SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Hi,

I'm looking into the justifications I told myself when having my affairs. I've tried to list them and remember what I did to tell me my actions were both acceptable and warranted. I'm also trying to link these into the timeline. The logic being try to understand at what point I was with my justifications during what stage(s) of an affairs. (hopefully that makes sense).

My questions to other WS's is not what justifications you told yourself. I need to remember mine without knowing yours. I'm asking for input into:

1) how did you come to these justifications. For me, I did not sit down and think I want to sleep with this woman, so lets think of some excuses. Well, that's not entirely true. I did think I wanted to sleep with her and my head did the rest. Every time something happened then the justifications just seemed to be there. I really don't remember this being an entirely conscious thing! Is this just me kidding myself? I know I knew what I was doing was wrong. BUT I also remember switching this guilt off because of the justifications. I genuinely believed them at the time too.

2) When did you stop believing them? Some of mine continued from my first affair and stayed with me for years. Only on doing some self reflection and reading did I see what the hell was happening to me and the lies I was believing.

3) Have you managed to sit with BS and explain them? This is a real struggle for me. Firstly because they were just not true so there is no justification for the justifications. Secondly because I'm only just starting to work on them properly, my initial thoughts are (as with a lot of our work) either not thought about enough or still shrouded in the lies i'm still believing. Thirdly, I am getting angry during the discussions we are having and this is causing us to regress back to previous stages of recovery. I struggle putting into words what I thought I was feeling and telling myself. This is, quite rightly, being challenged and I get angry. (I know this is unacceptable. Previous episodes of anger were when I was lying about elements of the affair, so clearly I need to do more work on my justifications).

4) I know some of my actions have permanently scarred my BS. As most of these are based on fantasy and lies. Do I have any hope of helping her? She has endured years of my affairs and abuse and clearly has no idea who I am of who she is. I need to be able to really ascertain how terrible a person I was AND how I could allow me to be that person, before there is any hope of me helping her.

5) What did you do to keep the justifications going? Were they always there or did you justify once and never look back? Did you change the justifications to suit the situation?

6) Have you managed to "deal" with the feelings of guilt and shame surrounding the bullshit you were feeding yourself? I know understanding this is only the tip of an enormous iceberg. I'm struggling with this too. I hate being like this as I've got no right to feel like this given that pain and damage I have inflicted on BS and our marriage.

7) Is there anything out there to help me unravel all this crap?! help me understand what ad how I was doing this? (Books, threads on here, other sites etc)

Some of my justifications:

1) We were not happy. (Firstly not true and secondly a bit of a cliche).

2) She will make me happier.

3) It's is OK to sleep with someone else as long as you don't get caught. If you do then just deal with it when it happens.

4) It feels good and I'm entitled to feel good.

5) I focused on the negative things about my BS. Crazy things that normal people would not even notice, let alone get upset or annoyed about. As I was annoyed by this, I used it to fuel the other justifications.

6) There were "friends" of both myself and AP who promoted the affair and validated my actions. I did not see this for what it was but again used this to justify continuing with the affair.

7) I could shut down emotionally from my BS and cared very little about the possible impact the affairs would have on her. I need to work on this immediately as it is impacting recovery in a big way.

I would frequently convince myself that there was no way that my A could be hurting my wife. I had things seemingly so neatly compartmentalized. I had it in my head that my W has her hobbies and her friends to my AP was simply another hobby and a friend for me.

I would happen upon some main stream media that featured an A and I felt completely vindicated to continue. There was never any thought of leaving my W so every day I would rationalize continuing discussions with this broken person who showered me with ego kibbles relentlessly. She seemed disease free so with no STDs to worry about I felt free to share my heart with this other person. I felt like king of the world where I was able to get twice the sex. What could possibily be the harm. Of course double sex is better. Until it wasn't.

Help me.

Bulcy,

1) My justifications occurred over time before I started my A. Lots of family issues - father and father in law passed away, followed by brother and brother in law. My W was dealing with anxiety and depression so she started on some meds that sapped her sexual drive. My MIL was basically living with us post FIL death. So my W was spending time with her mom. I was depressed too, although i didn't accept that. Same time my kids were growing up and not needing my time and my coaching and scouts leadership were winding down so I lost my ego kibbles. I give this background to understand where I came to deciding that my W did not love me anymore. I was too chickenshit to discuss this with my W. I never once raised my feelings. I buried everything. How could she see what I was thinking if she was so absorbed with her mom and not spending time with me or interested in sex when I wanted it. The telepathy signals I was sending were not being received and I figured that was good enough reason.

All other justifications flowed from that broken logic.

