Poppy

iheartlife...you made me want to cry. I am and have been seeing a cognitive behaviour therapist since September. He has been in IC in New York since January when he moved back from Singapore. We have been going to marriage counselling since jan. He is repentant and admitted to looking at porn pretty much every night for the last 10 years. We moved to Asia and he immediately started sleeping with prostitutes and then he started a year long affair on top of that. He then admitted that he had sex with a girl in a bar on business in Ohio over 2 years ago. I guess I know he is a serial cheater, but as I discovered all of these things at once over a few months si that his second chance, or is the fact that he did all these things and not choose to stop before being found out mean that there is less hope? I have 2 daughters aged 10 and 12 and I would never, never want them to stay with a man like this, so why am I? Yes, I love him..I want to believe he is sorry and will never hurt me again, but is there just too much damage? Is the fact that he did so much..ONS, prostitutes and a year long affair mean that there is less hope? I am so confused, so tired. I wanted him to leave the house last night and go to the condo he rented when I found out about the prostitutes, but I stopped him going in the end because I knew that if he went he would spend the night looking at porn...that is so messed up. My life has been taken over by this for 8 months. Do I walk away now and not care whether he is sorry or not? I know nobody can tell me what to do, but I am losing myself and I want to be a great Mum to my girls. They did not deserve this. What I struggle to get over is that he had sex with me not knowing his HIV or STD status..he had the tests done but they would not have been valid because it was only a week after the last prostitute in Hong Kong. Is that just too much???? What more would he have had to do for me to walk away? I have asked this before...sorry....

hurtingbadly

Poppy, I know what you mean. My WS had a ONS with a stranger on a business trip and had total disregard for if he had brought home a STD. He once told me in an argument that it's like an old 50s educational video. Just because she looked clean didn't mean she was... Yet, he still insists my HPV came from a BJ only. Wow, the more I type it out the more mad I get... Why won't he just admit what he did?!?

sigma1299

I love this statement. It describes the experience better than anything else I've read.

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**Cheaters - Read This**

Pit-of-my-stomach

Love is the great subjective.

~Pit
Talk About Marraige Forums.

profound huh? lol.

Reading this spew is so frustrating. Every person has a monsterous c0cktail of emotions and they get to decide which combination defines feeling "love" for another person... Blah.

So it begs these questions... I told a girl I was having a EA with that I loved her... I was overcome with emotion and swooning... at the time I believed I meant it, but later I realized I didn't. I bet if I ask anyone that has had some kind of affair if they said it, did they think they meant it? Sigma, you told the OW you loved her right? Did you beleive in that did in that moment? In retrospect, have you reassigned those emotions? So now maybe you didn't?

You say loved your wife when you were having an affair, while having this affair did you feel like you loved your wife? Maybe you had memories, attachments, and many many feelings for her... Maybe you did think contiously that you loved her, but maybe there was a shift in degrees of love or types of love or whatever... just shifting and redefining as is convienant or nessasary for you to persue what it was that you desired in that moment...

That's the wrinkle. The loose defintion that each person gets to manipulate, what 'love' means to them... What if I punch you in the face, for no reason, as hard as I can? and I tell you that I did it because I love you... Can you argue? No, you can't. I get to define it. But my action was not a loving action right? So by the same account, I think its absurd for you to claim you loved someone that you hurt so deeply. You felt many things for her no doubt, and the loving attachment likely existed... But that is not love, in that moment or those moments you did not love your wife. You manipualted your definition and its crap. I am no better, in my life many times I have been guilty of it too.

Anyone who has cheated, maybe take a moment and be honest if only to yourself. Maybe shift your definition, this time in an honest way that doesn't benefit what you need to believe...

Maybe shift your paradigm of thinking to a definition that can not internally negotiated.

Love is an action and you did not love her when you did this.

This women's husband does not love her. He has many deep feelings for her, if it suits him to define them as love... that's his perogitive. I call bullsh*t. On him and on anyone that hurts someone that they claim to love. Your actions are clear, love does not hurt. Hurting someone is a choice, a decision. You have your choice in that moment, you made the CHOICE not to love.

Now be a man, or a women and OWN IT. As a man who has grown to believe what Ive said above, I will and I will assign accountability to anyone who chooses to hurt rather than choosing to love yet hides behind that word. I have done it, and Im sorry. I lied. I didn't love them.

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sprman1

Well said. Wrong is wrong.

sigma1299

That's all fair Pit. I did tell my AP that I loved her, and yes I believed it at the time, and yes I have come to understand that no - in reality I didn't; but I did in fantasy land.

If love is only an action you are right I did not love my wife during my affair. I for damn sure wasn't behaving like I love her then. But what I know is what I felt - or maybe think I felt - so help me with this. I have said here before that my affair reminded me what it felt like to be in love, and that it actually reawakened some of those feelings for my wife - and I expressed them to her - while the affair was still going on - and that I believe they were genuine - they felt/feel genuine. Is it possible that I was on such dopamine overload that I simply assigned some of what I felt for my AP to my wife? Was I so high on the affair drug that I would have felt in love with a toad? I don't know - thoughts?

