Re: Still don't know HOW some of you forgive a cheater?
This message board has been very good at discussing various boundaries to work on in a situation.
When I was single I lived a very accept / reject life, that is, if I didn't like something, move on. Unfortunately, there are a couple of types of relationships in which there is too much invested to make moving on not as easy as the advice giver might assume.
In my current situation, unmarried, many people told me I should have dropped my boyfriend. Some people don't approve of multidating; some people don't approve of lying; some people don't approve of inappropriate male / female friendships. Good for them, but each of these situations are connected to something larger.
When I finally dealt with his "friendship" directly --something that I was advised not to do because it would make me look insecure and therefore, unattractive -- I was pleasantly surprised that he was eager to do what was necessary to make me feel secure. He took her off his instant messenger; he defriended her from FB; he showed me the text messages between them before and after we met adn asked me how would I like for him to respond to them. This was before I found TAM. I got the impression then that someone in his family must have dealt with adultery and he saw this happening.
I don't want to tell other people how to live their life. IF there's a way to reconcile, I want to know about it for myself and to help anyone else who asks for help.
Re: Still don't know HOW some of you forgive a cheater?
When they hand you the divorce papers the day you find out they've been cheating ever since the marriage took place, there's literally no chance for reconciliation. When the aftermath causes you to lose just about everything material that you owned, forgiveness never enters the picture.
Recognizing "trust" becomes the the next of life's projects.
Re: Still don't know HOW some of you forgive a cheater?
I will put it this way in how I rate the seriousness of things and my reactions to them; if I owned a store and a teenager steals a pack of gum out of my store and is caught and is sorry for it, there's no way I wanna see him or her go to prison for that. Buuuut if that teen comes into my store and robs me at gunpoint I am going to want him or her thrown in prison for a good long time!
So there's a lot of things that I'll forgive like that pack of gum, but if you cheat on me I will feel like being robbed at gunpoint which is always going to be unforgiveable in my book. And again for the record cheating is something I don't believe in and have never done and never will do, and if things ever get that bad and I am that horny I would probably ask for a seperation and then a divorce to remedy that(instead of sneaking around like a bank robber). In the past I had two opportunitities to cheat with an attractive co-worker - but I turned them down both times.
Very very little is black and white in life. Affairs range from same sex people developing too close of an emotional bond, to multi year full on EA/PA's, to serial cheaters. To make a blanket statement that cheating is a deal breaker is naive and bravado. There are too many variables to believe a statement like that.
That's not to say that there aren't affairs that aren't deal breakers, but for 99% of the population there are circumstance we here would all define as cheating that wouldn't (and probably shouldn't) end the relationship.
Re: Still don't know HOW some of you forgive a cheater?
Everyone is different and has their threshold of what they can get past. "Cheating" carries many forms. Some of which I could forgive, some not.
I've seen people divorce because their spouse flirted with another person too much, but otherwise did nothing. I've also seen people forgive a spouse even though they've had sex many times with several people outside the marriage.
Somewhere inbetween these is where most people are. For me personally, any sex would be a dealbreaker, unless my spouse was raped or heavily drugged or something. Willing, sober, sex, even once and I would be out. But various levels of emotional affairs, if completely broken, to me, can be forgiven, especially if we've had a long history and I surely am not perfect by any stretch.
Re: Still don't know HOW some of you forgive a cheater?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gabriel
Everyone is different and has their threshold of what they can get past. "Cheating" carries many forms. Some of which I could forgive, some not.
I've seen people divorce because their spouse flirted with another person too much, but otherwise did nothing. I've also seen people forgive a spouse even though they've had sex many times with several people outside the marriage.
Somewhere inbetween these is where most people are. For me personally, any sex would be a dealbreaker, unless my spouse was raped or heavily drugged or something. Willing, sober, sex, even once and I would be out. But various levels of emotional affairs, if completely broken, to me, can be forgiven, especially if we've had a long history and I surely am not perfect by any stretch.
I agree in the sense that a lot of people male and female have their eyes wander over to the opposite sex and think that they're attractive from time to time, but there's a biiiiiig difference between doing that and sneaking behind my back to go share body parts and bodily fluids with someone you are attracted to other than me. To me the physical bond I share with my wife is very very sacred and cannot and will not be interrupted or toyed with by someone else, or else it is over and I am out the door.
Re: Still don't know HOW some of you forgive a cheater?
For me, it's as simple as the promise we made. I've been cheated on once (first marriage). Carol has not cheated on me. In both cases, however, I see it the same. It all goes back to what I believe I'm entitled to just because she said, "I do". The answer, for me, is "nothing". Accordingly, I wouldn't be worried about forgiving some [to me] non-existent infraction. I'd be focused on the current state of our marriage and whether or not it was still a marriage.
Re: Still don't know HOW some of you forgive a cheater?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cee Paul
I will put it this way in how I rate the seriousness of things and my reactions to them; if I owned a store and a teenager steals a pack of gum out of my store and is caught and is sorry for it, there's no way I wanna see him or her go to prison for that. Buuuut if that teen comes into my store and robs me at gunpoint I am going to want him or her thrown in prison for a good long time!
Re: Still don't know HOW some of you forgive a cheater?
I'm not a BS or a WS, so until faced with the scenario, I can only hypothesize how I would react.
I can understand how a BS can reconcile after one betrayal whether it's a ONS or EA or EA/PA, but there are people who forgive and reconcile after VERY long-term affairs. On another board I used to visit, there is a woman whose husband had a 21-year affair! She not only forgave him but reconciled with him and they're still going through marital counseling. There was also a man whose wife had like an 18-year affair which left the paternity of his oldest daughter in question. He's also still with that wife. Reconciling after THAT kind of betrayal I just can't understand.
Re: Still don't know HOW some of you forgive a cheater?
I'd just never be able to think of anything else...it would consume me. So I'm really not sure I'd ever be able to stick around. But I've never been married before, so it's definitely different. I've had several boyfriends cheat in many different ways. I never stayed with any of them, so that's why I doubt that I would stay with my H. Of course, like all of us, I hope to be one of the slim few that never has to face anything of the sort...
Re: Still don't know HOW some of you forgive a cheater?
We had 15 good years before our marriage went south. And a big part of the reason our marriage went south was due to my general outlook on life (self-entitled whiner / complainer). I had a serious leg injury that was a huge wake-up call that I needed to appreciate the good in life. It changed me from the inside out.
The problem was, by the time I had turned myself around, my WS was deep into an EA that would last for years.
I don't blame myself for his choice, but I do feel like I carried the bigger load of making our marriage vulnerable.
Also, educating myself about infidelity helped me to understand the tremendous difficulty he had extracting himself from the EA once he was in it.
But he has changed. He isn't just the person I married, he's a new and improved version. And I am too.
So I feel that there were lots of individual circumstances--and if any one of them had been absent, we probably would be heading toward divorce instead of good true R.
On the issue of trust, it's hard, but having my husband very willingly open up his life like a book so that I can prove to myself that he is loyal goes a very long way toward trusting him.
And last, needless to say this is it. He doesn't get another chance.
Re: Still don't know HOW some of you forgive a cheater?
I can forgive a person for "being human"... but I would never allow that person to be an intimate part of my life ever again. Trust broken is trust lost.
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Re: Still don't know HOW some of you forgive a cheater? 