2)About 6 or so months into my A I started to realize thing were not right with me. I really started to see through the haze and realize how shitty a person I was. I started IC around that time. Still took me another 6 months to end the A though.

3)For me it took MC sessions to really flush out an understanding of the justifications and mindset at the time before and during the A. Our MC really did a great job of mediating this part to keep us both from withdrawing. It is hard to try to explain why you made your W out to be the devil incarnate.

4) Bulcy, there is always hope. Keep writing out a time-line and add to it. Re-Read it. Then add some more. It will help you more than your BW, but it help her when you see WHY you cheated. I told my BWE everything at D-Day. Yes details were filled in as time went by, but I just threw myself onto the altar of truth and spewed forth the facts. It took a lot longer to understand what it all meant. That was what helped my BW - she saw that I was really trying to understand WHY, which led to positive change. She didn't want words. She wanted actions. You know, go back to the pinned post at the top of the Wayward Forum and re-read it. It will help.

5)Once you take that first small step all the others are so much easier, aren't they? I recall clearly the beginning - the AP encouraging me to complain about my BW, telling me how I deserved better, and I just went with it whole hog. I recall the thought after my AP really kissed me that "well I crossed a line".

6)I had a lot of guilt and shame. That passed when I realized I was doing the hard work to figure myself out and be a better person all around. Now I have regret. Lots of regret for ever going down the path of an A, of not dealing with M issues.

7) Bulcy, There will be lots of books and stuff. The best I can offer though is to take the time and talk to your BW every night, open up and just spill it out there. It will come out in dribs and drabs but it will come out. With luck your BW will be willing to listen and understand. Get a good IC and MC - spend the money it is worth it. We went weekly at first and then monthly for the first 4 years. We learnt a lot about ourselves and how to actually communicate and to be a couple.

1) Longstanding misassociations between sex and love. FOO stuff for sure that fed a misunderstanding of what a loving M looks like.

2) The minute I started looking at them. They did not stand up to scrutiny very well at all. The quick understanding leads me to believe there’s still room to refine this understanding, but it has been fairly informative as is.

3,4) No chance. I didn’t find these answers in time for them to be of any use to my BW.

5) They did morph over time, but only slightly.

6) Yes. I won’t tear into “good person, bad decision” semantics here because it’s too contentious to not distract. What I can tell you helped is frequent visits to the Serenity Prayer and recognize that accepting what has happened is distinct from condoning it. One of the greatest things I’ve heard is to use said prayer by looking at concrete examples- What are the things I can’t change? What things do I face with courage?

7) OK, here’s where I’m gonna sound like a broken record. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT.) My IC got David Burns’ “Feeling Good” in my hands the week R ended for me. While I wish I had it sooner, it’s certainly better late than never.

Why CBT is good- Because its goal is exactly aligned with this thread- Unraveling cognitive distortions that shape an emotional response. “Feeling Good” is a great text and you can work through it on your own even without IC support.

I think what you’ll find as far as “genuinely believing them at the time” is that you actually chose to believe them. It’s subtle and shame producing, but if you knew it was wrong, you didn’t really believe your rationale.

Thanks for this feedback. I'll respond properly later.

I knew what I was doing was wrong and did it anyway. How fucked up is that? Having been the BH first I believed having felt the sting of infidelity I would never be a hypocrite and fall into it. But I was weak when someone was paying attention to me and I indulged in the sex. OW gave me a bite of the apple.

There is a lot of information to digest in here. I have been doing further reading on how people justify actions. I'll try and consider everything on here and in books and understand further. It is hard to dissect how I did these justifications.

I read with interest other threads where WS are discussing honesty, lies (ok my thread), porn use etc. The advice given by some is to just stop. Hopefully I can do that.

For me:

Porn use - Stopped immediately on d-day. Only used with BS. For me an easy stop. I wish I knew what and could move that onto other ares of my life.

Lies - Getting there. The incident with the door prompted more thinking, but I am seeing improvement and stop myself from saying or writing anything to BS that could involve a lie. Think about what it is I'm saying and then go with it if true.....I do still struggle with this as detailed in my other thread. Just tell the truth. It may hurt at the time, but so much more hurt comes from the lies I've told.

Justifications I'm starting to understand that I knew all along they were lies, but I still believed them. Now my head is out of my arse I'm working on them. I no longer believe they are true, but need to uncover them to completely get them out there. Discuss them with BS and lose them forever.

I'm finding this thread interesting and hope others are too. Please continue posting.

Bulcy,

Good to see you are doing some thinking and further learning. That is really what getting to be a better person and in turn a candidate for R is all about.

