Trust and Serial Cheaters

[serial muse]

Just like someone said "the best prediction for future behavior is one's past behavior". I wish I had realized that fact earlier in life.

 

Ditto.

 

[Woggle]

Are you talking to me? I understand you would feel that way and I'm not insulted. I won't try to explain the difference in me in comparison to who I was 9 years ago.

 

But I think Frannie has a point too, about one who has cheated and now knows better. How do I explain the growth process you go through when being in a situation such as mine was? I can't. I'd have to write a novel! I just know what I need to know for me.

 

I was talking to somebody else but it can apply to any cheater. Being a cheater says something about a persons character.

[serial muse]

Are you talking to me? I understand you would feel that way and I'm not insulted. I won't try to explain the difference in me in comparison to who I was 9 years ago.

 

But I think Frannie has a point too, about one who has cheated and now knows better. How do I explain the growth process you go through when being in a situation such as mine was? I can't. I'd have to write a novel! I just know what I need to know for me.

 

 

Well, I'm definitely gunshy about dating someone who has cheated in the past, after my marriage. I don't think it's necessarily a dealbreaker, but I'd want more information about what that soul-searching has involved before I was willing to trust someone. It's the rationalization that I find dangerous - it's so easy to tell yourself that you had good reasons to do something at the time. But such reasons could always pop up again - and yet, to me, the point is really that there is NEVER a good reason to cheat. THere are reasons to leave a relationship, yes, but not to cheat.

 

So if my current SO had cheated once in the past, but is now willing to flat-out acknowledge, not that something happened in the past that drove them to it (nonsense) but instead that they made a MISTAKE and they know it's not fair to rationalize that - THEN I would trust that they've really done the soul-searching they claim to have done.

 

Any hint that they still think it was justified, however, is a huge red flag. Because it's the justification, as I said, that is the problem. You can rationalize, justify anything - and if that's what you're prone to do, you'll do it again. If you accept responsibility, and accept that doing such a thing was not okay under any circumstances and you absolutely regret it, then that's a different story.

[Izzar]

Well I hope I can prove you both wrong about the behavior prediction. The man I am with now was married when we met. He is now divorced.

Time will tell. I do trust him 110% & at the cost of sounding cocky, I feel like the exception. Sorry guys, like I said, I'll be here to prove that behavior theory wrong.

[movinon05]

No offense but if any woman said she was the real her I would run. There are certain women that seem to have a new identity every few years and they are nothing but trouble.

 

LOL!!!!!!!! I don't walk around telling people they're meeting the real me! I just know they're meeting a better person than I was back then. Everyone grows and learns. I don't have a new identity every few years!! I know I'm better every few years!! Because I'm constantly learning about myself and trying to better myself. I'm not saying that with a big head either! I just know I'm a better person.

[yousaveme]

If this was for me. Your right I didnt have the BALLS to leave.

 

As far as a red flag for any man. My past is MY PAST. but that doesnt direct my future.

 

 

Noy trying to insult you but the fact that you did not have the integrity to end things instead of going behind his back should be a red flag for any man.

[Freedom Now]

LOL!!!!!!!! I don't walk around telling people they're meeting the real me! I just know they're meeting a better person than I was back then. Everyone grows and learns. I don't have a new identity every few years!! I know I'm better every few years!! Because I'm constantly learning about myself and trying to better myself. I'm not saying that with a big head either! I just know I'm a better person.

 

And I am sure you were not a serial cheater in your relationship back then. I think one time cheating is a big NO NO, but serial cheating is hopeless.

[movinon05]

Well, I'm definitely gunshy about dating someone who has cheated in the past, after my marriage. I don't think it's necessarily a dealbreaker, but I'd want more information about what that soul-searching has involved before I was willing to trust someone. It's the rationalization that I find dangerous - it's so easy to tell yourself that you had good reasons to do something at the time. But such reasons could always pop up again - and yet, to me, the point is really that there is NEVER a good reason to cheat. THere are reasons to leave a relationship, yes, but not to cheat.

 

So if my current SO had cheated once in the past, but is now willing to flat-out acknowledge, not that something happened in the past that drove them to it (nonsense) but instead that they made a MISTAKE and they know it's not fair to rationalize that - THEN I would trust that they've really done the soul-searching they claim to have done.

 

Any hint that they still think it was justified, however, is a huge red flag. Because it's the justification, as I said, that is the problem. You can rationalize, justify anything - and if that's what you're prone to do, you'll do it again. If you accept responsibility, and accept that doing such a thing was not okay under any circumstances and you absolutely regret it, then that's a different story.

