SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Getting married in the UK carries a baseline divorce rate of roughly 42%, but that is a risk taken on a healthy, untainted relationship.

so there are factors specific to each case that make overall statistics less applicable...

@DRSOOLERS
I think I understand your position much better now, I agree that the original boundary was breached. I agree that choosing to stay means accepting the reality that the breach happened, and I agree that nobody should romanticise that or describe leaving as weakness. Where I think we differ is in what "tolerating the betrayal" means. I don't believe that choosing to remain means I have accepted the betrayal as acceptable I have accepted that it happened. Those are very different things. i can hold the thought that what my husband did was completely unacceptable, that it caused enormous harm, that I would never willingly choose to experience it, and that I will never tolerate it happening again, while also deciding that the fact that it happened once does not, for me, automatically mean the marriage has to end. Perhaps that's the fundamental difference between us. You believe enforcement of the original boundary necessarily means ending the relationship once it has been breached. I believe I get to decide what consequence that breach has for my marriage after it has happened. And I don't see staying as saying "you got away with it." Quite the opposite. There have been consequences that neither of us would ever have chosen, and the work of rebuilding requires him to live with the knowledge of what he did and me daily, I also agree with you that reconciliation shouldn't be presented as morally superior to leaving. I don't think I'm more courageous, stronger or more committed than someone who walks away, I simply made a different decision. Where I struggle with some of your earlier posts is when your personal definition becomes a universal conclusion that reconciliation is continued abuse, that people who believe they have rebuilt are fooling themselves, or that staying necessarily represents a loss of self-respect. You can believe reconciliation isn't possible for you without telling those of us who have chosen it that what we are experiencing isn't real.

Perhaps we are both enforcing our own boundaries, just in different ways. Yours was "if this happens, the marriage is ivwr." Mine became "this can never happen again, and I will decide whether the marriage can continue based on what happens from here.

You mention that the momentum of twenty years does not just stop. I agree that shared history is the one thing you cannot replicate overnight; I said as much earlier in the thread. However, I was talking about the romanticisation of reconciliation. I see a clear difference between acknowledging history as a practical tether and romanticising it. Staying to test whether a partner can rebuild after setting the house on fire is a pragmatic decision, not a romantic triumph. Burning the history down to eliminate the ongoing toxicity of betrayal remains, to my mind, the cleaner and healthier deal.

I think you have now latched on to the idea someone around here is romanticizing it.

We are not. We are saying it’s possible. We are saying in some cases it may end up being the right choice.

Where on here have you ever read us say to a newly betrayed person anything romantic about where they are at or the process they are going through?

The only romanticism I am seeing framed this way is someone saying it worked for them, they are happy they did it, that it’s possible. But usually even then the same post will say it was hell getting there, it’s not for the faint of heart.

I can see how someone would frame "I am happy, my marriage is now good" on a site like this as romanticizing. In reality we are just saying "this was my outcome, here is the frame work that worked for us to get there"

My point is about how society and forums frame that choice. Labelling staying as "grit" or "extraordinary character" subtly reframes a terrible compromise into a heroic virtue. Enduring prolonged mistreatment or rebuilding from nuclear fallout should not be rebranded as noble; it is an agonising recovery process. This framing is precisely part of the romanticisation I am pointing out.

It does take a lot of depth to reconcile. That’s truth. It doesn’t mean if you choose not to you don’t have it. You are skewing this to fit your purposes. What is being said is in defense of people calling bs who decide to reconcile foolish, weak, unable to see other outcomes, unprincipled.

This site is primarily composed of bs who are here struggling. Arguing against the assertions they are basically stupid to stay in a tarnished forever relationship is not romanticism. It’s being supportive of our fellow members.

What you keep asserting about bs is the epitome of kicking people when they are down. And when someone says "no I see more to them than they are stupid for doing this" and you are making it sound like romantiscim.

You can not be that tone deaf.

Equating infidelity to life’s tragedies, such as illness, job loss, or ageing, simply does not work for me. Sickness, grief, and age are involuntary hardships. Infidelity is a deliberate series of betrayals. I will happily vow to support my partner through the unpredictable hardships life throws at us, but not if she is stabbing me in the back. Grouping a spouse’s cancer or depression together with their active decision to cheat conflates tragic circumstances with deliberate mistreatment. A relationship battered by unexpected hardships is fundamentally different from one where a partner chose to break the foundational contract. An untainted foundation remains the gold standard, and settling for a rebuilt silver medal should not be romanticised.

