SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Hi All,

I know there are a lot of people in this thread right now, and everyone here (just like everyone on this site) is in pain.
Let's try to remember this as we communicate. I don't want to sound patronizing at all, please don't take it this way, I just want everyone to remember that on the other side of the computer, we are all humans in deep pain, who are all coming here for support in improving ourselves.

I believe everyone in this thread, WS, BS, MH alike, are all here for improvement and healing. And I largely believe everyone is saying essentially the same things, but those points aren't getting across.

We can all agree that a WS, usually due to adverse childhood experiences, lack certain characteristics that led to value violations and causing pain to their BS. I know there are some particulars being discussed, but ultimately we can agree on this?

I'll throw my hat in the ring: I grew up in an abusive household with an alcoholic and drug addicted mother and neglectful father. I mainly lived with my mother, so I learned to escape through fantasy to survive the abuse. I have a fake family in my head that I have always visited when I feel unsafe. I also have a lack of boundaries and people please, because I am so desperate to not lose anyone in my life due to my extreme fear of abandonment - it would bring me back to being stranded alone in my mom's apartment with no food because she was passed out for days.

I was also SA'd at 14 by an older guy who locked me in his car and attempted to r*pe me. I escaped before that, but enough damage was done. I kept all of this information secret. (I learned to keep secrets to avoid punishments).

This hurricane of issues culminated in me leaving for college at 18 years old (my boyfriend and future husband still in high school), and when I was all alone in a place I didn't know anyone, all of those feelings came rushing back. Thank you, C-PTSD. When another guy was aggressively pursuing me and eventually held me down and SA'd me, I took that as validation that someone wanted me so much because I was special. The fantasy I had always used to escape my pain had come true. So I continued seeing this guy. My fawn reflex really kicked in here. I was atrociously cheating on my boyfriend, and I was appalled at myself.

I tried to break up with my boyfriend, but he grabbed my arms and wouldn't let me leave. He jumped on my car to prevent me from driving away. And I didn't have the boundaries or self worth to push harder. Isn't that what I always wanted? People to want me, and to not be alone?

After this shameful infidelity was over, I was horrified with myself. What a monster, how can I ever look in the mirror? How can I ever make it up to my boyfriend? I would be everything to him. I would keep the secret, my shame, and not put it on his shoulders. I would make his life amazing. Continued wayward thinking, continued selfishness.

Did I betray my values? Absolutely, horrifically. Did I hurt my partner? Atrociously, yes. Does this justify anything I did? Not at all. I simply need to figure out what characteristics I lacked so I can change them, and ensure I never hurt anyone again.
I am now rebuilding myself, telling the entire truth, releasing all secrets, and receiving intensive therapy. I would like to say that my values are honesty and fidelity. I betrayed these values, but they are still my values and I will never betray them again.

Unhinged and PrettyLies- I am absolutely not attacking here in any way, but it seems as though you have both betrayed values of fidelity and honesty as well.
Unhinged, you have committed infidelity multiple times (going on a date, kissing/touching women). I did not have intercourse with my AP, but it was still infidelity. The boundaries that Ghostie was saying people should be careful about are exactly the boundaries that would have prevented these infidelities. Anyone can be found in a "predicament", we all have the responsibility to avoid these situations. Being alone with the opposite/attracted sex, going on a "date", etc.
PrettyLies, although you have not cheated on a partner, you were the OW. This does betray the values of fidelity and honesty, but I'm sure you still have those as values now?
We have all done hurtful things we would not repeat. I am the first to say that my actions are far worse than both of yours, so please do not think I am comparing myself to you at all. I was egregiously unfaithful. But we are all humans, here for improvement. I am thankful to learn from the introspective and intelligent BS and WS here on SI, including you both. I am deeply sorry for any pain everyone here is experiencing, and I hope you all continue on your paths of improvement.

Thank you, heartbroken.

I will say, I genuinely feel so much better after the most recent turn this conversation has taken. I’m trying to figure out why that is. It feels really important, but I can’t put my finger on it.

heartbroken12345

I see you did some research and digging lol. Which is fine, and not really a "gotcha" because even in this thread, I admitted that I’ve done some things that I’m not proud of. That was one of them. That was the first time I had IC, to get myself together.

