SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I’ve been reflecting on my recent post and some of the responses, and I found myself thinking about the discussion around details.

A few people mentioned that more details about my affair would help provide context or make it easier to offer advice. I completely understand that perspective — details can matter, and context can be helpful.

Maybe I’m thinking about this weirdly, but when people say they need more details, is it less about the affair itself and more about understanding the self-discovery piece? I’m curious what people are looking for in those details — context about what happened, insight into why it happened, understanding of accountability, or something else?

For me, the bigger question isn’t just "what happened?" but "what does someone do with what happened once they are trying to grow and change?"

I’m genuinely interested in hearing different perspectives.

It really depends on what your primary goal is here.

While focusing on long-term growth and change is crucial, what actually happened is still deeply relevant.

Sharing those details helps the community provide much more tailored advice, and it gives everyone a clearer window into both your headspace and your husband’s.

To put it in perspective:
A drunken, single-occurrence one-night stand carries a very different dynamic, betrayal trauma, and path forward than a long-term, calculated romantic affair.

Similarly, a purely physical affair impacts a relationship's foundation quite differently than an emotional affair built on shared intimacy and deceit.

When people ask for context, it’s usually because the "why" and "how" are inseparable from the self-discovery process you're talking about. You can't fully map out real accountability or behavioral change without looking directly at the specifics of what needs changing.
On a side note: your husband's response to all of this is genuinely interesting. Hearing how and why he arrived at his current perspective so quickly could offer incredible insight to other members here—both betrayed and wayward partners alike. Ultimately, though, it’s not your job to unpack his process for the forum unless you choose to.

If you're comfortable sharing a bit more of the backdrop, it will help us give you far more specific, actionable feedback rather than generic advice but it's entirely up to you.

Completely disagree with DrS. I don't think we need to know the details of your affair to help you. To us, they're completely irrelevant.

When you have questions about growth and healing, reconciliation or divorce, we can offer advice and guidance.

Well-- and I'm sure this sounds kind of silly-- personally the details of my story mattered because I felt like infidelity "snuck up on me." Like, I didn't go looking for an affair; it kind of just found me, and I had to parse out exactly what happened, where exactly I started making the wrong choices, what made me vulnerable to making the wrong choices, and how I was going to make better choices going forward. Sharing the details with this community helped steer me away from external factors and towards the internal whys, and I learned that much of what I was missing in my marriage were things that I could give myself. It also mattered to acknowledge that I was a serial cheater, because there are different and broader patterns there, and I've had to confront that this most recent time wasn't just "a moment of weakness." There were things severely wrong with my character and modi opperandi.

You don't have to share anything you don't want to. Just know that what you've done most likely isn't the worst thing this community's ever heard of, and even if it is, we'll do our best to support you so you move out of infidelity one way or another.

DrScoolers, I do understand where you’re coming from. Especially early on, I can see how details help people understand context — where choices shifted, where vulnerabilities existed, and what needs work. I think my question is more about what happens after someone has started identifying those things. As the work moves from understanding the why into actually changing, do the details serve the same purpose?

Unhinged, thank you for the support. I appreciate the reminder that there’s a community here when those questions come up and as I continue figuring out what healing looks like.

Haha, GotTheMorbs, I think this is where I may be looking at it a little differently. My affair isn’t really some deep, dark, convoluted secret. I regret my choices and have a lot of remorse for the hurt I caused, but the affair itself is honestly pretty predictable.

The part I struggle with sharing is the life around it. Not because it excuses anything, but because it’s grief, loss, and things I’m still working through with my husband, my therapist, and my friend.

I think the question I’m really asking is whether sharing those details would meaningfully change the guidance I receive, or whether the work I’m doing now is already pointing to the same places.

For me, the self-discovery of disconnection, emotional numbness, and loneliness tells the same story. Just without making them excuses.

Maybe that’s part of the answer to "what’s next" — learning how to finally grieve what I never allowed myself to grieve.

There is the general prescriptive arc of the WS, and then there is every one's individual journey (or lack thereof, in many unfortunate cases...). I think that the more you share, and the more specific questions you ask, the more tailored the advice becomes. But we will do our best with whatever you feel comfortable giving us.

