SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Okay I only read this in fragments before, that is why I didn’t contribute.

Also truth is unfortunately I see a lot of similarities between our wives. So I don’t like to read it too much because I kind of see myself back then when, and I had for the longest time deep anger towards that version of me, now dead.

That’s not meaning anything bad towards you buddy, I feel a lot of sympathy. It just hits a bit too close to home to feel comfortable, so when I answer you I have to take a dip in that dark bottomless hole 🕳 I spent half my life trying to climb out from.

No big deal anymore, I can dive and hop out no sweat today, but the memories of it all still make it feel more uneasy than other betrayals stories. It was bad so I feel it all when I see you describing your fall.

You are bleeding pain.

I can tell you this. One of My wayward AP used her to do amateur porn compilation, along with prostitutes.

She was probably the cheapest of the bunch because he didn’t even have to pay her. Immortalized forever in the greasiest corners of the internet, fucking an obese ugly rat for the world to see.
I can tell the prostitutes in her video have more self respect than my wife had back then.
i do respect those prostitutes more than her back then.

Does this make it a prostitute? Does it make it less than one?

No it doesn’t. It does make her different. A cheater, a girl who had it all , something that most dream for life, and she choose to drawn it in the sludge.

This was her burning desire that trumped everything. The prostitutes got money, she got a sterilizing STD.
That’s the only thing she probably truly shared with me.
(And thanks god is cured at last)

So I kind of get exactly what you feel man.

I wish you would never actually have to watch your wayward having sex with one of her affair partners. Well I don’t wish that to anyone really.

You can figure how it feels

And I know there’s actually no help I can truly offer you besides a simple "hey I hear you! I know how it feels ".

Sometimes just not feeling totally alone might be good enough to breathe a bit better.

I can only tell you that you will see the end of it. You are climbing on sword tips and bleeding. It will pass. Don’t try to imagine what outcome will get you out first, D or R. It doesn’t really matter.

It will pass and will be clear skies ahead

Gemmy

I am deeply unsure if I can ever see it as anything but from now on.

This thread has stayed with me because the word itself carries so much weight and shame and in my own situation there is a painful irony around it.

My husband once called me a prostitute when I was pregnant and carrying his child. Less than a year ago I found out that before I was pregnant he had actually used prostitutes six times.

That is a particular kind of mind twist because the shame was put on me while the reality belonged to him. So I understand why the word lands so hard and why the transactional part feels so degrading from the betrayed side. It is not just sex or jealousy - it is the way something intimate and protected becomes cheapened, hidden and exchanged while the betrayed spouse is still living honestly inside the marriage.

I also think there is a difference between using the word to understand the wound and letting the word become the whole person. That is the part I am still sitting with myself because once you see the shape of something it is very hard to unsee it.

Gr8ful

So all the hurt the betrayed feel is their own issue with self esteem. Got it.

If other people’s view of you dictates how you feel about yourself, is "self-esteem" even the right word for it?

A huge part of life‘s problems are people looking for validation, and looking for it from other people. It is a killer to both the WS and the BS.

Gemma

I see…

I think if you said, "I choose to see" or something like "I judge" it’d be a more accurate statement.

To the extent that you possibly can, right now, you do actually want to just see her. Hit pause on the judging and putting into a specific niche, and just watch like you’ve never seen her before. As soon as you stick her into a particular bin, everything gets seen from then on through that filter.

It works the other way too, one in particular that the WS gets stuck into is the "This is so unlike them" type of thing. It’s not unlike them, they did it.

The more you can suspend the instantaneous judgment and watch them, the more you will see the unclouded truth. Then you can follow that where it takes you.

I think if you said, "I choose to see" or something like "I judge" it’d be a more accurate statement.

To the extent that you possibly can, right now, you do actually want to just see her. Hit pause on the judging and putting into a specific niche, and just watch like you’ve never seen her before. As soon as you stick her into a particular bin, everything gets seen from then on through that filter.

It works the other way too, one in particular that the WS gets stuck into is the "This is so unlike them" type of thing. It’s not unlike them, they did it.

The more you can suspend the instantaneous judgment and watch them, the more you will see the unclouded truth. Then you can follow that where it takes you.

Huh?

WBFA

Huh?

Gemmy wrote

Now how do I move forward? I see the shape and it is deeply disturbing to me. I cannot look at her right now.

I think a good starting point to move forward is to recognize that he chose to see her that way, I.e., apply that label to her, which means he can choose to see her a different way (apply a different label). He has some agency here.

Even better, resist the urge to apply any label. Just watch.

Or…just move to a divorce.

I understand and agree 100% with what HouseOfPlane is saying here.

Gemmy, and (WBFA) if you're still reading here; I labeled my husband as a happy, loving, faithful partner of 20+ yrs. His actions were filtered through that context. If I had simply observed without that filter, I would have been able to see more clearly. This is great advice. It's painful.

[This message edited by KitchenDepth5551 at 4:16 PM, Tuesday, July 14th]

I understand what you both are saying, but choose is subjective. It is now a subconscious label but a label none the less.

I see your point Gemmy. To me, it's a bit like those meditation exercises where you try to breathe and notice without labeling. You practice simply being and observing impartially.

It’s kind of like the mind movies thing. You sit there and they pop up, and you think I wish they could stop. But when you really pull the thread on it, the only person teeing up those mind movies are you.

You might say you hate them, but there is definitely some part of you that loves them to death, and can just watch them all day long.

So when they pop up, if you can switch your attention from the mind movie to the question of why am I playing these stupid things, then you can undercut them.

The eventual answer you get to is that they are a self manipulation.

Just so with the labels.

Best of luck, Grammy

Edit: Gemmy (damn spelling autocorrect 🙂)

[This message edited by HouseOfPlane at 5:35 PM, Tuesday, July 14th]

I will reread and re-evaluate then, maybe I am the one missing something. Gemmy if you found that helpful then that is what really matters.