What I also said here is that I have worked with professionals to be a better person and grow from the person I was. And I have said that I leaned that my wounds and traumas do not give me the right to bleed on other people.. And whenever I felt like I needed more help, I sought help from professionals again. And again.

But my goal the first time, was to start the journey to dealing with myself and be the best person I could be. And that took me sorting things out and being honest with myself, and learning how to be a person of integrity among other things, because that was really important to me, and has been ever since.

What you probably read when you looked up my post history, was me wondering if what my partner did to me, was some kind of karma for what I did when I was much younger. Maybe it was karma, maybe it wasn’t. Posters tried to tell me that regardless of what I did years before I ever met him, I still didn’t deserve for him to betray me like he did. I’m still not sure what the answer is.

All I tried initially to say in this thread, was how important honesty is in relationships. And things went downhill from there. But you already know that and how it happened, since you not only read it, but went looking for a reason and way to try to call me out for speaking my mind on the OP’s situation, and saying that I won’t cheat on someone I’m in a monogamous relationship with. I even said on my last post here, that therapy is the reason and what gave me the tools to not be that person, and a person of integrity instead.

Some things really are better addressed in IC, than a message board on the Internet. And I will leave that at that, saying what I’m not saying.

And while you were checking my posting history, your time probably would’ve been served better investigating another certain someone.

All I’m saying is that people don’t always know what issues they have to be clued in that they should seek therapy. "Sleeper issues" is what I’ve been calling them. That’s why it takes waywards a lot of time and effort to find the deep whys.

I do think we secretly agree on these things, PrettyLies. Maybe that’s where the good feels (relief? Glee?) are coming from.

ETA maybe my meds are kicking in

[This message edited by Ghostie at 4:16 AM, Tuesday, December 2nd]

No, I never told my girlfriend. Maybe it was a rationalization on my part that it was close to cheating but not really that bad. I could have stayed that night, had sex, breakfast in the morning, etc. But I didn't.

Gently, that does sound like classic WS rationalization. If your GF had gotten kissy and handsy with a naked friend in her bed, and then cut it off short of full sex, would you have agreed that it wasn't relevant information to share with you? If you really believed that it was a small matter, why did you hide it rather than fess up and give her the agency to decide what to do for herself?

My husband was 18 when he cheated on me in a drunken grope session with his sister's best friend. I was 19, going on 20, when I had my affair. I've heard people argue that people that age aren't responsible for the dumb shit they do, but he and I knew right from wrong then as well as we know it now. That's why both of us tried to confess. Unfortunately, we also chickened out and TT'd each other. But as we've seen, plenty of fully grown adults do that, too.

ETA: I hope you know I don't mean to come at you personally! It's more that this is a topic I've grappled with on my own, given that I became a WS at such a young age. Every now and again, I'll see a BS mention casually that they've done something in the past that would qualify them as a WS or madhatter on SI if they had done it in their current relationship. If my BH and I had broken up instead of getting married, and then I arrived here as a betrayed spouse in a subsequent relationship, would I have a clean slate? Even if I never worked through the issues that allowed me to cheat in the first place? Is there an age cutoff where betrayal goes from "not counting" to "counting?" Or does it never count if the relationship is in the past? It may be a topic worthy of its own thread.

[This message edited by BraveSirRobin at 3:12 PM, Tuesday, December 2nd]

Unhinged, you have committed infidelity multiple times (going on a date, kissing/touching women). I did not have intercourse with my AP, but it was still infidelity.

Twice in my life I've found myself in precarious situations. In both instances I was surprised and overwhelmed. In both instances, I quickly shut it down.

The first, I was 17yo and it was two months or so after discovering my first girl friend, my first love, had cheated with one of my best friends. The female friend (a friend of a friend, actually) had a crush on me and sought to take advantage of the situation. I quickly shut it down, although I'll freely admit not quickly enough.

Gently, that does sound like classic WS rationalization. If your GF had gotten kissy and handsy with a naked friend in her bed, and then cut it off short of full sex, would you have agreed that it wasn't relevant information to share with you? If you really believed that it was a small matter, why did you hide it rather than fess up and give her the agency to decide what to do for herself?

We were not naked in bed. The entire incident lasted a few minutes before I bolted like a bat out of hell.

