SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Is it what you would do or would you expect to be done to you and why? Does it expand to other branches of life or just romantic partnership?

@itiswhatitis

I glossed over this question and didn’t answer it properly.

Yes I take that this is the way I should approach every branch of life.

If I demand trust from someone, I owe them honesty.
I think that’s the deal in any human relationship not only romantic.

Truth is when you are not being transparent with someone you are trying to take advantage of something.
Which is not completely evil per Se, if you are selling something and you are only focusing on the positive side when you pitch it, that’s natural interaction.

You are not acting upon pre established trust, you are trying to convince someone to give you what you want from them, and you are convincing that you give them what they want from you.

This is called transactional. And even here, if you are transparent and honest with your perspective buyer, you may earn their trust. Which is an immense value for anything.

If you were dishonest that trust will either never come or will be broken once they found out you lied them or withheld the truth.

You might get away with a one off (rip off if you will) but you are compromising the future with this buyer.

And I believe we do know the stated goal of our intention right from the start:

Do I want to rip off someone in a transaction or do I want to give them something that I truly believe is of value and being rewarded in kind for that?

The per might not know my intentions and be suspicious "just in case", but I do know. We know our goals.

In the past I worked those odd jobs where you were to rip off people by convincing them to buy something that was not reflecting its value and part of the job description was to seek it no matter what.

I know I have the skill set to potentially do that very well and profit from it. When I found out what the job enticed, I turned it down because it felt dirty to me.

So yeah, trust is sacred to me in this light.

I have to betray myself to break trust, and I rather do something else.

And of course this being my principle is what I expect from others as well.
Trust demands transparency and honesty and it is a one off deal breaker.

I don’t see it as extreme, I may even see it as extremely selfish if you want to see it from a different angle:
The value that you get from honesty and trust is far greater than the value you may get from cheating and taking advantage of someone’s trust in every area of life.

So choosing that will in the end benefit me the most.

BackfromtheStorm, thank you for the explanation. It's far from my own philosophy or requirements for my trusted people. I believe that the internal life of humans, similar to animals, is volatile, chaotic, quite random and gets more significance then it should. One of the things that are special about us is having a backbone and agenda that we can follow and not letting the inner noise control us. I see it as a great merit. Kind of the opposite of a wayward that thinks that their feelings are an objective reflection of the world and based of that rewrite their morals and agenda.

If my partner had, let's say, a boner for a coworker and didn't have any intention to act on it, I would expect her to refrain, realign, bring all the new sexual energy back to the fold, think about what to improve and continue to be the best. If she came to confess it, I would assume that it is serious enough for me to take actions. So perhaps the end result would be much worse then intended.

[This message edited by Itiswhatitis000 at 1:13 PM, Monday, November 9th]

@sissoon

What's so awful about accepting the proposition that a WS may, in fact, love their BS during their A(s)?

Because doing so completely hollows out what love actually is.

If we accept that a WS can love their spouse while running a clandestine affair, we also open the door to domestic abusers who swear—hand on heart—that they love the partners they beat to a pulp. Put them on a polygraph, and they’d likely pass; they genuinely feel whatever emotion they call "love." The same logic applies to abusers of children who insist they love their victims.

Think about that assertion for a moment. A incestual pedo parent can deeply feel they love their child whilst abusing them every night. Messing them up beyond belief. What does 'love' mean whilst simultaneously doing such profound harm? Surely to truly love someone is to protect them from such harm. Not inflict it.

If we define "love" purely by whatever internal feeling an abuser or betrayer experiences, then love isn't special, noble, or protective. It carries no more weight than loving a car. That's fine if its your definition. I've always felt it should have more gravitas when relating to human relationships.

No trustworthy fWS asserts their behavior was loving, and no BS asserts that a WS's experience of being loving mitigates the severity of the A. And most BSes accept that their WSes don't know how to love others because they don't love themselves enough anyway. So when so many WSes say they loved their BS during the A, how does one reject the possibility that at least some of them are honestly sharing their experience?

