Accidental Affairs

[Sauron]

How do you know you are all happy? I could bet when you are with oen ro the to her the person left at home isn you and i would hazard a rough guess to say you might just be wrong about everyone being happy this relationship....... three way situation is destined for heartache all the way round especially for the kids how do you explain it to them or you dont you lead them to believe what about your status? what are you teaching them about love? to have a threesome and be happy or just lie about your fidelity and expect them to follow what you yourself dont believe in? doesnt work and it also teaches the girls in your family if you have daughters or even sons exactly how to treat a woman ?exactly like you are that is what your daughters or sons will follow.I am sorry to judge your situation and that is what i am judging the situation that is going to cause heartache for all....my daughters are still damaged from my exes affair.....and its horrible to have to deal with i wont go into details but my second oldest daughter has ptsd from the whole situation and i am partly responsible because i broke down when i was needed by my daughters but between me and my ex he also is responsible........he didnt stick around to help make it alright.....dont kid yourself every one is happy .....remedy the situation before you cause long term damage.....sorry i was so blunt.....had to be

 

 

thsi post upset me in all honesty the blase stance you have on yrou situation....cause and effect....im off sorry if i offended you....good luck in life and love and i send all my vibes i can to your family they may remain unscathed by total disregard of cause and effect.....seek counselling i urge you too..........deb

 

No offense taken. I am not asking anybody to validate, except, approve or make any judgements about my lifestyle, although many have and they intended much offense. I actually ended up here by accident. I posted in the OW/OM forum and it was moved here and I got a very warm welcome. My kids are grown ups, I supported my family, they have lives of their own. I have a life of my own, well 2 actually. Anyway, you were bit hard to follow, but it is what it is. Thank you for your comments.

[Dreamless Sleep]

Accidental is a copout that one uses to deflect responsibility. It fails to respect the emotional contract with the other party in a relationship.

 

I don't accidently pick up other peoples wallets, or their wife. When my STBXW tried to explain away her behaviour she used the 'accidental' line.

No way. It was deliberate and sneaky.

 

If you are looking for a way to allow yourself to forgive your spouse and her behaviour then follow the drivel you linked. If you are looking to defend your own stray, go tell someone else.

[todreaminblue]

No offense taken. I am not asking anybody to validate, except, approve or make any judgements about my lifestyle, although many have and they intended much offense. I actually ended up here by accident. I posted in the OW/OM forum and it was moved here and I got a very warm welcome. My kids are grown ups, I supported my family, they have lives of their own. I have a life of my own, well 2 actually. Anyway, you were bit hard to follow, but it is what it is. Thank you for your comments.

 

I am glad you didnt take offense, sorry it wasnt clear to you in what i posted.I get that feeling that a lot of what i post may be hard to decipher.i am happy to hear you supported your family.i dont agree with having two relationships at once.After being in that situation with my ex I had no idea it was happening and considering he was sleeping with me and her at th same time i felt absolutely mortified.I waited alot for him to come home even on christmas day he said he got a flat tyre and i had my mum staying with me.We were waiting to eb picked up when i eventually did find out abotu the affair and pushed resolution all the waiting around for him to shwo and hsi coldness and inability to be there for me when i was facing difficulties with my son in fact getting aggressive when i asked for a lift back from the courthouse made sense all the coldness the confusion was gone from my mind on what i was doing wrong ...........i dont see how either woman would be happy in a double sleeping together situation i could get graphic here with my thoughts what i felt what i remember but i wont.....thats why i dont understand you being happy with this either

 

dont you feel like you are betraying one of them? do you love them equally and if you do .....dont you feel you are short changing both? i am curious i would like to know.......i couldnt short change someone myself but i am that way because i choose to be that way.I know a lot of good men wouldnt short change someone who loved them implicitly they would give it back and be faithful to one......again this is my opinion maybe thats old fashioned of me to feel this way but im a retro chick so i guess thats old fashioned...or maybe even conservative but thats me and i respect you are you....deb

[Hawaii50]

... is this like a "Slips, trips, and falls" thing?

[Radagast]

 

The author equates "unintentional" on the onset with "accidental":

"It is an accident because neither one was looking for anything at all when it began and neither had any intention of even getting involved personally with each other."

