Forget Divorce, ‘Staying’ Is The New Shame

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affair, betrayal, betrayed spouse, cheater, esther perel, fuck it all, healing, hope, husband, infidelity, liar, lying sack of shit, marriage, other woman, sex, survey, trauma, wayward spouse, whore, wife, yougov

Last week, research body YouGov released the results of a survey asking 1660 British adults a bunch of questions relating to affairs. Of the 1660 questioned, 314 said they had engaged in an affair.

The press release only skims the surface, so if you’d like to see the ACTUAL poll results, scroll to the bottom of the page for the link to the PDF file.

Keeping in mind this sample is quite small, there were nonetheless some fascinating insights.

Much has been made of the result showing most men have affairs with work colleagues (44%), while women are more likely to have affairs with a friend (53%).

Digging deeper, I found far more remarkable stats.

This one really surprised me:

 

Have you ever taken a partner back after an affair?

Yes, I have 14%

No, I have not 75%

(Other 11%)

 

Fellow betrayed spouses reading this, we are in the minority. Three quarters of betrayed spouses said NO WAY, FUCK OFF. That is a surprisingly high figure.

 

Q. Why did you have an affair?

There were three stand-out answers here:

I felt flattered by the attention (men 35%, women 44%)

I felt emotionally deprived in my relationship (men 29%, women 43%)

I was dissatisfied with my sex life (men 32%, women 15%)

Wow, what a huge disparity in the sex life numbers! If you ever wanted more proof men want more sex than you think, there it is.

 

Q. Was the person you were having an affair with also cheating on someone else?

Yes, they were 55%

No, they were not 39%

Proof everyone is cheating on everyone else! OK, maybe not. But sometimes, it sure seems that way.

 

Q. Which, if any, of the following do you consider as cheating? Please tick all that apply.

Having sex with someone who isn’t my partner 92%

Oral sex 84%

Using a prostitute 82%

Romantically kissing someone else 75%

Having webcam sex with a stranger 73%

Sexting someone else 67%

Forming an emotional relationship with someone who isn’t my partner 44%

Other 4%

This question was asked of everyone, whether they’d actually had an affair or not. What disturbs me is the level of ignorance concerning emotional affairs. Let’s admit it, many of us didn’t know we’d be so affected by an emotional affair, mere WORDS on a screen.

MOST of us thought our partners having actual sex with someone else would devastate us the most, but here’s the truth of it. Hurt is hurt. Let that sink in for a bit. Hurt is hurt. The way you were hurt is different to the way someone else was hurt, but the affects are the same: devastation, sadness, mourning, realising your relationship was a sham, anger. Someone else’s hurt is not your hurt. Your hurt is your own hurt, your pain is your own pain. They way you feel it is REAL.

A few other curious findings:

• One affair was not enough. Almost 50% of respondents had engaged in two or more affairs. Sobering thought.
• Most affairs ended because the cheater decided to end it (men 38%, women 49%).
• 41% of cheaters said they had children with the partner they were cheating on.
• 67% of men said an affair improved the relationship with their partner because “it made me appreciate what I had” (yeah, right). Only 44% of women gave this answer.
• Most affairs lasted less than 6 months.
• Most affairs happened when the couple had been married more than 10 years.

While we’re on the topic of affairs (this IS an affair blog!), if you haven’t already watched the Esther Perel TED talk ‘Rethinking Infidelity’, GO NOW. Set aside 22 minutes of your time, and watch this expert psychologist detangle the reasons why people cheat and the psychology behind it. It’s a fascinating insight. I’ve watched it 4 times now and discover something new with every listen. I’ve also sent it to my husband.

Consider her hypothesis that having an affair is not about you, the betrayed spouse, but about a cheater trying to find another sense of themselves. It’s a fascinating concept. Have a listen.

In her presentation, Perel also makes the observation that once upon a time, divorce was likely to be a great source of shame.

Today, she says, “choosing to stay WHEN YOU CAN LEAVE is the new shame”. I agree wholeheartedly. It angers me that this shame is not ours to wear, yet we do. But why? Why do we feel ashamed? Our husbands were the ones who cheated, yet we’re the ones staying to wade through all the shit, AND have the added burden of shame? It’s a slap in the face.

