SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

DrS,

Thread jump.

So Crete went well!

Congratulations.

(And there’s little downside to praying)

Thisisfine- I feel you are right. Maybe for me I am inclined to believe there is a spectrum, but what you are saying resonates for me.

Some will always cheat, some will be so gobsmacked they build a higher dam. I think this was in essence me, and I feel that is true for my husband or I would not have been able to move forward. Of course, after I found out I wanted a poly to make sure there hadn’t been others and agreed to the same.

It’s also probably why I do not feel I would reconcile a second time. If he didn’t build the dam higher the first time I just am less inclined to wait around. The older I get the more I realize how short life is. I probably wouldn’t even try with a future partner the first time because there will never be the same investment time and family wise as I made with my husband and I would not waste more years on this bullshit.

Fhp- I don’t have any response to what you said other than I feel I held the same naivety- or maybe more willful ignorance- in my own affair even though it should have been clear. Though, my ap was old enough to be my dad and may have looked more like my grandpa. In the end, I think I was looking for validation and escapism, and I did get those things. They just were not at all worth the price of admission.

[This message edited by hikingout at 8:29 PM, Wednesday, June 11th]

hikingout

This post of mine I wasn't really wanting to get so much into my situation as such.
I realize that this is my life now and nothing will change with her so I either have to suck it up or leave. I decided when when she came back and when I let her back into my life again it was mainly me doing it for my children.
I did not want to be a part time dad or risk them having another father figure in their life's that I had no control over I was going to dump her when they were much older.
We ended up having another boy so that drew the prosses out a lot longer. he's 22 years old now.
Anyway, our marriage is so good now and stupidly I really do love her. Shame she has left me with all this baggage but it's just something I have to live with' It's sort of like take the good with the bad but the good is really good, so I settle for that.
My main point was just to get others' opinions on the mid-life crisis thing Google was just so 50/50 on it.
The replies have been very helpful as have yours.
I do believe that there is no good excuse but in the back of my mind I wonder if she had had a better upbringing weather she would have stopped and thought about me and our family and not fallen for this guy and his attempts to bed her.

I wonder if she had had a better upbringing weather she would have stopped and thought about me and our family and not fallen for this guy and his attempts to bed her.

Here is one of my H’s more honest revelations after his affair ended and he realized the damage he caused and the nuclear bomb he threw on our marriage.

He said he deeply regretted the affair and wished someone would have knocked some sense into him. Or Sat him down and told him what he was throwing away.

I looked at him and said "would you have listened?" He sadly said "probably not".

I think the same theory applies to your wife. Her upbringing may have very little to do with her moral compass - I’ve seen great families that had that one kid that just is off the rails with behavior, choices, drinking, cheating etc. while the rest of the family were good law abiding adults.

I’ve seen kids who grew up in the worst conditions and no role model become well respected adults who would never cheat. I’ve seen rich kids who had every opportunity grow up to be serial cheaters.

Selfish people don’t stop and think about anyone but themselves.

I was questioning everything. We had moved towards almost empty nest (last kid at home was getting ready to graduate), and the amount of sacrifice, well to the point of martyrdom, had left me not knowing what my purpose now would be, what I liked, who I was.

Hiking, we have discussed the similarities in your feelings to those of my EX. This is precisely it. I think it was exacerbated as my career at this point was going full guns, and both my daughters were out of the house and embarking on their life journey. The comparisons to her situation where we as a group had so many great things happening to her feeling like her journey was at an end, and with nothing to show for it. They should be, but SAHM wives are not celebrated for all of the years of work they put in.

Now of course most of this was in her head. She had great friends, was in unbelievable shape, and could have been successful if she wanted to with a job, or charity work. We were also at the cusp of a new life together as I was working towards retirement where we would have been set financially and could have spent years traveling and at some point become grand parents.

I still believe that had not her AP have been so skilled in playing off her insecurities, that she ultimately would have stabilized her feelings of being lost and would have found something to give her back the confidence that she was an amazing person. He saw the chinks in the armor and exploited her.

At first I took this all as an excuse, but eventually came to to the conclusion that it was the reason. I know this is a very fine line. As either an excuse, or a reason, it still didn’t justify her actions and we both paid the price, as did our family.

Bottom line mental weakness, which is what a MLC is, if not recognized and dealt with can be very destructive. I’m living proof

WWTL, I think your wife is a prime example of "idle hands do the devil's work."

Her kids were grown, she didn't have to work, and she was bored. But rather than take up her time with a hobby or something beneficial, she had an affair.

I think her midlife crisis was revisionist history. You showed her plenty of love and appreciation for being a stay-at-home mom. She had a lot to look forward to. As I recall, you had a luxurious vacation to Tahiti planned for your upcoming anniversary.

Now maybe I'm just projecting my own envy, but whenever I hear about bored SAH spouses using their free time and their working spouses money to fuck around it makes my blood boil like nothing else. That's probably because I have a running list in my head of all these projects and goals that I'm trying to fit in between working full time and raising 3 young kids.

An acquaintance of mine who doesn't work and doesn't even have kids had the audacity to complain about how bored she was with her husband, to which I replied: "Only boring people get bored."

