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The guy that wrote Bridges cheated on his wife with a friend. I think he left for the OW. Hated the movie. Totally disinterested in Babygirl. I think it is typical Hollywood passing soft porn as art. No. It is porn and no thank you.

I don’t remember you saying your wife had anything emotional going on with him. So it might have been sexually fueled. I personally think she just wanted to know she was still desirable knowing what I know about midlife crisis.

The emotional component was in the beginning. It wasn’t love, but more of not only being desirable, but as a person other than her role as wife and mother. He didn’t start his grooming with "hey you are hot and I want to bang you" but rather telling her how amazing her ideas were in the renovation and he never had a client who was so smart. He then put the idea in her head that she could be part of a business that he was looking to start. He doled out these compliments and she escalated by dressing for him, bringing him snacks, etc. The compliments were like water to a person in the desert dying of thirst. As a women now in the throes of a mid life crisis she said she felt like a piece of furniture. There, but not really seen. In reality that thought was just in her head. She was valued not only by me and my daughters, but the whole community.

But it’s hard for me to think your ex could have good feelings over a guy who let his crew know what was happening behind the door so they could all laugh at her.

She definitely didn’t have good feelings for him. The question is how she felt about the sex. In my youth I had a number of relationships with women that were frankly bat shit crazy and made my life hell. Yet the sex was amazing, and yes I look at the sex quite fondly. I’m sure the women here have had the same thing with guys who were pricks but nonetheless rocked their world. The only variable here was these relationships were short term and the break ups weren’t like unwinding a long term marriage. My car still got keyed after one break up and I still remember how great she was in bed.

I think for me in this movie I was angry that this husband who had looks, brains, and was kind could be treated as such a doormat, and actually like it. He let her train him on her lover’s techniques. I just can’t fathom that.

I wonder how many other BS here feel when something that wasn’t on the menu prior to the affair, shows up in their bed after the affair was discovered.

The ONLY realistic aspect of the movie is that it confirms one statement we often make here: They cheat despite us -not because of us.
Kidman could have been in a polyamorous relationship with Banderas, Pitt and Clooney but still cheated with the office-boy because she thought something was missing and she couldn’t communicate it to her partner(s). The big question in my mind is why we – the betrayed – are supposed to mind-read unclear messages (or even no message) about something that our partner thinks is "missing". I think a major reason tends to be because what’s "missing" tends to be either easily solved or really minor.
Like... if the issue was the lack of orgasm, and yet Kidman could orgasm when the intern did his stuff... Banderas is surprised when he learns she hasn’t had the O for 19 years of marriage (so... no communications). Yet when Banderas does something new, she comes.
I’m guessing that an open discussion maybe the first year of marriage, and then open communications about wants and needs for the duration of the marriage could have gotten better results.

Chaos—thanks for the shout out about winning the internet😊. There’s only so much crying you can do before the humor comes back into your life. And laughing feels so much better. Stay strong everyone!

The ONLY realistic aspect of the movie is that it confirms one statement we often make here: They cheat despite us -not because of us.

This. Cheating is about the person doing it.

And wwTL I do t want to keep going about your ex because you have a firm grip on whatever happened I am sure. And I respect you and don’t want you to feel like I am invalidating you or your feelings about it. So I will keep my comments personal here .

I just want to say for myself and the women that I know, if we regret the sex, if we think the person turned out to be shitty, they usually do not stay in the "spank bank" so to speak. I have lots of girlfriends and we talk about these things. I just think often the landscape of female sexuality (and maybe this is true for men, not sure) centers mostly around how we feel about someone emotionally. I am not saying we are incapable of having a fun fling but generally a fun fling is an understood thing between two single people where often there are no consequences or repercussions.

Heck, I had a boyfriend when I was 18 that I can still look back and think that sex was really hot. He was the best kisser of anyone I’ve ever kissed. But all that still doesn’t supersede what I have had in my life since being with my husband. Yet if I remember certain things about that time I still see them how I saw it then. I am too far removed from my 18 year old self for me to use it as a fantasy but I don’t have bad feelings about it.