My point was that your partner is going to be a lot of versions of themselves over the course of decades. And sometimes it’s going to make the relationship feel unstable, you will feel not considered, you will experience neglect of your needs.

I wasn’t conflating infidelity with your spouse being depressed. It was to say for a lot of people they don’t base their whole opinion of their partner on a snapshot in time. You have watched this person be a thousand different things, and they will be a thousand different things over the course of time in the future. And not everyone is willing to end their marriage when their partner manifests the worst version of themselve when that’s not who they experienced for decades prior.

Some ws do not change, have any interest in reforming. Do you see anyone here saying they should put up with that?

You are not new here. It doesn’t happen.

I don don’t romanticize reconciliation, that shit is hard. But I do romanticize the relationship I am in and I am pretty sure I am supposed to do that.

If staying works for you and you have built something fulfilling out of the ashes, that is your path. However, pointing out that an unfaithful partner has proven themselves unworthy of that immense effort, and that a clean, untainted relationship with someone else is an achievable and often superior alternative, is not "shaming". It is providing stark, necessary perspective to people sitting in the fog of betrayal.

While I believe that you can go find people that you are compatible with, but what you are saying is the equivalent of saying "sorry your dog died, why not go get a new puppy?" I agree wholeheartedly with ink about the baby loss example too.

First of all, a bs is not thinking about having new relationships in the "fog of betrayal", they are grieving. If you can circumvent your own grief with novelty, go for it. Selling them on there is someone waiting in the wings for you is not a reality most experience in being single. But it’s for certain not in the radar that someone traumatized by an affair can snap out of it by realizing there are other people they can have a happy life with.

I am not saying stay in an unsafe relationship so you won’t be alone is what is being suggested. I am saying if the relationship can become safe and that’s what you want and not works for you, it’s entirely possible. It happens all the time. It’s probably as much effort to divorce and date as it is to spend some time healing and seeing if your partner is going to step up. They are both valid decisions.

We are not asking a bs to be undiscerning.

Furthermore, I really think it’s laughable that you think my marriage doesn’t have a clean foundation or doesn’t feel wholesome and safe.

I am getting married myself this October in Edinburgh, so I am certainly not anti-marriage. I simply believe in building on a clean foundation.

I don’t feel our relationship is tainted because I live in the present and I see a bright future ahead of us. I feel we cleaned it during the reconciliation process.

We have had many hardships over the past 30 years in our first five years of marriage my husband made bad business decisions and we had to file bankruptcy. And guess what? He started other businesses after that and has been successful at some of them, and at others we were financially stable enough to not feel the losses for a couple that didn’t work out.

I have never felt like his prior failure should mean he can’t be an an entrepreneur. I feel some of the biggest mistakes he made is really what makes him successful today. And I have supported him through it all.

Because failure isn’t always permanent. It’s a deep knowledge that one way doesn’t work over the other.

Just because you don’t understand how you would ever value a spouse or a marriage that cheated on you, doesn’t mean there aren’t those of us out there who feel very positive about our spouse and our marriage and feel our foundation is pretty damned sound. Probably a much safer bet than this imagined person who will come into our lives and be without their own set of complications.

[This message edited by hikingout at 6:12 PM, Friday, August 28th]

** Member to Member **

If you concede that you would prefer a relationship completely free of betrayal, then it follows logically that the only true triumph is building a life and a relationship where betrayal has no place. If that is the ideal, this is what we should romanticize.

You lost me. Seeking absolutes is a virtually certain path to disappointment, and your search for absolutes colors most of your posting..

[This message edited by SI Staff at 5:48 PM, Friday, August 28th]

WBFA, you completely missed my point. Grubs, dead on.

I. Loved. Her.

I continued to love her after I found out about the affair.

It had to be ground out of me, with pain and time.

You don’t get talked out of love by Internet forums.

And yes, from where I stand now, uncoupled from the love bond, I can see that there are other options. But love by its very nature does not consider the beloved interchangeable.

Give people time. Let them find their path. Again, I just can’t believe that needs to be seriously debated.

Everyone is finding their own path though. Aint no one coming in from here and staging an intervention.

It is also hard watch some of these situations too I must admit. In your particular situation I did find myself feeling some anger and rage of my own. I feel this way reading a few situations on here.