I would steadfastly tell you that I reconnected with my wife DURING my affair. That the increased affection I felt and expressed was real, that my affair made me realize and remember just how much I love my wife. Maybe I'm wrong though, one thing I've come to understand is that when you're in an affair you cannot trust your emotions. I will add here that within 72 hours of D day my wife and I went into a very long and very intense period of hysterical bonding - not sure why that seems pertinent but it does.

So does a drug addict who spends all of his family's money getting his fix not love his family? Does a gambling addict who blows it all at the casino not love his wife? Most will say no, that those vices are not direct violations of your vows and giving something you promised to give only to your spouse to another. It is said here, and I believe correctly, that an affair is not about the betrayed spouse it's about the cheater. So while the act is a violation of and betrayal of trust, from the cheaters seat it is very much like other forms of self destructive behavior - all about yourself.

None of the above is intended to rationalize or defend my affair, I wouldn't try to defend the indefensible. Pit I am genuinely interested in your thoughts, please don't take any of the above as being argumentative or antagonistic, it is not my intent in any way.

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OhGeesh

I'm in minority duh.........lol!!

I definitely think you can if it's a once or twice type of deal. Ongoing affairs, multiple ONS, or habitual behavior I don't think it's true love.

I know few will agree, but we are all tempted and we all make mistakes. I definitely think there is a difference between "I got drunk partied and had a ONS" one time in 25 years versus a year long affair with emotions etc.

So, my answer is for Yes for some and no for others. all affairs are different.

OhGeesh

Also agree with Sigma!! Very true statements there..

Pit-of-my-stomach

I don't take it as argumentative or antagonistic, your not rationalizing it or being defensive. We are having a discussion, I respect you. You made a mistake, likely many of them. We all have, I have made countless mistakes in my life. I do want to share some additional thoughts after I put my little boy to sleep.
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cledus_snow

if they say they do, that is some warped sense of love, if you ask me.

iheartlife

Are any of your therapists trained in porn addiction? Many men enjoy porn and are capable of carrying on healthy marriages. But not all.

Have you seen this famous lecture on porn?
TEDxGlasgow - Gary Wilson - The Great Porn Experiment - YouTube

Again, some men are able to watch porn and then channel their enjoyment into a healthy sex life. Other men get caught in a cycle with porn where (like a drug) they need increasingly harder and harder core stuff to get off (and by getting off, I mean masturbation, which creates a dopamine reward cycle in some men much as cheating does--which is often discussed around here). And then some men take that and then seek more partners to live out their porn-induced fantasies which become stranger and riskier as the "newness" wears off.

In terms of your question about serial cheating, I do believe that it counts if they have multiple partners before you find out. I would probably lump seeing prostitutes as "one" and the affair as "two." Even though he saw prostitutes many times, theoretically he wasn't attached to any one of them and they were to some extent interchangeable bodies where it was all about sex.

But I can see your point, which is that all of this occurred before he recommitted to your marriage, so another way to look at it is that it all counts together as a great big "one" time.

What is the understanding between the two of you about his porn use? That you don't like it but he can still do it? That he tells you he won't but he does it anyway? That he says he's allowed to do it and you shouldn't try to control him?

I'm also curious--if you don't mind me asking--whether any of the therapists have brought up the madonna/who** complex, where he puts you on an idealized pedestal, meant to be worshipped but not enjoyed in a 'dirty' sexy way.

unbelievable

We are only human. Despite our best intentions, each of us are capable of failure, including those failures we believe are beneath us. There are no saints on this earth. Peter loved Jesus but denied Him three times. If someone who raised the dead and healed the blind could fail, I don't imagine it's beyond the realm of possibility for little ol' me.

Love Song

My husband hasn't cheated on me and I have not on him.

But I do think it has more to do with a person's lack of love and respect for themselves that will cause them to cheat. In my opinion it can still happen if they genuinely love their spouse. It's still wrong though regardless of why they do it.

michzz

You really have to step back and see for a moment just how shockingly repugnant any spouse would react to finding this out, that their cheating spouse could actually believe that their intensity of feelings for them increased during their cheating.

See, the expression of love for a faithful spouse REQUIRES the context of monagamy.

Anything else? Is just whoring around.

Beowulf

I believe that affairs as as different as the people who engage in them. When Morrigan had her affair she admits that if there was love for me it was not very strong and certainly not the type of love a wife has for her husband. She said she isn't the type to share her affections so as her feelings for her AP grew her feelings for me dimmed. I would rather have heard that she still loved me while in her affair but she won't lie to me just to make me feel better.

What I can't understand to this day, and she's tried to explain it to me many times, is that our sex life never faltered at all. If she had little to no feelings for me how could she have had sex with me consistently? She has said that sex with me was familiar and comforting and that's why she could still enjoy it even with little emotional feelings for me. For a long time I felt resentment for that because I felt like she used me as a sex toy and to feel better about herself with no regard for my feelings. But eventually I had to let that resentment go because if I didn't we could never have moved on.

My belief is that she did still have love for me but buried those feelings so that she could justify her affair at the time. Then again, who can tell how the human mind really works. Just when you've got all the answers someone goes and changes the damned questions.