SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I am not going to repeat myself in detailing all of the ways I AM DOING THE EXACT WORK YOU ARE PRESCRIBING.

It has already been outline multiple times, in multiple instances, in this thread and in others.

Really? Trying to convince everyone that anyone could cheat? Telling us you're avoiding people and believing that it's establishing boundaries? When challenged you lash out, you tell us we're all predictable, pathetic and disgusting?

If you truly believe this community doesn't see right through that nonsense you're terribly mistaken.

No one here is trying to shame you. That's all you.

You're terrified to really open up. You're terrified to let yourself be that vulnerable. So you run, put up your walls, and say "fuck that," and fuck this site.

Look around you. Tens of thousands of people have joined this community and bared their souls, exposed their greatest fears, deepest insecurities, greatest sorrows, struggles, and most painful and challenging journeys.

But you won't do that.

And it's not because you can't.

Thank you hikingout, I will continue my attempts. I sometimes revert back into shame and it is difficult to put myself out there.

Your last post was very enlightening, I think you had a lot of good points I need to reflect on myself. Particularly this portion:

And as I developed a self love, something you have mentioned realizing that you need to develop, I started naturally having new feelings about my life.

When you don’t care about or respect yourself, it’s hard to have values. The best I could muster was wanting to avoid future consequences. Once I learned to love and respect myself, then those things began to mirror themselves in my other relationships. I not only wanted to protect myself from pain, I wanted to protect them from me giving them pain. Then I also saw how good I felt when I was doing things out of self love and self respect.

Ghostie, I find your posts about anger and not valuing honesty/integrity interesting, especially because I used to relate to this. For a long time, I felt "asleep". I didn't realize that I was "asleep", or living "unconsciously", until recently when I "woke up". But while I was "asleep", I always had a short fuse/was quick to anger, I had little to no integrity and did things impulsively and out of desperation, and I did not do a lot of self reflection. I worked a lot and distracted myself a lot.

I am now learning through trauma therapy that I was in "survival mode". Our brains contain a prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for our critical thinking skills, decision making, thinking through long term consequences/logic/morality, etc. When people experience trauma (especially as a child) their prefrontal cortex becomes less active or inactive. This can go on for a while until this person feels safe again, and during this time, the person will act out of survival. This could lead to stealing, lying, being secretive, infidelity, committing crimes, driving recklessly, sudden anger, mood swings, etc. This is in response to PTSD or CPTSD.

While this does not justify or excuse any of the decisions we make while we feel unsafe or our nervous systems are dysregulated, it does help us to understand why so many WS's say they don't "recognize" who they were during their A, or even that they don't remember certain actions they committed during the A (the brain sometimes dissociates or compartmentalizes actions taken during this "asleep" state).

I lived in this way for many years, but I slowly started to "wake up" and reflect with horror about how I acted during this time. My infidelity, my anger, my lying, my tendency for secrets, etc were all so appalling to me. For the past few years, and especially the last 6 months, my anger has disappeared and I am more patient than I ever thought possible. I am able to reflect on my feelings andrecognize my emotions and the reason behind my thoughts, something I was never able to do for a long time.

This might not apply to you at all. But if it resonates, I would maybe bring it up with your IC.

I may be totally off base here, and if so please disregard. Just something I experienced, and a lot of the symptoms are apparent in WS posts on here!

The idea that anyone can commit infidelity, what it means to me, and the time I spent discussing it here, is just a very small part of my R&R journey, Unhinged. I have written SO MUCH here on SI, in which I have exhibited the radical honesty, deep introspection, and personal accountability that betrayed posters constantly demand of wayward posters (and then, after frothing at the mouth over these things, and promising that you will be treated better if you demonstrate them, BS will inevitably punish you for them, as I have found time and time again.)

It seems to me that 1) you are unwilling to go back and read (or even to remember the comments you already have read of mine) in order to find examples of "the work" I am doing, and 2) that you are trying to bait me into going back and compiling examples for you. I am not going to do that. You do not deserve a minute more of my time, because I know exactly what the result will be.