[This message edited by WontBeFooledAgai at 6:35 PM, Friday, August 28th]

@hikingout

Where on here have you ever read us say to a newly betrayed person anything romantic about where they are at or the process they are going through?

This side track came about because several users were discussing whether reconciliation was romanticised here back on page four. I said that, irrespective of the truth of that claim, here is why the concept itself is absurd anyway. It sounds like, on that specific point at least, we are in agreement.

This site is primarily composed of bs who are here struggling. Arguing against the assertions they are basically stupid to stay in a tarnished forever relationship is not romanticism. It’s being supportive of our fellow members.

I do not feel that is what I am doing, and it is certainly not my intention. I am simply arguing why the act of staying should not be framed as an act of great glory or moral superiority. Framing a choice to leave as "kicking people when they are down" misses the point entirely.

If I survive cancer, I do not want a parade; I want to get on with my life. I do not need people projecting how strong they think I am for enduring it.

I wasn’t conflating infidelity with your spouse being depressed. It was to say for a lot of people they don’t base their whole opinion of their partner on a snapshot in time.

Calling a calculated, affair a mere "snapshot in time" or one of a "thousand versions" of a person downplays the reality of what occurred. Cheating is not a bad mood, a rough patch, or a temporary bout of depression. It is a deliberate series of deceptions. Framing an active betrayal as just a temporary phase minimizes the conscious choice involved.

sorry your dog died, why not go get a new puppy?

That analogy fails because your dog did not deliberately inflict great pain on you through a selfish, conscious choice. Dogs are not even capable of that kind of malice.

For the analogy to actually fit, it would be more like: your dog carried out a suicide bombing inside your house and ruined everything you built. At that point the sensible response is: forget that dog, focusing on rebuilding and let us go get a new dog that would not blow up the house. That maybe also has floppy ears too.

If your dog dig take a chunk out of your life through its own selfish wants, I think it's fair to say fuck that dog, even if it died.

Selling them on there is someone waiting in the wings for you is not a reality most experience in being single

What makes you think that? Why could someone not channel the exact same immense effort they would have poured into reconciliation towards finding a new partner instead, after doing the necessary work to heal and recover?

It’s probably as much effort to divorce and date as it is to spend some time healing and seeing if your partner is going to step up. They are both valid decisions

I can agree with the premise that both require effort, but if you accept:

At the core of it, surely every single person here would choose a relationship completely free of betrayal if given the choice. Nobody stands at the altar hoping for a soul-crushing affair just so they can experience the 'profound journey' of repairing the damage. If an untainted relationship is universally the gold standard, why would anyone romanticise an outcome that is, at absolute best, a silver medal?

Why expend that immense effort aiming for recovery within a compromised relationship when that same energy could build a clean one? This is where we keep hitting a wall.

In our first five years of marriage my husband made bad business decisions and we had to file bankruptcy... I feel some of the biggest mistakes he made is really what makes him successful today.

Comparing bad business decisions to infidelity falls into the exact same logical trap as comparing it to illness. A business failure is a financial risk that did not pay off; cheating is a deliberate breach of moral trust and loyalty. A partner making a poor financial choice isn't lying to your face and violating your physical and emotional boundaries.

Furthermore, I really think it’s laughable that you think my marriage doesn’t have a clean foundation or doesn’t feel wholesome and safe.

You inferred that yourself; I would never say that to you, I have far too much respect for you to say that. But you previously agreed your preference would have been a relationship with no betrayal

Yes of course everyone would prefer for an infidelity free marriage

.

All I'm doing is advocating for your own preference.

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so there are factors specific to each case that make overall statistics less applicable...

Yep.

[This message edited by DRSOOLERS at 6:59 PM, Friday, August 28th]

Some ws do not change, have any interest in reforming. Do you see anyone here saying they should put up with that?

Umm, there are a few threads in the Reconciliation Forum I would point to... one particular frustrating one that I was involved in.

T/J Seriously, the guidelines in that forum need to be changed... there are some instances that 2x4s need to be thrown about.

I am not going to let you twist these things. It seems you often like the debating more than the taking people in.

This side track came about because several users were discussing whether reconciliation was romanticised here back on page four. I said that, irrespective of the truth of that claim, here is why the concept itself is absurd anyway. It sounds like, on that specific point at least, we are in agreement.

Nah, you were asserting we romanticize reconciliation. You used that word so much we could have had a nice drinking game. Someone said it and you went into exploring how that might be true.

I will give you credit for seeing it isn’t true.