I don't recall believing it was a date. We were friends. Accepting her dinner invitation was foolish and naive. I don't recall ever thinking that it might be more than that.

Why didn't I tell my girlfriend at the time? Fear. Selfishness. Pure and simple.

I've had women hit on me many other times while in a relationship or not, which has honestly always baffled me. I'm about as average as average can be. Average looking, height, weight. I was in good shape in my youth, a swimmer, worked out, but never extraordinary. I even think my self-confidence is rather average.

The only reason I shared any of this is because Ghostie was insistent that we are all capable of infidelity given the right (wrong) circumstances. In some ways I agree with this. The difference between being tempted and following through is a need we cannot fulfill within ourselves. I never felt like I needed to blow-up my life.

There's no judgement here.

I don't think most people who cheat are horrible people worthy of condemnation. We all have issues that can trip us up throughout our lives. That's just human nature and being human is hard.

Ghostie, I think you are correct about the "sleeper issues" becoming crystal clear when the shit hits the fan. I'm quite certain my exww never understood her powerful codependent tendencies until she self-destructed because of them.

You've self-destructed and blown-up your life. It happens. I can't tell you how long you "should" feel bad about it. That's for you to figure out. If those feelings are enough to motivate you to address those sleeper issues, then that's good enough, I suppose.

At some point, I think, explaining all of this to your husband will help him to understand, recover and heal, and reconcile.

[This message edited by Unhinged at 4:31 PM, Tuesday, December 2nd]

Unhinged was young and not married at the time of his infidelity. I am fairly certain having a marriage end due to infidelity and his son having to split between homes is going to be enough that even the most minor transgressions will be avoided in his future relationships.

There is a bit of litigation happening here of levels of infidelity. I get it. We may have members of the audience who just haven’t cheated yet.

You are in the level of more of an emotional affair because you did not have sex with your AP.

I had mostly an emotional affair but did have sex with my AP 3 times over the course of a business trip and the affair lasted two months.

My husband had sex 3-5 times a week with his Ap in our house for over a year.

Likely the impact was similiar in many of these cases - it was devastating to the person who was betrayed

While it’s great that you are working in this before a physical boundary was crossed, I suspect if left undiscovered you likely would have kept escalating the behavior and that is what haunts your husband. I didn’t have sex with my Ap in that first business trip either, though he made it known he was interested in that. Had we not been discovered I know the count would have gone up despite the thousand miles between us. Because affairs sort of have their own momentum.

I would agree that vigilance is important over our boundaries with the opposite sex.

I do think some people know they would never cheat, and have had that tested in their life. I do know without a shadow of a doubt I would never cheat again, the outcome is always horrific and not worth it at all, and I do think I have addressed most of the issues that led to it and allowed it.

I think that you do not like to be judged - who does- but there is a lot of judgment coming from you in these posts. I especially feel where you said that some bs will not reconcile because of who they are. That comes off as victim blaming. I happen to have watched a lot of these people’s story unfold, some could not get over it and stay, sure. But that is a natural outcome of infidelity. Many would tell you that the infidelity wasn’t the whole nail in the coffin but how their ws proceeded afterwards.

More often than not, what actually happens is their ws did not want to address it for whatever reason. Many of those ws went to IC, read books, etc. but when push came to shove, especially in inkhulk’s situation, the ws could not let go of their resentments or go about the marital issues from new directions. They could not find space for their bs’s true areas pain, and they approached things like they already had fixed themselves ion e they could tell you a few of their whys, when in reality that takes a much longer time than most people would guess to begin to address them so perceptions can change.

And in reality, I was that ws too. Most of us are for some period after discovery. We know we fucked up, and it feels good to know we are working on it, but more of that is spinning your wheels at first than you might think. It’s only by the grace of God that I am still married today because I faltered in most of these areas at first too.

I still to this day discover things about myself that I need to work on. Recovery and Reconciliation requires a lot of humility on the ws side for things really to start to work and true progress to be made. And a lot of that progress is quiet, individual, and takes a while to trickle into the relationship. It takes even longer for the bs to believe what they are seeing.