Even moreso here is another thing that is not infidelity but morphed after my husbands affair. I have been open that when my husband and I were dating we were sexually adventurous because we really didn’t see ourselves in a long term relationship with each other. We were having fun and we were young. Anyway, we had a couple we would see for about a year and up until he had the affair, I often thought about him and the woman. It was definitely in my spank bank rotation. We all were great friends and I liked watching them together. There were never bad feelings about it, just a place in time when we were a bit wilder and freer. Since his affair I can’t stand to think about it because it morphs into thinking about him and the ap. When I have tried to use it, I have had to stop whatever was happening and I would be done for the day and probably the next few days.

My affair has a completely different vibe if I think about it than past relationships or sexual memories. There is nothing but being filled with regret, remorse, disgust, disappointment in myself, and deep shame. Unless you are a person who is turned on by those things it’s truly impossible.

It’s natural to want to draw from our own experiences and say "well I still think about this fondly" sure you do. You were not a villain in that story, you didn’t critically injure your marriage over it, you didn’t traumatize the person that you love deeply, you didn’t derail your life.

In the movie, we don’t really see her life derailed. We don’t even see it derailed for Antonio’s character. We all know these fictional movies do not represent how things really go.

[This message edited by hikingout at 2:54 PM, Saturday, February 1st]

Really interesting discussion. I am certain that I will not be spending my money on this movie. When I read the other comments and gleaned the plot, I figured that this must be intended to be a sex fantasy, from a woman’s perspective. You know, where the heroine is a beautiful, sexy, high-powered wealthy CEO and steps out with a young hot peon and then, being the fabulously talented person she is, figures out how to make her faithful successful handsome pleasant husband not only not feel humiliated and abused, but also better than ever. Now, I like happily ever after stories as much as anyone, but this one requires a ridiculous suspension of disbelief, so far over the reality line that the writer should have her poetic license revoked. It really sounds like someone found an old Letter to Penthouse and made a movie out of it. Imagine if the sex roles were reversed and a man did this with an intern and then made his wife happy by showing her some of the intern’s best moves.

I looked up the Wikipedia entry for the writer/director. It is a Dutch woman named Halina Reijn. She’s had a long and successful career in film. She had an unusual upbringing. Her father was openly gay but stayed with her mother. He died young when Halina was pre-teen. She has not confirmed that she is a lesbian but her long time companion is a woman and they kiss in public. Her inspiration for Babygirl was a documentary about women therapists in a Dutch prison who have sex with inmates. The one that resonated with her was the affair with a rapist. She was fascinated with what inspired successful woman to risk all to respond sexually to low lifes in their care and over whom they had absolute power to grant their freedom or keep them incarcerated. I don’t think that she knows or cares about how men in committed relationships are devastated when their spouses betray them. She is focused exclusively on women wielding power. I guess that a movie about female therapists falling for sexually violent predators in their care and tossing their professional ethics in the trash, and then making it all good by sharing some sex techniques with their husbands, would not be commercial.

And wwTL I do t want to keep going about your ex because you have a firm grip on whatever happened I am sure. And I respect you and don’t want you to feel like I am invalidating you or your feelings about it. So I will keep my comments personal here .

Hiking, I so value your perspective. No worries on sharing your thoughts. I see a lot of similarities between our situations. Especially from the angle of an affair stemming from a mid life crisis. We never did any exploration outside our marriage, although both of us had a lot of sexual experiences prior to our getting together. If we had, maybe what she did wouldn’t have been so detrimental. The only visions I had were with him. Funny as her body count was pretty high, but I had no problem with that

Now, I like happily ever after stories as much as anyone, but this one requires a ridiculous suspension of disbelief, so far over the reality line that the writer should have her poetic license revoked.

I kind of agree with this, but movies are movies and most require a suspension of reality. Could Jack Reacher really be that tough?
My issue was more of the content and how the reality of such a damaging action, and hers was not a drunken ONS, could be wrapped up so neatly and with such a happily ever after.

The thing that I still was most bothered was the way she took her sex with her AP and actually used it to mold him. I just can’t imagine that conversation. "Well AP did this to me and I loved it. Let me show you how he pleased me". Makes me want to barf.

Just curious if any of the BS here felt like their WS learned new techniques from the affair and brought them back into their bedroom. Or if any WS took what they liked from their AP and brought that back?

