SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Based on Gemmy’s update, his wife has yet to grasp that cheating is wrong in and of itself. She explained that she justified her affair by building a fake caricature of who Gemmy was.

Going back and reading all of Gemmy’s posts on this thread again, I think you are over-interpreting this. This distorted vilification of the betrayed is a well documented part of affairs, and if she is uncovering that in herself, that is positive. You are taking it to a "logical conclusion" well beyond what has been said. He never said that she said that it was THE reason she had an affair. It was a mechanism (one of many, no doubt) that allowed her to justify it to herself. She seems to have unraveled a layer of the onion. That is good.

What you described in your post is general self-improvement. I’m not trivializing that. Those efforts are healthy and helpful to a relationship, and fixing personal issues can certainly strengthen resolve. I can understand that fixing all these personality flaws, coping mechanism and relationship dynamics can take a long time. Rome wasn't built in a day.

What on earth do you imagine the work for a ws to become reliable? Changing the internal environment in which the cheating was attractive is what I described. That is what the bs here are expecting their ws to do. That’s part of the 2-5 year arc. The other part is the bs healing.

What I am referencing is the specific self improvement to be a more emotionally intelligent, reliable partner. It means they need relearn how to make themselves happy in healthier ways than just bailing out. Happy people do not cheat. People who rely on others to bring the happiness to them do. Happy people do not have as many maladaptive ways with dealing with life and relationships. It’s more than a moral failing, it’s a symptom of a failing construct.

And I know it’s not a universal experience that people need to cheat to understand the damage. It you have seen the damage and it effected you. So you were exposed to the fallout from presumably a young age.

And I am perfectly clear that I am not gemmy’s wife.

She must think cheating is wrong, the whole point of his post was she feels she is no longer clear capable of cheating. But I think most people who cheat already know it’s wrong. Saying it is wrong is not a benchmark of being able to trust them again. Talk is cheap.

All I am saying a lot of ws feel they have been rendered incapable initially when they see all the damage they created, not some abstract version of it they put their head in the sand not to see. This was my experience and by what he describes that is what his wife is saying. I think it’s possible her feelings are valid, even if they aren’t yet rooted in a solid foundation you can trust.

Good for you that you don’t need to cheat to do that. But I do not see how that is relevant. As a ws, the whole thing I do here is encourage the bs to become independent and detached, and when they bring ws mindsets here, I can say yes I felt that way. Do you not think that bs have some similiar experiences? Ws can and do as well. I trust Gemmy’s discernment.

[This message edited by hikingout at 2:17 PM, Thursday, September 10th]

Everyone is going to give their own advice. As far as I myself am concerned though, the one kind thing to do is to DSICOURAGE Gemmy from attempting R. Good Grief.

- Gemmy's WW's efforts so far have been MINIMAL to NONEXISTENT. She still has not even told her own family yet the truth of her affairs. D-Day was over a year ago!

- How the hell Gemmy would ever be able to trust his WW ever after all those years of lying is beyond me.

I see many many men get stuck for YEARS trying to R with a WW. Some of them keep trying to coach their WW to be better, waiting for that one magical day when she finally shows signs of getting it. Some just end up as these sad hen-pecked husbands who lost themseslves. It becomes harder and harder to walk away the longer this goes on, the sunk costs are brutal.

[This message edited by WontBeFooledAgai at 2:33 PM, Thursday, September 10th]

Who is encouraging him to reconcile though?

I think that part is up to him, he certainly is collecting data. He has a plan that includes divorce.

We are discussing one disagreement he is having, and helping him sort through that.

No one is suggesting if she makes small or big progress that’s what he should do. That’s where we start talking past each other. We are just evaluating what has been said by him in this post..

[This message edited by hikingout at 3:12 PM, Thursday, September 10th]

I’m capable of cheating.
Do I plan on cheating, want to cheat, intent to cheat or go about looking for opportunities to cheat? No.
Am I likely to cheat? No.

But I’m capable.
Which is why I have rules and guidelines that enforce my decision not to cheat. Like I don’t go to strip-clubs or brothels, I drink carefully and don’t get blacked-out drunk, I don’t encourage flirtatious behavior. I don’t pinch perk behinds or oogle women. I don’t talk inappropriately with colleagues (as in both male and female) nor partake in morally dubious or risky actions.

