SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I've been a registered user for just over a year, but a lurker for years, but something has always baffled me, when it comes to infidelity and that is, to those who caught their spouse in the act(whether it be making out or a full blown porn scene), how can anyone in their right mind stay with that person?...

Now some might say, well there are different degrees to what you may have walked in on(say for example kissing), which many may forgive, but I can't fathom how that makes it any better, as it's still a big betrayal in my book and I see kissing as a very intimate act regardless...

Then there is the location of where the betrayed spouse caught them and worse yet if it was in their own bed...

It's just food for thought as I have tried to wrap my head around the amount of stomach a betrayed spouse in that position has and have literally thrown their self-respect out the window and have taken back a cheater like that...

I think the excuse of oh they have kids together or have been married for umpteen years, to me makes it ten times worse and that argument just doesn't hold water in my book...

Would love to hear your thoughts on this type of betrayal...

can't claim how others "stay"

ask self question - Am I better with or without her? (or him) If with, am I willing to gamble my future?

Point I think for some people is that physical activities don't matter so much. The emotional stuff is what really matters.

Given most all affairs are a big dose of fantasy and selfishness makes the consideration the mentality of the couple most important.

Begs the question: "What were you thinking?"

Answer? "Just about myself."

Byebyebirdie, while I never witnessed anything like that with my cheating husband I don’t believe anyone who has and chooses to stay has "thrown their self respect out the window", but actually has an amazing amount of self preservation and respect to decide what is best for them despite knowing many who don’t understand or think they know better will come along and judge. One thing infidelity has taught me is an unyielding refusal to judge anyone’s choices when deciding what is best for them given their choices don’t hurt anyone else. And I’ve learned that I have no f’ing clue what I’d do in most traumatic situations unless I’ve lived through them. I was sure I’d leave a cheater, yet here I am happy I stayed. :)

Good point Hippo, and as they say, for men it's more the knowing of the physical act and for women, it's more the emotional connection...

I think the shock of walking in on and seeing what you see, shocks the person so much, that the PTSD from it causes a severe brain re-map, where all rational goes bye bye...

BTW, I didn't make this post to "judge" anyone who stayed with their cheater, regardless of how they cheated. That's your cross to bear🙏...

I'm dealing with a specific type of infidelity and trying to understand the mindset of it...That's all

[This message edited by Byebyebirdie at 2:55 AM, Thursday, December 5th]

So I didn’t catch my WS in the act but I know what they did sexually as I asked for every detail. While others don’t necessarily think this is a good idea I needed it for my piece of mind. In fairness it sounded like the most boring affair in the world.

Anyways the one thing I’d like to say to you is the biggest reason I stayed is for my son. The reason being if I left I would have to share custody 50/50 with him. I have done this with my first son and ex-husband and the fact I have missed out on so much of his life hurts more to me than staying with a man who fucked someone else.

The pain caused from the thoughts of not seeing my son everyday outweighed the pain of staying. I get you can’t understand it because these are my thoughts not yours. Before all of this happened I never dreamed of staying with a cheater but when you are left with two shit choices you just have to pick what’s best for you at the time.

Webbit, I know everyone's case is different and you had to do what you had to do. It's like jumping from Ceasar to Ceasar and as I said in my last reply, I'm not here to judge anyone who stayed with their cheater...

I am dealing strictly with what someone walked in on, not what was learned after the fact...

[This message edited by Byebyebirdie at 3:03 AM, Thursday, December 5th]

Byebye, what are your thoughts about a person like me that found out 12 years after the fact with two toddlers a new home and we werent married when she fucked a few guys? Believe me I am traumatized and grossed out probably forever but leaving might have sucked worse, either way I , we lost and she knows it, no such thing as Valentines day in our lives, it's sad because when that day comes we both pretend we are saving money but we both know why.

I did not catch them in the act, but the majority of the acts were in our house, and I knew her well so the mind movies were relentless.

I used to think similiar things- how could one reconcile with this or that? Especially for a long time it was hard to understand serial forgiveness towards a serial cheate - but over time I stopped thinking that way.

The worst affair is the one that betrayed you, and many people get ptsd without seeing the act. I have come to believe reconciling successfully comes down to enough good in the marriage to stay. We as humans have lots of needs, not just fidelity. If many of those other boxes are checked and the ws is a good rebuilder, then sometimes we would rather be with the devil we know so to speak.

For me, it happened in my intimate space and the cross contamination of sometimes having sex with him the same day, or kissing him hello when I got home after she just left. There were still other things I did not want to give up easily. Our family, shared history, our business partnership, similar sensibilities, ability to get along, etc. those were big things. Thoughts of having to date again, to have to move, to have to hire help with handyman things. I still trusted him in many other aspects of our marriage. So, if he was willing to do some work on himself and come from a place of accountability, I don’t find it hard to imagine actually seeing them together and making the same choice. I feel like my mind movies were probably worse - imagination can certainly provide more suffering sometimes than reality.