Could Jack Reacher really be that tough?

Yes, yes I think he could be.

Hehe.

Love that show.

Let's talk Reacher instead of WS fantasy films.

The thing that I still was most bothered was the way she took her sex with her AP and actually used it to mold him. I just can’t imagine that conversation. "Well AP did this to me and I loved it. Let me show you how he pleased me". Makes me want to barf.

Just curious if any of the BS here felt like their WS learned new techniques from the affair and brought them back into their bedroom. Or if any WS took what they liked from their AP and brought that back?

So here is a different take on this.

I have said that there as a whole element of wanting to meet a different version of myself. I do not feel I was authentic in the affair. But I will say I did learn about some of my needs. I wanted to feel younger and sexier, so after the affair I did that by taking up running. I wanted to be able to be more spontaneous and enjoy life more, so I made changes to my schedule and lifestyle.

And while sexually my affair was standard fair, There was an element to what I learned about myself that I did apply to my relationship. I don’t feel it was about learning from the ap, moreso in every experience good and bad we learn things about ourselves. And I think to reject that discovery is just another way to repress myself. There was a piece missing that proved to be a very important piece to my well-being, happiness and sexual expression. And I by far I obviously enjoy it way better with the person I truly love. I am certain that there are things my husband does or you do that you picked up in a prior sexual experience that really had nothing to do with the partner, but it was a self discovery. I don’t think one should fear that so much because it still doesn’t validate the affair.

I can understand if it’s a specific act one didn’t do with. Their spouse and then comes back wild about it, that may be harder to deal with.

In the movie, the kink was already there because she watched that kind of porn. So I don’t feel she took something the ap did for her and taught her husband. I think more than likely it was "so I have this kink I never told you about and it’s something I need sometimes"

As far as our explorations when we were dating, no that still doesn’t help when betrayal is involved. In the other situation, we would discuss our boundaries with each other, everything was in the open for mutual enjoyment. Most of the time it caused HB for days, which was its own benefit. And it was 20 years prior. Nope, didn’t make anything easier at all in fact it made it more confusing that I didn’t talk to him.

[This message edited by hikingout at 8:45 PM, Saturday, February 1st]

Just curious if any of the BS here felt like their WS learned new techniques from the affair and brought them back into their bedroom. Or if any WS took what they liked from their AP and brought that back?

This happened to me. My wife was always highly sexually repressed. I remember having something of a "breakthrough" before D-day and being thrilled about it. Shortly after finding out, I was out on a run and put together that she learned it from him. I stopped in my tracks and almost vomitted. I tried to take HikingOut’s reasonable perspective of it being a self discovery for her. But I could never get past the association.

I wanted to feel younger and sexier, so after the affair I did that by taking up running.

I also used her affair as a motivation to get into shape. I was a dad bod kind on guy. 36 inch waist and not very toned. I started lifting weights, took up Krav Maga, and now weigh 20 pounds less and have a 32 inch waist. Lots of other stories like that where emotionally the marriage gets better although for the life of me I cant understand how. But too many people here who I respect have said that, so I have to trust it’s true.

But life changes and changes in sexual behaviors in my opinion is different. In the end he was doing exactly what AP was doing with her sexually, while she was dreaming about him. I don’t think she really changed. She just figured out how to get better sex, and in my opinion will be ripe to do it again as the consequences were all positive.

Shortly after finding out, I was out on a run and put together that she learned it from him. I stopped in my tracks and almost vomitted.

This had to be so disconcerting. Did you ever discuss this with her? What was it that tipped you off. Technique or just overall enthusiasm ?

This had to be so disconcerting. Did you ever discuss this with her? What was it that tipped you off. Technique or just overall enthusiasm ?

Thanks for the concern. It was brutal, a moment that sticks out for me in all the destruction. I would say yes, the uncharacteristic enthusiasm and novel technique. In light of D-day, even my poorly tuned gut knew exactly what that meant, and she did later confirm it. But my story is not one of getting insightful reflection from her, so no new perspective to be had here.

I wanted to feel younger and sexier, so after the affair I did that by taking up running.