The little lies is often tied to conflict avoidance. I found as I was working on myself these last few years that I had to learn how to be honest again after the A. To be ready to say 'no'. It was hard to do and it took time. But I find that life is so much simpler now. I find being tactful better than an outright lie. There is also so much less stress involved in being honest. I also had to learn not to try to please everyone. That was part of my small lies issues. I had to set boundaries. My mom would call and want me to rush over to trim her roses. Yes, in the past I would leave my wife at home and run over. It took time to change that dynamic but did it.

So, I think the best way to handle this is by taking accountability. Here are a few examples of how I did this with the types of things you are saying:

1) We were not happy. (Firstly not true and secondly a bit of a cliche).

I was not happy. I did not take responsibility for my own happiness. I did not fight for some of my needs to be met, and I was lazy in my relationship. My husband would have been open to working on our issues if I had brought them to him instead of looking outside of the relationship.

Being unhappy was because of the ways I didn't manage my life properly. One of these things would have been I had terrible boundaries in I went a long with things I didn't want. I had to learn to say no. Then, I came up with things I could have done differently to become a more engaged happy person. From there I developed habits that will ensure I will take responsibility for my own happiness moving forward.

2) She will make me happier.

I had to figure out why I was relying on other people to make me happy. It made me look at my own self love, self worth, and self respect. If we don't have these things for ourselves we don't have them for others. If we can make ourselves happy and have a good relationship with ourselves, people enhance our lives rather than make our lives.

3) It's is OK to sleep with someone else as long as you don't get caught. If you do then just deal with it when it happens.

Yep, there is always some version of this. It was not against my integrity to this. I had to think about what my moral codes were and why. I had to practice boundaries around those. Instead of walking around thinking I was a good person, I made my decisions moving forward on what a good person would do. Guess what? It feels better to do the right thing than the wrong thing. It feeds our self worth, self love, and self respect. Bending the rules is no longer appealing to me. My husband needs to know and see that moving forward so my accountability to these principles are there and I demonstrate them any time I can. Not for show, but because that's how I want to live my life.

4) It feels good and I'm entitled to feel good.

Entitlement is present in every single affair. We are entitled to feel good, but not at the cost of others. For me, I fed that entitlement with my martyrdom - all the selflessness, sacrifice, and work that I put into him and our family. I deserved a break, right? Wrong! Figure out what fed that and what your attitudes are about that. Usually it's in some imbalance - you make more money, you do this or that. Rethink whether that is a tilted perception, restate it in a way in which your wife balances that and you need to appreciate those things more. Start looking at ways of noticing those things and expressing your appreciation.

5) I focused on the negative things about my BS. Crazy things that normal people would not even notice, let alone get upset or annoyed about. As I was annoyed by this, I used it to fuel the other justifications.

Extremely common, and present in most all affairs. You could have been married to a perfect person and you would have done that. Instead, start with a gratitude journal, and appreciate the small things she does for you, talents you notice she has, etc. Cherish her.

6) There were "friends" of both myself and AP who promoted the affair and validated my actions. I did not see this for what it was but again used this to justify continuing with the affair.

Can't relate. But, in the accountability column, I hope you have eliminated all these people from your life.

7) I could shut down emotionally from my BS and cared very little about the possible impact the affairs would have on her. I need to work on this immediately as it is impacting recovery in a big way.

I think most of us dehumanize and shut down feelings for our spouse to do what we did. There is a lot of stuff I have read from Brene Brown that talks about how when we numb our feelings we numb our good and bad experiences. How showing up and being mindful can be an important aspect of being wholehearted. Eckhardt Tolle has written and spoken a lot about being a conscientious observer of our thoughts and how most of the things we think are really not even true.

What you have listed here are all very core truths we all have as WS. Admitting the truth to yourself, and to her is extremely important. But, what you do with that truth moving forward is just as important. Apologies without change is nothing but manipulation. So, use this to grow your accountability and to change your behavior patterns.

You are getting it, Bulcy. You really are.

1) How did you come to these justifications?

Like everyone else did, I got so wrapped up in my own needs, my own pain, my own struggles, that I failed to be able to see anyone else. Things in our marriage DID need work. I was hurting and struggling and so was she. But instead of leaning into her, and offering my support to her in her time of struggle, I instead climbed under an emotional rock and settled into "poor me" mode. My wife was living and working in the next city over at the time (because of business reasons, not relationship ones). Rather than do all I could to maintain the marriage despite the distance, or to help or even recognize her loneliness living along so far away, I instead chose to see myself as a victim. Rather than hear her and see her and support her through her struggles, I ignored them, couldn't even recognize them to be honest. And sure, there are many moving parts to this story. But in the end, I chose to justify my affair on the simple premise of believing that my needs mattered more than others. When the opportunity presented itself, instead of throwing my all into saving my marriage, I instead threw in the towel. It was never about what was lacking in my life or my marriage. It was about what was lacking in myself.

