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Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)
Talk me off a ledge- other side of the world and just discovered cheating
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Anonymous
I choose neither, lol. Seriously, why does thinking of ways that a horrible trauma and betrayal could be slightly worse even something we're doing here? At least he didn't murder the OW to keep her silent! At least he didn't steal the Mona Lisa on his way home from a tryst! Seriously, why is comparing what he did with what he didn't do a thing? |
Anonymous
Thank you for this thoughtful analysis that gets to the bottom of the misogyny behind berating women for not wanting to accept infidelity. |
Anonymous
Op here. Thanks for sharing. This hits home for me right now. |
Anonymous
+1 Really well written. Thank you so much. |
Anonymous
As pps after reiterated quite well, it doesn’t matter. It’s personal. It’s dependent on the spouses, the marriage and a million other factors. Where society goes wrong is shaming women (and men too) that choose to reconcile after infidelity is revealed. It does not mean they are weak or settling or they are destined to an unhappy future. Nobody knows the circumstances. People should not judge. |
Anonymous
I am the PP who wrote about the hierarchy of pain. I used to work with a population of women, all of whom had experienced extreme trauma that was similar in many ways, but each traumatic act also had some factual differences. I was amazed to see that rather than focus on what was common and support each other, some chose to focus on differences to minimize or elevate themselves or others for a variety of reasons. I was puzzled until a psychiatrist friend working with the same women shared that this kind of minimization is a really common response to all kinds of trauma. Once he identified it, I saw it frequently. I saw it in my own reaction to my secondary trauma from dealing with this population, and I did it to myself when I found my then DH’s infidelity - he did a ton of absolutely bonkers stuff and told bonkers lies about it, and my response to myself was “at least it’s not as bad/traumatic as those women I worked with.” I came to understand that I was doing that to make what I had experienced survivable on some level - these other women survived something way more horrible, so I can survive too. I also saw it in a lot of the responses I got from people when I told them about the infidelity. I’m not sure why people respond like that - maybe they are trying to help by minimizing, so that you don’t feel so bad about the act? Or that people feel like it’s survivable should they ever experience it? I definitely feel like one reason people blame-shift in infidelity is so that they can feel they would never suffer infidelity because they would never make the same “mistakes” the infidelity victim did. But, in fact, the blame-shifting and minimization felt invalidating and disempowering, much in the same way I felt when I experienced workplace sexual harassment - at the time when I shared about that (with lawyers!) I got a response that it wasn’t harassment even though, post-“me too” movement, what I experienced would clearly have been actionable and resulted in the other person’s firing. Perhaps that is why when “me too” happened, it really reawakened my infidelity trauma and made me feel validated, because I could see that the same minimization, denial and blame-shifting at work in the culture. I also see the minimization at work in the way we respond to death, miscarriage and serious medical issues. Your Granny died but she had a good life or lived to an old age. You had a miscarriage, but you’ll have another baby or it’s a blessing in disguise because the baby had something wrong. You got cancer but it’s only breast cancer which is treatable or it’s stage 2 and not stage 4, etc. Our friends do this all the time and it’s meant to help, but I know it doesn’t feel helpful. In general, I would say humans find it very difficult to sit with pain - their own or other’s, and so the mind works in mysterious ways and we tell ourselves and each other stories in order to move forward. Unfortunately, sometimes these stories do more damage than good over the long haul. |
Anonymous
Sometimes DCUM really wows me. This was so thoughtful and articulate. Thanks PP. |
Anonymous
Yep. That's why we're here, right? There are some really intelligent people here who share ideas and thoughts that can make a difference. The pp did just that. |
Anonymous
I very much appreciate both your posts, PP - they’re a thoughtful, articulate consideration of a difficult issue. To the bolded, people have defense mechanisms for a reason. It’s uncomfortable to be in pain, especially intense pain. And it’s important to have those defense mechanisms - people wouldn’t function very well with no relief from some of the more crushing aspects of human existence. Those defense mechanisms become problematic when they’re rigid and/or out of awareness. If people are able to realize, for example, that they’re compartmentalizing a particularly difficult emotion, that’s the first step to acknowledging the avoidance of that emotion. Learning to sit with and tolerate emotional discomfort is so, so important and also so very undervalued by many. |
Anonymous
Give me a break. I would’ve said the same thing to a man. A man describing the situation of sexes were reversed as a “three year affair” would also be overstating things a bit. There are degrees AND OP can feel however she wants about it. I personally think meaningless sex isn’t even close to the worst thing that can be done in a marriage. I think it’s less bad than the general contempt many spouses treat each other with. What’s fidelity if you don’t aren’t even kind? Yes, OP is going through something huge. But some of y’all are really really overstating his betrayal. |
Anonymous
| Lol beware people who use terms like “sit with pain”… PP asp probably regularly tells people she’s “holding space” for them. Barf. It’s all performative healing. Nothing real. |
Anonymous
I can’t imagine you are someone who people confide in or go to for comfort in your personal life. You do you. |
Anonymous
OK, so let's apply your reasoning to a different scenario. Would you say "well, he only actually hit her the one time. So she's not really in an abusive relationship." No, of course you wouldn't. OP can feel however she wants to feel. I would be LIVID and HEARTBROKEN and she doesn't need to explain herself to you. It's HER husband, not yours. |
Anonymous
With that last statement, you have the arrogance to think you can define "betrayal" for other people. No. You only get to define what you would consider a betrayal of yourself. You don't get to define what OP considers a betrayal. You can decide how YOU would feel if your spouse had done to you what OP's DH did to her. But that does not mean you get to be arbiter of how OP should feel about it, or whether it's an "overstatement" for anyone else to call it an affair, or to call it betrayal. You don't call it that? Fine. But you're trying to say others are objectively wrong for what they feel. Not up to you. |
Anonymous
| Is the pandemic and lack of work travel the reason they stopped getting together. Would they have continued to see each other otherwise? |