The reason I don’t cheat aren’t simply because of my vows. They are also (even mainly) based on respect. Respect for my wife, respect for my vows, respect for the person that might be tempting me, but most of all respect for MYSELF.

Am I capable of murder?
A man I worked with in law enforcement decades ago did time for murder (years after we worked together). A stranger was hitting on his wife at a bar, and in a confrontation, he punched the other guy. One single punch. The guy hit his head on the bar on the way down and passed away. My former LEO colleague got a relatively heavy prison sentence because with his background in law enforcement there was a higher expectancy of his training keeping him calm and using minimal force. Yet despite that training, despite the restraint cops tend to have, despite the deescalation training… some primal urge made him clench his fist and throw a punch.
Just like I don’t cheat, I don’t enter fights.
Yet only a couple of years ago I had to deal with a confrontational situation where I battled my urge to punch the daylight’s out of the antagonist. Like it took EVERYTHING in me to deescalate the situation, get the antagonist to walk one way and my party the other. I realized as I walked away I had my fists clenched and grinding my teeth.
I was 100% capable of punching that guy.
I was 100% capable of punching him in a way that would cause him serious damage. Maybe even unintentional death – like my former colleague.

Yet I didn’t. Not because I’m not capable of cheating, punching, killing someone, driving drunk, embezzling cash, beating my spouse, drowning kittens or whatever.
But because I do my best not to do things that could lead me to these actions.

I think it’s a big risk if one decides that they are morally so perfect they can’t go wrong. I think that stance makes you let your guard down. You take your piety for granted and start judging others from your stance.

@hikingout

What on earth do you imagine the work for a ws to become reliable? Changing the internal environment in which the cheating was attractive is what I described. That is what the bs here are expecting their ws to do. That’s part of the 2-5 year arc. The other part is the bs healing.

This is another example of us talking at cross-purposes. I made no statement about this element at all. I agree that changing the internal environment is what the work entails—I never disputed that, nor was I addressing the overall mechanics of that multi-year process. I was talking about something entirely different, which I then went on to explain.

She must think cheating is wrong, the whole point of his post was she feels she is no longer clear capable of cheating.

That doesn't necessarily follow, as I have now explained three times.

Suppose I am Gemmy's wife. I can hold the belief that cheating on a supportive partner is wrong because they are a good person who doesn't deserve that pain and trauma. However, I can simultaneously believe that cheating on a bad partner is somehow justified or understandable because "they earned it." That makes the morality of cheating relative strictly to how one feels treated by their partner at any given moment.

This isn't theoretical. Surely, in your experience, you have encountered many wayward spouses—especially early on—who operate under this exact mindset. You see it across infidelity discussions every single day: "I cheated. I regret it and I don't agree with cheating, BUT they were emotionally absent, cold, angry," etc.

But I think most people who cheat already know it’s wrong. Saying it is wrong is not a benchmark of being able to trust them again. Talk is cheap.

I am not talking about what someone simply says; I am talking about what their statements reveal about their underlying beliefs.

Consider the difference in these two internal mindsets:

Mindset A: "I regret cheating because you found out, and seeing your pain made me realize how awful the consequences are."

Mindset B: "I regret cheating because betrayal is fundamentally immoral and destructive, regardless of the state of our marriage. I abandoned my core values, and I am working to rebuild a personal moral code that holds firm no matter what."

The first mindset indicates they don't view cheating as inherently wrong—they view the fallout and the pain it caused as the bad thing. The second mindset acknowledges that the act itself was a fundamental moral failure, independent of external circumstances or their partner's performance.

To be clear on two points:

You or InkHulk can certainly disagree with my reading of what Gemmy posted about his wife's words. That is a fair debate; we are all working off snapshots here.

I fully agree that saying the right things doesn't automatically mean a WS believes them. My point is that, based on what Gemmy shared, his wife is currently failing to demonstrate even the baseline realization that cheating is fundamentally wrong in and of itself. Talk is cheap and yet it would appear she still can't afford it. (or something pithy like that)

** Member to Member **

We know from observation that people often do things they know are morally reprehensible. We see it on a daily basis. That's why I react negatively when anyone claims that their 'principles' will keep them from cheating.

