'infidelity is caused by problems in the marriage'

[Wellwobbly]

This has come up again in a thread.

I can't cut and paste (copyright), but would like to post three links of differing views, and ask people's input of what they think of them?

First:

www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/07/couples-therapy_n_3977035.html?utm_hp_ref=divorce&ir=Divorce

Second:

chumplady.com/2013/10/it-takes-three/

Third:

www.davidclarkeseminars.com/apps/articles/?columnid=508&articleid=3813

What do you think?

How nasty Miss.

Objective is great, but you seem to be confusing objective with being arrogant. Your last post (11;17) is pretty nasty, Missbopeep. You're talking about an innocent persons feelings. Wobbly is clearly deeply affected by her experience.

But the examples mentioned here where the relationship was not good, the partner who cheated could simply have walked away from the relationship.

Regardless of the state of the relationship, infidelity brings along the issue of lack of trust, and I'm not sure I'd recover from that.

Even if the fault for the bad state of the marriage lays with the other partner, it is still not a cause for the infidelity. The two are separate issues.

As is DV. It's not because the victim didn't clean enough, or wasn't sufficiently caring. It's the choice of the partner who is violent. Modern law doesn't give excuses for DV.
We shouldn't give excuses for infidelity either, other than the choice of the cheater.

I agree, Lweji.

I'm just saying that in some situations, it's easier to understand. It certainly doesn't make it right.

If we hadn't have had the problems, I would have been far less likely to be able to stay and work it out.

empathy not your strong point, Missbopeep?

Upnot, I think the problem there is that you both felt in the wrong and were able to work it out, but it wasn't your fault he cheated, nor was his fault that you didn't give enough of yourself to him.

As in two wrongs don't make it a right. :)

But, I'm glad you both were able to come together past each other's shortcomings.

My point, and in relation to this thread, is that didn't cheat because you didn't give enough to the relationship. He lied to do it, and he did it because he decided to. He chose that path instead of addressing it with you properly. So, the real cause was within himself.

As the cause of your attitude within the marriage was (I assume) yourself.

Missbopeep is right, though. Sorry, Wobbly.

You do need to work on yourself why you still feel that way.

It is not healthy that you'd rather have been stabbed. :(

I think this thread is to help you do that. It is major progress to feel free of responsibility over his actions, particularly those that hurt you so badly.
I believe you are having counselling? I hope you are addressing these issues of self worth.
You should be thinking he's a twunt, not that you'd rather be dead/he killed you.

I had been reasonably certain that only one person on this thread had misunderstood/claimed to have misunderstood my posts, but because those posts have been persistently falsely paraphrased and there now appears to be further false paraphrasing, I want to reiterate that I have never said that marital discord or relationship dissatisfaction have no influence on someone's decision to have an affair.

But the causal factor itself is always the person's decision to be unfaithful, rather than choosing other options.

The causal factor is what this thread was was meant to be discussing.

Not individual fallibility, or why people make the choices they do, or the validity of those choices. Not straw men either i.e arguing with claims that have never been raised by anyone on the thread.

Saferniche, ha ha ha!

I reiterate: when I sit here looking at everything I have lost and what my children have lost, I would rather have been stabbed.

For me, never have been stabbed, it doesn't sound like a big deal. 999, lung reinflate, a few stitches, life back to normal in a few weeks. That deal sounds absolutely preferable to me.

It is not up to you to tell me what I feel or don't feel.

Miss Bopeep if you read properly, the issue I was debating at the time (with Dotty NOT YOU) was - is emotional injury as traumatic as a physical injury? I was telling her that it most assuredly was, using being stabbed as an analogy.

Most stab injuries do not cause death. YOU extrapolated and YOU projected.

Please don't.

Wellwobbly

Well it's an interesting debate you have started here, and I can see there are as many theories as there are affairs. Personally my view is that no two affairs are the same. Some people cheat because they can, and they enjoy it, others to escape something, many are serial cheats, many are not, some even leave a partner because they fall in love, properly, and the new union lasts. You can't define anything where human emotions are involved because emotions are by their very nature at times both illogical and irrational. Love, lust, loyalty.... strange concepts all of them.

You are a strong and intelligent woman, but sometimes you come across as being almost consumed by your husbands betrayal, perhaps even allowing yourself to be defined by it. Why let him infiltrate your thoughts like this? He is history. Gone. A weak man. Not worthy of another thought.

In a strange way I've felt connected to you on here because we went through the pain together. You are right, no bystander can even begin to understand what it feels like. You have to let go though, you have to invest your thoughts, energy, passion into something outside of this.

MN relationships board is a little dangerous. I'd been on here too much recently, and you know what, it set me back. I was doing so well, and then I found myself getting sucked back into doubts and obsessions, fuelled by stuff I was reading on here. I had to step away, find myself, my independence and my self confidence again. It's back. The rest, it's over.

I'm not a therapist, I haven't read fancy theories, I don't speak the current lingo, but I have walked a mile in your shoes. It hurts like hell, but it hurts a hell of a lot less when you close that door, open a new one, and start your life again.