I can't say for sure whether we would advise you to do anything differently than you're doing now if we knew more, because we don't know more. But from what you have told us, it seems like you're on track.

I think my question is more about what happens after someone has started identifying those things. As the work moves from understanding the why into actually changing, do the details serve the same purpose?

Ultimately, it depends on what you hope to get out of this community. If you feel you already have all the answers, no advice will be useful to you anyway. But if you’re looking for fresh insights from people with diverse, lived experiences, the more detail you share the better the guidance you will get.

Think of it like therapy: a practitioner asks for context because those details actually matter. That said, if you aren't comfortable sharing, that’s completely fine—just keep in mind that with this process, you generally get out what you put in.

Many users just use this to vent and that's fine too.

I have shared my fully account for context but it's not really relevant to why I'm still here.

[This message edited by DRSOOLERS at 8:33 AM, Friday, July 24th]

Hi NMI,

FYI, I am still working on response to your wonderful comments in your other post....stay tuned.

But really wanted to jump on this.

When I say details matter....I mean literally every single detail matters. This includes mindset, thoughts, words, and every single action....yes...IMO every sexual detail too.

Why you might ask....

Because every single detail represents a specific wound. Every specific detail represents an offense. Every choice that was FOR connection to the AP, was a choice that disrespected your spouse. Every single sex act shared with the AP was something stolen from your husband.

I am in NO WAY saying each betrayed spouse needs to know every detail. Some do not want that. Some do. My mind works such that it did. And what it allowed me... was to process each detail and identify the root wound that is it inflicted. We then discussed these together countless times. This is how I progressed towards where these things had less and less power over me.

I think in your case however, at least what I meant in other post....was the details mattered in making a more accurate assessment about "IDENTITY", and your assertions that the affair does not define your identity.

Well....not so sure about that....depends on details....

Example.

If you had a make out session one night at a company party...and were paralyzed with guilt afterward immediately, that is one thing.

If you had a 10 year affair and one of your children was the AP's and your husband did not know it, and you practiced swinging at sex clubs with the AP, while you were a conservative church going homeschool mom with your husband.....THAT IS WAY DIFFERENT.

It IMPACTS your claim about "not my identity" significantly.

Spoiler....I will suggest even with the latter ...that 10 year affair does NOT have to define your identity. In Christ. ANYONE can be made new in reality and positionally before God....but IT TAKES TIME to live that out and demonstrate. In other words, a new identity can be 100% true....but to the people and the world around you...IT MUST BE DEMONSTRATED with CONSISTENCY OVER TIME....by observable ACTIONS....not just words or a declaration.

[This message edited by WoodThrush2 at 1:47 PM, Friday, July 24th]

WoodThrush2, you're absolutely right about the details of an affair mattering to a BS. Most of us will want to know as much as we can handle or need.

Some BS will share the nitty gritty details here. Most don't. I think for most members, the general story is enough information to offer guidance and support.

Unhinged,

Just to clarify, I was not saying I, or we, necessarily need the details here in this forum. Some information would be useful in the context of her discussions.

It was more an encouragement for her to understand that those things matter in her own objective and humble assessment of her identity.....or maybe more accurately...her realization that others will be impacted by that information related to what they think of her identity.

Again, I hope everyone understands, I am in no way claiming a person cannot build a new identity after living a life of debauchery.

I 1000% believe that, especially given the saving work of Jesus in people's lives.

Thanks 😁

[This message edited by WoodThrush2 at 1:54 PM, Friday, July 24th]

I am in NO WAY saying each betrayed spouse needs to know every detail. Some do not want that. Some do. My mind works such that it did. And what it allowed me... was to process each detail and identify the root wound that is it inflicted. We then discussed these together countless times. This is how I progressed towards where these things had less and less power over me.

I know you're speaking for yourself here, but if I recall correctly there wasn't much in the way of sexual act details in your experience? I could be mixing you up with someone else, but wasn't your spouse involved in an EA and not a PA?