*****

It doesn't take 2-5 years to change. It takes 2-5 years to change, build, and confirm new habits of feeling, thinking, and acting.

*****

It may be kind to remind BSes contemplating R that R is not guaranteed and that it will atke time to determine if it will succeed. IMO, it's ridiculous to always counsel against R.

Counseling D always is surrendering to fear, IMO. Since healing requires courage and patience, also IMO, advising a new BS to give in to fear is tantamount to advising slowing down that BS's healing. I see that as downright unkind.

*****

Seeing infidelity as a purely moral issue may be a sign of strong principles. That might be healthy.

It could instead be a sign of excessive rigidity and refusal to accept the evidence before one's eyes. I don't see that as a sign of emotional health.

What I responded to in your post was that you said something to the effect of that you could not take years to wait to see if someone can internalize something so foundational.

I explained it doesn’t take years to understand cheating is wrong, here is what takes years.

Your response was basically "no you are talking about self improvement. Heck I everyone needs to do that. I share traits of a ws and I don’t cheat..

I found that to be dismissive. But I think fundamentally I see cheating as a symptom of a failed construct. You see it only as a moral failing.

You also said that you didn’t need to see damage to know how damaging it would be. But you had witnessed plenty of damage.

You also were not in a 20 year marriage and believed your husband would not be damaged because you believed he held you at little value. This of course should have resulted in me asking for counseling or filing for divorce- not having an affair. We had talked about this in circles over the years, but the communication broke down to where I believed it didn’t matter to him how I felt. Add in a long term (about 18 months prior to the affair) a largely disassociated state it didn’t take long to feel pretty callous about it all.

I did cheat because I was unhappy in my marriage. I think most cheaters do that. But we all have an unhealthy view of what that means and usually take no accountability for our part in that construct.

I am not for a minute telling you it was my husband’s fault I was unhappy or that my affair was his fault. It actually meant that I needed to expand my self awareness and take accountability for my unhappiness. The beginning of that was understanding I had created a false narrative around him, which is where Mrs Gemmy is on the map.

What ink and I hear Gemmy saying is she is seeing that it wasn’t his fault she assigned these negative attributes. That’s likely the truth. That’s an early aspect of many ws’s journeys, and I think we can safely assume she knows what she did was wrong- otherwise she wouldn’t have hidden it.

I know the difference between right and wrong. I used justifications to mitigate that. The reason that the "basic self improvement" work is used is so that there is a self awareness over how we manage our lives:

-it will allow us to build a life we don’t want to escape from.

-we take responsibility for our own happiness in life and our relationship.

-we will be more versed in how to employ the hard work that goes into the harder options when another fork in the road arises.

-we will communicate more effectively and connect more fully so that the urge to cheat isn’t there. We also won’t blame our partner dor

-we deal with the fallout of our actions constructively, therefore know how hard it is to come back from it. Between now understanding the damage and the hard work to do the repairs that in itself is going to make cheating very unattractive.

She is taking a step forward in seeing her accountability in the narrative around her husband. That’s a good step. There are a whole marathon of steps between here and where she needs to go. No one is suggesting otherwise.

[This message edited by hikingout at 4:53 PM, Thursday, September 10th]

But I think fundamentally I see cheating as a symptom of a failed construct. You see it only as a moral failing

Ultimately, I see it as both. I believe this because sisson is correct, in my opinion, when stating:

that people often do things they know are morally reprehensible.

First, you need to accept the morality and begin to establish a principle, and then build a system that aligns your actions with that principle. This is where the self-improvement elements come in. That system could comprise of coping mechanisms, self-regulation practices, or relationship techniques, but ultimately it serves to ensure your behaviour aligns with your principles.

The problem is, how effective are these practices—'the system'—going to be if she doesn't first fully accept that cheating is fundamentally wrong, irrespective of her perception of Gemmy? I'm just stating that based off what he's wrote here, I question whether she actually does. I think it's valid for him to think on that.

