SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

It has been over 10 years since D-Day. We are reconciled. I have been through all the stages at least a few times. I have backslid, moved forward, had bad days and terrible days as well as awesome days. We have made it through the worst of it. So I was surprised to hear an exchange on a podcast titled: Divorce Lawyer: Why Oral Sex and Granola Cause Divorce. I was amazed at the lawyer's insight and wisdom. I guess seeing the worst of marriage gives someone some clarity on the human condition and relationships. This is not word for word what he said, but it provided more insight on what happened in my marriage than any other piece of work.

"People early in relationships, for understandable reasons with no nefarious intentions, develop habits that in the long run are going to be bad for them. Like, "I don't want to disappoint this person, so I am going to tell them things that are not necessarily true, because an uncomfortable truth is worse for me than a comfortable lie." "Their mild discomfort is so uncomfortable for me that I am going to get in the habit of being untruthful about what I am feeling." Which is a perfectly understandable habit that may even be borne of love habit, but it is a bad habit, and don't get good at it. Because it will metastasize. There will be a line, a straight line from that people pleasing, good intentioned thing...and cheating on your partner."

"Like no one gets up one morning saying I am going to F up my life today. I think I am going to go out and I am going to ruin my relationship and ruin my partners trust in our relationship and other relationships. And I am going to take this other person's gig and screw that up. I am going to give others and myself trust and abandonment issues for the foreseeable future...Let's do it!"

"It's more like, Awe, its no big deal, its just a little flirting, c'mon we're human. Just 'cause your on a diet doesn't mean you can't look at the menu. We're just playing we're not...it's not a big thing...okay its a big thing, but only happened once, one little... c'mon life is short, it happened once, nobody even knew. That is how it happened. Next thing you know is you turn around and you ask, how did we get here? Like when did this happen?"

He goes on to say "It's a straight line, it can be a long line, and the longer it is the harder it is to see how it happened. It is a lot of little bad choices." He illustrated it like how you can get overweight. It would be easy to see if you made one bad choice and your pants no longer fit, but that is not how it works, you make a lot of little bad choices and then you realize your pants no longer fit.

I had not heard it put that way and so matter-a-fact. So I shared it with my fWW. It made her cry, not because I was angry (I was not) but this was simply so full of wisdom about how it happened, and she had never seen it that way before. That her people pleasing lies when compounded the way she did, lead her to infidelity. And if she had been more honest, not only would she not have been made a slut (her word) by her own actions, she could have had a relationship with me that was closer and met her needs more.

Anyway, I thought it was interesting. I have not listened to the rest of the podcast. I bet it has more insights. I would be interested in the reaction of both betrayed and waywards.

It’s the slippery slope to an affair. Most often it’s not 1-2-3 💥- people are cheating. It starts off "innocently" as in meeting for the first time and then it builds over time to cheating. And "time" could be as short as a day or two.

Excellent post - I think it gives people something to think about b/c often the betrayed heard the way the affair started is because the married couple "don’t communicate" and the OM/OW listened.

People pleasing and lack of awareness are a big thing minimized into a little thing to cope and indulge in it.

It’s a mini but constant validation chase to soothe your insecurities about your value. You get recognition when you please, even if small and momentary is addictive, because it’s reassuring about you "being finally accepted ". The fear of not belonging is soothed. You end up wanting this reassurance more and more often in time.

When you are in a relationship that shouldn’t matter, because you are by default, accepted by your partner.

If the insecurity still whispers you aren’t worthy, you don’t belong, but at the same time you find comfort and a safe harbor in your partner’s presence, you might be tempted to avoid conflicts with small white lies, so you are sure you won’t risk to be cast away. (Which wouldn’t happen).

Honesty makes you uncomfortable when you seeded many little lies, because lies always blow up when scrutinized. Feedback loop.

And you started people pleasing your partner, which merges with the outside people pleasing, transferring the comfort of your relationship into blurring the line between the you as a partner and you as interfacing with the outside world.

Your partner becomes the testing ground for people pleasing lies, giving you back emotional energy as validation, and a sub surface sense of guilt for doing that.

But no guilt in doing the same with others right?

Not the same emotional investment but surely the same emotional validation and dopamine hits, relaxing, feeling pleasant.

You weaved a fantasy relationship at home because is now framed on a castle of little, unnecessary lies tha avoid conflict. Small each one, but forming a frame that is shaky in the number and frequency right now. You know you shouldn’t do and at the same time you want to preserve the fantasy perfection, so you can’t be honest and undo the net of lies.

The mere idea is depreadful.

Better minimize the chance of making little lies for conflict avoidance and validation. But it is now needed because your system is used to it as an easy fix.

Outside is safe as above, no emotional investment, little lies, small play pretend, nothing harmful and no big deal ven if it collapses. It’s a validation farm and is forgivable, or you aren’t as emotional invested that cutting those ties would really hurt.

So you bring the home model outside gradually (you probably started a while back already, testing the waters without realizing it). And it works, and you tell yourself lies about what you’re doing and why you’re doing and why it’s now feeling relaxing to do that outside while at home you walk on eggshells not to add more lies and not to blow the older ones up.

Then someday you interface with a person that is like you. Same little lies, same validation farming. You both get along because you’re answering to each other’s transactional need.

And you both have a story to tell yourself about why it is nothing bad what you are doing, why it’s innocent, why you deserve the good feel.

And of course you lie to each other to people please the other the most and receive back in kind the validation.

Even when you crossed the sexual line, the pattern doesn’t change, it just rebounds in your safe haven, the relationship and your partner, just now with treacherous and abusive lies replacing the little white ones you were escaping from.

