SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I know several people personally that have been turned off by this website. Like me, they are disgusted by many members making these absolute statements based off of their own pain and doing so without any sort of therapy license. I am talking about statements like "your entire marriage is a lie. Your marriage is a sham. Your spouse isn’t remorseful. You’re not in true R. Your spouse doesn’t love you. Your spouse is not a good parent, etc." These are all opinion statements, not absolute truths. I am far enough out now that when I read these statements I can brush them off and feel empathy for the author and recognize the raw pain they still feel. Newbies can rarely do that early on. When the excruciating pain is still so new, "taking what you need , but LEAVING the rest" is difficult. I think a lot of posts would be helped with a simple "in my opinion" precurser.

"Why this website's user interaction and engagement has become so small"

I think partly it may have something to do with some of the new posts especially in the just found out forum being totally unbelievable totally made up BS. You have to sort through them to find the real ones.
I commented on one once and got my hand smacked by the moderators.

^ Totally agree. However, reading stories for 20 years, there have been some absolutely awful ones that you’d have to think are fake, but turned out to be completely real. How do you determine the fakes? There are some tells, but it takes time for the story to unfold before it becomes obvious.

I think partly it may have something to do with some of the new posts especially in the just found out forum being totally unbelievable totally made up BS. You have to sort through them to find the real ones.

I commented on one once and got my hand smacked by the moderators.

First of all – part of what the staff here does is monitor and deal with posts that aren’t believable. We do get PM’s from members who RESPECT the guidelines and direct their concerns to mods – as is asked in the guidelines.

It’s also a deliberated stance to allow posts to flow... even if they are hard to believe at first. It’s staff-experience that those that fabricate their stories seldom last long and/or the posters here see through their lies and the thread drops down the pages.

There is a reluctance to call out posters as imposters simply because we think it less damage to let an occasional false story have it’s ten minutes of fame than to scare away a poster in need of help. Like the thread you are referring to: That poster made 2 posts on his thread and then quit. Still checks in occasionally but hasn’t contributed further. That could be due to what I stated earlier that those that fabricate stories seldom last, or it could be due to the poster being scared off by harsh and completely unhelpful comments like you posted. I guess we will never know.

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The guidelines for this site are quite few and simple. If you can’t follow them or don’t agree with them... well... the internet is a wide-open space and there are other sites with other guidelines. I guess everyone can find a home somewhere.

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This thread has gone way off course, but I don’t really see how an alleged "pro-reconciliation" slant can have lowered the activity on this site.

If that was true, then the logic doesn’t match up:

>Most new members are newly betrayed people.

>Most newly betrayed people have an initial response to save their marriage.

>This site allegedly has a pro-, you-need-to-reconcile-at-any-cost stance.

Ergo: New members are offered that false hope.

If all this was true, this site should be blossoming!

We would be getting dozens of posters wanting to drink the KoolAid.

After all – they would be getting false hope and their unrealistic wishes validated. The average newly BS would be sniffing the hopium for a couple of months, before reality sets in, and be super-active here for that period to get their hopium-fix.

Instead, I think the average new poster might make 2-3 posts and then runs away because this site does NOT have a pro-reconciliation stance, but rather a realistic stance that tends to demand some real hard actions from the betrayed spouse, in the hope it might change the WS, or at least lead the BS to some path out of infidelity. Being told that your spouse’s affair is not a "mistake", that divorce is a likely outcome despite the OP hope to reconcile, that you have no blame for the affair, that you need to move on with or without the WS... these ARE tough messages.

Personally – as someone trained in tirage and trauma handling – I think it counterproductive to welcome new posters with some message about their situation being the worst ever and that their only hope is to divorce. In the triage-world that would be like walking past a car-crash victim telling him that he’s bleeding so much he will probably die anyways...

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I encourage those that are wondering why forum activity has dropped to simply google a couple of phrases like "has online forum usage dropped". You can bypass probably biased sites like Reddit, but you can find quite good articles and discussions about this issue. Infidelity sites are no exception to the ongoing trend, and I have no reason to think this site is experiencing anything different than other infidelity-sites.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 1:38 PM, Saturday, November 30th]

As others have mentioned the decline in posts here is linked to many factors, as is happening in most internet forums these days. For years I mostly haunted the Betrayed Menz threads but that has all but disappeared.

As someone who was an admin and a mod in several NFL forums for many years I can tell you from personal experience how difficult and time consuming that job is. Plus you are doing it for free. So thanks to all who do that here.

As for me, I joined here in 2010 sixteen years after the first D-Day when most of the mistakes we are warned about had already been done. We've been married for 39 years and threaten to divorce each other every couple of months. Today we're fine, tomorrow who knows? This isn't R at least as described by some here. When I was in AA someone who didn't work their program was referred to as being in a "dry drunk." That's how it feels.

The memory of her betrayals is with me every day even after all these years. There's an old saying, "I forgive you for lying to me and betraying me but I will never forgive you for putting me in a position where I can never trust you again." The thing is I no longer give a shit. I live my life the way I want to and if she chooses to join me that's fine. If not that's fine as well.

Yes we went to personal and marriage counseling many times and she even passed a polygraph test but it made no difference. Why stay? That's a question I have no answer for. If both partners are able to work through whatever caused the adultery and both are committed to R, then go for it. But if that was a dealbreaker for you then get out when you can. Don't be me.

Like me, they are disgusted by many members making these absolute statements based off of their own pain and doing so without any sort of therapy license. I am talking about statements like "your entire marriage is a lie. Your marriage is a sham. Your spouse isn’t remorseful. You’re not in true R. Your spouse doesn’t love you. Your spouse is not a good parent, etc." These are all opinion statements, not absolute truths.

