Infidelity

[Tablerat]

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Maybe there was a time when lots of people recognized that caring well for one's children is just more important than life-long romance?

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Such a great post.

Adultery enters a whole new level when children are involved. If the events are exactly as OP describes, then that means his wife started the affair when their twins were one. This fact is absolutely disgusting to me. I mean, sure, I'll enter a discussion about whether there should be punitive measures against her, but that's not the point. The point is that there are nine people immediately affected in this scenario. That's slim and his family and his wife's lover and his family. It's just not a healthy environment for the children (all five) to be reared in my opinion. The twins, for example, are completely dependent on (and are imprinting from) a mother who is in complete emotional disarray. But now is not the time for blame or longings for the past. Now is the time for the parents to get all their [censored] together for their kids. OP and his wife are at a serious crossroads for their kids' sake. There is still so much work to be done.

We live in a society where the norm is still a monogamous marriage with children; whether or not this paradigm is most consistent with our biological and emotional inclinations, is still unknown to me. Yet we, as a society, still cling to that tradition, almost hopelessly, despite terribly depressing statistics. Maybe it's time for some type of modification - or at the very least an openness to discussion. Slim also mentions that they've been together for 14 years. Probably married young. What were their original motives? In what state was their relationship when they decided to have children?

I wish this were an isolated incident, but it isn't; I hear scenarios like slim's all the time.

"There's no such thing as bad children, only bad parents."

I hope things work out for all involved.

[pergesu]

You know what else can be addicting? Spending too much time researching and analyzing your wife's infidelity rather than being an awesome father for your kids and getting on with your life.

[wet work]

Human nature is a helluva drug.

[br549007]

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I don't really have any questions, I just want to make a comment and maybe some of you can agree/disagree. Some of you have read my other post about my wife cheating on me. Obviously, my life has been turned upside down and there has been nothing else on my mind since I found out about 2 and a half months ago.

Just wanted to give everyone a brief history of our marriage. We've been together about 14 years and married the last 8yrs. WE have twins who are 3 and a half. My wife has been having an affair for about 2 years with her boss who is about 10 yrs older than she is. There was no abuse in our marriage. We had the typical marriage....basically on autopilot and taking each other for granted. Not many fights just raising the kids and no romance. My wife has decided to divorce me and eventually move in with her boss who has 3 kids aged 10-15. Since revealing the affair to her family, my wife has been disowned by her father and kind of on the fence with pretty much everyone else in her family......most are not willing to shun her completely but do not really want to invite her over bc it is too awkward. So basically, my wife and I have gone from having a large nice house with no debt, 2 beautiful twins and a good family relationship to each of us living in smaller houses, our kids will be bounced between 2 families, and her being not welcome by her own family. As for me, obviously I now have a lot of psychological issues with trust and a host of other issues like anger, sadness etc.

In doing research on infidelity, I discovered that it is an addiction like any other addiction. People who have some kind of void in their lives become vulnerable to affairs. Anyone who shows interest or pays special attention to a vulnerable person becomes the source of addiction. There are bunch of chemicals there are released in the brain when these people "fall in love". These chemicals cause irrational behaviour and cause the person to do ANYTHING to preserve the feeling of being in love including distancing themselves from their spouse, magnifying small problems in their marriage, minimizing the faults of the affair partner and all kinds of justifications and rationalizations. It causes the person to live a double life of lying and deception even in a previously honest person. Once the affair is discovered, the culprit acts like a typical addict....tehy go on the offense and attack the people trying to help them. They blame everything but their own weaknesses for casuing their affair.

The thing about affairs that make them one of the hardest addicitons to overcome is that no one thinks of affairs as an addiction. So the persons involved feel they are in total contol of their lives and they feel that the have found their soul mate when in fact it is all an illusion. They are living a life with their "soul mate" which is all a fantasy....no bills to pay, no diapers to change, only romance. The persons involved only see the best side of each other, the side they want to portay. Everything changes if they live together. 80-90 % of the time, affair relationships end and even those that survive are no better than the original marriages...same but with a different partner. The other thing about affairs is that unlike, drugs,gambling etc, interventions tend not to work. A drug addict will choose to go into rehab when faced with the reality of losing their family. With affairs, there is someone waiting for them on the other side so it is easy to accept losing a family bc they will gain a new one.