 

Well that's just it! I have never said I was right. I have said I was wrong and never justified my actions. And if I ever found myself in an unhappy R, I would get out, out of respect for that person and myself. I would not look for someone else to make me happy and leave in the way I did before. Simply because I won't put myself or anyone else through that again. Its just not worth it!

[Woggle]

LOL!!!!!!!! I don't walk around telling people they're meeting the real me! I just know they're meeting a better person than I was back then. Everyone grows and learns. I don't have a new identity every few years!! I know I'm better every few years!! Because I'm constantly learning about myself and trying to better myself. I'm not saying that with a big head either! I just know I'm a better person.

 

I don't know you but so many women seem to reinvent themselves every few years and to me that is so fake. It is like they have no core at all. There are no deeply held beliefs or values but an empty void that keeos getting filled with crap.

[serial muse]

I think that taking responsibility for one's own behavior - without trying to pass it off onto others, or explain it away by circumstances, or otherwise lighten your load out of fear of self-confrontation - is a sign of maturity.

 

That is the kind of soul-searching that needs to happen for a cheater to reform. Honest owning of one's own actions - without trying to blame anyone else, including your spouse, family, friends, depression, etc. etc. Just look that responsibility in the face, feel the full force of the pain and regret, and let the experience change you.

 

Find the courage to TRULY face yourself, accept what you see, be brave enough to make active decisions rather than passively letting "circumstances" decide things for you, and then go forward with your life.

 

Perhaps I'm being a pollyanna, but I do think that that kind of deep change is possible. It's called growing up.

[NoIDidn't]

NoIDidn't your posts are so true about the serial cheater. My ex was the most charming man you could meet. Totally controlling and critical behind closed doors. When he would cheat somehow it was all my fault that he was lead astray. I told him each time, fine but why didn't you decide to leave me and go with the other - never had an answer for that one. The reason is because he didn't care who he hurt to have what he wanted. Well we are apart for many years now and I hear his wife has endured one affair after another from him. He will never change.

 

Just like someone said "the best prediction for future behavior is one's past behavior". I wish I had realized that fact earlier in life.

 

 

I hate to give the impression that I know everything about serial cheaters. My dad and I had a very close relationship until recently. He told me all of his tricks and told me how to avoid a "man like [him]". Somehow, I got the feeling that he was ashamed of what he was but felt powerless to change it.

 

Most of his friends were not serial cheaters, so over time he lost contact with them. He was so disrespectful of his marriages. He would take his lady friends to his friends' home in front of their families and wives and wondered why no one wanted him around after a while.

 

I don't know if this is the case with all or most serial cheaters, but I find them to be generally above average in looks. My dad is the classic tall, dark, and handsome. It has to be hard to not take a good-looking, clean-shaven, well-off, well-read and well-spoken, obviously well educated (even if only in the school of life) man at his word when you can't SEE anything wrong with him.

 

Also, don't get me wrong, but I really love my dad (I just find it impossible to respect him). I feel sorry for him that he is too afraid to own up to his misdeeds. Even though I wasn't his W, his cheating has hurt me (and any child in his care) deeply. He re-opened the wound when he helped me catch my own husband cheating and told me to "get over it" because "all men do it" and just to "wait until he comes to his senses". But the worse was "you need to get over yourself and expecting him to be faithful, he is just a man and you are just ONE woman". I wanted to go into his gun closet and SHOOT him. Several times.

[movinon05]

I don't know you but so many women seem to reinvent themselves every few years and to me that is so fake. It is like they have no core at all. There are no deeply held beliefs or values but an empty void that keeos getting filled with crap.

 

Maybe some women do that. But I don't. I am not reinventing myself. Lets just say, I am taking my original core values that I had long before the A, and not reinventing them, but brought myself back to them with the knowledge I have now. I was always a good person, but obviously got lost. I now know myself better and have a better sense of who I am and how I want to live my life. And to tell you the truth, I hate to say it, but I will. If it wasn't for that A, I might never have gotten to this point.

[serial muse]

Maybe some women do that. But I don't. I am not reinventing myself. Lets just say, I am taking my original core values that I had long before the A, and not reinventing them, but brought myself back to them with the knowledge I have now. I was always a good person, but obviously got lost. I now know myself better and have a better sense of who I am and how I want to live my life. And to tell you the truth, I hate to say it, but I will. If it wasn't for that A, I might never have gotten to this point.