You are not healed from your betrayal trauma, as much as you insist you are, and you are not able to see the world except through the lens of your pain. You will read my words through that lens and interpret them as least charitably as humanly possible, and often times even as directly contrary to their defined meaning, and when I point that out, someone like Sisoon will be along to insist that it’s my fault you aren’t listening, and then you and any number of other BS will see the Bat Signal and be summoned so they can accuse me of being defensive and not wanting to do the work that I literally just described doing. And you will continue to gaslight me that this is not happening the more I protest. I would laugh at the ridiculousness of it all if I didn’t understand that it will not only happen to me, but to every other WS that comes here looking for help and support as they try to improve themselves.

You have not "done the work" in order to process the infidelity you committed decades ago, and I know this because of the way you’ve minimized it and excused yourself for it on this thread. ("I was young… I never suspected my ex would do that after we had dinner and went to her place, and it caught me by surprise… It was so long ago that it was before you were even born…It was only a few minutes of making out and groping someone who wasn’t my partner, to whom I didn’t disclose it because I know it would have hurt her… Obviously I’m not capable of committing infidelity because I could have gone all the way and I didn’t") Other people pointing this out, and my warning to you over it, has obviously triggered you. To think of yourself as someone who could commit infidelity, who could hurt your loved ones so badly and betray these values that you hold central to your very identity, is terrifying and uncomfortable (believe me, I understand. I’ve been to the lowest depths of shame as I took an honest look at myself for the first time, such that I’ve become completely unable to function as a person, and come back from that) But it is necessary to put you ego aside for a minute and undergo this process, in order to fortify your defenses against further infidelity… ("BuT GhOsTiE, YoU'rE JuSt SaYiNg ThAt So YoU cAn PuT eVeRyOnE ElSe DoWn So YoU CaN FeEL BeTteR!!!1!!" Yeah, no. STFU and actually listen for once.)

And because you are triggered by this, it is clear that you have chosen to utilize against me the trauma that I have been vulnerable enough to share here with you when I believed you wanted to help me, in order to trigger me as well. And then you have the fucking BALLS to accuse me of not being vulnerable. It’s beyond unbelievable. The very definition of "unhinged." This behavior is what is disgusting and pathetic, so much that I almost, almost feel sad for you that you can do it.

I am so glad that I’m not you. I will be over here counting my fucking LUCKY STARS that I am not you.

[This message edited by Ghostie at 7:18 PM, Thursday, December 4th]

OK. I'll admit it. I deliberately provoked you, for a very specific reason. None of it has anything to do with being triggered by you, not being healed, addressing the shit that I did thirty plus years ago, or to vicariously punish you for my ex-wife's betrayal.

I knew you'd be furious. I knew that intense anger you carry deep down inside would come out like a 155mm artillery round.

This is what I see in you.

I'm truly sorry for what you endured from your step-father. It might not surprise you at all to learn that the #1 reason people suffer childhood abuse is step-parents (step-fathers slightly more often than step-mothers).

This pain, the source of that anger, has most likely been tripping you up for most of your life. I've read from countless betrayed and wayward spouses who have come to understand the same things about themselves (differing issues as unique as the individuals themselves).

I have struggled with a tendency to avoid conflict and build walls most of my life (foo shit). As you have observed, I'm far more comfortable with conflict and don't build walls to shut people out. And it took my ex's betrayal to force me to change that.

Yes, you've been somewhat vulnerable here, shared the things you've been working on. I honestly believe you’re just scratching the surface, peeling those outer layers of the proverbial onion.

As you start to dig deeper, I think you'll find that untangling those childhood experiences will help you release that anger and pain.

I'm just a stranger on the internet. I'm not exactly an expert in psychology. I don't have a PhD nor am I board certified in any way. What I do have is a deep understanding of human nature that comes from years on these boards, getting to know, intimately, dozens of people who have made similar journeys.

I'm not your step-father. I have no interest at all in shaming you, making you feel "less than," or otherwise hurting you. My only hope is to see you release all of that pain you carry and find peace with yourself.

It's that pain that led you down Infidelity Lane. It limits you, doesn't it? Haunts you? Trips you up?

[This message edited by Unhinged at 11:10 PM, Thursday, December 4th]

You don’t have to be my step father to be an abusive shitbag. You have it down pat without any sort of relationship to me.

[This message edited by Ghostie at 2:35 AM, Friday, December 5th]

** Member to Member **

Yeah, no thanks on that one Sisoon

You took my observation and treated is as an attack. You received my communication and decided what it meant.

