# Whats worse EA or PA



## calvin (Jan 7, 2012)

What do you feel is worse a EA or a PA? Of course I thing nothing can be as bad as a PA with an emotional connectiong.Thoughts?
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## Complexity (Dec 31, 2011)

calvin said:


> What do you feel is worse a EA or a PA? *Of course I thing nothing can be as bad as a PA with an emotional connectiong*.Thoughts?
> _Posted via Mobile Device_


:iagree::iagree:

A PA in my opinion, you can't get over the mind movies but I understand how devastating EA's can be too. It makes you think everything in your relationship was a lie.


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## Jellybeans (Mar 8, 2011)

T,he worst is an EA combined with a PA, IMO.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## Beowulf (Dec 7, 2011)

I think any betrayal is devastating. It's like asking to choose between being stabbed or drowned. Either way you're dead so what's the difference.


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## arbitrator (Feb 13, 2012)

In my opinion, both are reprehensible in their own way primarily because the presence of either has the potential to wreak total havoc on what is supposed to be a loving, committed relationship!


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## morituri (Apr 1, 2011)

Both have degrees of severity. An EA can range between countless texts and emails about personal and marital issues to outright declarations of love and desire to be with each other. While a PA can range from making out kissing to full blown sex. Often an EA can become a prelude to a PA.

The mind movies that a PA evokes of ones spouse kissing to having sex can be very traumatic and difficult to overcome unless the LS(BS) seeks therapy with a PTSD specialist with experience in helping victims of infidelity.

Generally speaking, a PA by a wife often tends to doom a marriage more than a PA by a husband. We men have a harder time in recovering from it than women do and so more marriages end because of it than when it is the husband who had the PA. Now mind you that I'm in no way, shape or form implying that women are not equally devastated by their husbands PA as men are by their wives PA, but women seem to recover faster from it that the marriage often survives it. It could be a result of cultural, gender specific or a combination of both.

But in the end, both hurt like hell.


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## bandit.45 (Feb 8, 2012)

I can only speak for myself by saying that the e-mails between my wife and her lover were far more emotionally devastating to me than her trip to San Diego to meet him for sex. To see my wife start off by saying she had a good marriage, to eventually trashing me within two months and saying how she wasted her life being married to me and what a lousy husband I was....

That hurt bad.


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## AngryandUsed (Jun 23, 2011)

both are bad. In PA, BS should worry about STD as well. Mori correctly put: EA could be a prelude to a PA. Both A's are destructive.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## LovesHerMan (Jul 28, 2011)

Both are devastating, but I think that a PA is worse due to STDs and potential pregnancy.


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## Almostrecovered (Jul 14, 2011)

What's worse? Getting eaten by army ants or stung to death by bees?


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## Mario Kempes (Jun 12, 2010)

Yeah, both bad but I'd find it harder to cope with a PA. The mind movies would eat me up.


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## SweetAndSour (Feb 25, 2012)

This is very gender specific.

I take the "worse" as depth of an affair.

For a wayward wife, if it is at the PA stage, EA is already included or emotional bond with the AP is about to develop soon. So the PA is worse.

For a wayward husband, PA can go forever without any emotional attachment developing, depending on the human quality of that man. I mean depending on how shallow and selfish he is. Then wife doesn't get much more than what OW gets so that kind of men cannot have an EA with no one, wife included.

But if a man have an EA, PA is included or wished and welcomed even if it has not happen yet. So for a wayward man (for his wife actually), EA is worse.


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## oaksthorne (Mar 4, 2011)

morituri said:


> Both have degrees of severity. An EA can range between countless texts and emails about personal and marital issues to outright declarations of love and desire to be with each other. While a PA can range from making out kissing to full blown sex. Often an EA can become a prelude to a PA.
> 
> The mind movies that a PA evokes of ones spouse kissing to having sex can be very traumatic and difficult to overcome unless the LS(BS) seeks therapy with a PTSD specialist with experience in helping victims of infidelity.
> 
> ...


I don't agree that women recover faster, men are actually better at compartmentalization generally and that makes recovery easier for them. Men are acculturated to be less forgiving, period. I've seen a lot of comments on this forum by men in which they refer to the forgiving male as a "beta type". They then begin pontificating about how they wouldn't and didn't let themselves be "emasculated" by a commitment to save the marriage ya da ya da . It doesn't seem to be a constitutional weakness in in lot of cases,it's just a Rambo like paradigm.