This reminds me of a discussion I had here where a wayward poster suggested, in one breath, that sexual fidelity wasn't important to her—that if she discovered her partner had a side piece, she would be accepting as long as it didn't compromise her time with him—and in the next breath stated she was 'flawed' for being capable of cheating. To me, this wasn't shocking. Her base morality simply didn't view infidelity as wrong. I'm therefore doubtful any structure she put in place was going to mitigate cheating particularly effectively.

think we can safely assume she knows what she did was wrong- otherwise she wouldn’t have hidden it.

I haven't read anything that leads me to this conclusion and I don't think that necessarily follows. Feeling justified in an action doesn't mean you will necessarily be open about it. If she believes cheating is justified in a failing relationship, she could view her actions as justified while still fearing the consequences of discovery.

Consider resentful employees who steal from overbearing bosses. They don't think it's wrong given how they've been treated, underpaid, or overworked, but they still hide it for fear of reprimand. Fearing job loss or potential prison time isn't the same as believing an action is morally wrong.

That is to say, because she retrospectively viewed Gemmy as a jerk, she may have felt her cheating was justified while still wanting the marriage—and still wanting the elements he brought to her life. To me, it is crucial that Gemmy explores with her whether she accepts that, even if he was a poor partner (which she now accepts he's not), what she did was still atrocious.

[This message edited by DRSOOLERS at 6:06 PM, Thursday, September 10th]

I do agree that I failed my integrity and values. I will leave the rest for Gemmy to weigh in on as to not derail this any further. All I have tried to say in this post is that this does sound to me like she is being introspective and taking some level of accountability even if she isn’t where she needs to be yet.

As a side note—- For what it’s worth, I agree that poster you referenced does not hold it strong in their values and therefore it interferes with the feelings of remorse (among other things that contribute to it) but they are not anything like any poster who has come before them in my recollection. I do think a great amount of cheaters know what they are doing is wrong, they simply make what they feel more important than what they believe they value.

I personally don’t think Gemmy has shared anything concrete about whether his wife feels infidelity is wrong. Some of the things he said in this post make me believe that she does know it’s wrong but it’s not sensible for me to debate that when he will eventually return and can answer that or not.

[This message edited by hikingout at 6:33 PM, Thursday, September 10th]

This is just my interpretation, and I could of course be off, but it's how I read what she said.

I'll leave it on this point—merely because I think it's important for him to consider.

I do think a great number of cheaters know what they are doing is wrong; they simply make what they feel more important than what they claim to value.

I agree that many do. I'd venture to guess that people who truly know it's wrong make better candidates for reconciliation. Surely it stands to reason that it's easier to create a system around a base principle than to start from scratch.

People always advise speaking from experience, and I think that applies here. Two cheaters have had lasting impacts on my life, and in my assessment, neither found it morally wrong—not really. They may be regretful that it hurts people, but ultimately they don't think it is inherently wrong. My father's perspective was more in line with "it's only wrong if you get caught"—the sort of mindset that inhabits r/Adultery (the pro-cheating subreddit, for anyone unaware, and a total cesspit). The other was my ex, who was a serial monkey-brancher. I worry her perspective aligns more with what I'm reading from your wife.

She grew up in a household where her father left for another woman, and his life improved exponentially. She idolised him. She learned from his situation that having an affair when you're unhappy is the answer. She then did that to a long-term partner to be with me, and ultimately did it to me. I don't believe she thinks it's morally wrong; I think she sees it more as a painful route to the correct outcome.

Hence, I think that's a conversation worth having. What are her holistic beliefs on cheating? Perhaps ask: if you were the person she had framed you to be, would it have been somewhat acceptable?

[This message edited by DRSOOLERS at 6:36 PM, Thursday, September 10th]

Who is encouraging him to reconcile though?

I think that part is up to him, he certainly is collecting data. He has a plan that includes divorce.

We are discussing one disagreement he is having, and helping him sort through that.

No one is suggesting if she makes small or big progress that’s what he should do. That’s where we start talking past each other. We are just evaluating what has been said by him in this post..

hikingout, you tend to write these long posts that see all sides of everything. Frankly, that style is often hugely challenging to me. My style is instead more like, "WTF bro!! This woman is crazy! Run!"

