SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Hi everybody,

I have my idea of what Love is but I would like to hear your concept of it.

I am a BS and when I hear my WS say "I love you" sometimes it makes me cringe.

In an A in my opinion people confuse "love" with what THEY FEEL, a kind of propelling force aimed at THEIR OWN WELL-BEING, a self-centred emotion, in which THEY are at the centre. When I read about "love" in those circumstances, I know that is NOT LOVE.

For it to be LOVE the centre is not yourself but the other, so you make choices that will benefit the other person, will make them find inner peace and consequently, you will be serene and happy, too. If you think of your love for your children, probably you get what I mean. You are prepared to make sacrifices to make sure they are happy, because if they are happy, so are you.

In a romantic relationship it is not possible to split what you FEEL for a person and the actions you take to make them feel well, respected, at the centre of your attention, desired, looked after. You can have feelings for your cat and even your car. But that doesn’t mean you LOVE them.

So when a WS tells you that during the affair they have never stopped loving you they probably mean they had FEELINGS for you but if they had LOVED you, they would have not voluntarily chosen to HURT YOU, deceive you, ignore your needs because their attention shifted from the loved person to THEMSELVES.

Not protecting the couple from external invasions and choosing to stab your spouse in the back are clear demonstrations of LACK OF LOVE.

So how do WS learn to LOVE? How do they mature and put the loved one at the centre of their thoughts and actions?

[This message edited by Fantastic at 6:37 PM, Monday, April 8th]

  Moving to General

I agree with your framing.

As for how does a ws learn it? That’s something that could have many answers.

For me, I think I did understand how to love before. I was a dedicated wife who put my husband and kids above me always.

I think for me what I needed to do was learn to love myself. And I suspect that is the answer for a majority. It’s that lack of self worth and self love that creates the void that a lot of ws are trying to fill. Because I didn’t live myself I starved myself of receiving love because I couldn’t really connect with the idea that I was worthy of it. I felt like as long as I was useful and didn’t make too many waves that would be what made me lovable.

And it’s not like I was consciously aware of all that.

When I figured out my relationship with myself I figured out my relationship with others. When I live myself there is love that can flow to others. When I can be compassionate with myself, I have it for others. Same with respect, and I could go on.

I also took inspiration from my mother in law. The woman acted in pure love always. She was a remarkable woman.

Baby don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me no more.

Seems appropriate, and acceptable after hikingouts good answer.

It’s that lack of self worth and self love that creates the void that a lot of ws are trying to fill. Because I didn’t live myself I starved myself of receiving love because I couldn’t really connect with the idea that I was worthy of it. I felt like as long as I was useful and didn’t make too many waves that would be what made me lovable.

When a WS looks at the pain they are causing with their actions and choices, it is very difficult to imagine to be worthy of love…

A large number of WSes cheat as a way of getting external validation of their own worth. If they love themselves and know their own self-worth, they have no need for external validation, and they won't cheat again.

*****

IDK what romantic love is. I do know that I love my W for her pleasure and for mine. I can't separate the strands. I like who she is, which is 'for her', but I want to be with her, which is for me.

I certainly have given her the gift of R, but she has given me a lot, too. All the gifts were freely given in some ways, but had strings attached in others. My first gift to her was a book. I did not mean the gift to put her under any obligation, but my stretch goal was for her to decide to let me into her bed - it was a very good book, after all. Were strings attached? Yes. No. Both?

I like to think I didn't force her to do anything ... but she's co-dependent. She over-complied in many matters, even though I never twisted her arm or threatened to use a weapon or to leave. But did she do things out of fear anyway? Yes, in some cases. Whose problem was that?

In other words, I'm very skeptical of 'the other being the center'. My experience is that there's an ebb and flow of selfishness and altruism during a relationship. Sometimes one needs to get more than give - sometimes one needs to get a lot more than they give. But we all need to do both for a relationship to work, IMO.

In receiving, we serve ourselves and the other. In giving, we also serve ourselves and the other.
n
JMO.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 3:46 PM, Tuesday, April 9th]

When a WS looks at the pain they are causing with their actions and choices, it is very difficult to imagine to be worthy of love…

You misunderstand.