Parse your own sentences to see how they can be read. Make you write what you mean. And posting when you're triggered is something you should avoid.

Ghostie, have you considered a new thread with a stop sign? Only WS would be able to respond.

Sisoon, if I said to my husband "No, that’s not what I mean; that’s the opposite of what I meant," and he insisted that he knows what I meant better than I do,

Or if I said, "You’re not listening. You’re interpreting everything I say as uncharitably as possible and hearing things that I’m not actually saying, probably because you’re hurt…"

And he fucking replied, "I’m the receiver; I get to decide what your words mean. If you don’t like that decision, it’s your job to communicate better…"

I cannot even describe how fucking fast I would divorce him because that is NARCISSISTIC, GASLIGHTING ABUSER CODED. Like you’re really gonna sit there and deny the possibility that you could misunderstand me? That you could have biases? That you have no responsibility, as a participant in conversation, to make an effort to understand what I’m actually saying?? Absolutely fucking not; I’m done done.

And I’m not just saying that because I’m triggered and perceiving everything as abuse… Sometimes after people spend years dealing with this bullshit, THEY ARE ABLE TO RECOGNIZE IT FOR WHAT IT IS WHEN OTHER PEOPLE TRY IT.

No fucking thank you, Sisoon. Literally everything you could possibly say after that will now be disregarded because you are not a fucking safe person to talk to.

Ghostie, have you considered a new thread with a stop sign? Only WS would be able to respond.

I honestly believe that a new thread with a stop sign is not what Ghositie needs to help her. People here have been trying to help her, before she was "Ghostie" and after.

I also honestly believe that "Ghostie" needs more help than any anonymous person on a message board can give.

I am saying some things without actually saying it, and some people here know exactly what I am referring to. If I am banned for saying what I’m saying, so be it.

These forums are all about honesty and that being a huge part of the path of getting out of infidelity.

It is not okay for someone to prey on and play with all the goodwill that is shared here, from WS and BS both, that are doing and have done the work they need/needed to do to do, to try to heal and move forward with life after what they did or what was done e to them.

And as much as I have learned from reading on these boards, and occasionally posting here and there, I say shame on you, for allowing this. Someone this troubled, if they aren’t a troll, clearly needs more help than they can find here, on an anonymous message board. And if you really care like you say you do, you would’ve tried to help her find IRL resources, instead of what you have allowed her to do here.

I have "receipts" to show that them latest name "Ghostie" is either a troll or a person that needs more help than anyone on a message board like this one, can give her.

I’m not being ugly, I am just saying what I believe to be the truth.

cannot even describe how fucking fast I would divorce him because that is NARCISSISTIC, GASLIGHTING ABUSER CODED

You are aware that cheating too is a form of abuse? Whilst two wrongs do not make a right, it's pretty outrageous for an abuser to have no capacity for forgiving when it's exactly what they are asking of their partner.

As someone who was gaslight and cheated on, it's not clear to me which is more damaging.

Is your husband aware that you wouldn't have forgive him for abuse? Wonder how that makes him feel given that is what he's attempting to do.

I am saying some things without actually saying it, and some people here know exactly what I am referring to.

I knew it.

It's not easy to fool a community like this one.

If I wanted to keep myself concealed, trust me, I would have. I’ve been lying and sneaking around for like 99% of my life; I’m pretty damn good at it.

I thought this website would be helpful. I thought it would give me a community of people to talk to when there’s no one else to talk to about this sort of thing. It’s hard to have these thoughts and no feedback on them, and when your therapists have been equally useless. And I have given this website multiple chances because there are a few of you who do sincerely want to help and will do so kindly. Thank you to those users.

The rest of you… You have it in your heads that you want to be helpful, but I think you either can’t be helpful, or secretly want to hurt WS, and your pride won’t let you see that about yourselves, no matter how many times I point it out. (It’s almost funny that you would rather believe this is "trolling" than accept the possibility that I’m right about you.) I was right the first time. This has happened over and over, and I tried my absolute best to believe that you weren’t doing it intentionally, and to keep things polite, but you just push and push and push, and it’s torturous. I asked for my account to be deactivated days ago, so it wouldn’t have progressed this far, but obviously that didn’t happen in time. But I couldn’t not respond to this.