[This message edited by WontBeFooledAgai at 6:46 PM, Thursday, September 10th]

That’s very fair, won’t be fooled. And it made me laugh.

Unfortunately it’s because I have been on both sides of it, and have spent almost a decade, a full third of my relationship studying myself and other alike me. It’s hard for me not to see a lot of angles.

Can someone become incapable of cheating after they have cheated? Absolutely.

But it takes a lot more than white-knuckling fidelity and repeatedly telling yourself, "I will never do that again."

They have to find the why beneath the why they think they already know.

Many affairs are driven by things like avoidance, escape, reactance, entitlement, poor boundaries, compartmentalization, conflict avoidance, difficulty tolerating uncomfortable emotions, or simply the thrill of doing something forbidden. Saying "I was unhappy," "I liked the attention," or "I made a terrible choice" may be true, but those answers usually do not go deep enough.

Why did those feelings become permission to betray?

Why was deception available as a coping mechanism?

Why did secrecy feel easier than honesty?

Why was protecting the affair, or protecting themselves from discomfort, more important than protecting the relationship?

That is the work.

They have to understand what made them susceptible to going down that road in the first place, then make substantive changes to those parts of themselves.

That usually means becoming radically honest, authentic, proactively transparent, intentional, and willing to protect the relationship even when doing so conflicts with what they happen to feel or want in a particular moment. It means learning to bring uncomfortable things into the light instead of hiding them, dealing with problems directly instead of escaping them, and refusing to let emotion become the decision-maker.

Just doubling down on "I won't cheat again" is, in my opinion, a poor indicator of whether someone will actually remain faithful. Plenty of people sincerely mean that when they say it.

The better question is whether they have dismantled the internal machinery that made betrayal possible.

If they truly understand why they cheated, address the deeper causes, and fundamentally change how they deal with themselves and their primary relationship, then yes, I think a person can reach a point where having another affair is no longer something they are realistically capable of doing.

That’s very fair, won’t be fooled. And it made me laugh.

Unfortunately it’s because I have been on both sides of it, and have spent almost a decade, a full third of my relationship studying myself and other alike me. It’s hard for me not to see a lot of angles. laugh

It takes all types on here tho right? Even fuckers like myself to provide the counterbalance

[This message edited by WontBeFooledAgai at 10:08 PM, Thursday, September 10th]

There is an idea I got from "not just friends" of Shirley Glass. If you think "I am not capable", you tend to have your boundaries lower when it comes to "innocent" friendships and it may become a danger.

I think I should probably clarify a few things because this thread has understandably grown beyond the original argument about the word "capable," and I think some conclusions are being drawn about my WW that aren't entirely accurate based on what I have actually shared.

First, she absolutely knows the affairs were wrong. She has never told me that cheating was acceptable because I was a bad husband, nor has she said that if her distorted version of me had actually been true then the affairs would somehow have been justified. Quite the opposite. She has told me she knew what she was doing was wrong while she was doing it. She feels horrible about the affairs, about what she did to me, our family and herself. Where I think the disconnect happened was that she was able to know it was wrong while simultaneously building justifications and compartmentalizing enough to keep doing it anyway.

When I talked about her realizing that she had created a distorted version of me in her head, I wasn't saying she has suddenly concluded, "Oh shit, he was actually a good husband, therefore I shouldn't have cheated." I was talking about her beginning to understand one of the mechanisms she used to allow herself to continue doing something she already knew was wrong. She resented me, exaggerated my faults, interpreted frustration as something much worse, complained about me to other people and slowly created a version of me that made it easier for her to live with what she was doing. Recognizing that doesn't excuse the affairs. In my mind it actually removes one of the excuses.

And I want to be fair to her about something else. I have posted a lot when I am angry, confused, triggered or when she has said something that landed badly. Those are real things and I am not taking any of them back. But naturally you guys see a disproportionate amount of the failures because those are the moments when I come here trying to figure shit out.

She is showing signs of improvement. Not enough for me to declare her safe. Not enough for me to promise reconciliation. Not enough to erase the lies, the trckle truth, the character assassination or the years of betrayal. But improvement nonetheless.