For those who just stay but don’t truly reconcile - not sure the decisions rest on anything that different. Splitting time with kids, moving, fears of being able to financially support oneself either because you stayed at home with kids or you will have too much child support to be able to have much left over. It’s just maybe the situation is a bit different - maybe the ws is not a good rebuilder, neithe rod you really want to work on the relationship in a deep way, etc.

But I think any couple who stay together or fully reconcile do so often with largely practical motives. Yes, I love my husband and that plays a big part, but without those practical reasons it may not have been enough to get us up the hill. Having multiple reasons in addition to love helped when that love felt scarce or strained.

I do think codependency can play its own role. But anyone married for years has developed some level of that because you have a role that you are used to, and a role you rely on your partner to play. Change is hard and people tend to only do it when the pain of staying where you are is greater than the pain it takes to make that move. Greater than the pain of having to fill that partners role some other way.

Some of your replies are truly heartbreaking and kudos to all who worked it out for whatever their own reasons and circumstances were/are...

As I said in my initial post, I'm trying to understand the psyche of those who walked in on their spouse and how they could stay in that type of situation after seeing what they saw...

Shouldofleft, your situation is truly sad after learning all these years later and my prayers are with you...

Hikingout, I've read your story before and all the ups and downs, hope you continue to heal with yours...

FWIW - I think "judging" is just wrong and tending towards personal bias and maybe being (insert word pertaining to lack of mental acuity) when speaking about "why I stayed."

Sometimes one makes the trade for their personal well-being "for the sake of giving their children a respectable home life" and sometimes one make the choice to "stay" hoping their dream won't totally evaporate. (a "Wonderful Life")

It pains me to no END to see/read posters who post JUDGEmental and disregard the opportunity to offer suggestions, perceptions, and ideas for moving forward adding in warnings of pitfalls for which they have paid a price for stomping into.

What folks post is but a microcosm of their situation - so to make (especially) sweeping judgements is just (I'd get banned if I go further with this line of thought).

Best option is to ask for info and OFFER suggestions on possible pathways towards resolution of issues. (I hate to make such a generality but what else can you suggest?)

Staying with someone who has trashed your feelings to the bottom of the Marianas Trench is one of the hardest things one can face.

Staying with said person is a supreme gamble with the odds badly negative in your favor. So? One make such a choice based on HOPE and their JUDGEMENT based on what they do know.

NO WAY we on an anonymous forum can have the same visibility of the history and facts they have to make a JUDGEMNENT on the path they should take.

Offer postive support and warn them when you see them wandering into a 'pitfall.'

have literally thrown their self-respect out the window

Pull that phrase apart…is it really self respect when you base your respect of yourself (your self) on what someone else did? Because if you do that, you are saying what they do and who they are determines who I am.

Which happens all the time, of course. Trophy wife, anyone?

ByeByeBirdie,

I did not visually see my WH acting out with porn and escorts, but I am (now) aware he was doing it for many years and know the sordid details.

I don't know if seeing it with my own eyes would be any worse than what my colorful imagination has displayed over and over.

I ask myself if I should stay or not frequently, as I'm only a few months into this hell. Yes, WH was hard to connect with emotionally, but I excused it; my father didn't demonstrate love either and it had been normalized for me. My parents were married over 50 years before they died, and were content. WH was reliable, responsible, and I thought we had a decent marriage before I found out about everything.

I bristled when you said that if I take him back I'm "literally throwing my self-respect out the window."

WH is messed up. He used connections with fake people to deal with his childhood neglect from his parents. The dopamine hit from acting out helped him feel in control of his fear of abandonment and negative emotions, gave him a false 'connection' with a female, and from a young age he started to rely on that to deal with his intimacy issues. He never got help, and then it escalated into physical acts during our marriage. A lot of people think porn is no big deal. Hell, I thought that before I realized just how much of an intimacy disorder it can represent. Now I realize human trafficking is heavily involved, how it damages true emotional connection via objectification, and how insidious the effects are over time.

I'm trying to understand this instead of just running away. I think THAT would lead me to feel less self-respect, if my empathy for someone I've loved and shared my life with could be so quickly jettisoned when he's finally addressing his long-standing addition. I might leave him regardless, but if I don't I would not be friends with anyone who saw me as "poor, worthless gray54, she didn't respect herself enough to D."