My wife was involved in both. I know specifically what they did, but good lord I really didn't want to know in extreme pornographic detail with pinpoint accuracy. For some of us it's just too much. Knowing what acts were done is enough for a lot of us without a detailed blow by blow account of every single detail in 4k.

I'm not so sure, if your spouse had gotten physical, that you would appreciate knowing what they did in extreme detail. You cannot unhear it once you've heard it.

Porge,

There was some physical, but you are correct in that it was rather limited. No sex per se.

I completely support you and others who want to limit your knowledge of details. I also support those who want (or need) to know everything as part of their needed prerequisites to be able to attempt reconciliation. Even if she had allowed the physical to go further, I would have needed to know. It is just how my brain works with respect to this topic.

My wife is precious to me. Every intimate act is precious to me. I would want to know exactly was stolen from me. And in all honesty, as I tell her...if they had gone further, it might have crossed the line where I just simply could not have stayed.

I thank God He limited our situation to what I personally could bare and the marriage still survive....

Others are stronger than I.

I’ve been following this exchange, and I think NotMyIdentity is hitting on a fundamental dynamic that often gets lost in these discussions: the purpose of details changes depending on where you are in the process, and who is asking.
When it comes to why forum members—and betrayed spouses in general—push so hard for "all the details," it’s worth noting that there are distinct patterns in how men and women tend to process infidelity and define what feels "worse."
Generations of research, relationship psychology, and collective community experience consistently point to a noticeable trend.
Broadly speaking, men (especially betrayed husbands) tend to be heavily hyper-focused on the physical, mechanical, and comparative details of an affair. There is often a drive to know every exact act, frequency, and comparative measure—partly to quantify the breach, but also because for many men, physical sexual betrayal is framed as the ultimate, unforgivable boundary.
While women certainly care about physical details, female betrayed partners often express that the emotional intimacy, shared secrets, and romantic connection feel like the deeper, more devastating theft. Conversely, men frequently struggle most with the mental imagery and physical boundary violations.
As Pogre rightly pointed out, demanding or digesting explicit, hyper-detailed accounts can cross from "seeking truth" into "inflicting secondary trauma." Once a mental image is planted in high definition, it cannot be unseen.
When male posters (or those wired similarly) push for "every single detail," they are often coming from a place where the specifics determine the severity. In that mindset, a 1-month affair is fundamentally different from a 1-year affair, and a single kiss is a world away from a multi-year physical arrangement. To them, you can't judge a person's character or "identity" without grading the exact severity of the offense.
However, NMI’s point stands: Once a wayward partner has already confronted the reality of what they did, accepted full accountability, and pivoted toward deep internal work (addressing loneliness, emotional numbness, and character flaws), cataloging every historical micro-detail for strangers on an internet forum doesn't necessarily accelerate internal growth.
Details are essential between a wayward partner, their spouse (to the degree the betrayed spouse actually wants/needs them to heal), and a therapist.

Hello 1994,

I appreciate your comment and for the most part agree with what you presented. A few additions however.

When citing that men will often focus on the physical, this is a true statement. However, I would submit that it is a wrong, or rather short sighted, belief that it has to actually do with the physical primarily.

From the study I have done, and pondering my life experience, "the physical" for men...is inextrabaly linked to emotions much more than people realize. In other words, sex/physical is generally (not entirely) rooted in much deeper, emotional meanings for a man in a long term relationship. The details of the sex acts, although troubling, are not the core issue....it is the fact that YOUR LOVE wanted and allowed them to happen and took part in them. That ties to the relational and emotional betrayal and wounds for the man.

This concept is also extremely valuable in "mismatched desire" or "dead bedroom" problems in a marriage. You will time and time again hear women claiming "they only want me for sex". Yet once you dig deep and learn the reality of the matter....men do NOT just want sex. The sex and physical is actually very strongly linked to their love and connection and feeling of being close to their wife.

How can I support the above. One example is this. If someone's wife was sexually assaulted against her will, the man of course does not like it....but it has NO WHERE NEAR the effect on him as intentional betrayal. Those are two different worlds.