2) When did you stop believing them?

That was a process. "When" I stopped believing them was when I was able to gain my empathy back, and that took a lot of IC/MC work as well as enormous efforts, patience, understanding and sacrifices on my wife's part, as well as my family. The other thing that had to happen, and perhaps the main thing, was that I needed the ability to see myself, the real me. I didn't realize how much my own self-worth was based on others... required others, to love me. I had no actual self-worth, and the very concept of self-worth itself was foreign to me, scary even.

3) Have you managed to sit with BS and explain them?

I'll offer some advice here. While this is certainly something that you must do (well, unless your spouse says otherwise) I do urge you to be careful. Explanations can easily turn into excuses and justifications themselves, and even when they don't, sometimes they feel that way to a spouse who was just betrayed in the most unexpected and cruel ways. When you do explain, be honest, be open, be prepared to throw yourself under the bus completely and own everything. If you feel that things may either be volatile, or that perhaps you will unwittingly make things worse for her, then perhaps consider doing this together at MC.

4) I know some of my actions have permanently scarred my BS. As most of these are based on fantasy and lies. Do I have any hope of helping her?

Nope, you cannot help her. The damage you've inflicted on her is heavy, crushing, and sadly, it is now her burden to bear, and her recovery is her own. The best you can do for her is to not make things worse. Honesty and empathy may help in that regard, but you will have to take your queues from her.

Instead, focus on yourself. See a good IC and get to the root of how and why you came to a point in your life where you allowed this to happen. The truth is, the lies you eventually told her, are the ones you told yourself first. Figure out why you cheated. What was lacking in your, in your life, that cheating was supposed to fill? Or was it self-sabotage, and if so, why? Until you know the answers to these things, until you understand yourself intimately, you remain dangerous, not only to her and your family, but to yourself and others. Until you are safe... you are not.

5) What did you do to keep the justifications going?

Honestly, once they were in place, I went on auto-pilot. It is strange now, looking back at my daily life then, and who I was, and how I thought... The lying, the sneaking, the double life, the damage done... it became my identity. It was my daily reality. It was constant stress, constantly feeling like shit, constantly needing more. For me, it was just another addiction. Not to drugs or alcohol, but to the attention, to someone filling my need for praise, to tell me I'm special, to lie to me in the way I prefer to be lied to, and all for the price of giving the same back to them. Like any junkie, the lies and justifications almost invented themselves after a while. It was the cost of keeping my fix-up.

6) Have you managed to "deal" with the feelings of guilt and shame surrounding the bullshit you were feeding yourself?

This is a lifetime goal, in my opinion anyway. The short answer is, you first have to learn to accept the concept of loving yourself, of being someone worthy of love and respect, and having those things without requiring them from others. Once you have that inner fortitude, then you need to accept the fact that we are what we do. We can't go back and undo what we did and the damage done. So, at that point in time, we were people that we do not respect. We did bad things, hurtful things, and we did them on purpose, with forethought and intent, and then covered them up, stealing the agency from our spouses. However, harboring guilt and shame over those actions, serves very little purpose, and often does more harm than good. Shame and guilt should be a motivator, but we have to take care to not make them an identity. Living in shame often hurts our betrayed spouses more. They don't need us to "feel bad". They need us to stop being the massive assholes that betrayed them, pull our heads out of our asses and be human beings. The way you learn to forgive yourself is by doing all you can to be a better person. Be supportive and understanding of your spouse, and put her needs before your own, even to your own detriment if need be. Be honest. Be so very vulnerable with her (read some Brene Brown). Be there and never stop doing the work. You don't ever really forgive yourself, rather, you learn to be someone better as a result.

7) Is there anything out there to help me unravel all this crap?

Yes, time and effort. Keep reading, see an IC, come to SI and ask questions like these, and be open to getting some really rough 2x4's thrown at you now and then. When you do, learn to listen, and consider why people are saying such harmful things. I promise you, it isn't because they hate you and just feel like being mean. Most of us respond emotionally when we see others making the mistakes we made, and we can see them taking destructive paths that we took and knowing we were just as stubborn or misguided once too... and it is frustrating, so we get emotional. That's a good thing. You'll get honesty here is nothing else. Just remember, take what you need and leave the rest.

Oh, and one last thing. Expectations. Those are bad things to have. Try listening instead.