Cyrena said: "You say you've been "up-front" about your whole relationship with "anyone to whom it might matter." It's telling that the one person one might assume it mattered the most to--your wife--is the one with whom you've never been up-front."
I agree, and the other people who are affected by his choice to have affairs who he hasn't been upfront with are his children and his wife's relatives, all of whom I doubt would agree with any of his justifications.
You seem to want to demonstrate that the women you know who choose affairs over genuine relationships are strong and healthy? They're not. People with self-respect do not cheat themselves out of either half of a fulfilling relationships--either the sexual passion or the emotional bond.
Yes, Cyrena! This hits on exactly what we are trying to get across to ssmguy. This is what it took me years to wake up and see as well. I was cheating myself out of fulfillment. I had an emotional bond with my wife, but without passion <---> I had passion with OW, only without an emotional bond. Not only was I cheating on my wife, I was cheating myself.... fooling myself, living a lie that I could be happy in this split half-assed mode.
True happiness only comes in that emotional-sexual-passionate-bond. Anything less is a compromise, it's as simple as that.
BTW yes, the OW knew upfront that I was married. My very first reply to her stated that I was married (again, I used the same justification as you ssmguy. I wanted to be honest and up front, why lie? I've got nothing to hide.... Oh wait, I was lying to my wife and I was lying to (and fooling) myself... so much for honesty... duh) She was a busy professional woman that just wanted a physical R.
This changed though as the R progressed. Indeed, it changed for both of us as we fell for each other. We didn't mean for it to happen but it did. I was so careful over the years (like you ssmguy) to compartmentalize my sex life from my love life. I was all so empty. It was empty because relationships don't bloom into fullness until sex and love occur together.
ssmguy...I had commented much earlier on this thread, how as part of the justifications that cheaters make, they tend to think that somehow they are different than other cheaters. That somehow, "my reasons for cheating are better, or the way I go about it is better, and somehow that makes my decision to cheat different than the other cheaters out there".
Your post about telling upfront that you are married is part of what I was saying. Your telling you are married upfront doesn't make you better than other cheaters. It doesn't make you different. Other cheaters who may not say they are married are not "worse" cheaters than you are. You are again still trying to find a way to justify it all to yourself and make yourself different than they are, but you are not.
I hope you can maybe go back and review this whole thread and read again all the responses. I also hope that somehow, any of this thread will help you make the right choice and DO SOMETHING to change your current state of affairs.
The answer to that last question won't really matter to you, because you've already had the affair.
Had "the" affair? It's not black and white. And that's not rationalization or justification, because I have no guilt about it and wouldn't have done it differently as I see it at this point. I don't see how I could have survived without some outside support.
Again, I say it's not black and white because I have not had the kind of affair where it was sexual and I was emotionally involved to the point of distraction about the other woman. You can argue with me on the definition and that I'm fooling myself, etc., but that doesn't interest me and isn't material to me. The point is that I have been available to my wife in the sense that if she wanted to turn it around, I was there the whole time and ready to do so. That's not to say I did the very best job -- clearly I was not a saint.
Cyrena said: "You say you've been "up-front" about your whole relationship with "anyone to whom it might matter." It's telling that the one person one might assume it mattered the most to--your wife--is the one with whom you've never been up-front."
Yeah, I was aware of that apparent irony when I wrote that post. I have been up-front with my wife to the extent that she wants to talk about it, and even more. What more can I say? She's the opposite of the women who want to know every sordid detail and obsess over it.
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I agree, and the other people who are affected by his choice to have affairs who he hasn't been upfront with are his children and his wife's relatives, all of whom I doubt would agree with any of his justifications.
As for some of my wife's relatives, your assumption is reasonable, and I can't fault you for it, but you're wrong. I've had a number of talks with them about my situation with my wife, and even the fact that I had friendships with other women, in the context that I'm trying to work it out with my wife. Her family is also aware of her difficulties and were sincerely trying to help. But there's only so much even a parent can do with a fully grown adult child who very much has a mind of her own, and has decided that she is not interested in that kind of meddling input from her parents. So I've been around that whole merry-go-round too.
It's telling that some of her relatives "sided" with me in this whole situation, and realized how characteristically stubborn my wife was being to working on the problem with me.
Why does it not surprise me that the kind of family who would fail to protect a child from abuse (because that's what it feels like to the child) would then go on to talk inappropriately about her lack of sexuality with the H who ought to be her defender. What were you thinking, getting her relatives to take "sides" with you? What an appalling betrayal! And that was supposed to motivate her to feel closer to you?
I'm not going to argue with you about the definition of an affair, SSMGuy. You are the one who is quibbling about that, down to your objection to the word "the." My point was simply that the question of whether you could have solved things without having an affair is impossible to answer and might as well be put aside. It's only another red herring to follow and avoid the real question, which is what you're going to do now about the situation you are in now.