She is starting to recognize the false narratives she created about me rather than continuing to defend them. She is acknowledging that the things she said about me to other people were unfair and inaccurate. She has acknowledged that I was faithful to her while she was deceitful and unfaithful to me. She is in therapy. She is becoming more willing to sit in conversations that previously would have caused avoidance or defensiveness. And lately I have seen moments where she is actually trying to understand what this has done to me instead of simply telling me how sorry she is.

Today was probably one of the better examples.

I asked her to describe what she believes this has actually done to me. Her answer wasn't "you're hurt because I cheated." She talked about me having to live with knowing she gave her time, affection and body to other people. She talked about the truck being contaminated for me because of what happened there. She talked about me questioning whether anything she has ever told me was true, the paranoia and mistrust, losing the ability to enjoy memories of camping and our family because they are now attached to lies. She talked about me replaying the past and asking myself "what if" and "if only." She said the joy has been stripped out of the past, the present is a struggle and sometimes the future looks dark.

That is considerably deeper than where she was months ago.

Does that mean she suddenly gets everything? Fuck no.

Does it mean I believe everything she says? No.

Does it mean the "old me/new me" language doesn't still bother me? Obviously not. This entire thread exists because it does.

But I also don't think it would be intellectually honest for me to keep moving the goalposts every time she actually makes some progress. If I am going to call out the failures, I have to acknowledge the successes too.

Someone also asked about her family. That remains an issue. Her family is aware of the affairs, but I do not consider the larger narrative with her family repaired. Too much was said about me over too many years, and simply knowing that she cheated is not the same as correcting the distorted picture of me that was created. That is still something I believe she has to own and deal with. I haven't forgotten it and I'm not pretending it has been resolved. But here she has shown growth as well. Without me prompting she emailed them a full accounting of timelines and depth of the affair they had not known. She also has told them to stop trying to manipulate and interfere in our marriage. And she told them she agrees with the boundaries concerning our children, all must have been very hard for her as enmeshed as she is.

As for whether I am staying or divorcing, I haven't changed what I already said. We are separated in the home and financially untangling. Divorce is happening regardless of change or R. I am working on my own healing and watching what she actually does rather than deciding my future based on promises. Reconciliation is something I am evaluating, not something she has been awarded.

I also don't believe that recognizing improvement obligates me to reconcile.

She could become an extraordinarily safe and healthy person from this day forward and I may still ultimately decide that too much was destroyed. Those are two separate questions. Can she change? and Can I live with what happened and build something new with the person she becomes? I don't know the answer to the second one yet.

I appreciate the people challenging me because some of these questions genuinely make me think. I especially understand the concern that therapy could become a way for her to forgive herself without fully owning what she did. I have had that exact fear myself, and I have posted about it here.

But I don't think "performative" or "minimal to nonexistent" accurately describes everything I am seeing anymore either.

There are still things that feel rehearsed. There are still moments of defensiveness. There are still things she hasn't repaired. There is still a mountain of damage sitting between us.

But there are also moments now where I can see her digging underneath the affair instead of just staring at the wreckage it caused.

Whether that eventually becomes real, lasting change is exactly what I am watching for.

Edited to add: Maybe in not all ways but @hikingout my WW does sound a lot like your situation.

[This message edited by Gemmy at 8:54 PM, Friday, September 11th]

And I want to be fair to her about something else. I have posted a lot when I am angry, confused, triggered or when she has said something that landed badly. Those are real things and I am not taking any of them back. But naturally you guys see a disproportionate amount of the failures because those are the moments when I come here trying to figure shit out.

This is a very important distinction that I think some people are either incapable or unwilling to comprehend. It's the difference between focusing on a member's current question, topic or confusion, and launching into a self-serving diatribe based on prejudice, disposition and projection.

Is it "natural?" Yes and no. It depends upon the responding member's intent.

Fair enough, Gemmy.

​I thought the point was worth raising, but I’m glad to see it’s already been well considered and addressed. It was just my interpretation of what she said, and I only brought it up in case it happened to be something you hadn't considered.

​Glad to hear you’re doing better.

@DRSOOLERS

Don't take my response wrong, I appreciate all points of view, they do help me look from all angles. I appreciate your time and effort helping me through. Oh and "doing better" is a relative term depending on the day, hour, or minute to be quite honest.