 

 

You know what? I think that's fair - sometimes it does take a deep shakeup to jar us into awareness. I'm not glad my exH cheated, God knows, but I know it did show me things in a new way.

 

But the point is, future SO's are going to want to know if such a shakeup is really going to be necessary for you to continue to grow. I'm not saying you can't take something positive out of the fact that you've been through a big event, but it's also fair for any future SO to have one eye on the future and wonder whether the fact that you see value in your A means you're using that kind of emotional shakeup as a crutch for growth. The question is, could you have gotten to where you are in life anyway, or to an equally self-aware place?

 

Personally, I think yes. That is not to say you should excoriate yourself constantly for something you want to leave behind you. But it is to say, probably leave it behind you, rather than converting it into a jump-start of sorts.

[movinon05]

You know what? I think that's fair - sometimes it does take a deep shakeup to jar us into awareness. I'm not glad my exH cheated, God knows, but I know it did show me things in a new way.

 

But the point is, future SO's are going to want to know if such a shakeup is really going to be necessary for you to continue to grow. I'm not saying you can't take something positive out of the fact that you've been through a big event, but it's also fair for any future SO to have one eye on the future and wonder whether the fact that you see value in your A means you're using that kind of emotional shakeup as a crutch for growth. The question is, could you have gotten to where you are in life anyway, or to an equally self-aware place?

 

Personally, I think yes. That is not to say you should excoriate yourself constantly for something you want to leave behind you. But it is to say, probably leave it behind you, rather than converting it into a jump-start of sorts.

 

Well I'm going to be as honest as I can and answer your questions. Because in truth, I always thought I knew myself, but I was just going with the flow. I put up with a lot in my M and put my happiness on the back burner to keep everyone else happy. The MM, I guess, came along at a very vulnerable point in my life and I honestly was not looking for a way out in that way. I never even contemplated having an A.

 

I don't use the A as a crutch. I use it as a very big learning tool, that brought me back to myself little by little. But I had to learn the hard way and face facts about myself, but more importantly, try to fix the things that needed fixing in my own life, find the things about myself and finally trust in those original core values, and for one thing, stop putting myself second, like I did in my M and my A. I'm finding this so hard to explain, its just an inner knowing. But the fact remains that if it wasn't for the A, I might have just continued to live that life I had before, always compromising myself for everyone else's happiness and probably keep spinning my wheels, because that's what I realize I was doing.

 

The shakeup happened. I don't need anymore shakeups. As far as I'm concerned, anything that happens in the future cannot possibly be worse than what I went through. Most importantly, I won't put myself in that position again.

[serial muse]

Well I'm going to be as honest as I can and answer your questions. Because in truth, I always thought I knew myself, but I was just going with the flow. I put up with a lot in my M and put my happiness on the back burner to keep everyone else happy. The MM, I guess, came along at a very vulnerable point in my life and I honestly was not looking for a way out in that way. I never even contemplated having an A.

 

I don't use the A as a crutch. I use it as a very big learning tool, that brought me back to myself little by little. But I had to learn the hard way and face facts about myself, but more importantly, try to fix the things that needed fixing in my own life, find the things about myself and finally trust in those original core values, and for one thing, stop putting myself second, like I did in my M and my A. I'm finding this so hard to explain, its just an inner knowing. But the fact remains that if it wasn't for the A, I might have just continued to live that life I had before, always compromising myself for everyone else's happiness and probably keep spinning my wheels, because that's what I realize I was doing.

 

The shakeup happened. I don't need anymore shakeups. As far as I'm concerned, anything that happens in the future cannot possibly be worse than what I went through. Most importantly, I won't put myself in that position again.

 

As I said, I think that's fair enough, MO. I think learning from the past and choosing not to put oneself in a bad situation again is a reasonable goal.

 

Incidentally, I think that all parties in an affair need to do the kind of honest, fearless self-evaluation that I described (which I still struggle with, but do believe in) in order to ultimately move on. I say this because, reading on these boards, I'm always staggered to see how many former BS have now become OW, which I think can't be a coincidence - and, having been through what I've been through, I admit that I can understand it, to an extent.

 

To me, it seems to have something to do with stumbling forward in a haze of pain and ultimately turning those lowered expectations and that disillusionment inward, rather than facing the situation honestly, seeing yourself clearly but also keeping parts that are external, external - and finally stepping past it for good. JMO.

[movinon05]

As I said, I think that's fair enough, MO. I think learning from the past and choosing not to put oneself in a bad situation again is a reasonable goal.

