Affairs Improve Marriage?

My X’s affair greatly improved my marriage, by ending it! Thank you Schmoops, he’s your sparkly turd now!

From the NYT article “ But short of irreversible incompatibility or physical or emotional abuse, with professional counseling and a mutual willingness to preserve the marriage, therapists maintain that couples stand a good chance of overcoming the trauma of infidelity”

The last time I checked, infidelity is emotional abuse. Cheating comes with a large dose of gas lighting, and then after discovery, comes the rewriting of history, another form of emotional abuse.

I use the business model. What if a coworker steals your PowerPoint, shamelessly uses it to gain an account that garners them a raise, how would you feel? Violated? Or would you still be their friend? Or, if someone embezzles monies, steals a car and causes the demise of a company? Do you ask them along on your next business venture? Nope, you call the police and prosecute. Infidelity is just that. Crappy, unethical behavior steeped in a power narrative.

As a therapist I educate not only about mental health, and coping skills but also about power and the culture of infidelity. The narrative has to change. Infidelity is embedded in our society as a “private, moral issue”. Time to come out and be part of the larger dialog. It’s not mysterious or sexy. It’s dirty and destructive.

I still can’t hate on Michelle. I’m glad I explored my role in my marriage. It’s what made me realize she’s a fucking whack job and I needed to file. I allowed myself to be diminished to fit into her plan. That lost person is what she wanted. It fit into her narrative. It was not who I used to be or wanted to be. I owe a lot to that self evaluation. I also quickly learned that people who want to improve can and if they choose not to, well that their problem. Time to get away as much as you can from them.

I consider myself a pretty open-minded person. I really don’t care about a person’s sexual orientation, religion, political beliefs, but I do care about a person’s character. If a couple wants to swing, have fun. If a couple decides to have an open marriage, knock yourself out. As long as both parties are open, honest, and have equal agency in the relationship, it is your circus, bring on the clowns!

Chumps did not sign up for that. We signed up for the long-term. We invested years and years. We made sacrifices along the way, be it in our careers, our friendships, our time, whatever. For someone to take a dump all over that, and to betray trust, abuse, and expose a partner to physical harm and pretend that it is somehow a good thing is a pile of crap.

Again, whether or not anything good can come out of an affair is fully dependent upon the chump putting up with that shit and somehow making the best of it!! I know that I am not perfect, but at no time did my behaviour as a husband and father ever justify my wife going out and having an affair. I was blamed for the affair happening because I wasn’t “good enough”. My wife didn’t want to reconcile because I wasn’t “good enough”. I suppose it might also be me not being “good enough” to see that abuse to myself and my kids is really a good thing.

If you merely take the Perel / Weiner-Davis mindset a step further you realize its absurdity:

Married couple is dissatisfied in their marriage, so they honestly and openly decide to seek marriage counseling.

Counselor’s ironclad advice is for the couple to draw straws. The recipient of the long straw must agree to embark on a secretive affair (or affairs) and completely deny it to the other spouse so they don’t know if the long-straw spouse is telling the truth or not. They must secretively text, mysteriously disappear for hours, work late at the office and make lame excuses for suspicious behavior. Essentially they must step away from the marriage and make another person (or persons) the focus of their love and affection while making their spouse feel discarded.

Marriage counselor insists this will save their marriage.

Who in their right mind would heed this marriage counselor’s advice? And that’s not even taking into account the resources spent outside the marriage, possible exposure to STDs, affects on the children, etc.

The worst part of my post D-day life is my STBX wife’s insistance that I own or take responsibility for my half, that it takes two for a marriage to fail. I didn’t think my marriage was failing. I actually thought things were never better and the future was bright. So good to hear people reject this blame shifting bullshit. I am to the point where I don’t want to talk or think about it anymore but I feel liberation when I can share what happened to me to others. Yeah, I may seem like the over sharing weirdo, but I also feel that unless we tell our story and share the deep of pain caused this shit will keep happening. I fee it needs to stop. Cheating is abuse. I will not be victimize again by being forced to take responsibility or share blame for decision my wife made in secret and hid because she knew they were wrong.