I think Ester Perel would be proud of all of us I’ve also undertaken a significant fitness transformation in the last seven months. Lost 30 lbs, put on muscle, rehabbed injuries that were slowing me down. I’m excited about this next chapter.

Just curious if any of the BS here felt like their WS learned new techniques from the affair and brought them back into their bedroom. Or if any WS took what they liked from their AP and brought that back?

Ugh…..this is one of the most annoying parts for me. Like IH’s wife, mine was always pretty sexually repressed as well. She was a virgin when we started dating and was always embarrassed to talk about what she liked as far as sex was concerned. I communicated my likes and "showed" her things. Sometimes she liked them sometimes not.

One point of contention for us was oral sex (her on me). She didn’t like it and would not let me "finish" and frankly wasn’t really very good at it. Selfishly, this annoyed me. I always thought it was a good alternative during her periods, late pregnancy and such. Yes, selfish but I never pushed the issue. At some point that just disappeared from our menu.

After D-Day, I found out she not only did it with the APs. It was "her thing". She was giving it out like candy on Halloween. At work, in the car going places, sometimes multiple times in a day. I was flabbergasted. During HB she started back up with me (it had been ~20 years since her last affair and since she had done that with me). She was WAAAAAY better than I remembered. More enthusiastic, much better skill level and "finished the job" (pardon the pun). Crap……

I recalled one of the last times she did perform oral many years ago. Based on the timeline, it would have been during her last affair. She popped a menthol cough drop before starting (I do NOT recommend trying this!). When I asked her about where she came up with that idea, she said her "gay friend" at work told her about it. After D-Day, I confirmed it was her last AP.

So now oral is a HUGE trigger for me. I can’t even enjoy these new-found skills.

On another note, I also lost 30 lbs on the "infidelity diet". My problem is I am 6’1" and weighed 185 lbs on D-Day. Took me over a year but I am back to 180 lbs which looks and feels good on my frame.

Last note: Jack Reacher IS that tough (excepting the Tom Cruise version). I wish I could turn him loose on the wife’s APs while I watch with a bag of popcorn!

I have no interest in seeing Babygirl. I’ve never had much sympathy for paths of self discovery that deceive and devastate the people closest to you, and I have even less since my husband’s affair.

Hiking Out, I always appreciate your input, and I was grateful for your honesty about self discovery. It made me feel deeply sad and broken to read it, though.

I don’t know exactly why it provoked such a strong emotional reaction. I think maybe it gets at the fundamental difference in agency between betrayer and betrayed, and how that creates an unbridgeable difference between the kind of self discovery experienced on each side of that divide.

I can totally see how an affair could make a person realize they were repressing or neglecting parts of themself that needed to be freed and nurtured, and I don’t begrudge them that self discovery, especially when it’s accompanied by remorse and restitution and honest reckoning. (And Im sympathetic to the fact that gender dynamics have typically given women much less practical and psychological space for self discovery).

But I can’t help finding the self discovery involved in committing infidelity paltry and frivolous when it’s stacked up next to the wreckage of betrayal. (A wreckage it sounds like Babygirl is utterly unconcerned with).

My husband’s infidelity has taught me a lot about myself. But for me, it’s the self discovery equivalent of having my spouse go on a drunken joyride with someone else in a Mac truck, running me over and nearly killing me in the process. I’ve discovered that I can survive the long harrowing hospital stay and stick with physical therapy even when it’s grueling and painful. I’ve discovered gratitude for things I previously took for granted, and clarity about what matters most. I’ve discovered how to find joy and fulfillment in the midst of brokenness. I’ve discovered how to have patience with the healing process, even when I’m not sure whether parts of me will ever fully heal, or whether I’ll always walk with a bit of a limp and feel a deep ache when the weather turns. I’ve discovered I can live in forgiveness and peace in an emotional landscape forever altered by betrayal.

That’s a little hyperbolic, and I’ve realized over time that the way I experienced my husband’s betrayal was as much about me as it was about his infidelity. I was fragile in ways I didn’t realize, and I had constructed my sense of self on the foundation of our relationship rather than within myself. (Yay! More self discovery!).

Again, I don’t fully understand why this is hitting such a nerve for me. It’s just really hard for me to step far back enough from my own pain to enter into a genuine discussion of how having an affair can be about positive self discovery. Intellectually I can get there, but something about it goes straight to that part of me that isn’t fully healed.