 

Incidentally, I think that all parties in an affair need to do the kind of honest, fearless self-evaluation that I described (which I still struggle with, but do believe in) in order to ultimately move on. I say this because, reading on these boards, I'm always staggered to see how many former BS have now become OW, which I think can't be a coincidence - and, having been through what I've been through, I admit that I can understand it, to an extent.

 

To me, it seems to have something to do with stumbling forward in a haze of pain and ultimately turning those lowered expectations and that disillusionment inward, rather than facing the situation honestly, seeing yourself clearly but also keeping parts that are external, external - and finally stepping past it for good. JMO.

 

In an almost perfect world, and I say "almost" because it would be perfect if there weren't As, but in an almost perfect world, both parties would self-evaluate themselves. Its just a fact that not everyone will do that or ever feel there is anything to improve on. And that's pretty sad, because they will continue making bad decisions.

 

And I agree with your assessment of stumbling forward in a haze of pain and turning toward lowered expectations. Until one really evaluates themselves and makes an effort, they will continue on that path. We're told at a very young age not to put our hand on the stove because we will get burned. Yet, in a childlike sense, we touch that stove anyway. We are either grazed or burned very badly. If we are burned badly, we know not to touch that stove again. How many times do the grazers have to keep putting their hand on that stove until it burns enough to learn their lesson?

[Woggle]

I am not judgemental and narrow-minded but I do have my standards. Any man should have high standards because if we did then we would save ourselves a whole lot of headaches.

[movinon05]

I am not judgemental and narrow-minded but I do have my standards. Any man should have high standards because if we did then we would save ourselves a whole lot of headaches.

 

So I gather you lump all OW in the same category/the same boat?

[Salicious Crumb]

So I gather you lump all OW in the same category/the same boat?

 

I don't know about him, but I'd say there are 2 categories of OW/OM.

 

1) those that go into a relationship with someone married not knowing they are married

 

and

 

2) those that know the person is married beforehand

 

The former is understandable as there are so many liars in the world.

 

The latter...well..I don't think I need to say it.

[movinon05]

I don't know about him, but I'd say there are 2 categories of OW/OM.

 

1) those that go into a relationship with someone married not knowing they are married

 

and

 

2) those that know the person is married beforehand

 

The former is understandable as there are so many liars in the world.

 

The latter...well..I don't think I need to say it.

 

Ah! Well then, I'm guessing you think the latter should walk around with a Scarlett A on their chest branding them for life?

[Woggle]

So I gather you lump all OW in the same category/the same boat?

 

No but unless they do some serious changes it is damn near impossible to have a happy and healthy relationship with this type of woman. I am sorry but it is the truth.

[movinon05]

No but unless they do some serious changes it is damn near impossible to have a happy and healthy relationship with this type of woman. I am sorry but it is the truth.

 

Well I'm glad to hear you believe its at least "possible" to change. Even if it seems "damn near impossible."

[Woggle]

Well I'm glad to hear you believe its at least "possible" to change. Even if it seems "damn near impossible."

 

It is like a drug user. Unless they admit they have a problem that they helped cause and they take the steps to change they will be nothing but drama to another person. I don't think all drug users are bad but I would never get involved with one.

[movinon05]

It is like a drug user. Unless they admit they have a problem that they helped cause and they take the steps to change they will be nothing but drama to another person. I don't think all drug users are bad but I would never get involved with one.

 

See now, this is where I have to disagree. You make it sound like someone who cheats has an addiction to cheating. That is FAR from the truth.

 

I really have to run out, but I'm just going to use my situation as an example, without all the details, and then go. My exMM has, from what I hear now, cheated before he even met me, and I do believe he's at it again.

 

I, however, cheated with him. Now, I'm speaking for me only here. Doesn't it occur to you that I might realize how much hurt I caused my children being so stupid that I would never ever ever do that to them again? Does it occur to you that maybe I learned soooooooo much about myself in the process, that I have no desire to go there again? To hurt anyone else for my own selfish gains again? To even PUT myself in that same situation again when I know what I know now? I assure you, in my mind, NO MAN is worth that to me, to make me lose myself or my children for love. NO MAN!!!!!!!!

 

So I say to you, no, it is not always an addiction. I would NEVER bring that miserable drama into our lives again.

[Salicious Crumb]

Ah! Well then, I'm guessing you think the latter should walk around with a Scarlett A on their chest branding them for life?

 

You said that...not me.