I am asserting that when you don’t love yourself that you will act out in many ways. By not feeling worthy of love, I didn’t really receive the live h gave me. I went looking for it somewhere else, but the problem was as within me. No one could fill that because I wasn’t in a place to receive it. This has more to do with before the affair and some of the reason I had the affair.

Most ws cheat for validation, yet they are unable to believe validation. It will never be enough.

Today I do feel worthy of love. I do love myself. I am many years out now. I would assert loving yourself more is the goal of everyone who visits this board.

This ^^ I struggle to wrap my head around. There is self-love, but there is also self-ENTITLEMENT. A WS felt entitled to something that they were not entitled to. This is putting your needs first before the needs and should I say rights of others. Isn't this what you do when you love someone--according to a few love songs you beg steal and borrow for them so they can get their needs met. A WS did that for THEMSELVES during the affair.

There is definitely some self-love going on there I'm seeing. If you want to say there was no SELF-RESPECT though, that would be easier for me to see.

[This message edited by WontBeFooledAgai at 5:55 PM, Tuesday, April 9th]

Baby don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me no more.

Lol exactly where my mind went too.

On a serious note, I feel like this sums a lot of it up:

When I figured out my relationship with myself I figured out my relationship with others. When I live myself there is love that can flow to others. When I can be compassionate with myself, I have it for others. Same with respect, and I could go on.

And to add a bit more, I agree that hearing a wayward spouse tell us they love us when they’ve done such injuring and hurtful things is cringy. For me, I questioned how that was ever love…eventually I learned that my WS could only love me from the very limited space of how she knew love to be which felt very transactional.

In many ways though, I was used to that transactional form of love from a very different lens. While hers was one way of external transaction, mine was transactional in my own self sacrifice and making her wants and needs and emotions the center in my world. Hell, not only her wants and needs and emotions, many other people’s wants and needs and emotions were significantly more important than my own. I was raised in emotional abuse, and learned that my own self sacrifice was what love looked like in that space. I knew nothing else…so in a way, I was also loving from a very limited space.

Like Hikingout mentioned, my process as the betrayed spouse was also about learning to love myself. My approach to love was obviously different from my WS, I was the person that made others the center and self sacrificed in the process. I had poor boundaries, allowed myself to be used, and treated my wants and needs like they did not matter. My emotions were tied to others in a very dysfunctional, damaging way.

In order for me to come out on the other side of infidelity, I had to learn to find my voice, to hear myself, to tend to my wants and my needs, to connect to my deepest inner emotions and to marry action to my wants and needs and emotions when I heard them, to love myself more and to build myself up. I, too, had to learn compassion for myself, i had very judgmental and critical language toward myself when I would place myself first in any way. That had to change. I had to heal myself and find my happiness. I had to be toward myself what I always needed so that I could turn around and KNOW what I deserve, and give myself that. I was so deeply hurt, and so used to putting myself on the back burner. This process was immensely hard ESPECIALLY with the added trauma of infidelity and past trauma.

The truth is, if I had never learned to do that I could never find my true happiness. My happiness was muffled behind my own self neglect. Even in that statement though, our paths with WS mirror…I was neglectful toward self in one way, and while my WS seemed immensely selfish in her choices - she, too, was self neglectful…she granted herself external validations at others expense, sure, but she did not really know how to hear herself, see herself, connect to herself, respect herself, love herself. All she knew was this external transaction of "love".

We cannot make others happy, we are all responsible for our own happiness as they are theirs. We cannot be for others at the expense of ourselves, we cannot pour into others and leave our cups empty. This process for me was about learning to make myself the priority and not judge and criticize myself for it. Hearing myself, seeing myself, building myself up and setting boundaries was not selfish, it was self loving. As I learned to do that the world around me became everything I wanted it to be, my relationships changed for the better, I was able to accomplish things for myself I struggled with before, I found a new sense of autonomy and independence and I found actual happiness (and a beautiful expansion of love) with myself, and in turn others.

Thank you to all who shared their ways of seeing love.