Yes, my partner rolled the car into the ditch while texting. However, I’d let it go past due for an oil change, and I’d backed into a few parking poles and left some scrapes, so we both kinda contributed to the car being totaled.

I propose a study. Surely one of these so-called experts can get some funding and somebody in academics with the credentials to do a statistically valid study of whether or not infidelity actually improves marriage. First of course one must define what measurable factors will constitute “an improvement.” For instance, here are the hard costs from my situation that I would label as a negative consequence of the betrayal/fraud:
1) $1500: STD, including cost or testing and treatment, lost work time for time at doctors’;
2) $300,000: three years of lost efficiency at work (quantifiable as billable hour reduction over pre DDay levels);
3) $200,000: medical costs of Dd3 suicide attempts/hospitalization/rehab costs following DDay and blameshifting and discard by cheater dad;
4) $600,000: lost equity in 3 years from the premature sale of our primary residence — we sold weeks after DDay in response to demand by X to “reduce his stress” and based on his false promise to stop cheating;
5) $400,000: legal fees to obtain divorce, including two failed mediations, X’s failed summary judgment to exclude his business from community property when we built the business together over 25 year marriage, and week-long trial because X, who earns $80k per month, was only willing to pay $300 per month in child support;
6) $60,000: legal fees to defend DS after DDay when he went off the rails and got into legal trouble;
7) $8,000: therapy expenses for failed MC (futile as X was lying and still cheating) and for suicidal and depressed kids….

Thus, at a minimum, the “affair” in real lost costs total at least $1,600,000. This amount does not factor a dime for lost opportunities or pain and suffering.

So, now, let’s look at what was “gained” by the affair? Hmmmm…. thinking really carefully…….uhhhhhhhh…….ummmmmmmmm…….nothing. Not one single positive item can be identified.

How thrilling would it be if the NYT gave CL a column…

Testing 1 2 3

Affairs aren’t humiliating, disrespectful, and devastating — they’re improving! Fucking strange makes me a better husband! Hey, I get my “needs” met. Takes the edge off, and I’m nicer to be around. Win, win. It is Good to be King.

This was a “D-Day Eve” Red Flag for me.

My then-husband was extremely abusive during the last year of the marriage. He was short-tempered, critical and disrespectful. He was only nice when asking me to buy him something as I had become the breadwinner due to his refusal to work. His devaluation of me served to rationalize and justify his decision to commit adultery. His projection of subconscious guilt onto me as “the bad guy” served to exonerate him of his adulterous conduct and allowed him to soldier on with OW, an immoral whore in her own right.

We had one vehicle and I allowed him to drive me back and forth to work so that he would have access to the vehicle to help his elderly mother. He would call me to let me know when he was leaving and the trip took 30 minutes.

On my D-Day Eve, when he called to let me know he was on his way, he was not his usual tense, surly self. His voice was melodic and warm, practically sing-song. A throwback to the Idealization period from decades ago! I felt uncomfortable. But wasn’t this what I wanted? Wasn’t this why I was working so hard? What was up? Were things finally turning around, in my favor?

Thirty minutes had come and gone and he had not arrived at my workplace. But you could set your watch by him! Oh no, was he in a wreck? He’s finally nice to me without asking for money, and now he’s probably laying in a ditch somewhere or being taken to the hospital! The bottom of my stomach dropped out. Oh, here he is! It’s been 35 minutes but he’s here and okay! And he came dancing in, no, I would say he sailed in the door flashing a megawatt smile! He’s not really sure why it took him 35 minutes today and not 30 but he’s just fine!

The next day, in the bright light of day, coming back from running an errand, I notice our brand new car seat has been stained by sex. That stain was not there 24 hours ago. I would not have seen it the night before, as all was dark. This is why he was “nicer to be around” the night before – he had been pumped up with “narcissistic supply” in the form of sex from the OW. The reason he took 35 minutes to get to my workplace instead of 30 was that he spent 5 minutes frantically scrubbing the still-drenched car seat in an effort to dry it, which resulted to terrible pilling to the seat.