I do not feel that is what I am doing, and it is certainly not my intention. I am simply arguing why the act of staying should not be framed as an act of great glory or moral superiority. Framing a choice to leave as "kicking people when they are down" misses the point entirely.

If I survive cancer, I do not want a parade; I want to get on with my life. I do not need people projecting how strong they think I am for enduring it.

You are really twisting this one.

You have countless times since you have been here expressed in many words and phrases that:

If a bs is reconciling they are not principled.that they are staying so they aren’t alone. And even recently their marriage will always be tainted and not having a clean foundation. You have described a reconciling or on the fence bs has being essentially powerless.

When others have tried to correct that view, now we are throwing a parade?

No, it’s been expressed multiple times in this thread by multiple members that people who survive infidelity are those who healed from it, not just the ones with a specific marital outcome. And healing from infidelity does take a lot of depth, effort, pain and time.

I

wasn’t conflating infidelity with your spouse being depressed. It was to say for a lot of people they don’t base their whole opinion of their partner on a snapshot in time.

Calling a calculated, ongoing affair a mere "snapshot in time" or one of a "thousand versions" of a person downplays the reality of what occurred. Cheating is not a bad mood, a rough patch, or a temporary bout of depression. It is a deliberate series of deceptions. Framing an active betrayal as just a temporary phase minimizes the conscious choice involved.

No that’s what you perceived me to say.

What I was really saying is in the scope of a thirty year relationship I have been many women. At one point in time I was woman who made very bad decisions that caused my husband a lot of pain.

That wasn’t who I was for the twenty years prior to that. It isn’t who I chose to become in the aftermath. In that amount of a timeline it was a snapshot in time, it is not meaning it didn’t create a lot of trauma. Nor does it mean I thought he shouldn’t divorce me, it’s just not how it unfolded.

sorry your dog died, why not go get a new puppy?

That analogy fails because your dog did not deliberately inflict great pain on you through a selfish, conscious choice. Dogs are not even capable of that kind of malice.

I am saying that you are simplifying the ending of one relationship with the hope there will be another that is more fulfilling. It rings hollow, you are exactly right about that. That’s exactly what ink and I are trying to say to you, in the darkest days when the marriage is still dying the thought of another relationship is not helpful.

With that being said I have said to people before, by leaving, you are opening up new opportunities for happiness, it’s going to suck for a while.

For the analogy to actually fit, it would be more like: your dog carried out a suicide bombing inside your house and ruined everything you built. At that point the sensible response is: forget that dog, focusing on rebuilding and let us go get a new dog that would not blow up the house. That maybe also has floppy ears too.

If your dog dig take a chunk out of your life through its own selfish wants, I think it's fair to say fuck that dog, even if it died.

Nope because I was talking about the overly simplistic notion of replacing one with another, I was not referencing infidelity directly.

But even what you said is ridiculous because most people will still mourn the dog because THEY love the dog. It’s doesn’t always matter early in if the dog loves them or how it ended. That’s what ink and I were both trying to get across in our analogies.

Selling them on there is someone waiting in the wings for you is not a reality most experience in being single

What makes you think that? Why could someone not channel the exact same immense effort they would have poured into reconciliation towards finding a new partner instead, after doing the necessary work to heal and recover?

I am not suggesting that isn’t true. What I am suggesting is they can spend their time doing one or the other and it’s probably the same amount of time and effort. It just depends on their preferences and the nuances of their own situation.

It’s probably as much effort to divorce and date as it is to spend some time healing and seeing if your partner is going to step up. They are both valid decisions

I can agree with the premise that both require effort, but if you accept:

At the core of it, surely every single person here would choose a relationship completely free of betrayal if given the choice.

That’s true, if before we all got married you said chose spouse number one, they are going to cheat on you or spouse number two they are not, everyone would choose the one who will not.

If I had a Time Machine I can promise you I would go back and not choose it a second time. Of course I agree that is not ideal.

However, that’s not where we find people. We find people after a significant investment has been made. And for some, divorce is still the answer and it’s a valid one. But reconciliation is also valid given there is recognizable growth in the ws, and my snapshot in time thing was really it’s harder to erase so many good things u out know about this person and the bonding that has happened.

We reconciled with no kids left at home, no financial constraints, with the full understanding we were still young enough, attractive enough, to leave and be with another person. We chose each other because that’s in our hearts what we both wanted and the work we did felt worth while even though there were a lot of periods of time going through the rigors was exhausting, disheartening, and painful.