Absolutely all those years with a man who was hiding a secret of this magnitude damaged me too. I have plenty of flaws and confusion and I am working through some of it now, trying to get my self-confidence back. And I will. I'm trying to grow from this betrayal and my self-worth is not tied to his behavior in the past. I was ignorant of anything other than H was a jerk sometimes. I got good at detaching when he was being an @ss and it seemed to pass. But even though I recognize I'm broken, I've always had self-respect and I believe I still do.

WH is in recovery now, and working hard to try to be a safe partner. He is invested in his own healing, for himself, not just to win me back. I don't intend to take him back unless I can heal to a point where what he was is less important than who he becomes/is now. My post-traumatic growth and ability to see what is the right choice (for me) is my focus. I do not think my self-respect is on the line.

[This message edited by gray54 at 4:23 PM, Thursday, December 5th]

have literally thrown their self-respect out the window

Pull that phrase apart…is it really self respect when you base your respect of yourself (your self) on what someone else did? Because if you do that, you are saying what they do and who they are determines who I am.

Exactly.

*****

I can agree that even a kiss can be a tremendous betrayal, but I also think seeing a kiss is different from seeing something more intense. That's me, though. Your get to and must choose your own values.

*****

Different phenomena affect different people in different ways.

I don't understand your reason(s) for worrying about what others do in the face of infidelity, and I don't see how doing so helps you heal.

Not many people catch their WSes in an act, so I wonder why you focus on that. If you caught your WS in an act, though, you have your own problem to solve. I don't understand how what other people did affects what you want to do.

I agree that choosing R after seeing one's WS in full on sex with someone else would be very difficult. I don't know what I'd have done if that had happened to me. I do know what I'd counsel, though. It's the same counsel I give everyone:

look inside,
figure out if you want to stay or go,
if you want to stay, figure out if your WS is a good candidate for R,
then act to get as much of what you want as you can,
process the feelings that come with being betrayed out of your body.

*****

I feel a little better when people post in ways that show they're healing. I feel a little better when people report making choices that they think are right for them. I feel more than a little better when people report they made a choice and they're happy with what they chose.

But really, what other people do after being betrayed has minimal impact one me, and I'll project that onto others - what I - and others - choose has little impact on anyone other than people we interact with IRL.

Reading SI gives me some insight into how I might respond to various stimuli, but I have to make my own choices and deal with the consequences. So does every other SIer, lurker, and even people who have no idea SI exists.

*****

So what's going on with you Byebyebirdie? The more you share, the more help you can get.

I had the "pleasure" of witnessing it all...
I had to go home from work for a clean shirt. Being the middle of the night and me being the considerate man I am I unlocked and entered the apartment very quietly and silently made my way to the bedroom in the dark. I heard the noises, and maybe stood for half an eternity (probably all of two seconds) in the doorway to our bedroom looking at some heap of intertwined flesh in the dark, before flipping the light-switch. Nothing to question or doubt... pretty clear what they were doing.

Was that worse than maybe hearing about it from a friend, or finding some love-notes or wondering how I got the clap?

Honestly – No.
My imagination can conjure up a lot worse images than I saw.
My mind can create some combination of Hollywood sex, where all the women have perfect hair and makeup, where the men are shaved and combed and a sheet is somehow not preventing the act. It can combine that creation with what I have seen on dubious sites where the women scream and moan in pleasure like felines in heat, where the man has a Johnson the girth of a pepsi-can and the length of the average cucumber (it’s all the height of the male porn-stars and angles of the camera...). I can imagine people enjoying themselves doing the umpteenth sexual act after 90 minutes of non-stop screwing about.

Instead I just saw two people that didn’t really know each other and had no real intimacy have sex. I didn’t have to imagine anything.

Granted – I did leave her. But that wasn’t because of what I saw but because of what she did.
I have always been relatively logical, and for ME leaving THAT relationship five weeks before our marriage made sense.

You Byebyebirdie have never shared YOUR story. I’m guessing based on the question you didn’t walk in on anyone. We all react differently. I remember a female poster who divorced because her husband patted a strange woman’s behind. Then we have people that (seemingly) successfully reconcile from multiple affairs. It’s all individual, and I think that often we can’t know if something is better or worse unless we experience it ourselves.

I came home earlier than expected from a business trip, picked up some flowers and walked in on my finance having sex with another guy in our bed. I ended the relationship, but the mind movies haunted me for a long time. I’m not sure I could ever understand how someone could stay after seeing something like this, but then there were no kids, finances were still separate and I was young enough to start over. So, I guess I really don’t know what I would have done in other circumstances.

I can't imagine staying just knowing an affair occurred, much less witnessing the act. That would just be too traumatizing for me. But, to each their own. Although I would have only sympathy for someone exposed to that level of trauma, I wouldn't judge them, because I didn't appreciate being judged for helping him pack his shit and filing within 3 months. Lots of people came for me with that BS about for better and for worse til death do us part.