What a stinging observation.

I do admire Perel’s belief that a marriage can be better after an affair. But, she says, you must first acknowledge your first marriage is over. Most of us, she says, are destined to have two or three big relationships/marriages in our lifetime, “and some of us are going to do it with the same person”.

It’s an optimistic outlook. Hopeful.

Something to think about.

 

 

O Husband, Stupid Husband

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affair, asshole, asshole husband, betrayal, betrayed spouse, cheater, cheating, couple, D-Day, divorce, fuck, fuck it all, infidelity, liar, lying sack of shit, marriage, other woman, wayward spouse, whore

On the weekend, my musician husband was performing with his band at a local fair.
My husband was keen for our children to come along to see his performance.
I told him I wasn’t sure if we’d be coming along, as going anywhere on my own with three little children poses its own challenges.
Plus, we’d been at a kid’s birthday party that morning and our children were all exhausted.
In the end, I decided to take them. When it came time to leave for the performance, my baby was still asleep. It should be a crime to wake a sleeping baby. But I did it, because I wanted the children to see their daddy performing.
I piled everyone into the car, set the GPS, and set off with one grumpy baby and two tired children.
In the car, the two older ones crashed out while baby demanded food. Joy.
When we arrived, I took a guess where the nearest viable parking might be (several blocks away from the fair), placed a protesting baby in pram, and woke two grumps to begin our walk there.
Unfortunately, Google Maps sent me on some fucking expedition in the opposite direction, so we end up walking several blocks needlessly.
I knew then we had missed my husband’s first performance.
But we kept walking anyway.
And then I spotted my husband. He was across the street waiting for the lights to change so he could cross over. He was eating an ice cream and was with two other people, both other band members. I recognised the male, but not the female.
I stopped in my tracks.
The three of them were chatting and laughing away at the lights, unaware of my presence on the other side of the road.
Finally, the lights changed and they began walking towards us.
My husband then spotted us. “Hi!,” he said. “You’ve just missed our performance.”
“I know,” I said.
“We were just going to hang out at the pub until our next set,” he said. “But now I don’t have to!”
He was so cheery.
“Who is that you were walking back with?” I asked.
“Oh, that was….James….and……Gina.”
I looked at him like he was fucking mad.
“Gina?,” I asked. “GINA??”
(In case I need to bring you up to speed, Gina is the fucking slut who sent my husband Facebook messages calling him ‘darling’ and asking, sorry, TELLING him that he should call her “when he can”, and that they should have lunch together. I discovered these messages a month after D-Day. I made him unfriend her on Facebook and I sent her a direct message calling her a home-wrecking whore. She wrote back telling me she was offended. Boo-fucking-hoo, sweetie. She later called my husband and HE told her we were “having problems”. Like it’s any of her fucking business! You can read the full story here.)
Where was I? That’s right, about to punch my husband in the fucking face, metaphorically speaking.
I looked at him with my eyes on fire.
“I cannot believe you’re just casually walking down the street, eating, laughing, WITH HER when know how much stress that causes me!”
My husband had led me to believe he had cut off all non-essential contact with her.
What a stupid, o stupid, husband.
Guess that makes me the stupid wife.
“You didn’t tell me you were coming,” he offered.
“What difference would that have made?” I asked. Guess he would have been more careful to not be anywhere near Gina in my presence.
“You should just go to the pub with everyone else,” I seethed.
“But I don’t have to now,” he protested.
“Just go. I don’t want you anywhere near me,” I hissed at him, careful that the children were not within earshot.
And then I walked away. And I didn’t look back.
I pulled out my phone and began typing a text message to him.
“YOU ARE SUCH AN ASSHOLE.”
I hit send.
And being the asshole he is (and knew it), he didn’t respond.
SUCH an asshole.

PS It was the first time I had seen Gina in the flesh. She looks like an overweight giraffe.

(What If) It’s Not You, It’s Me

Tags

affair, asshole, betrayal, cheater, divorce, emotional affair, fuck, husband, lying sack of shit, marriage, other woman, sex, whore

The past few weeks have been stressful around here.