 

At some point it DID become intentional!

 

 

When I was young and single and met my future wife I asked her out on a date. At the beginning of our relationship, I had no intention of marrying her. So by this logic we "accidentally" became married.

 

Thoughts? I'll hang up and listen.

 

I read the article with interest after your analogy about "accidentally" marrying. I had always thought my first marriage was unintended in that way. I "rescued" her from a "bad" marriage and she started living with me when I was very young and many years later we kind of "fell into" marriage when the tax legislation changed and made it much less economically viable for us to continue living together without marrying.

 

Yet when I think of my affair, I can't quite ascribe the same lack of agency. It's true that I was not looking to have an affair. I had had several offers over the decades of my marriage and had had no hesitation in turning them all down. I was not the kind of person who did that kind of thing! And yet, in this instance, I did find myself agreeing to participate in an affair that I had neither sought nor intended.

 

If asked (and she did ask) I would have replied that my marriage was happy and that I had no intention of leaving it. Again, that professed intentionality turned out to be untrue, as I did leave my marriage, but at the time I was deeply in denial about the unhappy state of my marriage as I had just recently taken my then-wife back after a separation and was still invested in believing I had not erred in doing so.

 

As described in the article, I found myself in a "blurred boundary" situation, at a conference far from home, after several drinks, alone with a very attractive woman whom I'd gotten to know in a professional context and had established a close, respectful platonic relationship with. Yet I was very aware of crossing the line into intimacy. She made her expectations very clear before a single item of clothing was removed, before a single body part touched, and made sure I knew exactly what I was about to undertake before we crossed any lines we could not uncross. And at that point, I made a choice. I knew that the opportunity presented to me mattered so much more to me than my marriage did, that even if it all went pear-shaped after that, that one moment of indulging my own happiness instead of tending to the happiness of others mattered more to me than anything else. I may not have realised at that point the full scope of my choosing, but I realised I was choosing, and that for the first time in my life I was choosing me, and it felt magical.

 

That profundity, that bliss, that extreme satisfaction, that can never be accidental. I may not have intended in that moment to leave my then-wife, to start a new life with that wonderful woman, to shake of the decades-old shackles that had bound me to an inauthentic existence, but choosing to engage in an action that led down that path was no accident. It was a choice, and one that I will never regret.

[cocorico]

I wonder why you protest so much Radagast. What are you so scared of taking responsibility for?

 

And I wonder why you need to take threads off-topic all the time to vent your own bitterness and insecurity. So that's two of us wondering.

 

To bring the thread back on topic, I think the article misses an important point. Many times in these " unintentional" situations, the MP has a sense of a boundary under threat, or being crossed, but doesn't act on that warning because they worry that drawing a line will risk or strain the friendship / collegial R and they feel a sense of loyalty or obligation not to let their friend / colleague down in that moment.

 

What they're not conscious of is the competing loyalty /obligation claim of the spouse, in that moment. The rush of the new dulls out the awareness of the pre-existing and that same sense of loyalty which should be protecting the "primary" R is transferred to the newer R and acts as a accelerant instead of a brake.

[threebyfate]

Have to laugh at the term "accidental"! I accidentally drove over the cheater and OW, 300 times in a row. Dear me.

[Summer Breeze]

Going on from what Jade said I think the thing that killed me was the fact that my xH could carry on our lives like there was nothing going on. He had a million moments he could have overcome whatever feeling he had when he crossed the line and had the A but he chose not to. He didn't accidentally smile at me and participate in our lives all the while knowing he was at that very moment actually betraying me. It may have started unintentionally but he made a choice every second we were together to keep it going.

[woinlove]

And I wonder why you need to take threads off-topic all the time to vent your own bitterness and insecurity. So that's two of us wondering.

 

 

I think it is obvious to any caring person that Jade is hurting badly from the betrayal of her husband. What is less clear is what is eating you, Maybe some kind of bitterness and insecurity against the wifes of MM, that you feel the need put down hurting BW on the Infidelity forum?

