Responsibility, Blame, and Outcomes

[fooled once]

AFW <hug>

 

I thought your post was great!

 

There are way too many women who DO enter into affairs with married men who think they should be held harmless to the hurt they inflict on the BS.

 

I do believe that the anger should be most directed at the cheating spouse, as that is the person who took vows with the BS.

 

BUT the OW IS responsible for her actions; and those action are to have sex with a married man and possibly expose the INNOCENT BS to disease.

[jj33]

Again fooled once, its the WS who is exposing his W to disease. Rarely is the OW is sleeping with both of them.

 

The OWs responsibility is moral only and everyone's morals are different. If everyone agreed on that point, thered be no need for this foum.

[bentnotbroken]

But it isn't rare that the OW has been with more than that one man. The ow in my situation had been married before this H and has lovers before. I am sure Mr. Messy had others and they had others and since no one thought to use a condom, I was exposed to all of them. I know for a fact I am not the only BS to be exposed, I just didn't catch anything. Others haven't been so lucky.

 

There was a poster on another site I was on, she found out her H cheated when she lost her unborn child to an STD she was exposed to. To lose a child is horrific, but to find out that your H was cheating and that's why your child died.

 

I don't believe all people who have A's are having sex without protection, but we know enough of them are, because their are so many children born of A's.

[White Flower]

Hi WF,

 

I think, but can't say for sure, if my H had a thing for a blowup doll, I would just stick a pin in her, and that would the end of that...LOL!

 

On the stock market analogy... I'm not sure how that applies to two live people agreeing to do something together, that they know would, and unnecessarily so, hurt another.

 

Maybe if there were more attractive balloon dolls available, there would be fewer affairs.

 

Thanks for responding! : )

But it wouldn't be the end of it, you see. If he had a thing for anything other than you he would most certainly replace what you destroyed such as said doll.

 

It isn't always about two people agreeing on hurting another person. I always said that if exMM's W discovered me I would disappear over night. I was very concerned about her feelings and was always very careful of preventing a D-day. She never did discover me in a three year period.

 

Just because there is an accomplice in an A with an OW doesn't mean your H wouldn't find another outlet if there were no women available on the planet. If he was unhappy, he would find anything to fill that void. As a side note, it is more difficult to persuade another human being to be an accomplice in an A than an inanimate object; therefore, proving the MM's desire to overcome certain challenges, but I digress.

 

Look, most OWs don't sign up to agree to hurt a BS. They are persued, persuaded, convinced, and set up to fall in love. The CS is working both sides and usually targets both parties to be the victim in order to fulfill their selfish needs/desires.

 

And who said the pain is unneccessary? There are realms of reasons we can't neccessarily see now as to why we go through such trials. Maybe we need to know our spouses are missing something or that they're just plain a$$es. In any case, there is always a reason. I don't like it, you don't like it, but it's never going to stop happening.

[Trialbyfire]

AGW, nothing stops cheating from happening, IF your spouse is the type to self-indulge. That's fact, regardless of all the rationale behind "why" they cheat. Another fact is that predatory women exist and there's nothing you can do about it.

 

If you choose to remain in your marriage with someone who's self-indulgent, that's the choice that YOU make. That's fact, as well. If he can't control himself and chooses to cheat again, this is something you'll have to learn to either deal with whether you hold him responsible by walking or whether you choose to stay. When people stay with cheaters, in essence you enable their cheating, since there are no consequences for actions taken.

[White Flower]

The number of women who enter affairs in a predatory manner is few and far between no matter what your lying cheating husband may tell you.

 

What a load of crap, IMHO

 

Look at this board alone. Can you really tell me that each OW didn't know the man was married?

 

BS

How does the fact that there are many OW/MM R's prove the OWs were predatory? Are you saying that merely knowing they were M dictates the OWs were predatory?

[White Flower]

AFW <hug>

 

I thought your post was great!

 

There are way too many women who DO enter into affairs with married men who think they should be held harmless to the hurt they inflict on the BS.

 

I do believe that the anger should be most directed at the cheating spouse, as that is the person who took vows with the BS.

 

BUT the OW IS responsible for her actions; and those action are to have sex with a married man and possibly expose the INNOCENT BS to disease.

I will agree with you here. All parties involved should be testing themselves on a regular basis.

[Trialbyfire]

I will agree with you here. All parties involved should be testing themselves on a regular basis.

