infidelityGood Wednesday to everyone!

This week our discussion is actually a “rerun” from one that we ran about two years ago.  At the time it generated lots of discussion and comments and we’re hoping that we can repeat that this time around as well.

We feel that many of you will have some pretty strong opinions on the following…

What is it about infidelity that hurts so much? Is it the breach of trust, the betrayal itself or something else?

Why is monogamy so important to us?

What is it about human relationships that we can share friends but not lovers?

As always, please respond to each other in the comments.

Thanks!

Linda & Doug

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    19 replies to "Discussion – Why Does Infidelity Hurt So Much?"

    • kelbelly

      What is it about infidelity that hurts so much? Is it the breach of trust, the betrayal itself or something else?

      It was the things that my husband said about us as his family and he was everything for her that I had been begging him to be for me. When I think about what hurts the most, it usually comes down to these two things but one thing that I recently realized as well is that I really love my H and even through all the anger, the thought of him not being in my life is devastating.

      Why is monogamy so important to us?

      I think one thing for me is that I was raised with a lot of dysfunction and I didnt want that for my children so it was important to me to have a strong marriage for my children and myself. Another really big reason is all the nasties that one can get from being unfaithful!

      What is it about human relationships that we can share friends but not lovers?

      I sometimes wonder this myself. This question has probably been one that I have tried to figure out the most lol!

      • Chuck

        I am a man who was devoted, and curiously still hurting from my wife cheating. I don’t know everything but I know she left lots of clues behind. She ended up with a co-worker who was also married. I don’t think this will last long for them, they are too alike.
        What I don’t understand is ME. What is it about me that makes me still desire her? I am done with her but I devoted my whole heart into her. I ignored too many signs and ignored the words she used.
        My trust in both women and men is gone. Men because I cant trust them around a woman. My heart remains broken. I cant seem to get past this. I think about what I did wrong? Not the stud in the sack? Not loving enough?

    • Patsy50

      Why is monogamy so important to us?
      I think some are raised on monogamy and some are not.

      What is it about human relationships that we can share friends but not lovers?
      I think because there is a stronger intimacy between lovers. You can love your friends but not at that same level of intimacy that you have with your lover.

      What is it about infidelity that hurts so much?
      It’s the breaking of that deep intimacy between both partners that has been shattered along with feelings of betrayal on every level and the loss of trust in this person.

      • lost again but not forever

        Yea the breaking up of the personal intimacy is the hardest to overcome. I feel she chose this person over me. 2nd place is not where I want to be in my marriage.Trust factor is gone now after 33 years.
        Thought we were going to stay together until the end of our time.But I was wrong….

    • chiffchaff

      My feeling on monogamy is that it’s important for stability in life. If you have polygamy there’s the potential for disruption and instability that affects everyone, including children, property, finances and home life. I was brought up with an expectation of monogamy in a relationship too. It might have been different if I was brought up in a functional polygamous family.

      On sharing – it’s the sharing that makes friends friends and not lovers. Not sharing someone for anything more than friendship makes them a lover. it’s the exclusivity of the extra intimacy from a special relationship. the parties to the relationship invest more in each other on a personal and practical level than you would with a friend. the risks are less with friends and therefore the benefits are different too.

      For me the hurt was the betrayal of trust, the deliberate deception practised on me for purely selfish reasons. It bursts the bubble of who you thought this person was and how important you thought you were to them. It’s also the lack of choice involved for only one party. If the CS had told the BS that they wanted to have an affair before doing it (I know, ludicrous) then at least the BS would have had a choice in that decision. As I said to my H many times, he chose to share himself with two women, the OW chose to share herself with a man who was committed to someone else. I did not get to choose whether or not to share my husband with someone else.

    • forcryinoutloud

      For me the LIES are what caused the most pain. Betrayal of trust is too dignified of a phrase to place on my pain. Chiffchaff put it perfectly with the statement about “the deliberate deception practised on me for purely selfish reasons.” I might add “over an extended period of time.” I’m still shocked at the amount of lying and manipulation my H practiced. It had to be exhausting to the soul.

      As far as relationship monogamy and sharing of friends not lovers I believe it boils down to personal choices. I think certain cultures, personalities and childhood nurturing affect decisions about both.