The confrontation now, you know is nothing like it would have been for the little lies, now it’s an elder that will likely cast you away.

For the fear of confrontation and insecurity of being cast away, you reached the point where you cast away yourself, self fulfilling the prophecy that your low self worth feared.

But as long as you have this other person feeding the fantasyland of lies and deception with enough feel good to keep you going, you’ll be likely to continue.

Confrontation is scary.

And people could do unthinkable things when they fear confrontation enough, that they choose lies over honesty.

Edit - is rather shame than guilt, guilt is felt and owned, shame is avoidance

[This message edited by BackfromtheStorm at 9:01 PM, Wednesday, September 30th]

The1stWife, I found it interesting that the Lawyer traced infidelity back farther than that chance meeting that started the affair to a behavioral pattern that could have started in childhood, but definitely took root in the early part of a relationship. If I am honest in looking back, it is clear to me now that she would tell me what I wanted to hear instead of telling me what was true from the time we were in college, to long after d-day. Being honest about her feelings or even inconvenient truths was so uncomfortable for her that she has lied as a matter of course. Not because she is a bad person. More because of what the lawyer said, an uncomfortable truth was worse for her than a convenient lie. And all those lies and swallowing her own feelings and needs turned into resentment, combined with a habit of not being truthful, and it snowballed.

My take away is there was a pattern, long before the affair that points at the apparent inevitable conclusion of probable affairs. One that is identifiable. And it may not have to do with being a narcissist or deeply flawed or even selfish. It does have to do with choosing comfort in the moment over honesty. Unfortunately, the comfort in the moment turns into deep pain in the long run. If I had advice for a young person going into a relationship it would be this, avoid the people pleaser who will tell you want you want to hear. No matter how nice it is to think you have a partner that will go along and get along, in the end, it could cause great pain.

"People early in relationships, for understandable reasons with no nefarious intentions, develop habits that in the long run are going to be bad for them. Like, "I don't want to disappoint this person, so I am going to tell them things that are not necessarily true, because an uncomfortable truth is worse for me than a comfortable lie." "Their mild discomfort is so uncomfortable for me that I am going to get in the habit of being untruthful about what I am feeling." Which is a perfectly understandable habit that may even be borne of love habit, but it is a bad habit, and don't get good at it. Because it will metastasize. There will be a line, a straight line from that people pleasing, good intentioned thing...and cheating on your partner."

Yes. To this day I don’t really feel like I am vigilant over not cheating, that part is not at all challenging to me.

It’s taking up space in the relationship, inconveniencing him, making him uncomfortable, bringing up things that bother me.

I force myself to do it because I know 100 percent that’s how I slowly lost my identity, not just through doing this with him—-it was with everyone.

I have gotten better at it because I have learned better delivery. I think that is also part of the accountability part. I stopped saying the things because it always resulted in negative interactions. I learned that I just needed to learn to deliver what I am thinking in a less emotionally charged way. I don’t think I was capable of seeing or understanding that as a young married person, and the longer it went on the less I even noticed it.

When our relationship became strained during the period before the affair and I hit empty nest at approximately the same time, I didn’t quite see the things that defined me were all crumbling around me and there was little else that defined me other than my career success. But I felt it. I didn’t know what the feeling was or how it had happened but it was like I was experiencing my own death in many ways. I no longer existed the way I had for 20 years and it was a quiet devastation I could not name.

The thing that was most deceptive of all is it seemed like I had done everything right. From the outside looking in, I had a great marriage, a nice house, just utterly exceptional kids, I had an executive level job. But looking back the reason I had all these things was because I was a top notch people pleaser who gave until I had nothing left to give. Yet I am patting myself on the back and thinking wow look at what you have done!

By the time I had my affair I couldn’t find a way to care about any of it at all. I risked all of it by having an affair with someone related to my work that could have ended my career, which was the last piece I had left. I think in many ways it all felt so abstract to me that I did want out of all those things, not just my marriage because I couldn’t keep giving what I had in the past, it wasn’t there anymore.

Now I have less- I quit my job, we sold everything and traveled together for a couple of years, which helped me shed my labels that pretty much defined me and I started asking myself what I wanted and what was important to me. I am still asking those questions but I have slowly rebuilt a life that pleases me.

We have a smaller home, my job is more mid-level, the kids are all still great but they are all now deeply entrenched in their own lives. My marriage is great—-but there is far more intentional things being fed to it so while it’s not as easy it’s more fullfilling. And because I am not people pleasing I have come to be able to accept that he loves me almost unconditionally (barring any further abuse or disregard of our relationship —that’s the main condition which feels perfectly fine and less strangling than trying to be a stepford wife)

I never thought about it as lying, I think I have said here lots I never lied to him. But in essence there was a lot of dishonestly happening within myself that did create lies of seeming okay when I wasn’t.

The most dramatic thing that I have noticed in ceasing that behavior (not perfectly but I do continue to refine and improve) is how much my nervous system has adjusted and relaxed. I don’t have nearly the anxiety, rumination or other things that were compounding without my understanding. I still have to balance myself in certain scenarios but I get more masterful of being unbothered on things I should be unbothered about and any control issues I had are all now pretty nominal. But it has taken 10 years to unwind all that and I still have epiphanies all the time.

But I know who I am, what I want, why I do things, what I enjoy, and it’s really made a difference in every single one of my relationships.

I know the lawyer you are talking about and I have heard a lot of his philosophies but it wasn’t hitting me the way you just interpreted all of it quite the same way, so great discussion to put out.

[This message edited by hikingout at 4:45 PM, Thursday, October 1st]