Why would a betrayed wife test herself if she's unaware her spouse is cheating? Monogamy and fidelity are synonymous with marital vows.

[White Flower]

Why would a betrayed wife test herself if she's unaware her spouse is cheating? Monogamy and fidelity are synonymous with marital vows.

You are right on this and I should have been more thoughtful in my post. A suspecting BS should have themself tested.

[bentnotbroken]

You are right on this and I should have been more thoughtful in my post. A suspecting BS should have themself tested.

 

 

Or as soon as you find out.

[Reggie]

How does the fact that there are many OW/MM R's prove the OWs were predatory? Are you saying that merely knowing they were M dictates the OWs were predatory?

 

 

Of course entering a relationship with a married person is predatory. The OW/OM is intentioanlly interfering with the WS's familial relationship.The Ws's is messing it up, as well.

What type of person with a conscience has such a dishonest relationship? A predator, for one.

[White Flower]

Of course entering a relationship with a married person is predatory. The OW/OM is intentioanlly interfering with the WS's familial relationship.The Ws's is messing it up, as well.

What type of person with a conscience has such a dishonest relationship? A predator, for one.

I think we have a contradiction of terms here. Succumbing to a MM's advances is not the same as preying on his attention and affections.

 

MM to this day blames himself for persuing me. I will usually then take blame for succumbing to his advances but it was his behavior that was predatory.

[Montclair0011]

This is kind of an interesting topic to me as I believe my husband was one of those rare "lured" away by a calculating OW types. Back about four years ago I came home and he told me that, surprise, surprise we had received a phone call from an old friend who had stopped talking to us about 10 years previously (for trivial reasons). We had at one time been good friends and she and her husband had attended our wedding and we had attended hers. I also remember my husband telling me that he had briefly dated her in college and she was his friend when we met.

 

Anyway, when this woman called up, it was with the news that she had gotten divorced a few years previously and was feeling lonely and wanted to "reconnect with old friends." She invited my husband up to a college reunion, saying mutual friends he had not seen in years would be there. She lives many hours away from us in a rural area near the college they both attended. For some reason I could not go and I let him go alone because I had always trusted him and I did not think anything would happen.

 

I did get kind of a weird feeling though and I remember that I asked him to stay at a hotel instead of at her house. He agreed, although he did not think it was a big deal to stay at her house. When he came back he said she was OK, but looked older ("everything falling down") and that none of the people he had hoped to see had shown up.

 

My marriage had had some major problems but I did not think it beyond saving--I've seen much worse ones continue. My husband and I had lots in commom and a child, etc. But things started getting out of wack from that point forward and my husband suddenly started saying he did not know if he wanted to be married anymore. I knew something was up but at first I did not think it was possible to have an affair with someone living that far away. Lucky for me I was married to one of the few geniuses who could figure out how to pull something like that off.

 

Eventually he moved into an apartment and she had furniture moved down to furnish it. The plan was she would get a job down here and move in, but she's never managed to do that (she's got a great job that would be difficult to find here) so they have a LDR. I've heard she's hugly jelous and worried that he will find someone else. She's done crazy things like break into his email account and erase everything. But he's stayed with her.

 

I was devastated and I started going to therapy. My therapist encouraged me to focus my anger on my husband, not on the OW. Also, I was not at first sure what her role was, as he was for a period, just claiming that they were friends and she was helping him sort out his confusion. At first I thought maybe that was true, that she was just a friend. But then she gave him some books about leaving "toxic relationships" and I realized in horror that she was couching him to leave me.

 

I found her ex-husband through the internet and he and I had a long email exchange. He gave me some insights into the situation and her true personality. Evidently the OW had had an affair with a guy at work (an abusive jerk it turned out) and had dummped her husband (a really nice guy) who had been as devestated as I was. But, by the time I contacted him he had moved on, was no longer angry, and was doing well with a new girlfriend in a new town. I think it was helpful and healing for both of us to discuss this though. He described her in terms that made her sound very narrsissictc (which is what I remembered from when we were friends--she wanted to be on a pedestle). She was very calculating and high drama and often blew hot and cold and had no problem interfiering in other people's relationships. As soon as they got divorced and he left town, the new guy moved in but that did not work out and she was suddenly alone in a rural place with limited opporutnity for dates. Her ex-husband, who was still friendly with her family heard that she had been dating lots of jerks.

