Reply to Would you consider having a revenge affair/ fling if your spouse had an affair and you decided to stay together?

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Reply to "Would you consider having a revenge affair/ fling if your spouse had an affair and you decided to stay together?"

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[quote=Anonymous]And OP, if dopamine is your goal, find it in a healthy way.

After my husband's affair, I restructured our marriage. I signed myself up for a massage membership. I took the vacations I wanted, and he didn't go on any guys' trips for many years. He stopped going out so often. He got into therapy.

It was ironic, because his complaints during the affair were that he didn't have enough time for fun for himself, but he was already taking 5x as much time as I was. So once that got evened out, he was getting much less time to himself, and he had to grow up and realize that this was the life had chosen and not something *I* did to him.

Almost 10 years later and I still get those monthly massages and he still sees his therapist. If I want a dopamine hit, I plan a vacation. But playing around with falling in love and sexual bonding . . . those are not just things you can pick up and put down when you want. You will be beholden to a lot of feelings that will get away from you.

And there's an opportunity cost to everything we do. The time you are investing does not exist in a vacuum . . . it comes at the expense of your family life or your job.

It's natural to want to feel better after the trauma of betrayal. But there really aren't any short-cuts to healing or happiness. You just need to cocoon and take care of yourself. Treat yourself with the care you deserve. Don't set yourself up for failure.

I remember the visceral way I reacted to finding out about the affair. I remember saying something like, WTF, I am hot stuff, I could find someone else! and my husband's eyes got wide. Oh, you never thought about me being with someone else? Well that was a mistake on your part because that's the natural consequence of blowing up your marriage. Know that you are hot stuff. Of course you could go have some fun sex. Just knowing that was enough for me. And I feel free to incorporate those story lines in my inner dialogue. But I'm going to blow up my life over something that will only be fun for a moment.[/quote]

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