I think maybe it gets at the fundamental difference in agency between betrayer and betrayed, and how that creates an unbridgeable difference between the kind of self discovery experienced on each side of that divide.

I absolutely love this comment. Deep and richly insightful.

ETA: I think that as long as the WS self discovery process is celebrated like in movies like this instead of being put in the appropriate context of their destruction and evil, the gap in experience between BS and WS is indeed unbridgeable.

[This message edited by InkHulk at 4:21 PM, Sunday, February 2nd]

I recalled one of the last times she did perform oral many years ago. Based on the timeline, it would have been during her last affair. She popped a menthol cough drop before starting (I do NOT recommend trying this!). When I asked her about where she came up with that idea, she said her "gay friend" at work told her about it. After D-Day, I confirmed it was her last AP.

That has to be so awful. Im hoping that the menthol trick, though probably pleasurable, didn’t make a reappearance. It’s awful how an affair and knowing what they did with their AP can just play mind games and alter the sex going forward. We had a great sex life and me performing oral was significant. It might not have happened every time, but my guess is 85 to 90%. After I found out I did it hours after she was with her AP, I tried once and never again. I don’t care how much she washed, his swimmers somehow ended up in my mouth. Same when I kissed her which wasn’t too often. Same thoughts.

I accused my EX of bringing home a trick, but in retrospect I think I was wrong. We never had HB, and I waited a long time before having sex again, but one time when we did, in the throes of me coming close, a finger went somewhere I was not expecting. If you read my profile you probably know how this area was a source of mind movies. Anyway, I was shocked and jumped off her and actually unintentionally bruised her as I pushed off so hard. I screamed WTF was that! And proceeded to begin screaming at her to get out of my room and not to take any tricks she did for her AP on me. I pushed her naked out of the room and she was crying that she was just trying to please me and she never did that with him. It was a week before I even talked to her, and another month before I touched her again. I laid down new ground rules that I didn’t want to try anything new. I also didn’t want to hear anything about how good she felt with me and how much she liked one thing or another. I told her I’m sure she to,d him the same things, and I didn’t believe her when she was telling me. The sex at that point actually sucked and we both knew it. Her verbal prompts were just her trying to make me feel better, but it had the opposite affect.

Any, in retrospect, knowing that her AP was a big dumb macho guy, I doubt he let her come close to that region on him. So she did just come up with that on her own. She never made that mistake again.

On another note, I am 100% in agreement that Tom Cruise as Reacher could have been the worst casting ever. I like the guy playing him, although I always pictured The Rock in that role.

WwTL- I can see what you are saying. It’s the combo of her fantasizing about the ap and doing those acts with her husband. I totally get it. You are right that is not someone who changed. What I had focused more on is that prior to her affair she left her marital bed to finish to a bdsm porn. The AP didn’t awaken this in her. It was always there. And that is what I was talking about. I have already laid out that I don’t think you can be remorseful and still fantasize about the affair. To me those two could never mix.

And I guess I should spell out better what I was talking about learning because what I said made it sound sexual. It can be sexual I guess.

What I learned is I wanted to feel cherished. I didn’t write that because it sounds kind of stupid. The AP didn’t cherish me, there is no illusion of that. But he pretended to. And honestly that was a big revelation for me. So it’s not something I ever think about in the way the AP gave me something. He didn’t give me that. But it’s just like the needing to feel younger, sexier told me I needed that in my life so I took up running. The main draw for me in the affair was the illusion of being cherished.

I had spent a lot of years in my marriage making myself the last priority until I had made myself feel invisible. It’s hard to feel cherished or appreciated when you feel unseen. What I didn’t understand at the time of my affair is you can’t be seen by others if you aren’t seen by or representing yourself.

I relate it sexually to an extent because while I wouldn’t say I was unhappy with our sex life, we never made love. We never spent time caressing each other, or kissing really. It was more like a porn. It is now a crucial part of our connection now to have bids of affection throughout the day, to say words of appreciation to each other, to spent time enjoying each other leading up to the other stuff. This has created true passion rather than two people getting together to scratch an itch.