 

So she changed her tactics and went fishing for her old friends. Because of the influence of my therapist I had focused on my husband (who was far from innocent and has major anger managment issues but I don't think had cheated before) but somewhere down the line I realized that this woman had basically plotted the whole thing out. I got so angry I wanted to call her or write to her or drive up there and confront her.

 

I did none of these because I was instead trying to focus on what was left of my own life. But then one day SHE called me! She was crying and told me that this was so hard on her too since we all had been friends and she wanted to know what we could do "to make things better for all of us" She had no idea on this, but she was expecting ME to come up with a solution so that we all could be comfortable with what was good for HER. As soon as I let her know that there was nothing that would make me feel good about her being with my husband she lost interest in the conversation.

 

So, anyway, there are some classic homewrecker scumbags out there, but I'm guessing they are few and far between. As I've posted elsewhere I later got involved with a married man myself while he was separated and inadvertently ended up being the OW for a short period of time when he moved back in with his wife. So I've seen some of what it's like from the other side, and I agree that the bulk of the anger should be directed to the HUSBAND, not the OW. But had this woman not called and gone after my husband, I'm not sure he would have gone with someone else or left me. I might still be married.

[White Flower]

Oh, "succumbing". Well, that is different. For a minute there I thought you had a say in all this. But, what with the drugging and pursuing, you had no responsibility. Sorry, back to your trance, now.

So, you're preturbed that I've clarified the difference between predator and prey? And did I not say I take the blame for succumbing to his advances? Of course I had a choice, but having a choice to give in to a persuer still is not the same as being predatory.

 

No drugs and no trances. Please be real if you're going to argue a point.

[jj33]

Fooled Once I will say it again. Its the married person's responsibility to keep their vows. Just because a single person says yes to a married person's advances that does not make them predatory.

 

You may want to believe that the OWs are out their stalking your mates but in 99% of the cases that is not true.

 

There have always been opportunities to cheat and there have always been men who will take them. No need to tar and feather women who succumb to the advances. They are not the ones who are married. They are not the ones who have a duty of fidelity.

 

You may not like to hear that, but its the truth.

[OWoman]

I am not sure what is the point of saying OMs/OWs spouses are bottom-feeders and not so bright....

 

To make the BS feel better about themselves.

 

BUT the OW IS responsible for her actions; and those action are to have sex with a married man and possibly expose the INNOCENT BS to disease.

 

Oh, I own that I had sex with a MM - it was great! Why would I have a problem taking responsibility for that?

 

As for possibly exposing an "innocent" BS to disease - I take responsibility for my sexual health very seriously. If the BW got any disease it would not have been from me, but from her own past indiscretions. In fact, precisely because I DIDN'T know who all she may have slept with, I took far more precautions and tested far more often than I would have done had I just been having sex with some random ONS.

 

Why would a betrayed wife test herself if she's unaware her spouse is cheating? Monogamy and fidelity are synonymous with marital vows.

 

Attitudes like that make the continued spread of STDs - including HIV - among the married unsurprising. The statistics alone should cause any spouse to have themselves tested, after all - someone out there got infected despite being sexually exclusive themselves, so how could they be so sure it would never happen to them? Unless both they and their spouse were raised in clinical isolation, and never exposed to any other form of transmission, the only way to know if you have the virus (or the antibodies, depending on which STD) is to test. With window periods stretching for years, it's quite conceivable that that hottie your spouse shagged before you got together left a keepsake - or that one of your Xs did.

 

I'm happily married now and sexually exclusive, but that's not going to stop me testing or looking out for my sexual health in other ways. I've had friends die from AIDS and it's not something I'm prepared to be smugly complacent, arrogant or ignorant in the face of.

[OWoman]

So, you're preturbed that I've clarified the difference between predator and prey?

 

Yes. Logic is deeply disturbing to some posters. It makes their arguments melt like a wicked witch under a bucket of water.

[OWoman]

And who said the pain is unneccessary?

 

No one would grow unless provoked by pain - it would be far too comfortable to remain where one is.