I do agree a wayward does not need to divulge every detail here in this forum. But I do believe, before they can accurately assess their "Identity"....it must be carefully examined through the lens of how their actions affected other people...or would have affect other people if they knew the details of their secretive actions. A viper may not be known to be viper until it bites someone. A damaged identity may not be revealed until a decade later when an unsuspecting wife finds out her husband has a child with an old affair partner...despite him now having mended his ways secretly.

Another wildcard is this, and I mentioned it in NMI's other post.... I don't think one can always rely on the fact that a wayward's identity has been cleared or made new based on the position of the Betrayed spouse. There are betrayed spouses who "just want things to go back the way they were", and are willing to avoid and rug sweep entirely. This leaves a great opportunity for a wayward to claim "new identity" with really doing very little other than not actively cheating.

I believe much of this discussion is often semantics, but I also think digging deep acts as a conduit to very valuable considerations.

[This message edited by WoodThrush2 at 5:11 PM, Friday, July 24th]

1194,

Thank you. I think you articulated my position on details and their purpose in the timeline better than I did.

WoodThrush2,

I agree that saying "this is not my identity" has to come after honest reflection, accountability, and looking closely at the impact our choices have had on others. I think where we may be seeing things differently is the possible assumption that I haven’t done that work.

I also agree that we can’t control how others see us after we’ve hurt them. Their perspectives matter, their feelings are valid, and deserve to be taken seriously. At the same time, I don’t think another person’s view of us is automatically the whole story of who we are.

For example, if someone told you that you were a hypocritical Christian because they saw something in your actions that didn’t align with your values (not saying you are), I don’t think the response would be, "You said it, so it must define me." I think the response would be to honestly ask: Is there truth in that? Is there something I need to work on? What do the people closest to me see?

That takes humility, because sometimes other people help us see things we need to confront. But it also takes discernment, because people’s perceptions of us don’t always capture the whole person.

I also want to clarify that I’m not sharing this to convince anyone I’m a "good person" or to get anyone to see things exactly the way I do. I’m genuinely trying to have a good faith conversation about identity, accountability, and growth, and I appreciate hearing perspectives that challenge me.

[This message edited by NotMyIdentity at 8:52 PM, Friday, July 24th]

I think it depends on what you want from posting?

You asked what to do from here.

That too takes context, and we got some of that through your responses.

But there is no formula to say "this is what comes next" if we don’t know what came before it. And we don’t know how to tell you how we tackled this or that unless we know what this or that is.

It’s hard to discern what you want from us.

I do not think we need sordid detail. But we do need some context when you post. And I get that you just got here and maybe that’s going to take some time. But my narrative of your last post is:

You asked what’s next.

Then you litigated with every post that came after.

It feels as though you know all the pitfalls of posting details, maybe a long time lurker? That makes it feel as if you know us, but you have picked up at end of where you are so we don’t know you. That maybe will come in time through natural posting but I would say if you want advice, then it might be best to include context so that we don’t spend all our time throwing the usual darts to only be told that’s not how you see it. And I get there is context in how you see it, but we aren’t given that until we get it wrong. So I think that’s why the cadence of the past thread was wonky, at least from my observation.

If you only want to participate in philosophical discuss, then we need less context but then the post shouldn’t be about getting direct guidance?

I am just trying to help on why we are confused.

It feels like we have some things in common. We told in our own after seeing therapy. But the reason I told was mostly for selfish reasons to start, not just because it was the right thing to do. So, those kinds of things were helpful for me to understand in what work was most needed after that discovery.

We asked why did you tell and you didn’t answer—-is that too deep of a detail? I am asking trying to understand where the boundary is?

We affirmed you that it doesn’t mean there aren’t hundreds of other parts of you, I think that’s why framing is healthy and one we say around here. We are all light and dark. But if we only show our light as a ws trying to do what some might call shadow work, we don’t have the opportunity to talk about the thing you need help with.

This is why I said you may not be ready to be vulnerable here — vulnerability would look like working on the dark stuff and not just going over what you feel has gone or is going right. I totally understand the propensity but it leaves us not understanding how to even talk about a next phase. Next phase after what? The beginning of your digging?