So while none of that I feel really came from the ap, it was self discovery of what I was missing in my life. It wasn’t a sexual act or a technique. It was a huge area of wants in a relationship that I couldn’t put my finger on because I was always trying to fit this mold of being what I thought my husband wanted.

Grieving- I agree - am not one to advocate for self discovery that is morally wrong or causes such pain and trauma in others.I didn’t have an affair with an awareness this discovery would even happen. But, the things I discovered through the affair are as a lot of things that I never admitted I wanted because I didn’t want to have to instruct someone to do these things. To me they were not genuine if he didn’t just do them on his own. The self discovery and what I have applied to my relationship is that asking for what you want and receiving it consistently is being loved. People can’t read your mind.

I wish like hell I learned these things a different way. There was no me going back and doing instruction to replicate the affair. It was more of a discovery of what had I been holding back in myself that I went out and sought in the affair. Then the process of realizing it would have been in front of me all long had I approached love differently.

Our relationship could never have deepened without me realizing I was skipping over a lot of things as to not inconvenience him. Though I wish I would have just went straight to therapy and figured out some other way the things I was missing in my life. The needing to feel better about myself physically rather than having someone validate me. The needing to discover deeper connection and rather than blaming my husband for not giving it, realizing that I couldn’t receive it because I never felt worthy enough to ask for it.

For me, I truly had to sit down and look at all my adolescent behavior in the affair and say to myself - translate this. Make it make sense as to why you were willing to trade everything. It came down to those areas that I was repressing, the roles I was playing simply because I thought they were expected. And getting real on what I wanted and needed in a relationship that I wasn’t getting.

I do not believe my affair was because I wasn’t getting things from my husband. I believe my affair, and most affairs happen because ws are avoidant to the place they never communicate what they want. Do that long enough and you will stop even paying attention to what you want. You will just muddle through until it creates a hole in you.

To me, Nicole Kidman’s character knew before her affair what she really wanted, and she avoided sharing that with her husband for a reason: shame. Saying to herself she shouldn’t want it. She was bad for needing it. She should be happy with what she had. That it wasn’t available because her husband was too loving to understand it. And that’s how we talk ourselves out of things.

Do that for 15-20 years and often you will find it leads to a lot of resentment. It takes self awareness to realize you are the one who kept yourself from it all along.

My affair was never about the ap or my husband. It was coming to terms with needing to be responsible for my own happiness. Figuring out what things could contribute to that. So I can understand what grieving is saying about the divide between the betrayed and not betrayed. But if your ws is doing it right, what should come from recovery is creating the life that you love, the relationship that you love, and no longer repressing it. It’s then you can be a safe partner because you are not starving yourself and going out for a ridiculous binge. You are feeding yourself and it gives you the ability to feed others. Loving myself and honoring those needs is how I have so much of it to give others. My husband is treated the way I want to be treated. I cherish and appreciate him every day. I just don’t leave myself off the list anymore.

I think looking at the affair and translating it was just the seed. The growth has all been absent of the affair and it’s been nurtured by my husband and I. What started as self discovery around the affair separated into awakening an authentic self discovery in the aftermath. One that happened in our home, between just he and I, with no other parties involved. To me this is how our relationship went from being unsealed to sealed again.

But grieving, I do understand we are all in different places in our journey and I am truly sorry if what I wrote triggered you. However, I do not see how a ws can become a safe partner without gaining a much deeper understanding of themselves and why they had the affair and figuring out what can be learned from it. Perhaps the vague nature of what I initially wrote provoked some hidden fear. This is why I came back and disclosed more fully what I meant. . At some point, you have to take the worst of what you have done as the ws and use it as the building blocks to create something new from it. To understand what was beneath it and find a healthy way to navigate that knowledge. That in essence IS our work.

And honestly I think as you kind of already wrote this happens on both sides. It’s not in absence of the other in reconciliation. Because if it is that will lend itself to feeling additional betrayal by the bs. it’s a path you walk together.