Hugs

I understand what you are saying that a physical injury is easier to bear and get over with than the emotional wound.

If you think it through, though, if they had arranged to stab you, and you survived, you'd still have to deal with the betrayal and the aftermath, including the destruction of the family, etc.

One of the issues there, IMO, is that he simply didn't leave. Nor you.

I think that prolonging the break up was the worst things you could have done for yourself, and possibly your children too.
A clean, quick, break would probably be more like pulling a band aid. Or the stab wound you say you preferred.
It would have hurt like hell then, but it would have been better sooner.

wellwobbly you post here often- mostly on the same topic- but being a 'regular' doesn't give any poster the authority to tell another poster not to join the discussion. It's a public forum. If you want private or exclusive conversations with only some posters, then perhaps you need to consider if a forum is the right place.

You were comparing the pain of being stabbed or shot to the emotional pain of being hurt.

If you didn't mean that you would , as a consequence, die from those actions then you ought to have made it clear. It's not the fault of the reader when they misinterpret something that's unclear. But unless you have been shot or stabbed I don't see how you can compare- it's just in your imagination and a figure of speech you were using.

But wellwobbly wasn't telling anyone not to join in the discussion MBP, she was asking you specifically not to extrapolate something different from what she was saying. All you had to say was 'Oh sorry I thought you meant you would rather have died, I see now you meant physical injuries in general.' Which would be the most rational and kindest response to a woman who has written so eloquently about the pain she is experiencing.

But you didn't.

Instead you went on to present her most recent request as her trying to bar posters from the entire discussion. More strange extrapolation then.

I don't know whether the OP posts mostly on this topic. I know I do when I (rarely now) come on to this site so I recognise her from other threads we've been on together. But the same could be said for you MBP. I recognise you from infidelity threads too, usually saying similar things in similar ways to your posts on this thread. For all I know you only post about this issue too. I suppose the difference is everyone knows why the OP and I are on infidelity threads, posting the way we do.

Missbopeep no, no sign of any yet..

Lweji - but it's the loss of a whole way of life and an idea of who you are and who you've been for many years. I don't know Wellwobbly's story but I see she fought to save her marriage. She can't have known at the outset what would happen. I'm assuming here's a new stage, not up to us to dictate the pace.

These 'breaks' are never clean or quick, really.

I think that's right Saferniche. While I'd hate to start misrepresenting posters myself (there's been quite enough of that on this thread IMO) I've seen posts from the OP which indicate new, upsetting developments. So I could understand it if that (and the realisation that the end must come now) is freshly traumatic.

I understood what Worsestershire was saying though about not letting the actions of other people define us, but I suppose this thread and the majority of posters on it can help with that, if someone's struggling. I can read a thread like this - even the irrational comments - and feel personally unmoved (although I get cross if someone's being cruel or rude!)

Although I've said that despite what my husband was telling me I went on a fruitless memory trawl, I can honestly say I never once felt responsible for his affair and of course neither did he ever try to pass it my way. Even if he'd been claiming unhappiness, we would have both acknowledged straight away that he'd have had the responsibility to let me know and to make attempts to address it.

This to me is so obvious. I can only summise why a couple of posters don't get it.

But I'm sure those very clear lines of accountability, together with the fact that my marriage was never the only thing that defined me, is why my husband's affair has never overwhelmed me or taken over my life. That doesn't stop me having enormous sympathy for people who are still struggling with the accountability issue, or who are coping with fresh trauma and ultimately, loss.

Maybe for those posters, losing the accountability that was never yours to start with kick-starts the recovery process and then doing some work on yourself to recognise what really defines you as an individual. That might be things like personal talents or a great job, it might be the other wonderful relationships you've built up, it might be personal qualities such as compassion or empathy or it might be the difference you make to people's lives through your voluntary work or a hobby.

There are some wonderful posters on this thread for example, who I think make a real difference to people's lives through their wisdom and compassion, the OP included.

hi familyscapegoat - well said.

I imagine Wellwobbly's marriage doesn't define her either, it's the shock of having to reframe such an important part of a life which has caused such a blow. Perhaps if your dh had been different - not as self-aware perhaps - and the outcome hadn't been as positive, you would have felt overwhelmed at least for a while. I know I would be, in fact I was. Your advice is sound, and is something to aim for.

I don't see any excuse for cruelty on threads like this.

saferniche, it has been a long story and many many posts rationalising why to stay with this narcissistic man, how to deal with him, planning to leave, then delaying and so on It has been a hard process and I'm really happy at how far wobbly has gone, but still sad that she's still so caught up in it.
Obviously she didn't realise from the outset. That's not in question. :)

but some of you have been here supporting her. At least you were able to do that. :)

family I think that extrapolating is the new 'in' word on this thread
.
FWIW my opinion is you are indulging in semantics. If a poster says they are NOT discussing something with YOU then the inference is that they don't wish you to join the dialogue they have with another poster. They may have stopped short of saying f... off - but that's the inference.

Oh I forgot- that's another extrapolation.