I seem to constantly be reminding myself that my husband is an asshole. I married a fucking asshole who cheated on me with a married skanky whore! BASTARD!

Then I get angry. And very pissed off. So I don’t talk to him. And as for sex – forgeddaboutit!

My D-Day was almost 12 months ago. Last week, I asked him to print out a copy of every phone bill for the past 15 months. His answer? “Sure…can I ask why?”

“No,” I snapped back. “YOU don’t get to ask any questions.”

“No problem,” he said.

When I woke the next morning, they were sitting on my keyboard waiting for me.

I went through them with a fine-tooth comb. Every single call, when it was made, how long it lasted.

Were the calls made on weekends? After work when he said he was “working late”? During his lunch hour? I HAD TO KNOW.

I don’t really know what possessed me to ask such a thing. Part of me wanted to see the reaction on his face, part of me wanted to see him squirm, part of me wanted to see if he’d make excuses and not give them to me.

I sent him an email asking him to identify a number of callers. I have full access to his phone so I could have looked them up myself, but thought I’d give him the benefit of the doubt.

Everything checked out.

It’s so fucking dumb that even this far after D-Day, I still go psycho insane at times. I mean, really, you’d think I would have worked this stuff out of my system by now.

But no.

And to be perfectly honest, my husband is not a jerk. I know other wives complain about their husbands not doing anything around the house, but my husband will put loads of washing on, hang clothes out, take washing off the line, iron clothes, load up the dishwasher, and basically do anything he can to help out.

So basically, I sound like an ungrateful bitch for complaining, but HE HAD A FUCKING AFFAIR. And I just can’t seem to get past that. How the hell do you just let go of such a thing?

Even if my husband does everything right for the rest of his life, such as telling me where he’s going, giving me access to everything, being completely transparent etc, how the fuck do *I* move on?

And what if I can’t? What if I can NEVER accept what he’s done?

What if it’s not him, it’s me?

This week he was talking about investing in yet another property. I said no. He seemed surprised.

Because all I could think about was “if we have to split our assets, I don’t want to make things any more complicated than they already are.” Of course I didn’t say that, but I thought it.

Everything we do now, I have to take that into account. Once upon a time, we’d book overseas trips with a lead time of many, many months. Now I have to factor in the ‘what if we’re not still together by then’ question. And that sucks.

I know nothing in life is certain, but to me, my husband was. He adored me. He loved me. We were so lucky to have found each other. We were going to be together forever.

Now I live in this altered reality where nothing is what it seems, least of all my husband. I don’t know what to believe, or who to believe, or who I can even trust.

It’s like realising your entire (married) life has been a fucking sham.

It feels like I’m starting all over again.

I doubt I will ever be truly happy again.

 

 

 

 

Over it

Tags

affair, affair infidelity trauma husband wife betrayal diet, betrayal, betrayed spouse, cheater, cheating, couples, D-Day, emotional affair, fuck it all, hate, husband, infidelity, liar, lying sack of shit, marriage, other woman, post-affair, wayward spouse, whore

I’m now 9 months after D-Day, and let me tell you, I AM OVER IT.

I am sick of everything. Sick of feeling like nothing’s getting better. Sick of feeling like I HAVE to be happy. Sick of everyday shit.

I feel beaten, exhausted, and completely dead inside.

I so want to stick around and raise my family in a mum-dad environment, but it seems less and less likely every day.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I hate my husband. I don’t want to look at him. I don’t want to be around him. I don’t want to talk to him. And I certainly don’t want to fuck him. He’s spent the last two nights sleeping on the couch after I kicked him out of our bed.

So what am I still doing here? Who the fuck knows.

Then I look at my babies and I remember. I am here for them.

My happiness is not the priority right now.

Who Crossed The Line First?