So on to my comment. As far as I am concerned, infidelity should be a crime. At the very least, there should be a lot of money poured into research and rehab for infidelity. Instead, we have companies nowadays that promote affairs )i.e. ashleymadison.com). There are many organizations that help alcoholics and drug and gambling addicts because left untreated, they destroy families and lives. It is not uncommon for the perpetrators of affairs to go into depression when the high wears off and they realise what they have done. These people lives are usually shattered whether the affairs ends or not bc they live a life of shame and guilt and alienation by family. The victim or betrayed spouse can also go into depression, cimmit suicide and even murder. Anything that destroys families, especially when kids are involved, should be taken very seriously. From my research, over 50% of marriages end in divorce and over 80% of those divorce is a result of infidelity. I haven't done any research on alcoholism or drug addiction but i would guess that affairs affect more families than both of those combined.

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"You are in more need of a blow job than any white man in history" Robin Williams

[Fast Food Knight]

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Basically anything enjoyable can be called an addiction.

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I have read about how love in general is an addiction. From the LA Times:

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It was only in 2000 that two London scientists selected 70 people, all in the early sizzle of love, and rolled them into the giant cylinder of a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner, or fMRI. The images they got are thought to be science's first pictures of the brain in love.

The pictures were a revelation, and others have followed, showing that romantic love is a lot like addiction to alcohol or drugs.

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So, with that in mind, I wouldn't really call the affair the addiction, but rather the emotional connection with the other man. A connection that she (hopefully) had with OP at one point in time, but for whatever reason has faded. Basically she fell for someone else and, in a sense, and as many of us have done, became addicted to that person. She simply became unaddicted to OP, which in and of itself I guess you can't really blame her for (since I don't believe one can control these things), but she clearly behaved in a selfish and unacceptable manner. Would it have been better for her to file for divorce with young children in the mix? Probably, but many would say that is choosing between two evils. She chose the one that was the easiest for her in the short-term.

[J.A.K.]

I've always wondered where the confidence/trust comes from in a relationship formed out of two cheating pieces of [censored].

[adsman]

I don't get off on all these handy defintions of addiction being the cause of this sort of stuff. We all have choices, unfortunately not all of us have self control or morals. A lot of people are just selfish pricks. You can do all the studies in the world but all that will do is to give them justification for their behaviour.

[slim]

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I think OP raises an important question. Although it isn't what he's focused on, he has mentioned an important point which plenty of recent studies have described: the bad effects that the divorce, which is the result of this affair, is going to have on his children.

One way in which our conception of marriage is different from the past is that we think that what is most important in a marriage is a warmly loving, sexually gratifying, and emotionally satisfying relationship. These things are each sine qua non for most contemporary marriages. Without sufficient romance, a marriage is considered to be in a bad place. But where does such an attitude leave children? And what of marriage vows?

Instead of whether extra-marital infidelity should be punished by law, a question I think all this raises is whether no-fault divorce has really had a positive influence on society. There once was a time when if the OP refused to grant a divorce, then there wouldn't be one--even if his wife was cheating on him. And, there was once a time when a pretty large number of men would have refused to grant the divorce, for the sake of the children, if it seemed possible to save the marriage and the family. Maybe there was a time when lots of people recognized that caring well for one's children is just more important than life-long romance?

Divorce because of abuse, infidelity (against the spouse seeking the divorce), etc. are one thing; divorce when the only real fault in the marriage is on the part of the one seeking the divorce seems something entirely different. Or do obligations to keep wedding vows and to care well for children just not matter that much anymore?

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The children were the main reason I tried to reconcile with my wife despite her affair. The future seems really bleak for my kids.