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## Entropy3000 (May 11, 2011)

calvin said:


> What do you feel is worse a EA or a PA? Of course I thing nothing can be as bad as a PA with an emotional connectiong.Thoughts?
> _Posted via Mobile Device_


PAs usually start with an EA. So they are typically on the continuum. A PA is a deal breaker for me. That is a boundary once crossed that means we are done. I might feel that way about an EA. It depends on the particulars.

With a PA one has to wonder about whether he children are the husbands or not.

I was in the early stages of an EA. My wife caught it. Convinced me it was an EA. I changed jobs. Took me a long time to forgive myself. So I have some unerstanding of how they start.


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## endlessgrief (Feb 19, 2012)

morituri said:


> We men have a harder time in recovering from it than women do and so more marriages end because of it than when it is the husband who had the PA. Now mind you that I'm in no way, shape or form implying that women are not equally devastated by their husbands PA as men are by their wives PA, but women seem to recover faster from it that the marriage often survives it. It could be a result of cultural, gender specific or a combination of both.
> 
> But in the end, both hurt like hell.


I agree with you. It may not be PC or this may sound like caveman days, but my husband likes to think of my body as HIS (as he beats his chest  ) The thought of another man using my body would be something he could never get over. Men are more territorial. And in small doses, caveman can be kinda sexy


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## ilovechocolate (Jan 16, 2012)

I don t know if it s EA or PA - but the fact that the WS lied to you, deceived you, hid things from you, and took time away from the family to feed their affair (EA/PA). The fact that they allowed a third person into your relationship.


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## Entropy3000 (May 11, 2011)

endlessgrief said:


> I agree with you. It may not be PC or this may sound like caveman days, but my husband likes to think of my body as HIS (as he beats his chest  ) The thought of another man using my body would be something he could never get over. Men are more territorial. And in small doses, caveman can be kinda sexy


Men are still men. Just because we evolve as a society does not mean we are not still human. In our marriage my wife and I have ownership of one another in the sense that we are partners. We agreed to an exclusive sexual relationship. The way that is broken is by divorce.


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## Entropy3000 (May 11, 2011)

ilovechocolate said:


> I don t know if it s EA or PA - but the fact that the WS lied to you, deceived you, hid things from you, and took time away from the family to feed their affair (EA/PA). The fact that they allowed a third person into your relationship.


Yes. It is the unfaithfulness.


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## Almostrecovered (Jul 14, 2011)

SweetAndSour said:


> This is very gender specific.
> 
> I take the "worse" as depth of an affair.
> 
> ...


this was not the case for me

while I won't argue that my wife had to have had an emotional connection of sorts to engage in sex with her OM, she viewed it mostly as a sexual thing- had it gone much longer I'm sure it would have much worse


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## Ingalls (Mar 7, 2012)

I am struggling with putting the hurt, fear that there "could" have been a PA, and forgiveness that have all been a result of my spouses EA... so I imagine the same feelings would be true if it was a PA??


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## KanDo (Jun 15, 2011)

For me, the emotional connection is the most damaging. If my wife had had a ONS, it would have been a terrible devastating blow; but, not as devastating as a true love affair which is what she had. Even worse is the choice to continue the affair after discovered.


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## Hope1964 (Sep 26, 2011)

I don't think that any of us can speak for anyone but ourselves here. We can't look at each other and say "Well my husband hiring a hooker was WAY worse than yours just claiming to love someone else" or whatever. Everyone who has been cheated on has been hurt far more than they ever imagined. Trying to categorize the levels of hurt here diminishes everyone's hurt. How do you compare infinite sadness with another infinite sadness?? They are both infinite. To say one is half of the other means nothing - half of infinity is still infinity.


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## NextTimeAround (Dec 15, 2011)

EAs are bad when the betrayed partner is the woman. since a lot of women still view sex as "giving it up", the fact that the OW can get something, time, attention, priority, consideration and gifts and other favors (that the BW has effectively funded, in part at least) without "giving it up" is particularly irksome.


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## Sparkles422 (Jun 3, 2011)

I only have experience with an EA. It was devastating to me. Watching the sexting and all that garbage.

My ex woke up, told me the OW was a Cro-Magnon in the intelligence department, that he had no respect for her and was appalled at what he had done. He is reconciling his self-portrait of a sensitive and generous man to that of a self-centered, frightened aging man with imperfections. The alien has left the body.

We are working on reconciliation. Lots of discussions and in depth talks. This is NOT for the faint hearted. It is all about honesty.

So far our re-uniting is much better than our marriage and worth the work.


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## ilovechocolate (Jan 16, 2012)

My H had a PA and although the fact that he had sex with another women hurts the fact that he was willing to lie and deceive and gamble our marriage hurts just as much .


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