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][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
Not trying to be better.  What has happened has happened.  Dealing as best you can with the cards you have been dealt.

Watch Esther Parel.  She talks about on in America there is this pressure to get divorced whenever infidelity happens.  There is little consideration to how it affects family bonds or kids.

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Because they value being with their kids every day! Americans don’t value family enough.

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]the vast majority of philosophers and humans would consider a well-timed and satisfying fling in the wake of a partner’s affair to be quite excusable. It would be about sex, full stop. Nothing to do with proving yourself desirable or better, just evening the playing field. I don’t mean tit for tat necessarily, but it means you now
have an equal experience. Not sure why it would cause so much “hurt”. It makes you equals.
[/quote]

[quote]This makes me think of that maxim we all learn in kindergarten 'two wrongs don't make a....', wait no, not that it was, 'an eye for an eye' yeah.[/quote]

OP, you know yourself (and your DH) best. Therefore, do not let the glib posters (like the "two wrongs" poster) unduly influence you. It may be that your DH can only understand how the affair made you feel after you have one yourself.

[b]I know of circumstances where a DH had affairs, promised to stop, but did not until the DW had started having affairs herself. Once he knew that she had experienced and enjoyed another man, he understood the impact of his actions. In other words, the DH lacked the empathic awareness to understand how the DW felt until she treated him like he had treated her. [/b]

Of course, most men are not that shallow and feel actual remorse for the affair without having to feel the pain themselves. However, you know him well enough to know if he might need the lesson your affair would provide.
[/quote]

Seriously: why stay married in this circumstance.  Everyone in the bolded relationship behaved without honesty, integrity, or self-respect.  This is sad.

There are worse things in life than being divorced and single.  Seriously.[/quote][/quote]

That’s kind of a manipulative excuse, right?  Like your spouse could have used the exact same reasoning for cheating on you:

I can’t stand this marriage but I want to be with my kids every day.

In fact, I see plain old cheaters using that rationale on this website constantly.

You can “revenge cheat” if you want but you’re no better than the original cheater.[/quote][/quote]

I’ve read a lot of Esther Perel and I’ve never seen her advocate for the kind of selfish stupidity that a “revenge affair” would entail.  Either fix your marriage or peace out.  If you have an affair you’re a cheater too and you don’t have much of a right to be mad at your spouse, plus you are probably tanking any chance of fixing the marriage.[/quote]

No, she doesn’t advocate for that. Nor would she advocate for a relationship eternally premised on being the victim-victimizer or one party being the more moral and ethical one. [b]She certainly would not condemn a wife for having an emotionally cleansing fling.[/b] What she really advocates for is understanding that people have affairs (sometimes) in order to feel more alive even if the marriage is strong. She would advocate against an hysterically puritanical view that could never understand how an affair could indeed level the playing field as a way to move on. [/quote]

I think you’ve missed the whole point… affairs aren’t healthy.  When Ester Perel talks about how affairs fill an unmet need for people, that doesn’t mean they are healthy.  I had an intense emotional affair- it definitely felt good but that doesn’t mean it was good on any level.  And if my husband turned it around and had an affair too I wouldn’t blame him but at that point, why bother being married?

He would just be trying to hurt me in return for hurting him.  Why would I want that for myself even if I was the absolute worst wife?  This isn’t about “condemnation” or perpetually being a victim.  A marriage can’t take an endless amount of assault and come out intact.  If you are dead set on lying, cheating, and sneaking around, you are just harming yourself and the marriage.[/quote]

It’s not necessary “assault” - that’s the whole point. [/quote]

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