I don't doubt they are sharing their internal experience honestly (often anyways)—I believe their definition of love is simply broken.

This is fundamentally a definitional dispute. I cannot accept any definition of love that comfortably coexists with severe betrayal, prolonged deception, or abuse. If a WS insists they truly felt it was a blistering summer afternoon, I don't doubt their subjective experience—but when I step outside and see snow falling, I recognize that their perception doesn't match reality.

IOW, they have a feeling that's strong and deep. It's just not love. I'd venture to guess that the same internal flaws that led to them being capable of cheating are likely at play with their ability to truly love someone wholly.

@Unhinged

Definitions require logic. You can choose to accept a definition of love that coexists with abuse, but doing so strips the word of all meaning.

What does "love" mean if it permits someone to habitually beat their spouse after work? What does "love" mean when someone returns from an alibi trip still carrying another person's DNA, smiles at their spouse, and crawls into bed with them? Whatever you want to label that internal feeling, you can keep it—I just don't accept it's love.

As for the supposed irony: I generally avoid engaging with you because past discussions routinely derail into personal accusations of arrogance or offense. I always think Helen Lovejoy of the Simpsons when reading your response. We clearly lack the common ground needed to have a productive debate on this. Often I think on the points you raise, just don't bother to debunk or respond to them.

[This message edited by DRSOOLERS at 1:12 PM, Monday, November 9th]

BackFromTheStorm,

You have laid out your position very clearly and I appreciate you taking the time to do so. However, I believe your premise that unshared mental thought equals to an untruth or lie by omission. I also find the "slipper Lope" concept unconvincing as well. However, if this standard brings both you and your partner comfort and safety, then I fully support your living by this standard. I applauded the discipline.

Asterisk

Soolers, I believe your reasoning is very black and white. You either love someone completely and perfectly or you hate them. You leave no room for nuance.

Physical abuse and infidelity are not the same thing. Conflating the two is fallacious.

Physical abuse is about dominance and enforcing one's will upon another. It is systematic cruelty designed to destroy the other person. It is done openly, directly and with clear intent. While a physical abuser may claim to love their victim, I agree that the value it holds for them is fundamentally flawed.

Infidelity is self-destructive. We, the betrayed, are collateral damage. With some exceptions, I do not believe people who cheat do so with the singular intent to inflict pain on their spouse or partner. They do all they can to keep their infidelity secret.

I do believe that someone can love their spouse or partner and still take a stroll down Infidelity Lane. Infidelity has nothing to do with the betrayed and everything to do with the wayward.

I understand your hatred for waywards. I don't share that hatred. I understand your judgemental disposition, your deep seated need to exact revenge, even if vicariously. That's not me.

Nietzsche wrote about people's need to cloak revenge as high moral principles. I see this in the things you write. Since you cannot exact revenge upon your father or exgf, you cloak yourself in superior morality. I've known a few people like this throughout my life and more often than not their belief in their own moral superiority is a mask for their own low self-worth or insecurity.

First off, your "you either love someone perfectly or you hate them" routine is pure rubbish. Complete straw man. I never demanded flawlessness; I asked for a basic, entry-level baseline. Saying that love shouldn't comfortably coexist with systematic deception and devastating emotional harm isn't demanding perfection. It is genuinely tragic to me that the idea of basic, non-abusive decency is a standard so dizzyingly out of reach for you.

And this quaint notion of a "stroll down Infidelity Lane" where the betrayed spouse is merely "collateral damage"? News flash: if you are willing to let your spouse become collateral damage, that is not love. If someone tears past a primary school at ninety miles per hour because they fancy the rush, their "intent" wasn't to run anyone down, but their breathtaking recklessness carries the exact same moral weight when they do. Treating your partner as acceptable shrapnel so you can indulge yourself isn't tragic nuance; it’s treating another human being like an inanimate piece of furniture. Entirely disregarding your partner—for whatever convenient justification you fancy, self-destructive or otherwise—is still not love.