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affair, betrayal, betrayed spouse, cheater, cheating, husband, infidelity, liar, lying sack of shit, marriage, other woman, trauma, whore

After I discovered my husband’s six-month affair with a married whore, he maintained most of the time when they spoke, it was about ordinary, everyday stuff. News events, the kids, plans for the weekend etc.
He said the conversation hadn’t turned sexual until about three months before I discovered it.
So my question to him was this: who crossed the line first?
Who took the conversation into sexual territory?
He thought about it for a moment.
“I don’t really remember, I can’t pinpoint that moment.”
“Was it you?”, I asked, knowing that it most likely was.
“I don’t know,” he repeated. “It just happened.”
I spent a fun-filled hour in my therapist’s office this morning discussing this with her.
“Whenever a cheater ‘cannot remember’ a detail about the affair, you can be sure they are at fault. It’s classic text book behaviour,” she informed me.
Then she asked me a question.
“How would you feel moving forward in this marriage knowing that you will never know everything? How does that sit with you?”
Hmm. That’s definitely a tough one. A very hard pill to swallow.
Not knowing all that there is to know…I was stumped. I’ll need to give this some serious thought. Accept that there may have been other affairs. Or that this affair was more serious than he was letting on. Or that he’ll do it again but this time be more careful.
Could you do it?
I just don’t know.

Dear Other Women, BOO-FUCKING-HOO. With Love, Betrayed Spouses Everywhere

Tags

affair, betrayal, betrayed spouse, husband, infidelity, liar, lying sack of shit, other woman, wayward spouse, whore

One of the best blog posts I’ve read about the pathetic Other Women (OW) – also known as ‘whores’ – was written by pabloswife on her blog ‘I Never Said I Loved Her‘. Her post ‘The Other Woman, or as I Prefer to Call Them, Whores’ was a brilliant look at all the boo-fucking-hoo stories spouted by the skanks who have affairs with married men (MM). How sad it is that they have to leave their MM so he can go back to his wife. How miserable those men must be. How it aches when the whore hears he had sex with his <gasp> WIFE.

Fuck me, bring out the violins.

A few days ago, I read an interview with one of these treacherous Other Women on the self-help blog Affair Resources and Advice, ironically written by a woman – oops, MAN – who cheated on his partner for TWO GODDAM YEARS. Anyone want to take advice from anyone with those credentials? Didn’t think so.

Anyhoo, as you can imagine, in this interview, the cheating wife and OW ‘Kaitlyn’ craps on about how she fell for a married man ‘Arthur’ and how devastated she was when his wife discovered the affair and he ditched the bitch, (aka the Other Woman), to go back to his wife.

How devastating!

In the interview, Kaitlyn drops this pearl: “To answer the question on if I’ve ever cheated before, well, no. Not really.”

I’m sorry, NOT REALLY?! What the fuck does that mean?

Well, by the time I got the end of this miserable interview, I was seething. You can read it for yourself here.

So I left the following comment: “You hope that his wife realises he is not alone to blame for the state of his marriage?! My goodness, is this how you justify the affair to yourself? Is the reason you sleep at night by telling yourself their marriage must have been complete shit? You awful, selfish whore. I hope you live the rest of your life in fear [of your husband finding out]. I feel for your husband – you’ve made a fool out of him and the truth will eventually come out, Just you wait and see.’

Despite writing up this interview and placing it on the internet for all to see, the blog owner had the temerity to say: “Judge if you must, but if you must, please do it silently.”

Fuck that, this is the GODDAM INTERNET! If I want to comment, I will. If you don’t want to publish it, then don’t. That’s your choice. But don’t tell me I can’t speak.

You’d be right if you guessed my comment didn’t go down too well with the blog’s owner.

Instead of sending my comment to spam, or – I don’t know – IGNORING me, he wrote me this lovely reply which I am pasting here for you all to see:

“I deleted your comment because apparently you have an inability to read, and you are a nasty, gutless, and rude person, hiding behind an anonymous blog and log-in. As I stated above, I asked that if you must judge, then please do silently. This woman has come out of the shadows to tell her story. Not to brag, but in the hopes that others will learn from what she did and hopefully avoid infidelity altogether. She is very remorseful. And hurting.

but people like you have to come along and throw nasty words and invectives at people like her. Why? She isn’t the one that cheated with your husband, I presume. So why would you be such a jerk?

Answer? because it’s easier than looking in the mirror. As long as you can write off a total stranger as “an awful whore”, then you don’t have to actually determine what YOUR part was in your husband’s affair. You can avoid looking in the mirror. Because frankly, one way or another, you do share blame for your husband’s infidelity:

Either you neglected him and or your marriage (or outright abused him emotionally or otherwise), or you married a person of very low character, and yes, you chose him, so you are partly to blame either way.

