Did anyone watch the show Betrayal last night? All the cheating spouses were "outed"! It showed the devastated lBS & children. It hurt to watch it (though nowhere as much as it would have 10 or so years ago). I wonder if any of our cheating spouses watched it. I often wonder how they can watch similar things in movies. Does it affect them? Or are they just broken people who see the bad in others but never in themselves.
Betrayal is a difficult thing to get past. I have been betrayed several times by people I trusted in business & sometimes even by friends. How do you get past betrayal. I mean the really emotional stuff that ats t you & keeps you awake at night?
My X won't patronize a restaurant because the owner did x, y, & z to his ex-wife, who is a friend of his. X did the EXACT same things to me. I honestly don't think he remembers.
I think cheating spouses see themselves as different than others who do this. My W said "I've done everything possible to save this marriage" I almost gagged. I said "if nagging is everything then yes you did!" They see the "evil" that the LBS has done to them e.g. "you weren't there for me emotionally" etc as a valid reason to go elsewhere. They legitimize their actions to make them seem moral and as something that either could not have been helped (by them, anyway) or that old fave, "it just happened" Again, "I didn't plan it...it just happened". Of course, that all time favourite the "soul mate" is something that they see as fate, nothing to do with their choices. I think cheating spouses are very good at seeing the speck in someone else's eye but missing the log in their own...Hmmm, where have I heard that before?
as far as i know my x didnt cheat until after the BD. i'm mind reading here, but i believe in her mind the marriage ended at BD (or even before) so she didnt really cheat.
people have all sorts of methods to justify their decisions/actions. and for some people its easier to manufacture excuses than to man-up to responsibilities and repercussions.
"In a ham and eggs breakfast, the hen is involved, but the pig is committed".
My ex in her own little world has rationalized and justified her betrayal to our marriage - it wasn't a reflection on her values or morals at all. Her thought is that we were really never meant to be together in the first place and what happened was just inevitable. Luckily, that thought process no longer has any hold on me whatsoever. Onward and upward.
I heard all the same words as Wii - "we never meant for it to happen", "if the circumstances were different - you'd really like her too", "you were never really there for me" & " were soulmates" hmm... Never a church goer - they went together for the next 2 years saying"God forgives even if you don't"
Oh well - it really doesn't hurt anymore but still leaves me scratching my head,
My ex counseled a friend not to cheat on his wife - about a year before he cheated on me! Go figure.
I think it is part of the disease, that they think it doesn't apply to them, and that they have to come up with rationalizations to justify their irrational behavior.
That being said - I no longer feel betrayed by my ex's affairs. I'm able now to look back and think, maybe he just needed to be somewhere else/ with someone else. I'm not even upset anymore by his crazy putdowns (I walk too heavy? Really????).
What I DO feel betrayed by, is his financial abandonment of our adult children, leaving me solely on the hook for thousands and thousands of dollars helping them, when he makes 3 times my income. His selfishness in this situation is not only a betrayal of me, but of our children.
I've gotten over it; glad I'm not married to a cheater anymore. But I'm still upset over what it's done to the kids. Both are very cynical and jaded. D13 was telling me this weekend that she thinks most people are cheaters like X and OW and there are a small group of people like me that won't cheat. I named a bunch of family friends that are faithful and married, and she says well that's an exception to the rule or something...Just sad....
