post-Infidelity Stress Disorder) and they can have dangerous adrenaline and other hormone cocktails released in their bodies. The stress cannot be understated.
The reality is that a wife who purposely damages her husband’s sense of reality is immoral. The betrayed spouse’s sense of truth, significance, certainty, respect, trust, honor, dignity and love are all destroyed instantly. There is not really an adequate way to heal from it.
Affairs and deception are the best way to destroy another person. They change the relationship forever. Period. You can never go back and have any semblance of what was there before. That is gone. Even remorse doesn’t “fix” it because of the lies and deception.
It is ugly. Hideous. It is insidious. It partners with the enemy of morality and it destroys.
Someone who trusts another person with everything is vulnerable. And in that vulnerability, their spouse betrays them. That part is the most damaging.