[This message edited by hikingout at 4:52 PM, Tuesday, February 4th]

Sharing an experience/POV, not arguing. My W said that at first, sex with o was like masturbating. Her ap was a tool, a sex toy, not a person. W is a CSA survivor who felt fear as well as pleasure in sex. Somehow her A sex allowed her to (largely, at least ) overcome the fear and just enjoy the pleasure. Sex since the A has been much better, not because of techniques, though.

I have mixed feelings about that. I wish she had had the breakthrough before or with me, but that's not how it happened. Mind you, W doesn't look back at the sex as a fond memory, nor does she look to me to make her feel like she did during (the early stage) of her A. She regrets treating another person like a non-person.

*****

I've read a bunch of Jack Reacher novels. I watched a number of episodes of the Amazon version and stopped when he got too stupid, IIRC.

The part that I have the hardest time with is that he has wide and deep knowledge that just seems impossible to me, and the right nugget of knowledge pops into his head at the right time. That hasn't been my experience.

*****

Interesting about the writer/director. I wonder if she's ever cheated or been cheated on.

Thank you for your thoughtful response, Hiking out. Everything you say makes sense. And certainly no need for apology—it’s good for me to go through the process of figuring out why certain things feel painful. I appreciate your contributions to this thread and to all threads; I’ve learned a lot from you.

Lurker here.

I've alway's followed WWTLs posts and especially his threads. I'm looking at the phenomenal insight provided here by BS and WS alike, and just wanted to make an observation (may be a threadjack of sorts) here about the recent trend of movies like Babygirl in multiple languages.

Several years ago during the pandemic, there was a well... steady trickle (sigh) of articles by women authors of a certain educational, economic and geographical distillation about the vapidness of their seemingly happy and perfect to outside world marriages. Some of these protagonists went remodeling their homes during the COVID era until they realized that it was their lives that needed wrecking and proceeded to blindside their (in their own words) "irreplaceable" spouses (usually husbands) for the taste of the open road, or pub as the case may be. They themselves were not happy about wrecking their loved ones lives, but it was something that had to be done.... it seems that the era of contagion and imminent apocalypse demanded they live their lives to the max at the expense of those that loved them unconditionally.

The next batch of pablum was a series of women who opened their marriages either grudgingly or by putting their husbands under duress.... knowing that their share of "harvest" from the bargain was bound to be a lot more than their middle aged husbands'. And yet, after helping themselves to the choiciest dick-buffets of some of the nation's top-tier cities, these women (in particular see "More" by Molly Roden Winter -- I'm sure coming soon to a theatre near you) were, in the end, not happy at all with the bargain they founds themselves in -- in spite of having every luxury and freedom even a wealthy wsterner could ask for.

The latest of this genre was a book that came out last year by the author Miranda July named "All Fours" (it's EXACTLY what you might think ). This about about a middle aged artist who sneaks away in a motel room under the guise of work travel and and ends of on...well... all fours. I've not read the book, but have read multiple reviews by both men and women who both think that fact that she was just able to merge back to her marriage and her perhaps unsuspecting and loyal husband after her perimenopausal erotic romp was believable, and that ther marriage just carried on, One might as well say that the story is as believable (given this site's massive collective testimony) as if only a light meteorite crashed into the Yucatan and the dinosaurs just mysteriously committed mass suicide.

The problem did not end there... the novel was celebrated as a work of art and a first true and candid embodiment of middle aged female desire -- the urge to be found desirable one last time (sounds familiar?) before the protagonist can accept that they need not be a sexual being. Given this extra dimension of unspoken and repressed female desire, the debate took a strong following among female readers of a certain age... who then decided to live it at their family's expense -- this was covered in the Guardian. So the exhaustive analysis by HO and others about their (female) side of the fence in the role of desire vs. duty in long term relationships is particularly illuminating.

That brings us to the problem with "Babygirl". In the end, it's all about messaging, and in this movie, the message is that if you can ensure you don't get caught -- go for it girl!! YOLO after all! A better messaging movie would be Catherine De Neuve's famous "Belle du jour" -- but one that has serious and concrete ramifications for her marriage outside the fantasy world she has created for herself. That line of thought could have made the movie more realistic (perhaps more traumatic for some), but the message would be that an affair is a two body problem, and you can keep all the secrets from your spouse you want -- but the AP is not under your control and can in fact use the secrecy to control you. That's what would have made it more human.