    • SamIam

      To all three questions the answer is trust! Monogamy because we trust that one person and made a vow (trusting the vow would be kept). Sharing friend but not lovers (of course in the case lover equates to married in the eyes of the law and eyes of the church) because we put more trust into one of the relationships (again a vow of trust whether spoken or implied). The most painful part of the affair was losing the trust…..that blind, faithful, unspoken, unquestionable trust I had in my DH. Trust just cannot be the same again…it is now a “mended” trust. As I told my H, I love him, I am willing to rebuild the trust, I have forgiven (not forgotten) but now our marriage always has an asterisk. (as does our trust because “there was that one time!” and we will live with it the rest of our lives) ugh!

      • SamIam

        The whole truth is this (for me)…if I cannot trust him with the marriage trust ~ the big umbrella trust~ how am I going to trust him with the little trusts…all the things that fit under that umbrella. When the umbrella gets torn, the storm enters in.

    • Rachel

      It hurts so much because your heart is cracked in half.

    • theresa

      one quick point. I think monogomy is an essential to maintain the roots of our family based society. It’s been said that men can’t help themselves. It’s an instinctive behavior.. MEN were not made to be monogomous.
      I put it to you.
      Women are also acting instinctively. Our reactions or response to infidelity is one of protection for ourselves and our family. If he’s spreading himself around, he’s giving away something that belongs to you. It’s a threat to our existence.
      We are trying to preserve the propogation of the species.
      (couldn’t resist this)

    • david

      For myself it is the overwhelming fear of loss. Someone else has taken the most special part of my life. They took something that i thought i was the only owner of. My wifes love. As well as her physical body. And the overwhelming fear she wont ever come back.
      She is the one who i entrusted my entire life with. All the good bad boring exciting times in our life our dreams and hopes was taken and given to another man. Forever it seems lost and as if it never happened. And its rather funny that as i told my wife he still enjoys the best part of your life, they are supposedly are no longer sexually active as lovers anymore but still sleep in same bed. I told her as weird as it sounds i miss watching her get ready for work. Blowdrying her hair and her cussing that its not doing right!
      Its rather amusing to me. And i miss it so much. Im affraid ill never see it again. I believe its fear driven of what we loved and lost and that we will never get it back

    • Gizfield

      David, I understand what you are saying, but do you really think the other man is getting the “best” of your wife? I can’t speak to anyone else’s situation, but when my husband was sneaking around dating his girlfriend I dont really think there was a “best” for anyone to get. He was a creepy, cheating, liar. He was a fake ass phoney, trying to present himself as something more to another fake ass phoney. He was a delusional twerp, as was she. She “had been cheated on so she WOULDN’T DO THAT to anyone else” while she was doing that to me. He is trying to impress someone who “hates cheaters”by cheating on me. If that is not delusional and pathetic, someone please let me know what is, lol. No one peruse

      • forcryin'outloud

        Love the fake ass phoney phrase! I’m stealing that one.

    • Gizfield

      oops, wrong button. Anyway, anyone outside Cheaterville, USA would run from people exhibiting these behaviors. It’s just plain creepy to the normal world. I’ve been looking at a website showing real honest to god cheaters and trust me, none of them are showing any best. ninety percent of them are fugly, or whorish looking, or usually both. No beauty attends in that locality. And again, I’m not addressing anyone’s situation except my own.

    • Gizfield

      Glad you like it, FCOL, steal away! My husband is a good man, but if he ever acts like he did when he was under the influence of that slut he is out of here, pronto. What a sanctimonious ass. I think one of his “needs” at that time was a negative bitch mate and he sure found one. I thought at the time he’d probably been an asshole all along and I just hadn’t noticed, lol. He had cardiac bypass surgery when our daughter was two years old, and he apparently went into a strong depression. He changed a lot, and not in a good way. Midlife crisis on STEROIDS. Bad, bad news.

      • Pam

        That’s what happened in our marriage. My husband had a double bypass, and because we were ignorant to the side effects that can happen, he also became very depressed and fell in love with a woman online. Eventually they had a weekend together, and I’ll just say it was a horrible 3 years. There were other issues within him besides having cardiac surgery which hadn’t been addressed, but the surgery played a big part.