Myths Surrounding Children And Divorce
From Cathy Meyer,
Your Guide to Divorce Support.
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Myths About the Effects of Divorce on Children:
In the early 1970’s, Judith Wallerstein, began to study the effects of divorce on children. She studied a group of 131 children and their families who were going through the divorce process over a period of 25 years. In her book, The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25 Year Landmark Study, published in 2000, we learn that children really aren’t “resilient” and that divorce leaves children to struggle for a life-time with the residue of a decision their parents made.
According to Ms. Wallerstein, “If the truth be told, and if we are able to face it, the history of divorce in our society is replete with unwarranted assumptions that adults have made about children simply because such assumptions are congenial to adult needs and wishes. The myths that continue to guide our divorce policies and politics today stem from these direct attitudes.”
In other words we have become a society of adults who put their own needs and happiness before the emotional well-being of their children and justify it all by buying into the myth that children are resilient or time heals all wounds.
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Myth #1: If Parents Are Happy Their Children Will be Happy Also :
I’m sure you have heard someone say that if they divorce and are able to lead a happier life that their children will be happier also. The idea behind this myth is that a happy mom or dad automatically means happy children.
People who use this justification are projecting their own feelings onto their children. They are objectifying their children out of a need to find happiness for themselves without having to feel responsible for causing their children emotional pain. They are failing to understand that, though they may be unhappy, their children are probably quite content and don’t care if their parents don’t get along as long as their family is together.
When you introduce a child to the world of divorce, you are altering every aspect of their life. That kind of change is hard to adjust to for adults. Imagine what it must be like for children who are not old enough to reason and intellectualize the situation?
Fact:
Children of divorce are more aggressive toward their parents and teachers. They experience more depression, more learning difficulties and problems getting along with their peers. They are three times more likely to be referred for psychological help. They become sexually active earlier, they are more likely to produce children out of wedlock and they are three times as likely to divorce themselves or to never marry.
A child’s happiness is not dependent on their parent’s happiness. A child’s happiness stems from routine, having a home, two parents, friends to play with, school activities to be involved in and being able to count on those things being constant day in and day out.
Myth #2: The Less Animosity And Bitterness The Less Trauma :
It is true that fighting and conflict exacerbate the trauma but there are those who believe that if they are able to get along then there children will suffer no lasting negative effects from the divorce. There seems to be a universal belief that the children will end up happy and content with their new life as long as the parents aren’t fighting.
Because of this belief, we focus on the process and not the aftermath of the process. We feel that our energy should be put toward making sure things run smoothly for the children during the process and once we are beyond that we don’t have to worry about any possible negative effects on our children.
Fact:
This misguided belief is not only harmful to our children but to the adults involved in the divorce process also. Divorce, at it’s best cannot be considered an amicable process. No matter how hard we try there will be bad feelings. Most divorces are not unilateral. One or the other parent is going to feel betrayed and hurt. Those feelings will trickle down to the children no matter how hard you try to conceal them. To think that all will be fine as long as the divorce process goes off without a hitch is unwise for all involved.
According to Ms. Wallerstein,”the parent’s anger at the time of the breakup is not what matters most. Unless there was violence or abuse or high conflict, a child has dim memories of what transpired during this supposedly critical period.” What was most painful and caused the most long-term negative effects for children is the sadness of their family breaking up, the anger they were not able to express, having to adjust to one parent no longer living in the home. The loss of control over activities because of forced visitation, the loss of two full-time parents in their lives, the sadness they feel around friends from intact families. The change in the economic status that all children experience when their parent’s divorce.
It is the aftermath of divorce, not the process of divorce that does our children the most harm. Don’t buy into the belief that once the process is over all will find a happy ending. Focus not only on the process but on what needs to be done after the process to help the children and adults move forward with as little emotional harm as possible.

[slim]

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You know what else can be addicting? Spending too much time researching and analyzing your wife's infidelity rather than being an awesome father for your kids and getting on with your life.

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some people choose to kick the crap out of the wife, some choose to kill the other man, some choose to hit the bottle.......I chose to find out as much information as possible as to what the hell happened to my wife/family by doing as much reading as possible. It's part of my healing.

[slim]

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Basically anything enjoyable can be called an addiction.

[/ QUOTE ]

I have read about how love in general is an addiction. From the LA Times:

[ QUOTE ]
It was only in 2000 that two London scientists selected 70 people, all in the early sizzle of love, and rolled them into the giant cylinder of a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner, or fMRI. The images they got are thought to be science's first pictures of the brain in love.

The pictures were a revelation, and others have followed, showing that romantic love is a lot like addiction to alcohol or drugs.

[/ QUOTE ]

So, with that in mind, I wouldn't really call the affair the addiction, but rather the emotional connection with the other man. A connection that she (hopefully) had with OP at one point in time, but for whatever reason has faded. Basically she fell for someone else and, in a sense, and as many of us have done, became addicted to that person. She simply became unaddicted to OP, which in and of itself I guess you can't really blame her for (since I don't believe one can control these things), but she clearly behaved in a selfish and unacceptable manner. Would it have been better for her to file for divorce with young children in the mix? Probably, but many would say that is choosing between two evils. She chose the one that was the easiest for her in the short-term.

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Exactly! The addiction is to the other person. It is the other person that makes the cheater get a high. My wife is the other person for her boss. If forced to end their relationship, they go throught the same withdrawal symptoms as with other forms of addiction.

The feeling my wife had for me faded because as with every other relationship, it always fades with time. I also did not have that "in love" feeling with my wife anymore after 14 years, but I knew that it was natural for it to fade. On the other hand, women in general, believe that once they lose that feeling, there must be a problem in their marriage. And when they find that feeling again years later with someone else, they think that they must have married the wrong person.