Evidence of whether you do it right isn’t the marital outcome. I have known a few ws over the years here that did work on themselves hard but in the end did not choose to stay married and they were the ones to initiate divorce. I have spoken behind the scenes to abused women who cheated because that’s the only way that saw out. I have seen unrepentant ws who basically make their reasons about the marriage get to stay married, but likely to the great expense of their spouse. It still may be a number of years before they get divorced and I doubt some of them will even relate it to issues that also had led to the affair.

I am saying focus less on getting an A, and more on really digging in. Because you deserve to see how good life can get. You deserve to see the power you have over your own happiness and time. It’s okay to realize there is a mountain ahead of you.

I know how hard it is to lean into that, because the only way I knew for a long time to deal with chaos is to either succumb to it or control what I could. I think you are a control what you can kind of person, that is your coping style. You want to control public opinion of you in an anonymous forum (I did the same- for me that was how I initially sought redemption- I don’t think that part is the same motivator for you). You want to focus on the things at home you can control.

You can even articulate why being understood is so important to you, but that doesn’t even seem to be an issue you see as related to your affair or one that you are actively working on. Instead you tell us- this is how I am and why. There is a lot of digging in that alone and then begins the hard work of trying to be mindful of it, and figuring out how it contributes to your self worth, and how that plays out at home. And the hardest part of all is changing it, figuring out how to remove the trigger button so you can self validate no matter what anyone else thinks. That’s when you will truly be in your power and the need to control the other stuff will start to subside.

It’s okay to surrender a little more so you can become more curious, more questioning. I think right now you are just still in damage control, and that’s a normal stage. I am not judging you for it, I am trying to illuminate it for you because there were people here doing that for me back then. It takes a long time to form the answers to all of it and you still have to come across the questions.

And because we don’t know each other in real life, I fully admit I could have this all wrong. I only ask you to self examine and decide for yourself with a true desire to see where that awareness can take you.

This is not about proving to us that you are normal and generally good. We are all light and shadows. Very few of us who have had affairs thought we would. But it’s a wake up call to a better life with a more balanced perspective and more peace if you let it be that. Keep going, keep wrestling. I started off this way in this forum, but the longer I stayed the more I started to become self aware. Write for you. Answer what you want, and leave the rest. You owe no one a response.

Figuring out our relationship with ourselves makes all this stuff so much easier. I promise. You are very smart but not all of this is meant to be an intellectual exercise.

[This message edited by hikingout at 6:12 PM, Tuesday, December 2nd]

Unhinged,

a few minutes

I'm just saying... "a few minutes" is a long time. That's not just a woman leaning in to kiss you, and you freezing and not kissing her back, or immediately pushing her away. And I think you knew even at the time that you had crossed a line and done something that would have hurt your girlfriend, so you avoided telling her... I don't mean to harp on this to make you feel bad about it or anything (especially after re-reading your other responses here and realizing that you have been kind to me... Sorry for lashing out at you earlier!), I just think it's a really good example of believing that you never could, when you definitely could.

I mean like even with myself, I somehow convinced myself that this most recent affair was "the first time," when the reality was this is the [counts on fingers] fourth (?) incidence of infidelity, and it took a lot of honesty with myself to even recover memories of prior incidences. I'm still not even absolutely certain I recall everything, though I very much want to come clean about it all. Like hikingout said, it's most likely true that you won't commit infidelity again in future relationships after everything you've been through. I'm just saying, it's not impossiblefor you, and it's worth it to monitor yourself and put boundaries in place to actively make sure it doesn't happen again...

{to everyone in general}

Like if you think of us standing on one end of a football field (sorry to the non-American readers), and the 100 yard line on the other end, between the field and the end zone, is the boundary one must not cross in order to remain faithful to one's partner... We can decide to stay 100 yards away from that line at all times, if we want to, and provided we can do that, the likelihood of crossing into infidelity approaches zero. (This is the approach PrettyLies described.) But maybe some combination of circumstances takes you a little bit closer to that line (what ever it is-- marital issues, internal issues, unplanned and/or unavoidable interactions with tempting people, what have you), maybe within the last few yards, like a hurricane-force wind pushing you down the field. Are your morals, values, principles, respect and love for yourself and your partner, etc., enough to keep you from being blown over the line? Do you want to actually risk finding out, just to preserve the belief that you "could never?" What if, like me, you were wrong about how strong they were, and then had to deal with the devastating consequences of crossing the line? What if instead, we kept an eye on our footing and noticed when we started moving closer (introspection and self monitoring), and took action to dig in where we were or pull ourselves back to the far side of the field (enforcing protective, pre-established boundaries), well clear of the line, so we don't have to find out whether those things will save us, just in the however small chance that they fail?