    • bellabby

      For me it has always been important to me that the person I chose to marry would always be faithful. I never considered anything else or would accept anything less. After all, my parents have been married for over 58 years and my father never cheated on my mother. I just expected that marriage was supposed to be monogamous, that your spouse was your best friend that you could always talk to about anything, that they would always be there to support you no matter what. A marital relationship is different from a friendship because of the intimacy a married couple shares. That intimacy creates a special bond where each partner shares both the good and not so good about themselves. We open ourselves up and let our spouse see who we really are, flaws and all. But even with those flaws, the marital bond should still remain strong, special, different than any other relationship we may have. Yes we may have very close friends who know our flaws as well, who we share personal information with and who we are close to, but somehow it’s different than our relationship with our spouse. At least I believe the relationships are different. So sharing friends and sharing spouses cannot ever be the same because that special intimacy you share with your spouse is so different that there is no comparison.
      My husband and I have been together since I was 16 yrs. I always trusted him and NEVER EVER expected he would cheat on me, That profound betrayal was such a stunning shock, I felt as if I had been punched in the stomach. I couldn’t think, eat, sleep, and cried so many times each day that my eyes were constantly puffy and red. The person I thought was my best friend, my protector, my biggest supporter, had destroyed any trust I had which unfortunately affected my trust in other people as well. After all, if the person who supposedly loved me and vowed to stay faithful to me through adversity as well as through good times, could betray me, how could I trust other people who did not have the same stake in the relationship.
      But besides the betrayal and obvious loss of trust, the humiliation I felt was overwhelming. I could not believe that this man I had loved and lived with for 35 years, excepted with all his flaws, could talk about me to not just 1 but 2 other women. Personal things that he wouldn’t even share with his best male friend but had no problem discussing with either of them. As Patsy50 stated, ” It’s the breaking of that deep intimacy between both partners that has been shattered”.
      I’m not sure how I will ever be able to forgive that ultimate breach in our marriage. It is something I am working on but he thinks I should just let it go, get over it, because they are out of his life and he never plans to talk to either of them again. I don’t think he understands the depth of the pain he has caused me and the total loss of trust. When I say we need to discuss what happened to avoid it happening again, he becomes angry and insists that he will never cheat on me again. But unfortunately the betrayal, the loss of trust and the humiliation have all but destroyed my self esteem. For me I will never understand how he could choose them over me and allow them to say such horrible, lies about me. He did not stick up for me or come to my “rescue” as a husband should. That will always be the most difficult part of this whole ugly ordeal.

    • Strengthrequired

      Exactly bellaby, that’s how i feel. I can forigve my h, trust is another story, that has to be earned unfortunately.
      The thought that he could talk to another woman about me, and in a bad way,is demoralizing. That is something I have to work through, but on my own I feel, as he wouldn’t be able to give a good explanation for that. There are no excuses not for sharing anything with that woman.
      Yet i accept that he did, he can’t take any if the ea back, it’s done, it’s time to make it upto me, share with me, the bad shit about her, because there is no good in the moldy tart. She makes you sick, if it look and acts like a moldy tart then it is one Now he has to see her for what she really is and share it with me.
      He told her lies about how bad i was and talked himsellf into believing it, now he needs to see and hear himself talk the truth about her, and stop sugar coating the way she is.

    • lost

      There is so much that really has hurt me over this EA, but I agree I think trust is the worst part. My H has had no contact with OW since I found out, but I still feel like there is something I’m missing, I want to trust him again, and he has proven that I can, but there is something in my gutt that won’t let me. The OW was a GF from HS, hadn’t spoke or seen each other in 25 yrs, and then she looks for him on FB, and then within that year they started a EA, and added texting. The part that hurts the most, to the OW it looks like she could just step into his life after all this time, and ruin what we have. So, that makes me feel like I don’t even matter to my H, although, he states untrue. This is the hardest thing to deal with. Why should I care what the OW feels, but it matters, because I don’t want her to feel like she accomplished what she set out to do, and thats to see if he still had feeling for her.

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