SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

How people can see so much and perceive so little.

It's the Dunning-Krueger Effect.

"One of the great challenges in this world is knowing enough about a subject to think you're right, but not enough about the subject to know you're wrong."

- Neil DeGrasse Tyson

[This message edited by Unhinged at 9:45 PM, Thursday, August 27th]

InkHulk, post #77:

It’s love. We love them. I loved her. I had 20 years of love. It wasn’t immediately obliterated. The great stories of the world are written about this insanely strong force that drives people to do the near impossible. Do you seriously not know that?

I think this needs to be challenged. Did the WS really love the betrayed partner though? They ran into the arms of another person and lived a double life behind the BS's back. That's not my definition of love.

I'd even go so far to say that if someone views that as love, they need to be harshly disabused of that notion.

And in your particular instance, @InkHulk, your XWW's actions may very well have put you and your family in PHYSICAL DANGER. You're a high income-earner (if I am recalling correctly that is) whereas your WW's AP POSOM was a real sleazebag--above and beyond having an affair with your XWW and on his own family that is. There is no telling of the lows they would have stooped to, the access your XWW would have granted to POSOM. Definitely not love as far as I am concerned, and I was actually in the wrong for not bringing this up on your threads.

[This message edited by WontBeFooledAgai at 10:04 PM, Thursday, August 27th]

I think this needs to be challenged. Did the WS really love the betrayed partner though? They ran into the arms of another person and lived a double life behind the BS's back. That's not my definition of love.

Inkhulk never mentioned his WS love in that post. It was his love for who he thought she was that kept him trying until she proved to him that the woman he loved never really existed. Love like that doesn't fade quickly for most.

I don’t know that my journey will end up in a romance novel anytime soon.

R is emotionally uphill both ways, it is a long, uneven path for the first several years.

I don’t think healing is especially romantic in and of itself either.

There was something unique about the moment where I had given up, and informed my wife that the pain of it all was just going to be too much. The farewell we had that day was both of us being okay with moving on. Maybe it was letting go of the outcome, letting go of the old M, I don’t know if I can define why we each of us kept reaching out to each other anyway. We kept being kind anyway. We kept talking about the kids, life and whatever else.

Maybe a spark of romance there that day kept us in this thing.

But again, there was still a ton of work we had to do.

Is it a romantic notion to give someone a last chance — who wasn’t expecting it?

I suppose it depends on the person being given the last chance.

As WWTL reminded me, no one is owed a final chance, and as Unhinged often said, infidelity is always a deal breaker.

I agree with those two sayings.

It is what we want and ask for in whatever deal we make to go forward is the start of R.

R isn’t enabling someone to continue to hurt or lie to you, it isn’t settling for less — to me, R is asking for more than ever (and if the M continues, it includes asking more of yourself as well).

I can say that ten years later, I think we found a way to always be who we were that day we thought it was over.

When I looked over my family, all together over the holidays last winter, I was really glad I found a way.

And these days, we got the romance stuff down.

I wouldn’t romanticize the concept of R — it is very hard work.

I’ll always understand why people walk away, and I can also understand the people who didn’t (as long as they built a relationship worthy of their time).

[This message edited by Oldwounds at 10:43 PM, Thursday, August 27th]