Nobody stands at the altar hoping for a soul-crushing affair just so they can experience the 'profound journey' of repairing the damage. If an untainted relationship is universally the gold standard, why would anyone romanticise an outcome that is, at absolute best, a silver medal?

And that’s where you are wrong.

A lot of us who have reconciled do not look at our marriage or spouse as less than.

Personally, I think I value my marriage more than ever because I worked so hard to save it.

I have never denied the infidelity was the worst of anything we endured. It was. But, didn’t mean to us that it could be it be fixed or fullfilling. I can promise you if it wasn’t either one of us would be gone. I also don’t think we would be willing to try again, because failing at this point would be with undeniable knowledge.

If my husband failed his business for the same reasons over and over I would demand he stopped starting businesses.

Why expend that immense effort aiming for recovery within a compromised relationship when that same energy could build a clean one?

That’s what we did put effort into, building a clean, strong, new relationship. It just happened to be with the same partner. A new improved version of said partner.

This is where we keep hitting a wall

I agree because I won’t accept your framing if it. I lived it, I know how it really is to do it.

In our first five years of marriage my husband made bad business decisions and we had to file bankruptcy... I feel some of the biggest mistakes he made is really what makes him successful today.

Comparing bad business decisions to infidelity falls into the exact same logical trap as comparing it to illness. A business failure is a financial risk that did not pay off; cheating is a deliberate breach of moral trust and loyalty. A partner making a poor financial choice isn't lying to your face and violating your physical and emotional boundaries.

I used this example to illustrate that failures can lead to excellence if you are willing to learn from them. I am not saying this caused me as much pain as infidelity does. It was very hard to build our credit and survive the next seven years, especially at junctures where we had a big unexpected expense or needed a different car. But I am not comparing the experience. I am comparing the idea that people can adjust their sails in the face of failure.

And also, if it at all contributes to the picture that I was a committed and loving spouse when we were broker than jokes and my parents had to pitch in some times to get us through. It’s not that I was owed reconciliation for any of that. But I am sure that the way I loved and took care of him in countless ways over the years did contribute to him feeling like I could be that again. And I did become that for him again in spades.

Yes, I was a huge liability for some time, but I also think he knew to manage that liability. He saw that I was showing up, getting my ass kicked, and showing up the next day, over and over until he saw the other changes and slowly but surely I went back to being an asset. In fact in many ways, I was and am still showing up as a bigger, better asset.

And of course I am not an asset, he doesn’t own me. You seem to want to make my annalogies into literal statements.

Furthermore, I really think it’s laughable that you think my marriage doesn’t have a clean foundation or doesn’t feel wholesome and safe.

You inferred that yourself; I would never say that to you, I have far too much respect for you to say that. But you previously agreed you preference would have been a relationship with no betrayal, so I'm only advocating for your own preference.

I don’t buy any of this. But I think I have sufficiently explained this already.

[This message edited by hikingout at 7:47 PM, Friday, August 28th]

At the core of it, surely every single person here would choose a relationship completely free of betrayal if given the choice.

You keep saying this. Yes, no one wants to get cheated on. But once you have experienced it, you can’t go back. It really isn’t a useful consideration in deciding whether to R or D.

Are you familiar with the Monte Hall paradox? This reminds me of that. Sometimes what sounds logical is just not applicable and sometimes dead wrong. Once you’ve been betrayed, the option of not being betrayed is no longer on the table. So now you have to choose between a fresh start or a rebuild. You are defining out the second option on the spurious logic of what we prefer in the past.

There is a term I came across in my behavioral economics interest: thought terminating cliches. Short phrases, useful for propaganda, basically impossible to argue against. They siphon out the complexity of reality and leave a false simple certainty. You have this simple principle you adhere to. All models are wrong, only some are useful.

Let’s just sum it up.

Soolers is not pro reconciliation.

😂

I’m not for or against R.

I’m not for or against D.

I think that’s the vast majority of members as well.

I’m for finding your result (which I imagine is kind of the point of Gemmy’s thread).

After infidelity, I was all about me.

I think most members who land here need a path to healing, and the first recommendations nearly all members make is about self-care first, before pushing for any specific result.

The only point I ever aim for in these threads, the same threads that go back all ten years I’ve been here, is that my result exists and is a viable path. I’m just as happy for all members who for whatever reason, went down their own path.