Hiding it doesn't make it noble, either. Sneaking around, gaslighting, stripping someone of informed consent, and gambling with their sexual health whilst smiling across the breakfast table isn't mercy. It’s just covert abuse with better PR. Slapping a discreet padlock on the dungeon door doesn’t turn it into a guest room.

Diagnosing my soul, dragging my family history into it, and babbling about low self-worth is just a very long-winded way of having no logical counter-argument. Frankly, that’s the first time in my life I’ve ever been accused of having low self-worth—it’s almost refreshing, given I normally catch flak for the exact opposite. But it neatly illustrates just how hopelessly wide of the mark you are.

Ultimately, If your definition of "love" stretches so thin that it happily accommodates clandestine double lives, emotional demolition, and viewing a spouse as disposable collateral, then the word has lost the plot entirely. You can call that warm, fuzzy internal feeling whatever you fancy, pretend it’s love if it helps you sleep at night.

*Edited for decency.

[This message edited by DRSOOLERS at 5:25 PM, Monday, November 9th]

If my partner had, let's say, a boner for a coworker and didn't have any intention to act on it, I would expect her to refrain, realign, bring all the new sexual energy back to the fold, think about what to improve and continue to be the best. If she came to confess it, I would assume that it is serious enough for me to take actions. So perhaps the end result would be much worse then intended.

I understand.

This is my position and 5e kind of energy I want to have reflected back in a relationship.

The example above, a person feels sexual desire and tension for another who is not their partner.

That for me is a clear sign of either a) unresolved issue and need for validation/ energy leaking outside the couple or b) the evidence that the current relationship has been exhausted and the person desires to find someone else.

They are both solvable and both okay if the person owns it with honesty.

If you realize that B) your current relationship is done for, then it is perfectly natural that you are receptive to attraction for a new partner. The best way in my opinion is to accept it, and move on. Leave your partner and pursue the next relationship. Maybe that’s the one that is truly a match for you.

But if it’s option A) you are feeling a pull due to validation craving, not genuine detachment from your expired relationship, then it’s really important before acting upon, to review why you feel that and understand where you stand.

If you’re pursuing a validation craving then you are on the slippery slope. You could confront the issues and pull yourself back into your center, or you could cheat and have an affair.

Of course another option is to break up and pursue that new relationship only to find out that it was empty and wasn’t the true reason you felt that.

I understand that being upfront isn’t always easy, but I believe a partnership requires both partners to be ready to confront even the most uncomfortable situations openly.

My understanding might be in the minority, but I think you form a real relationship when you’re communing with the other person, if there is any reservations then it’s probably better to accept they aren’t really "our closest" but they are a comforting fallback plan.

And even being with another person as fallback plan is not wrong per Se, as long as it’s clear to both you are together for convenience and mutual support, not soulmates, but roommates with benefits.

I do not intend for it to sound harsh, it just goes down to what you want in your life.
I can give that kind of commitment and I demand the same kind back.

That’s what I do desire.
Perhaps others see this as undesirable or settle for less strict terms where "exclusivity" is optional.

I think as long as both are aware of it, it’s perfectly fine.

You are correct in some assessments, though your conclusions around how my relationship looks like are projections. I don't believe in soulmates, I believe that on the hardest day almost everyone is alone. Nevertheless I took my (faithful) wife out of a very dire situation 17 years ago, helped her to gain education that she was lacking, including giving her lessons, helped her with her health issues. She made me a better, calmer, happier person. We went through 4 pregnancies, 2 of them failed, parents sicknesses and deaths, financial ups and downs and currently spend around 20h a day happily together. We still behave like very young people around each other. Some of our former friends got upset and tired of us and not being able to relate to us and how we treat each other. Does it mean she is a roommate and fallback plan, because I don't believe in significance of fleeting feelings or internal states? It's completely unfounded and the weight of the phrases used points at some anger or internal struggle.