Yes, DrSoolers, I do understand that infidelity is a form of abuse. I initially pushed against that label, but I can’t form any defensible arguments against it. So I have accepted the fact that abuse is what I have done…But I am not asking for forgiveness from my husband. I don’t know if he’ll ever be able to get there, as so many of you here appear to have not. It’s clear that I have not forgiven my abuser either. I am more grateful than I have words for that he hasn’t divorced me yet, and I do pray that he doesn’t, so as long as staying with me doesn’t prevent his healing.

Many years ago, once, we had been arguing, and I told him he was "communicating" with me the way my step dad did. He said, in anger, "Maybe Stepdad was right!" And I said right then and there that I wanted a divorce. That was enough to make him see that I am not going to tolerate that shit from anybody ever again, and it was enough for him to never do that to me again. When we get meta about the way we are communicating now, he listens. He considers that he might be going about it wrong, or that he might have biases, or that he may have misunderstood me. He makes every effort in the world to understand my words until he has it right; he does NOT assume he knows what I mean better than I do, or tell me that he gets to decide what it is that I mean and if it’s wrong, it’s my job to be more clear…And he still does these things, even as a BS. His ego does not get in the way of being a good, safe partner, and a good, safe person in general.

And if it did, I would need to protect myself from further abuse by getting myself the fuck away from him, as I did with my stepdad as soon as I was able. So yes, that is a divorce-worthy offense.

Is infidelity a divorce-worthy offense? For many, it is. Is it for my husband? I hope not, but it’s entirely up to him, and only time will tell…Like I said, I understand how truly awful a thing I’ve done to him, and I can’t tell you how grateful I am for another chance. I’m doing everything I can not to blow it this time. That’s why I came here in the first place, and why I kept coming back to look for those tiny needles of good advice in the shitstack.

So maybe you lot can open your ears enough to hear me when I call out abusive tactics here, and take it upon yourselves to do better. I hope to God you’re not doing this to people in real life. And I hope I’m able to keep myself away from this God-forsaken site long enough to never find out whether you do or not.

(And if you really want to keep me away, moderators, I’ll make you a deal. You lock this thread so that other users can’t keep dragging me back in, and I’ll stop posting. You don’t have the proper systems in place to keep people from making multiple accounts, that much is clear.)

I say this with kindness...

Please please please focus on your husband and child and not on what internet strangers are saying or doing....

The work needed to heal from infidelity includes spending time with your spouse...

The hours and hours of time you spend looking for those "needles" of help and arguing with strangers is not worth it. It would be better spent with your husband and child or cleaning your house... Your family deserves your full attention.

Best wishes.

Ghostie, throughout your involvement here you have been deceitful, disrespectful, disdainful, combative and insulting. You have been given multiple chances by the staff and members, many of whom were aware that you created at least three accounts. And yet you somehow ascert and maintain that it is you who have given us multiple chances, as if our engagement is subject to your terms and conditions.

I could have 20 accounts for all you know. I could have invented each of them, with all different believable stories, interacting with all of you on a daily basis for the past half a year, even interacting with each other… Do not underestimate what I am capable of.

Notice how the mods have still not locked this thread. Having the final word, insisting that you people are the victims instead of the abusers, that I’ve been "disrespectful, disdainful, combative and insulting" first without any sort of provocation, is sooooo important to your fragile little egos, isn’t it, that you have to keep responding, keep responding, keep responding… Have some fucking self respect and let it DIE

[This message edited by TreadingWater1592 at 12:09 AM, Sunday, December 7th]

Oh my!

"Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!"

Sir Walter Scott, 1808

If a web is tangled, it’s because other, hapless insects have been ensnared

I think it’s unfortunate that this seems to have devolved into a game or some farce of what it is intended to be.
I think Ghostie or Treading might be better served taking time away from SI and working on her situation at home. She obviously isn’t getting what she wanted here.
Maybe she’s in denial, maybe she is unable to see what people’s intentions are. Neither matters.
What does matter is that she take a serious look at what her family needs to heal from this awful situation.
I can’t say that I am happy with the way she has responded to everyone but maybe she’s needs to take time to recenter herself without all this noise.
Everyone wants to help in their own way. Some people can take help unless it’s the way they want it offered.
If agree that ghostie should probably start a different thread that has a stop sign. At least then she can say that is BSs aren’t using our pain to pain her as our own WSs.
I hope you stay ghostie, even if it’s just as an observer.