 

I think some pain is inevitable in any R. Unless one truly is going for the least desirable person on the planet, chances are someone else has their eye on them, too. You win, someone else loses. Collateral damage. If the possibility that someone, somewhere, might possibly get hurt by your actions was to be a guideline for our behaviour, no one would ever do anything - and if you balance the odds, an undiscovered A causes far less collateral damage than the car accident inadvertantly caused trying to avoid some kid on a bicycle who swerved out of their driveway into the road without looking - and a whole bunch more love and pleasure and good stuff. Certainly, in terms of the pleasure / pain ratio, my A came out way ahead on the pleasure. Pain for one - with the opportunity for growth and some new pleasure, vs lots of love and pleasure for many many others. Having elderly members of his family phone me up to tell me they're so happy that he's "back in the family" and how thrilled they are to reconnect with him and the kids has been one of the most heartwarming aspects. Hearing the kids laugh. Seeing him being totally carefree and silly at times. Having friends stop by who'd "lost touch" (been scared off by the xBW). The rewards are many, balanced against a little bit of soul-searching by an abuser? No contest, IMO! I'd do it again in a heartbeat!

[RecordProducer]

I am so sorry for your pain. I haven't been an OW or cheated on (not that I know of), but I am a wife, so I am more inclined to identify with you.

So you agree that if women (who know in advance that a man is married -- which are the OWs I was writing about) were not willing to have affairs with married men, men couldn't have affairs. Good. That was my point.

But that shouldn't be a point that concerns you as a wife. If your husband made advances to a hundred women and they all said NO, isn't he still a cheater? In the best case scenario, the spouse resist any external temptation. The OW is guilty, but it's your spouse who betrayed YOU. There are many bad people in this world, but you were hoping that your husband shouldn't be one of them. The OW's slot can be filled with any woman, but your husband's slot was reserved just for your marriage.

[OpenBook]

If your husband made advances to a hundred women and they all said NO, isn't he still a cheater? In the best case scenario, the spouse resist any external temptation. The OW is guilty, but it's your spouse who betrayed YOU. There are many bad people in this world, but you were hoping that your husband shouldn't be one of them. The OW's slot can be filled with any woman, but your husband's slot was reserved just for your marriage.

 

And this right here is why I believe so many BS's focus on the OW. It's so much easier than acknowledging their own H's horrible betrayal. Well said, RP!!

[blinded]

OP- you're very articulate and paint a picture perfectly of your situation (just like your avatar). Are you absolutely 100% certain that this is your H's first and only affair? Will you be making a more calls to a few more spouses of OW?

[Mr. Lucky]

And this right here is why I believe so many BS's focus on the OW. It's so much easier than acknowledging their own H's horrible betrayal. Well said, RP!!

Especially true when the BS stays in and tries to repair the marriage. Things morph from "How could you do this to me?" to "How could the two of you do this to our marriage?" and finally to "How could she do this to us?". Maybe it's part of the recovery process...

 

Mr. Lucky

[herenow]

I read part of this thread on the OW forum, but not all of it. Here is my opinion:

 

I do believe that the person to blame for an affair is the one that is cheating on their spouse. I don't have any thoughts about if the OW cares about the pain I was caused by the affair, because she isn't part of my life and her feelings aren't my concern.

 

Same goes for the pain she was caused by the affair. Not my problem. And because she was fully aware that she was having an affair with a married man, she can't blame my H either. She is responsible for the pain she is feeling. If an OW doesn't want to take responsibility for the pain that her actions have caused then she can't blame anyone but herself when she is the one feeling the pain. Can't have it both ways. JMO.

 

So many OW come here complaining about the MM when the affair is over. I don't get it. The OW already knew he was a cheater and a liar based on the fact that he was having the affair in the first place. So when the OW experiences pain because she made the choice (assuming she knew) to get involved with a MM, who is at fault for her pain? IMO, the only person she can blame is herself.

 

If the OW is unwilling to take responsibility in her part of the BW's pain, then why would she place blame on anyone else for her own pain? To expect the MM to care about the OW and her pain is unreasonable when the MM knows that the OW doesn't care about the pain he is causing his own wife.

[jj33]

Thanks RP that was exactly what I meant. Its the old platonic question (just like the tree falling in the forest that noone hears)

[herenow]

Contrary to what many are saying here, most BW do take blame for their part in the problems in their marriage, but how can they be blamed for an affair when they aren't even aware that it's happening? Makes no sense. Use that logic you are talking about.

 

Taking responsibility for problems in a marriage is very different than accepting responsibility for a spouse having an affair. There are other ways of dealing with martial problems, not all of then include another OW or OM. In no way is a BS responsible for an affair because they weren't given the choice.