SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

This may a petty or selfish couple of thoughts I'm tossing around, and I'm perfectly okay with anyone who agrees and denounces them as such. But I was wondering what you guys think about it.

For background purposes: My husband had an A in his previous marriage, which ultimately ended it. It was a long and very unpleasant marriage, from the way he describes it, and he said that the only emotions he could feel were numbness or anger. (I think there's way too many men out there in the same state, but I digress.) He told me a time that he went to MC with his XW, and after a few sessions with the MC, she remarked that it was "a marvel that he hadn't ended up killing himself or in jail." He reasons that his A was because he was seeking something to break up the numbness and feel alive again.

I've spoken to other women about this and many have exclaimed that it's a tale as old as time, where a man makes up lies about how bad his marriage was as a means of excusing the cheating, and then badmouths his XW to his next, much younger and naive wife. But I have seen a lot of behavior from her that corroborates his stories-- the most recent of which being scheduling her wedding to her current fiancé on Father's Day, when H had kids with her and her fiancé also has kids from a previous marriage... Who does that?-- and he admits that he most likely wasn't a good partner to her in his emotional condition, either. So I don't think it's quite as those women describe.

But anyway, I asked him the other night if he experienced a lot of shame after his A was discovered. And he said "No. Maybe a little after yours." And that's kinda been stuck in my mind lately. I mean, he did go to therapy for the last decade, resolve that numbness, fix his self-described anger issues (I've never seen any evidence of anger issues from him), and he's still working through his FOO trauma. So maybe he did fix the issues underlying his A. I'm just wondering though if that's possible to do without experiencing shame or remorse?

I certainly don't want him to feel the same way that I felt during my shame-paralysis phase because that was fucking awful, and God knows he's got enough to deal with right now. I just see that being touted as such an important thing here, and it's weird to think about him not feeling it at all right after his DDay, and not feeling it very much even after mine. And he says he would never cheat again because it's just not in his moral code, and that he was a different person in a completely different marriage when he did it. I don't think he loved [noun or verb] XW, but surely he had to have at some point in order to marry her, and even though our marriage has it's problems, it's much better. But what if he falls out of love with me and our marriage goes [further] south like theirs did... I don't worry so much about being cheated on because I don't necessarily need sexual monogamy from my partner, and I feel like I have all the tools I'd need to work through it with him if there was any EAs that developed. I just wonder if it's still a possibility if he doesn't feel much shame/remorse over his previous infidelity, even if he did the associated work, and it's kind of cognitive dissonance to say that he never could do it again...?

Probably not what I should be focused on right now, but the thought exercise is too... "appealing" isn't the right word. Maybe "pressing?" for me to be able to banish it from my head successfully.

Thoughts?

[This message edited by GotTheMorbs at 3:38 PM, Wednesday, May 27th]

To me it’s a question of morals.
If you can break your moral code without any sense of guilt or remorse… well… then it’s not a moral code, is it? It’s more a set of rules imposed on you by society that you have to go by.

Early on in my days as a LEO the veteran I was assigned to pointed out how nearly everyone we dealt with had some justification. Like the driver caught speeding would say he only followed the flow of traffic, that he had an important meeting… whatever… anything to make the reason for the stop trivial. They would go home and grumble to their friends about how fanatic the cops were for fining him for being "only" 18 miles above the limit, and forgetting that he was near a school-zone, or not knowing that the week before the same cops had scraped a body out of a car wrapped around the side-barrier.
That driver might slow down next time – not out of regret for breaking the law, but because he doesn’t want to pay another fine.
Had the driver rear-ended a school-bus or hit a kid… Probably a totally different set of emotions. Even without speeding.

Same "logic" of justification and minimization applied to nearly all sorts of infringement. The burglar would insist nobody got harmed and insurance would get them a new TV, the rapist that the victim wanted it rough… the absolute worst was the molester that insisted the 8 year old boys had enjoyed getting oral sex and hadn’t been harmed in any way.

So again – for me it’s a question of morals.
When you enter a relationship there are expectations. Those expectations might rank in different ways, but fidelity is probably one of the highest. If you can break that expectation with no moral consequence to yourself – then you are following social rules and norms, and not your moral compass.

There have been incidents and events where I have broken my moral code. Could be from naivety, stupidity, drunkenness, thoughtlessness… but they have always caused a period of self-criticism, remorse and regret. For example; I was financially unfaithful to my wife early-on when I hid some debt. After a serious chewing out and serious contemplations on her behalf if I was worth the effort… I recognized I was wrong and made amends and changes. If we had broken up at that time I hope I would have taken the lessons from that event and behaved more according to expectations AND my moral code in future relationships.

Remorse is attained through fully (as possible) understanding the damage that you caused another person and caring about it. It’s something I think you have to have to get through reconciliation because you must be able to contextualize the reactions you are seeing, empathize, anticipate and mitigate potential triggers, deesculate, to keep things in track by being in it together and understand the long process of the bs healing. It provides the ability to put your spouse’s comfort over your own for a long period of time.

To abstain from cheating, one only needs to have an unwavering commitment to themselves.

Integrity is what you do when no one is looking, and so the best way to abstain is to believe it is never in your best interest, you realize that cheaters cheat themselves from deep connection and lasting intimacy even if the affair is not discovered.

I also believe this helpful for you to learn why you would cheat to begin with and figure out how it reached that point.

Hindsight provides clarity so I see no reason if one cheated in a relationship that ended a lesson can’t be learned or growth can’t occur.

Remorse is not always about what you believe is right or wrong, it’s accepting that you did something that caused damage to someone else and having empathy over how they feel about it. It also in the case of cheating requires you understand more than what the other person is telling you, you understand the effects of trauma. Without that understanding, you will never be able to contextualize it in your day to day efforts. And then you tend to take everything the other person does as personal and unacceptable.

Guilt/regret is how you feel about what you did. This is helpful because it’s a form of pain that can propel you to make different decisions.

Shame is useless. It’s not an emotion, it’s a conviction. It usually causes personal healing and healing as a couple a lot harder. It creates defensiveness, inaction, avoidance, etc.

DARVO is when you deny, attack, reverse victim and offender.

I tend to think toxic people either end up with someone who is a empath type because the dynamic works best for them- the other person spends all their time being understanding and forgiving while they lose themselves in the overgiving, or they get with someone who is also toxic so they can be their worst self unchecked.

I do not think all people who cheat are of the toxic variety as their baseline. A lot of us are. I only made the last statement because I always think it’s entirely possible that a bs is not a good partner. Divorce is a valid option for either partner.

It never changes my advice—- The best analysis you could spend time on is yourself, not on him, and not on the relationship.

[This message edited by hikingout at 7:47 PM, Wednesday, May 27th]