I for one don't need a therapy license. I think most therapists got their license from The University of Rugschaweeping (very bad school) and are full of nonsense. So yeah I trust my gut to kick me the real deal over those loons any day of the week!

I am sorry but yes someone who cheats on their spouse does not love their family and does not respect their spouse. Anyone who views that as simply an opinion is simply singing a happy tune. And from what I have seen almost all (I don't actually recall any exceptions) who does not fully accept how serious their WS' betrayal was, tends to spend years trying to repair a marriage getting nowhere. THIS, in addition to the fact that BHs at least (and I am sure BWs as well) are desperately looking for a Hopium fix. It would be kinder in the long run to not give it to them!

I should add that we ALL (or everyone I know at least) has sung our share of happy tunes. I've made in the past a couple albums! We desperately want something to be true and we feel on a chemical level that we NEED something to be true so it is way too easy to lie to ourselves and tell us that it IS true. It is hard NOT to lie to ourselves that way.

R is possible or at least I GUESS it MAY be in SOME instances, but I don't see how it is at all possible without acknowledging how serious and bad the betrayal is. And how bad the BS seems to think it is, it is likely even worse.

Won’tBeFooled Again, I am sorry your experience was nothing like mine, but your post is part of the problem. You had no reason to personally challenge what I wrote with your OPINIONS, but I recognize your lingering pain has pushed you to do so. I wish you well.

This is a warning to keep on-topic.

The topic is quite clear in the thread title.

EDIT: Sorry for goong off-topic

[This message edited by WontBeFooledAgai at 1:32 AM, Monday, December 2nd]

ETA: Added this post before seeing the thread drift warning - my bad!

R is possible or at least I GUESS it MAY be in SOME instances, but I don't see how it is at all possible without acknowledging how serious and bad the betrayal is.

What you’re describing is only the start of reconciliation.

There is no way to rebuild anything if the damage isn’t thoroughly examined.

I’ll never wake up one morning and be happy about what my wife did. I find it very healthy to hate the A 8.5 years after discovery.

As I’ve often said, the way I grew up, R wasn’t even a thing. It didn’t exist. Someone cheats, it is over. Period, end of story.

When my wife finally confessed years after the fact, I was certain it was over.

Then I found SI. I found a few books. I found other websites, other experiences where some people chose to find a way to salvage the relationship.

Then I ran into dozens of couples here who made it to the other side of the very unique Hell of infidelity with a very different relationship.

I also keep running into real world family members and friends who have dealt with infidelity, some of them happily rebuilt, some still struggling.

At the end of the day, I can only relate my experience and my perceptions, and if they help someone else, all the better.

Only I can live my life and I am as happy as I ever been — despite the incredibly painful journey to get here.

Ultimately I have found people either identify themselves or others by their very worst moments, or they allow for the total sum of themselves and others (the good, bad and ugly).

That said, no one is owed a last chance. No one is owed a shot at R.

I will always understand why people don’t choose R.

I’m just grateful for the people here who added some wisdom to help me and my choice along the way.

[This message edited by Oldwounds at 5:42 PM, Tuesday, December 3rd]

Ack. Double post!

[This message edited by Oldwounds at 5:41 PM, Tuesday, December 3rd]

Well, I actually think what was said in posts #61 and #66--68 is actually on-topic in fact as well (although truth be told when I wrote my response I was thinking of responding to post # 61 and not the thread as a whole).

The thinking by some is that it is the vocal contingent bitter angry people who are driving others away who are always putting down others' attempts at R and stating their opinions (that comes from their pain and anger that is) as facts. The first problem with that line of thought is that well, some things ARE facts and not opinions. If someone puts their family at risk then they are NOT good parents, at least not by any way most people define a good parent, and that is a fact I am sorry to say. The next problem with that line of thought is that people are astoundingly predictable and it is the so-called angry people who overwhelmingly (99% of the time) turn out to be right. A BH will talk about his WW's cold behavior and too many people coming from the 'R is always possible' school, will will try to explain via these awfully long-winded spiels, whereas 'she is still in the affair' or 'she just isn't that into this' is not only much simpler but turns out to be the truth. Not opinion just a pattern of behavior by WWs that is almost as predictable as the sunrise. The BH may eventually get there a year or four later and maybe banging their head against the wall was necessary for their healing. But I still think that telling BH anything less than that he is banging his head against the wall is well....lying to him.

So to get to the point of this thread and why turn-put is what it is, I'm not seeing a way around the tough bitter medicine anyway even if it is driving people away (and I'm not even sure about that), we can't be offering more tokes of hopium just to get people in here.

Another possible reason why SI is so dead that there is just so little activity on the Wayward Thread. I get that only Waywards and Former-Waywards can post in the Stop-Sign threads and that it isn't a fair expectation on fWS to stick around SI and keep posting, if they've already moved on emotionally. But the lack of activity now I'm guessing, has to be keeping future activity away. It has to be hard to bare your story out on the interwebs when it takes so long to even get a response. So there likely is no easy fix.

[This message edited by WontBeFooledAgai at 3:26 PM, Wednesday, December 4th]

** Member to Member **

Although I hate to do this, I will not respond to WontBeFooledAgai's argument that R is impossible here, except to point out that he ignores the apparently honest testimony of BHes who have R'ed.

** Mod to members **

First, thanks to members for sharing their thoughts on why traffic on SI today is less than it years ago.

Second, if anyone wants to argue about the possibility of R, open a new thread!