My final thoughts are that if someone is clearly still very raw about something they have experienced, they ought to find help in RL and not use a debating style of posting to kick off a thread which invites discussion - when that discussion may include things they don't want to countenance.

If they just want cheer leaders and sympathy then a forum which includes a range of opinions is not the right place- surely they are just rubbing salt in their raw wounds by inviting comments they don't want to hear and which don't fit their own belief system?

Upnot I think that's an interesting idea, that where both partners want to make things work again and can see areas of improvement it is much easier to do so than when an affair has appeared completely out of the blue for one party.

My uncle walked out on his wife of 20 odd years having told her that for the majority of that time he had been having an affair with a neighbour. She (and the rest of the family) didn't have a clue that there was something fundamentally wrong, and that he had effectively checked out of their relationship years before, and had just stayed for the children (very old school). He had zero intention of ever allowing her to make things better, assuming that that was possible. Obviously a unique situation but not I suspect that unusual.

Personally, and I am a risk manager and trained in public health so generally good at logical thinking, cause and effect etc I would say that anyone who states even that most affairs are 'caused' by marriage problems isn't looking nearly deep enough at the root causes of individual behaviour. Clearly there is a strong correlation, but you'd really have to track a lot of couples for a long period of time and make many recordings to be able to show that a higher proportion of couples experienced problems prior to the affair than those that didn't and also that the claimed prompt or trigger for the affair was those problems.

Then you'd have to control for factors like the relationship status of the parents of both partners (higher likelihood of marriage break up if your parents themselves broke up, presumably a % of those break ups were because of infidelity), issues like illness or death in the family and other traumatic events that are associated with relationship failures etc. Oh and stress and poverty too, again associated with relationship failures.

So Lazyjaney with your obvious access to 'all research, observations, testimonies' etc please do direct me to the research that meets the tests above (which are pretty mainstream I shoudl add, nothing contentious or extreme) because I would be fascinated to read it.

MBP Wellwobbly didn't say she wasn't discussing something with you. She just asked you to stop misinterpreting what she was saying and putting your own spin on it. Which is projection and extrapolation and so yes, you did it again in your last post. That's not semantics - it's just a matter of written record on this thread. Just like everyone can read Charbon's posts and see how they are being twisted and misconstrued, yet everyone else appears to be able to grasp what she's saying which isn't difficult given the clarity and articulacy of her posts.

I profoundly agree with your post Nooka but although I'd agree it must be easier to reconcile if you believe the main issue that caused the decision to cheat was an unsatisfactory relationship, I still think it could be a false trail unless the person who's cheated transforms his/her way of dealing with dissatisfaction which is bound to crop up again in some form or another in the future. That might be hard for some posters in the initial honeymoon period of reconciliation to imagine just yet, but speaking as someone who's years on from this now, those low moments will come, as they do in any long term relationship. I do think it's a grave mistake if people think a great relationship can ward off infidelity on its own and I hope that's not the case for some of these posters.

By the way, I think the ' all research, observations and testimonies' Lazy Janey claims to have read is a false trail too. This poster said that 'all of it' would state that some affairs are due to problems in a relationship and others are due to other factors. Not strictly true and probably just further evidence of misreading (or possibly no reading at all) and therefore aberrant conclusions. We read loads and whereas most research acknowledged that there could be a correlatory link, not one stated categorically that an affair of any description could be attributable to a single cause. The correlatory link incidentally was not between problem marriages and an affair. The link was between problem marriages and a decision to cheat; a very different thing entirely.

Not one person on this thread has said that affairs never happen in unhappy marriages, or that unhappiness (if it exists) isn't a relevant factor in a person's rationale and perceived justification for being unfaithful. Neither does the literature. So there is no clash here, apart from in a poster's imagination.

Unhappiness in a marriage is also not neutral.

My H would have said that the unhappiness we had contributed to his decision. However, any unhappiness on my side related to his selfish behaviour with regards to family life, and on his side with the disputes which resulted from it.

He now sees that turning a deaf ear to me, when I was working too, was no solution. And he has learned, at least somewhat, through counselling that a genuine willingness to communicate a path through disputes is more productive and satisfying for him too than the alternative- which was to ignore me, feel undervalued by my complaints, do even less at home and stay up late sexting.

"I want to reiterate that I have never said that marital discord or relationship dissatisfaction have no influence on someone's decision to have an affair"

You stated it was a never a cause, ever, upthread. Now you admit it's an "influence". I think you are playing with semantics now.

"But the causal factor itself is always the person's decision to be unfaithful, rather than choosing other options"

This line of argument completely misrepresents the cause/effect relationship. If A is a cause of B, and B is a cause of C, then there is a causal link and A is a cause of C.

So if relationship problems cause a person to take some new decision, and that decision is to have an affair, then there is a causal relationship and the relationship problems are a cause of the affair.

That the person has other choices of action does not invalidate the choice of action they made. Different people make different choicest.

In this case, the person chose this action. In another case, another person will choose another action. Both are effects of the same initial cause.