/rant

[This message edited by BluerThanBlue at 3:16 PM, Thursday, June 12th]

I’m still waiting for my midlife crisis, and I’m 50.
I guess that means I’m gonna make it to over 100.

Not everyone has a midlife crisis. I think of mine more as an existential crisis and you can have those at any age.

For me, mine came because I didn’t make the needed changes for years to have a healthier life balance and was somewhat triggered by empty nest.

Yes, parenting should take a lot of time and energy, but it doesn’t have to be your entire life. I didn’t have any deep friendships, no real hobbies, no sense of what my needs were, much less any protection on those needs. My entire orbit was focused on them.

I could say I was bored in my life, despite having grown my career. It’s not fun to work the hours I was working or to be two ships passing in the night with your husband. I was on a hamster wheel for an extended period of time. And that was not very exciting.

At some point, it becomes more, this is it? My life is half over now and I haven’t found that purpose that lights my heart up. It lead, for me, a dark depression where I didn’t really want to go on. I wouldn’t actually do it to my kids, but I didn’t really want to go in this quest to figure out how to be happier in my life. I wanted a quick fix.

I didn’t understand I was grieving. Not just my kids new stage in life but all the things I could’ve, should’ve, would’ve. All the women I would have liked to have been. I didn’t understand the whole thing was I needed to look at my needs an important as others. I needed to recognize all that goodness in there and do something with it, but I couldn’t see it while being in the dark.

It’s a very painful state to describe. I do not think an affair was justified or helpful because of that state, I will always regret those choices. The spark I got initially from talking to the ap was the most light I’d seen or felt in a long time and it was irresistible to me at the time. Even as I sat listening to him, knowing all of this was a well rehearsed thing that worked for him for years.

I am not saying I didn’t make very calculated decisions or am not responsible but I was both things- I was mentally unwell, and I was still at the wheel making these decisions.

I think an existential crisis is very hard to understand if you have not had one. And I think for wwtl’s wife the idle hands thing can still be true but it doesn’t mean she was not suffering through similar emotions and state of mind that sometimes happens when you should have made a change long ago and didn’t listen to yourself. It’s as if the universe grabs you by the shoulders and says "it’s now or never" but you aren’t sure what the "now" is supposed to be.

Likely the idle hands were a symptom rather than the cause- she simply had not moved towards the self actualization that we as humans are naturally inclined to move towards.

The last 8 years has not just been about building my self awareness, character and skills or rebuilding my marriage, in the last year or two it has been about answering those questions I kept ignoring until I got in that state. It was delayed until more recently by just trying to get through the affair recoveries and reconciliations. I am just now recognizing some of my even simplest of needs after not listening to myself for so long. I am just now investing money, effort and time into what I want and making no apologies over it. And the more I do that, the more revelations come.

I could have liberated myself long ago, without it even effecting my marriage, had I just avoided having an affair. I just didn’t believe it.

Having an existential crisis gives no one the right to hurt another person, but it does not have to be dismissed in order for the bs to still validity set themselves free.I know that sometimes bs will continue to make an empty investment on someone who will never try and correct their course. I just do not think we have to dismiss these things as real to cut to the core of our highest advice.

[This message edited by hikingout at 7:29 PM, Thursday, June 12th]

Not everyone has a midlife crisis. I think of mine more as an existential crisis and you can have those at any age.

True. My wife was actually full on rebuilding herself by the time she hit her midlife.

My wife’s traumatic change was fear of motherhood — and if you met her parents for five seconds, you would understand why.

So, after our first son was born, she was 24 when her world of perfection crumbled. In for a penny, in for a pound on her free fall. For a person who never missed church, never missed a class (high school through college), team captain, business unit leader, never missed work (ever). All her perfection and she couldn’t outrun the harsh childhood or her fears of being a parent when she had no good examples in her life.

Ain’t none of it excuses a single bad choice she has made.

I simply understand some people are built better for crisis than others or have been given a stronger background to push through adversity.

"Is it an excuse or something that some people go through that don't have the mental ability to deal with it in a less destructive way?

Or just another very poor excuse for cheating?"

I like "birky" handbags and red bottomed shoes and "Tiff" rings as much as anyone does

And finding out that exwh was cheating and being dumped and having marital property, assets, and income stolen and concealed while I was life threateningly sick was really a crisis to me. I was over 50 and not getting any younger either.

But funny thing. I didn’t go to the Mag mile in Chitown and boost handbags and shoes. And if I had, I don’t think the court system would have bought infidelity as an excuse.

Just saying…

WWTL, I think your wife is a prime example of "idle hands do the devil's work."

I have to disagree with this. The truth is at the time of the affair she was the busiest she had been in years. The whole affair took place while we were doing an extensive renovation on our house. Almost a total rebuild. She was not the GC on this, but could have been. Anyone who has gone through this knows how much time and effort it takes. Working with the architect, the GC, picking out design elements, change orders as nothing goes to plan, and of course for her the kiss of death of working with the AP who was the electrician and having him tell her how amazing she was at everything. Of course that was him trying to get in her pants, but frankly she did a great job until everything blew up.

I told her also throughout the process how proud of her I was. It just wasn’t enough. Like I said in the last post, I still believe that had he not been who he was, we would have gotten through this and her fears of being irrelevant would have passed. She woukd have found new things and could have led a fulfilling life. But she didn’t.