[This message edited by hikingout at 7:21 PM, Friday, July 24th]

In your example

if someone told you that you were a hypocritical Christian because they saw something in your actions that didn’t align with your values (not saying you are), I don’t think the response would be, "You said it, so it must define me." I think the response would be to honestly ask: Is there truth in that? Is there something I need to work on? What do the people closest to me see?

This is correct. I would add if I found they were correct, I should if possible, thank them and admit I was dishonoring the work of Christ. Furthermore, if I did dishonor the work of Christ, I would hope that I would make all efforts to correct my errors which caused that and make repairs to damages where at all possible. If I were in a right frame, I would not be concerned about my perceived identity, but the people I hurt and the damage I did to the Lord's work.

Here is another real life example that I may have mentioned elsewhere. At a meeting Wednesday we heard of a Pastor of well known Church nearby that was removed for sexual misconduct. Does that define his identity? I would guess no. But, what he did has lasting and vast consequences. Is he trying to make amends? I don't know. Should he....yes.

Let me state this.....

If your first post had been something along the lines of you being completely broken and feeling worthless, and completely concerned about your devastated husband and worried about your marriage. I would have been one to tell you there is hope and what you did does not mean you have no value. That your identity does not have to be defined by what you did. In fact, after disclosure when my wife was spiraling, I said those very things to her.

And although maybe you have done this ...I am not sure based on your posts....it would be more profitable in my opinion, to focus on the damage that others have experienced due to your actions. Help repair them.

Focusing on yourself is what got you into the affair in the first place. Now, focus on your husband, focus on the betrayed wife, and whoever else may have been impacted. And through the process of holding space for them, showing remorse and empathy for them, making amends to them consistently over time where possible....it will be in that process where you in reality will define, and find, your identity.

Again, maybe that is your focus, i just have not seen that. The focus has been this slippery concept of defining identity, which as I said above, often comes down to semantics.

Matthew 16:25 KJV

[25] For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.

[This message edited by WoodThrush2 at 7:50 PM, Friday, July 24th]

Hikingout,

Thank you for your perspective. I appreciate the time you've taken to engage with me, and I'll keep your thoughts in mind as I continue moving forward.

WoodThrush2,

I'm honestly not sure what to say to this. Thank you for the time and thought you've put into your responses, and I think we've both explained our perspectives as clearly as we can.

[This message edited by NotMyIdentity at 8:49 PM, Friday, July 24th]

The details of the affair aren't a necessity per se.

However without disclosing what a betrayal suffered / inflicted was, responders will have to guess from the perspective you offer them, which could become very generic without knowing.

Imagine you ask how to deal with a broken bone, you can get some feedback and it will be generic at best. The readers do not know if you broke a limb or the ribcage or head, the kind of fracture, how many points/ times, etc.

What to do to grow and change? Affairs are bad, is self betrayal + betrayal + abuse + self sabotage, they indicate issues and character flaws in the betrayer, often being low self worth, people pleasing, perfectionism, compartmentalization, avoidance, lack of self love, validation craving.

In the victim they cause attachment wounds, trauma and ptsd.

To grow you need to resolve those character flaws and learn how to be a developed, safe partner.
To help the betrayed you need to resolve the attachment wound, broken trust and trauma, ptsd as well if present.

Eventually a couple may reconcile (successfully or not) or split after an affair. If the cheater is successful in resolving their character flaws it becomes a safe partner, if not, it is likely they will relapse, with the old or a new partner if they separated.

That's more or less the "standard template" response.

You can work without knowing any detail but you have to be very specific if you want to find some valuable insight in replies you get. Because they will be partially shooting in the dark when missing the background.

NotMyIdentity, I'm just as confused as hikingout. I'm having a hard time understanding what you're looking for here. Debates about pattern recognition and expectations, the value of detail, and whatever other issues you have with this community, are interesting to some degree. However, I have to question their overall relevance to surviving infidelity, learning and growth, or reconciliation.

So far, your engagement here seems like an experiment of sorts.