I'm not speaking to anyone's character, or comparing different instances of infidelities and "how bad" they each are, when I'm putting out this warning. As I said, I sincerely believe it is a vulnerability to believe oneself incapable of infidelity, as I did, and I quite simply don't want that vulnerability for myself or anyone else. Do not allow yourself to walk up to the line believing you would/could/will never cross it.

{back to Unhinged}

I never felt like I needed to blow-up my life.

Neither did I. Many WS don't ever feel that way either.

At some point, I think, explaining all of this to your husband will help him to understand, recover and heal, and reconcile.

I've been trying to. I don't think he is in a place right now where he can take it all in. For example, I've been trying to explain that my low self-worth probably lead me to interpret the situation pre- and during the affair as him having lost interest and desire in me, when the reality was just that he was experiencing low sex drive as a result of a poor diet and lack of adequate sleep, and then that he suspected the affair and consequently didn't want sex with me. So when I started sexting AP and couldn't stop, it wasn't because our sex life was lacking or that I actually desired sex with someone else; it because AP provided a (rather shitty) substitute feeling of desirability that I wanted to come from BH all along (that really should have been coming from myself.) But in BH's mind, he still thinks that our sex wasn't "good enough" for me to want exclusive sexual interaction with him. That he was never special enough to have "tamed" my previous promiscuity... I'm trying to get him to see that that's not the case at all, but it's just not being received. The doubt and fear and insidious insecurity that my betrayal caused are still taking up too much space in his mind to process what I'm saying, I think. I am just trying to wait for it to pass, and be reassuring in the meantime.

---

Hikingout,

I suspect if left undiscovered you likely would have kept escalating the behavior and that is what haunts your husband.

That's what he suspects too. What really sucks is that I'm fairly certain that AP wouldn't have shown up on the weekend that he said he would, as he was being evasive about the details, and then that lie (ironically) would have been the last straw for me and given me the final bit of impetus I needed to break things off... I often wish BH wouldn't have looked through my text messages and discovered the affair when he did, so I would've at least known if I would have broken it off, but now we will never know. As his grandad says, "shit in one hand and wish in the other, and see which hand fills up first." (Not eloquent, but effective.) As I acknowledged earlier, the effect is all the same, and all that matters now is the damage and pain that I caused with what I did do.

I do think some people know they would never cheat, and have had that tested in their life

There's been tons of times that attractive people have made moves on me, and I easily refused them because I was partnered or married. And several instances where I didn't say no... I just don't think people have experienced every combination of internal and external circumstances to be able to say with any sort of certainty what they would or wouldn't do in every situation, that they "would/could never." I think it's much better to say "most likely would/could not," and then still make sure that they don't.

I think a lot of people also have misconceptions about how infidelity starts. You don't necessarily have to go consciously seeking it out on an app or in a club, looking to take someone home. Lots of people would genuinely never do that. But it can disguise itself, often as innocent friendships, and get close to you when you are weak and vulnerable (again, in the right combination of circumstances,) and then suddenly strike... That's why a lot of WS commit infidelity and find themselves going, "Oh fuck... What did I do? How did I get here??"

I think that you do not like to be judged - who does- but there is a lot of judgment coming from you in these posts. I especially feel where you said that some bs will not reconcile because of who they are. That comes off as victim blaming.

Oh no, I'm not judging at all. What I meant is that some people are just wired to not be able to get over it, no matter how hard they try or how much they want to. It's not their fault at all... I just think that affects the amount that their "WS should do this" type-advice can be trusted. We all see things through the lenses of what we feel and experience. It's not meant to be a dig at them personally.

Evidence of whether you do it right isn’t the marital outcome.

I understand that.

I think you are a control what you can kind of person, that is your coping style.

Yeah, that's an accurate assessment. I logically know that I need to be patient and give both of us time to heal and grow, but the part of me that has a need for control is constantly anxious and looking for things that can ensure or hurry up the R&R process, when those things don't really exist. I'm trying my best to soothe it, but I'm not quite sure the best way to do that.