So before you start throwing stones, take a long look in the mirror. The fact that you would come here and act like this NOT to the woman that apparently ruined your “perfect marriage” (cough, cough, sputter), but would say things like this to a total stranger speaks volumes about you as a person. Your character. Your maturity. Your ability to deal with disappointment and hurt. And none of it is good. If this is any indication how you talk to your husband, I assure you that unless he has no other options, he will ultimately leave you. Your attitude is the opposite of understanding, compassion, maturity and forgiveness. I wish you luck. Clearly my blog is not the place for you. I suggest you avoid it. But please don’t bother commenting. Your types of comments are not wanted here. I demand civility if nothing else.

I rarely call people like you out on the carpet here. I merely just “spam” your comments. But frankly you deserve to be shown up. Your comments are completely uncivil and uncalled for.

I hope to God YOU never make a big mistake in life, because karma is a bitch when it hits you. “

Baby, don’t worry about karma getting me. Karma’s saving for her best stuff for cheating whores such as yourself and Kaitlyn.

And I have news for you, Mr High-and-Mighty, you’d be hard-pressed to find a Betrayed Spouse (BS) who doesn’t refer to the other woman (OW) as a complete whore.

Any woman (in this case, a MARRIED ONE) who KNOWINGLY engages INAPPROPRIATELY with a married man is a WHORE. Make no mistake about that.

Are you seriously having a go at me for writing my blog and commenting anonymously? I don’t see a name on your blog. Or any defining information about your friend Kaitlyn. NEWS FLASH: this is the internet and anonymity is afforded to us all. That doesn’t mean a real person doesn’t exist behind these words – they aren’t written by a robot.

I follow plenty of blogs written by betrayed spouses (BS), wayward spouses (WS), and other women (OW). I’d say 99 per cent of them are written anonymously.

The ones written by the cheating spouses usually have comments turned off. Why? Because they realise the amount of non-sympathetic, abusive emails they’d get. D’uh!

But not you, no. You CHOSE to leave comments ON, and I ask myself why.

Did you expect comments of encouragement and sympathy for Kaitlyn?

Do you feel the other woman worthy of our decency or compassion?

If so, you’re delusional.

By all means, don’t let the betrayed spouses out there tell her how it really is. Let’s leave her in her own little fantasy bubble where everyone feels sorry for her.

And if you think the other woman is suffering, how the fuck do you think the wife is coping? A thousand times worse, I can guarantee that.

The other woman has completely destroyed everything she knew about love, her sense of self, her sanity. She will spend forever asking why this happened, how it could have happened to her, how she will ever trust her husband again, and how you rebuild a marriage with a cheat.

Every marriage has its challenges, but the spouse who feels it is so unbearable they feel the need to look for sympathy and intimacy with someone else, needs to man up and say “Hey, we have a problem, what can we do?” rather than run to the first whore who will stroke their ego.

You left comments on but you don’t want anyone calling out the other woman for her thoughtless, selfish, egocentric behaviour (which of course the cheating husband is also guilty of). I’ve said it once, but it bears repeating: she KNOWINLGY engaged INAPPROPRIATELY with a married man. She fell in love with him. There was no grey area.

I don’t believe I said anything about having a “perfect marriage” in QUOTATION marks, no less. But I do know a thing or two about being the betrayed spouse. My husband cheated on me with a married woman who bitched and moaned that her own husband paid no attention to her. So what does she do? Go after someone else’s. It’s a low act.

So feel free to not have the backbone to publish my comment (gutless in itself) but please don’t think this erases the truth.

You didn’t like what I had to say, but you felt it was perfectly OK to send me a long, bitchy reply (which is why I initially thought you were female).

I didn’t quite understand the level of vitriol in your response until I noticed your name: Recovering WS. Ah, all makes sense now – you’re in the same cheating boat as skanky ‘Kaitlyn’.

Guess I hit a nerve.

And as for Kaitlyn hurting and being remorseful?

BOO.

FUCKING.

HOO.