 

I don't think there are accidental affairs. There are people who actively search out an A and there are those who decide at some point to have an A. Some of the latter may be in denial because they don't like to think of themselves as treating others in that way. Still not an accident.

[Radagast]

I wonder why you protest so much Radagast. What are you so scared of taking responsibility for?

 

Protest is clearly in the eye of the beholder. I thought my post was quite clear, that I did not consider my affair to be accidental but the result of a conscious choice on my part (even though I had not intended to have an affair up until that decision). If you read that as "being scared of taking responsibility" I cannot engage with you in any kind of meaningful exchange since we clearly speak a different language or interpret words so differently as to make communication impossible.

 

However, I stand by my argument - that even where affairs are not intended, they are not accidental, as decisions and choices are made at the point of engaging in the affair. To claim that the affair is accidental is to deny agency, and to cast oneself as a victim. Given how singularly unattractive victimhood is, I cannot understand why anyone would choose to portray themselves as such.

[waterwoman]

I must admit I can see some affairs as accidental, at least in their initiation. Accidental as opposed to deliberate. Of course decisions are made at some stage of the affair that are deliberate but as everyone here can attest once emotional connections are made it's hard to break away. I guess that an affair can begin unlooked for and unwanted but can still happen because humans are weak and self-serving and can lie to themselves as well as to others.

 

But it guess it's just semantics. An affair is an affair and causes hurt to everyone.

[woinlove]

Protest is clearly in the eye of the beholder. I thought my post was quite clear, that I did not consider my affair to be accidental but the result of a conscious choice on my part (even though I had not intended to have an affair up until that decision). If you read that as "being scared of taking responsibility" I cannot engage with you in any kind of meaningful exchange since we clearly speak a different language or interpret words so differently as to make communication impossible.

 

However, I stand by my argument - that even where affairs are not intended, they are not accidental, as decisions and choices are made at the point of engaging in the affair. To claim that the affair is accidental is to deny agency, and to cast oneself as a victim. Given how singularly unattractive victimhood is, I cannot understand why anyone would choose to portray themselves as such.

 

I assume you are referring to people who make a choice and then decide they are a victim due to consequences of that choice? Because lots of people of victims of all sorts of things, rape, mutilation, abuse, ... and while the perpetuators of such attacks are "singularly unattractive", the state of being victim in no way makes the person unattractive for having suffered at the hands of another.

 

I advocate for honesty and if someone is a victim, then it is honest to portray themselves as such. I have less understanding for why people chose to be deceptive about themselves. Of course, when one is a victim of oneself, it is more complex and probably the more important issue is why they made the choices they did.

 

As to claiming affairs are accidental, that language is actually quite common - it just happened, I found myself in this situation,... I don't think that makes the person singularly unattractive, I think it is simply a form of denial.

 

 

Given your statement about victimhood, which doesn't make sense to me for the reasons explained above, on the infidelity board, I wonder about its intent. Is it a statement meant to support or discuss or meant to put down those who are victims of the deception, gaslighting, emotional abuse that often accompanies secret affairs?

Edited September 10, 2012 by woinlove

[Radagast]

Given your statement about victimhood, which doesn't make sense to me for the reasons explained above, on the infidelity board, I wonder about its intent. Is it a statement meant to support or discuss or meant to put down those who are victims of the deception, gaslighting, emotional abuse that often accompanies secret affairs?

 

My goodness, there does seem an awful amount of paranoia about "intent" on these forums! I can assure you there was no conspiracy or malintent behind my use of the word. I was referring to the mentality of victimhood, which is very different from the misfortune of having something bad befall someone.

 

The mentality of victimhood, if you are genuinely unfamiliar with it, involves denying one's agency in a situation and painting oneself as a passive recipient of whatever is flung at one by circumstances beyond one's control, in an attempt to absolve themselves of responsibility either for past choices which have led to one's current situation, or for changing their current situation where they find that situation untenable but prefer not to do anything themselves to change it.