You want to control public opinion of you in an anonymous forum (I did the same).

Less accurate. I don't care what a bunch of anonymous strangers online think of me. I wouldn't have been able to be as honest as I have, in socially unacceptable ways, if I did. I speak truthfully about my perceived experiences; it's not a "narrative." I want them to hear what I'm saying, and think about infidelity in general, WS, and how best to support them differently.

You can even articulate why being understood is so important to you, but that doesn’t even seem to be an issue you see as related to your affair or one that you are actively working on. Instead you tell us- this is how I am and why. There is a lot of digging in that alone and then begins the hard work of trying to be mindful of it, and figuring out how it contributes to your self worth, and how that plays out at home.

I hadn't thought of that. I'll need some time to ponder that, and bring my musings before my therapist. (The session went well today. I have a lot of hope for this one!)

Figuring out our relationship with ourselves makes all this stuff so much easier. I promise. You are very smart but not all of this is meant to be an intellectual exercise.

Thank you. I will try to keep that in mind.

I do not understand what anyone stands to gain from clinging to the belief that they are incapable of infidelity. I suspect it is to preserve the ego and the belief that they are "good people" and that that inability to commit infidelity is necessary to being a "good person;" simply not committing it is not good enough. They must consider themselves literally unable to qualify for "goodness."

Is that right?

We were not naked in bed. The entire incident lasted a few minutes before I bolted like a bat out of hell.

Apologies, Unhinged. It looks like I was mixing up two incidents and thought you were in a relationship with someone else when your naked friend crawled into bed with you at 17.

Why didn't I tell my girlfriend at the time? Fear. Selfishness. Pure and simple.

Yeah, those are always the drivers. My deception was deeply rooted in fear of what I had to lose.

I do not understand what anyone stands to gain from clinging to the belief that they are incapable of infidelity. I suspect it is to preserve the ego and the belief that they are "good people" and that that inability to commit infidelity is necessary to being a "good person;" simply not committing it is not good enough. They must consider themselves literally unable to qualify for "goodness."

I’m going to dip my toe back here because I lied, I am interested. Also frustrated, but that is on me to manage. If you want me to stop commenting, just say so and I’ll stay away.

There is a "know your audience" element to your question. You aren’t talking about the general population here, you are talking about the sub-set of people who have a need to be in an infidelity forum. Maybe if you were asking this about the uninitiated your explanation would be correct for a decent number of them. It is said often here that until you’ve experienced the pain of infidelity, you have no clue how awful it is. I believe that is true. So when you are talking to people who have witnessed the devastation, either in themselves or in their partner, that ignorance is gone. And as such, I believe when a BS, or a former WS for that matter, says they could never do it, a big part of that is saying they could never knowingly inflict that suffering on a loved one, nor debase themselves so horrendously. And in the same way that I can confidently say I wouldn’t murder my children, I believe people here when they say it.

Maybe there is still some "I’m inherently better"-ness out there. But I’ve been here for over three years now and I can honestly say that I have not sensed it as a significant theme.

I don’t think I’m better than you. I also don’t need you to save me from my self. I think you would get more from your time on SI if you shifted your focus in line with hikingout’s suggestions. I genuinely wish you well.

I am not a psychologist but it sounds to me that you are trying to be replacing your shame, with a sort of selfish pride. You're not saying
'I'm above ever cheating' but you ARE sounding like you are saying 'Yes I broke my integrity but no more than you do'. (Keep in mind that 'no more than you' is often taken to mean 'and probably even less than'.)

Kind of an aside: Unfortunately people are always going to judge us especially when we sin. It's been that way since the beginning of time. I don't see how this will benefit you, keeping on trying to fight this.

By the way, I don't recall anyone here saying they are incapable of infidelity--saying 'I was in the same bad marriage as my WS and I didn't cheat' is not quite the same thing. Neither is it posters on here expressing their anger for your BH.

[This message edited by WontBeFooledAgai at 9:44 PM, Tuesday, December 2nd]

People have said, verbatim, that they "could never" commit infidelity. Quite often, actually, and they will push back if you disagree with them about it.

