I don’t find it an argument as I do an interesting discussion. I never really expect to convince you of anything, I know better than that. But, once again I will tell you things that you will say make your head hurt.
Everyone sees things through the lens of their own value system. Trustworthy people value trust. You are likely trustworthy and so that is important in your value system. Most affairs are not logical and you are a logical person. So it’s not hard to understand why you get hung up when someone says they didn’t trust their AP.
People who have affairs are at a point in their lives where their character is very low. People of low character have low expectations of the character of the AP. In You are both cheating on your spouse so most of the safety is knowing that person doesn’t want to be exposed any more than you do. In my case we were also taking huge career risks.
There is no trust amongst thieves. A thief knows the other one is a thief, they don’t care because they don’t have to hide who they are and they can work together to achieve their dirty deeds.
I always felt like my husband was better than me in my pre A marriage, this was an insecurity/low self esteem issue. The AP was more flawed and therefore it made me feel like I had an upper hand in ways I didn’t have in the marriage. I spent most of my time trying to prove how awesome I was, with him as the audience and really it was myself I was trying to convince.. I have read accounts of thousands of adulterers and have seen this theme hundreds of times.
The affair was kind of a funhouse mirror - there was a lot of distortion on what was important.
An affair looks from the outside like it’s a relationship. But while in the affair, it didn’t feel that way at all. I didn’t have a plan past the minute I was on. There was no future to picture, because it was too exhausting to even consider. I didn’t think the ap was better than my husband, it was more he didn’t know me so it was easier to play out this role of what I wished I was -younger, sexier, funnier, more interesting.
Except it was just pathetic. Deep down I did want to be those things but it was so hollow without having the qualities needed to be a good person. In a relationship you can be all those things together. In an affair, you can only be the superficial ones and you are essentially removed from the most meaningful parts of yourself.
If we are mostly reflecting on our own superficial traits, then this affects our values lens I was talking about. So instead of looking for normal things like trust, we’re instead valuing their superficial traits or the superficial in the relationship. Whatever is within is then projected externally.
I have read only 5 to 7% of affair relationships lead to marriage and of those, approximately 75% end in divorce. So if we assume only 25% of the initial 7% last, this means that less than 2% turn into long-lasting marriages. I am sure there are different factors for why this is but having had an affair and having been betrayed, I tend to believe it’s because fundamentally you know that someone who will do it with you will do it to you. You know what they are capable of, because it’s what you are capable of.
I disassociated when vulnerability was required, which is another signal I didn’t have trust.
What I did have was someone willing to ignore both of our marriages and feed me bullshit all day and that beat out real life for a period of time- which is really sad because the life I was escaping was good, it was real, it had a future. There was security and
I did ask my husband if he trusted his ap. He is a man of few words and he just said "I felt like I had the upper hand." And this rings true to me. We don’t need trust because in our magical world of make believe we are always in control. We are alway more clever, we are untouchable. It’s all just narratives born of cognitive dissonance.
[This message edited by hikingout at 6:25 AM, Saturday, October 26th]