Many years ago my husband and I were part of a youth group. We were secretly given a name and had to describe that person. My husband (at the time my fiancé) was given my name and described me "Ready to make sacrifices" which was the way I was raised and he grasped it. At the time I saw that as a positive feature. It provably is to a certain extent. Surely I took it too seriously and my husband took advantage of it. In his family they are mainly selfish but I learnt my husband is selfish the hard way. The affair was a choice of selfishness and because he felt entitled.

[This message edited by Fantastic at 6:36 PM, Tuesday, April 9th]

This ^^ I struggle to wrap my head around. There is self-love, but there is also self-ENTITLEMENT. A WS felt entitled to something that they were not entitled to. This is putting your needs first before the needs and should I say rights of others. Isn't this what you do when you love someone--according to a few love songs you beg steal and borrow for them so they can get their needs met. A WS did that for THEMSELVES during the affair.

So you are mixing up phrases and what I am talking about.

Selfishness is not self love.

Having an affair is selfish and entitled. People who truly love and respect themselves conduct themselves in that manner. They make healthy choices, they have the capacity to love others.

Ws are typically overly selfish or overly selfless in the way they present themselves. It’s really just two sides of the same coin. The selfish ones are easier to spot. They take what they want constantly and consider no one. The ws who is overly selfless is really just hustling for your love. They don’t speak up about their needs and keep serving you until they reach martyrdom because they never will believe you love them for them.

If you live yourself, then you have it flowing for others. You are more compassionate, you have integrity and live your life well because you want to make your life the best that it can be.

The people who don’t do this just keep running around doing whatever feels good even though it’s not in their best interest.

It wasn’t in my best interest to blow up a perfectly good marriage, destroy my husband and myself in the process. I would t have let the AP use me, I wouldn’t have burned my house to the ground.

I never acted selfishly in my marriage, in fact my husband used to comment with pride how much input my family first. But, I was selfish. I was doing those things to get live, and when I didn’t feel like I got that I was burned out and ready to be done. I set up my hope life based on feelings. Feelings are just byproducts of how we think. And my ways of thinking were not healthy.

When you have something, you have it to give. When you don’t have something you go around trying to take from others. I am actually not at all a selfish person but in learning to live myself, I can be vulnerable and feel connection and belonging and all sorts of things that didn’t exist in my life before.

There is no excuse for cheating. And you aren’t loving anyone when you are having an affair. You are destroying the lives of your spouse and family, you are destroying yourself and your own security, and you are destroying the obs and the AP’s family. That is not love.

Being selfish is not loving yourself. Being selfish comes from always feeling nothing is enough. And that comes from not learning to make yourself happy in healthy way.

The love I feel for my W may show itself in 1) sexual desire, on one hand, and 2) taking the partner into account, on the other.

There are some things I won't do or change for my W. Never have, never will. There are things she won't do or change for me. Never has, never will. We've asked for changes in some of those areas, and we haven't agreed to change. In other areas, I suspect the differences are actually attractive to each other. For example, I admire her ability to focus and go deep; she admires my quickness and breadth of interests. In other areas, the differences don't seem to matter.

We both do a lot to please our selves. We both do a lot to enable the other to please themselves, although we often - usually - please ourselves by doing things together. My W has become more assertive since her A, so she's gotten to do more to please herself since then, but that doesn't mean I've done less of what I want to do.

After all, if I'm doing something by and for myself, she can do something by and for herself at the same time. I have to accept that she's going out for a chorus rehearsal one night a week. I lose the enjoyment of doing something together that night - but I get to watch TV shows that W doesn't want to watch.

I could view the chorus rehearsals - and my W could view my alone time/activities - as losses, if, for example, we viewed individual activities as indicators of lack of love; however, we accept and enjoy the fruits of our selfishness. Enabling each other's alone activities is an act of love. Being together is an act of love.

Other aspects of taking each other into account include things like not manipulating each other into doing things one of us doesn't like to do. I don't drag her to restaurants that don't offer dishes that meet her dietary wants and needs. She doesn't drag me to ballet.

I doubt there's any need to discuss the importance of a agreements about sexual desire.

The proposition that married love is a combo of sexual desire and taking each other into account is just a hypothesis. If it works, great. If it doesn't, too bad - it would be nice to be able to put a definition of '(married) love' into words.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 7:17 PM, Wednesday, April 10th]