What I am saying is that I thought I had integrity before the affair. Probably believed it just as much as the people insisting they "could never." And if I hadn’t believed that I could walk right up to the line and not cross it because of that supposed integrity, maybe I wouldn’t be here. That’s the case for many other people who ended up cheating as well.

I am asking the questions, "How do you know? And why do you hold those beliefs?"

To me, the cost/benefit analysis of holding that belief, that one is literally incapable of infidelity, is not at all worth the risk of letting one’s guard down, and the consequences that could follow.

I am not saying "You should think that you will commit infidelity," or implying anything about anyone else’s character. I am saying "You should consider it a possibility that you might, and operate as if you could, so that you make sure you don’t." And like I said, I don’t think there’s any shame in believing you could do it; that’s entirely different than actually doing it.

It’s not about me at all, or bringing anyone else "down." (What good would that do me? None) I already did it. I don’t want other people to fall into the same pitfall I did. As I mentioned before, it is commendable to never have cheated before, and those who haven’t should be proud of themselves. But believing they are not capable comes with unnecessary risk.

I would literally rather die than go through the aftermath of my infidelity again. I’m still forever going to operate as if I could do it again. Because I don’t want to do it again, and I owe it to myself, my husband, and my family to actively make sure I don’t. I recommend this mindset to everyone.

I do not understand what anyone stands to gain from clinging to the belief that they are incapable of infidelity.

Why does this bother so much? Do you really care what others believe about themselves?

[This message edited by Unhinged at 10:25 PM, Tuesday, December 2nd]

And if I hadn’t believed that I could walk right up to the line and not cross it because of that supposed integrity, maybe I wouldn’t be here.

What exactly do you mean by walk right up to the line? You’ve said it more than once.

I don’t want other people to fall into the same pitfall I did. As I mentioned before, it is commendable to never have cheated before, and those who haven’t should be proud of themselves. But believing they are not capable comes with unnecessary risk.

This is commendable and kind. I agree that black and white certainty on a matter like this puts people at unnecessary risk and would allow them to sneak up to the goal line (to borrow your football field analogy).

But I’m going to say one more time: I don’t need you to save me from myself. Neither does PrettyLies or the Dr. Maybe WBFA could use it Your point is taken. I really recommend you move on to more self reflection and the hard work ahead of you. It’s a more profitable use of your limited time. It benefits you, your husband, your child. Your efforts are so much better spent on that than trying to convince strangers to be more careful, IMHO.

My affair started when I was away for two weeks for work. There was one building in the entire area that had air conditioning and Wi-Fi, so pretty much everyone went there between shifts… I would go there to sit alone and read, and my AP, with whom I was working, kept plopping himself down at my table and striking up a conversation.

And it was wonderful, enjoyable conversation, about our work, our interests, our lives, our experiences, our goals, hopes, dreams… It was the kind of conversation and connection I was starving for back at home, where I had no adults to talk to. In hindsight, these conversations were very much like first dates. But at the time, I just thought I had made a friend, and I allowed myself to continue talking to him for hours and hours at a time. I ignored the growing, gnawing feeling in my gut that this wasn’t right, that we were developing an inappropriate amount of intimacy. When I started developing feelings, I dismissed the alarm bells with "We’re just friends. He probably doesn’t feel the same way about you… When he bought you that coffee, it was just a friendly thing to do, right? And our other peers are assholes; that’s probably why he’s chatting with me instead… Besides, I love my husband. I would never do anything to hurt him…"

And when it came time for me to leave, and I didn’t want to say goodbye because I had grown attached, a voice in my head was screaming "Don’t give him your number!" But I told myself we were still just friends, and that we lived too far away from one another for anything to happen, and I love my husband, and I’m not a cheater…and so I made some bullshit excuse that I needed him to look after my people that were leaving later than I was, and exchanged contact info… and it all went down the drain from there.

I might have listened to the gnawing and the alarm bells and those voices if I believed I could cheat on my husband. I don’t think my pride let me believe that about myself, that I could do something so horrible. And then unusual circumstance, internal issues, and marital issues combined in a stupid perfect storm such that I ended up doing it.

Don’t let it happen to you.

You do realize the irony of cautioning people against infidelity on a website dedicated to surviving infidelity, right?