I think I can understand your desire to give and receive something completely pure. I believe I have that now, from my point of view. You may be pretty unique in that way you interpret it. From practical perspective trying to assert that would go into attempted mind policing territory, so I don't know how it should work.

[This message edited by Itiswhatitis000 at 10:29 PM, Monday, November 9th]

Don’t misunderstand me, I wasn’t making assumptions about your relationship in the slightest.

I see if you have strong desire for someone else other than the partner you are with, something is broken or you have internalized issues to resolve.
Especially if fleeting the second case is more likely.

In that situation love can’t be the gatekeeper of the relationship.
While if you are fulfilled already there is no risk at all, because you have no need to search outside to fill a void, if your glass is full

Sisoon,

I appreciate your thoughts with the "member to member" comments. I will not personally respond to it, 1st because it is not directed to me and 2nd because I was clear in my response with DrS that I was not going to continue to engage. I see no wisdom in doing so plus, he choose to see me as "avoidant" which is fine if that makes him feel more powerful. It has been my experience that attempting to have a mutually respectful conversation with someone who is not interested in trying to understand another view, (Only win an argument) or worse has no self-introspection that allows for discovery of what they did not fully understand has no possibility of a positive outcome.

Asterisk

Unhinged,

You have continued to be a strong support for me especially when you would push back on positions I had taken. I’ll admit there were times that it smarted but I never felt the desire to cut off communication with you. In fact just the opposite because it was clear to me your disagreement wasn’t out of a desire to squash my thoughts or simply to win an argument, rather to assist in my healing and reconciling process. However, with DrS, the vibe is not the same. I have yet to see in any of his responses on this thread or on other threads a hint of him wanting to understand a opposing concept. He has a need to win at any cost and I refuse to engage for there will be no resolution, only capitulation. A year ago, you, along with a few others, suggested I look into Stoic philosophy which led me to look into Buddhist philosophy as well and one of the things that I gained from both traditions is a wisdom that not every argument is mine to engage.

Unhinged, one of the things that really perplexes me is when those who chose divorce, like yourself, come into the reconciliation forum, and, unlike you, advocate that divorce is the only proper response to infidelity. I appreciate your position which, as I understand it, is that divorce is a proper response but so is reconciliation. And you make no bonds about it, reconciliation is hard as hell but you will support those who have chosen that path while advocating that divorce is also a proper direction to take. Right?

What gets under my skin is coming to this section of SI and maintaining a strict divorce posture. I am confident that if I went to the divorce threads and told those there that they were wrong to get divorced, that they mustn’t have loved there wayward spouses because they chose divorce I’d be rightly shut down. And yet here, it is allowed. Puzzling?

Asterisk

Itiswhatitis000,

I can say what her love wasn't, it wasn't devoted, loyal, erotic, respectful and sure as hell not mature. And there is really no wonder, given how it started, 2 brainwashed teenagers, very young, no life experience, remote controlled by strong handlers, oblivious about what they are entering into. It's a wonder that they are still together. I think she loved the way she could after being so thoroughly set up to fail.

My god Itiswhatitis000, I don’t think anyone has ever been so perfectly precise and spot on in laying out my wife and my early marriage. It was pre-scripted without our individual personalities given one single thought or consideration. You are correct, my wife (and I’ll add, myself) were set up to fail. And, in the area of fidelity, our marriage did fail epically. Though my wife was the one who chose infidelity, I was guilty of not seeing her deep, silent unhappiness in the prescribed, ridged roles our faith handed us as husband and wife. So, as I see it, we both failed in the "mature love" department. That said, though incomplete, we loved each other in the only way we new how, which I maintain, is still love, weak as it might have been. And yes, again you are right, it is a wonder that we, 53 years in, are still married and I will add, successfully, sensually, sweetly kindly, respectfully, and deeply in love with each other.

Your thoughtfulness both towards me and my wife has touched me deeply.

Asterisk