 

My specific reference had in mind unfaithful spouses who claim that they were the victim of predatory women or men that preyed upon their innocence or naivete and who somehow erased their free will and ability to make decisions. These unfaithful spouses are often motivated by fear of consequences from their choices, which they seek to dodge. Refusing to take responsibility, painting oneself as someone who has no agency, and casting everyone else as "having it in for one" as if everyone else is always to blame for everything bad in one's life, may well be attractive to some, but I think I can safely say that for the majority of people, such qualities are not attractive in the main.

 

I hope that has clarified my "intent" sufficiently without taking this thread too far off-topic.

[Owl]

I should think that it's obvious that there are millions of people all over the world who don't want to claim agency for their actions.

 

To do so would be to invite accepting responsibility for them...something that so many do not seem to be willing to do.

 

How many OW/OM have we seen insist that the fact that their paramour is married is NOT their issue? Not their problem?

 

This is a prime example of something we see everyday...and they refuse to accept agency in their own actions right there.

 

It's not surprising to see, when it's done by ANYONE. Refusing to accept agency means refusing to accept responsibility for those actions...gives them the mental/emotional "out" to let them continue on with actions that they would otherwise be forced to view as unacceptable.

 

You see it done nearly daily here on LS by MM/MW involved in an affair, and by OW/OM on their side of the affair.

 

I'd like to find a way to add BS's in here to balance the scales, but I'm a firm believer that while someone may participate in the downward spiral of a relationship, they're never responsible for their spouse's choice to go outside of that relationship without ending it first.

 

Being a victim avoids responsibility for what happened. Being an agent requires them to accept responsibility for what happened.

[woinlove]

My goodness, there does seem an awful amount of paranoia about "intent" on these forums!

 

My goodness, I don't know what paranoia you are talking about and get tired of such widespread digs at -- what? two, three, dozens? -- of posters you do not name or explicitly refer to. I suppose you think my asking you for clarification is one of the examples of paranoia you see all around you, but really it was asking for clarification and explaining what the sentence literally said - perfectly reasonable, since the explanation you now give is not conveyed in the sentence you wrote. The word victimhood simply means the state or perception of being a victim (where the perception may be correct or not). Thank you for the clarification, but I wish it came without the sweeping dig at other posters.

Edited September 10, 2012 by woinlove

[Spark1111]

Here's what I think. You can have poor boundaries that allow you to fuel an attraction, start flirting, start seeking out face time with another....enjoy their company...begin to want to see them more and more.

 

But the FIRST TIME you keep it a secret from your spouse, you have INTENTIONALLY omitted information from them.

 

Why? Because you know it isn't HARMLESS; you know you want it to proceed to more.

 

That is an ACT, and there is NOTHING accidental about the choice to keep something secret from your spouse.

 

Why? Because you knew on some level, it was WRONG.

[Reg]

“But the FIRST TIME you keep it a secret from your spouse, you have INTENTIONALLY omitted information from them.

 

Why? Because you know it isn't HARMLESS; you know you want it to proceed to more.

 

That is an ACT, and there is NOTHING accidental about the choice to keep something secret from your spouse.

 

Why? Because you knew on some level, it was WRONG.”

 

I absolutely agree with you that they know what they are doing always on some level, or there wouldn’t be secrecy and lies.

[Betrayed&Stayed]

Here's what I think. You can have poor boundaries that allow you to fuel an attraction, start flirting, start seeking out face time with another....enjoy their company...begin to want to see them more and more.

 

But the FIRST TIME you keep it a secret from your spouse, you have INTENTIONALLY omitted information from them.

 

Why? Because you know it isn't HARMLESS; you know you want it to proceed to more.

 

That is an ACT, and there is NOTHING accidental about the choice to keep something secret from your spouse.

 

Why? Because you knew on some level, it was WRONG.

 

Bringing this thread back to the article... ^^ this is what the author (blogger) misses. The relationship at the beginning is unintentional. He fails to acknowledge that at some point the relationship takes a drastic change into the sexual tension realm (aka sexual chemistry).

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"What I mean by accidental is that there was no real decision to cheat, no underlying marital problem that was causing a rift or other circumstances that caused a person who fell into the affair to be looking or seeking another person out for any reason whatsoever."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

I think that the article does a good job of outlining how a workplace affair develops. A lot of the substance resonates with my situation (wife's A). However, in the C&P below I would ay that both parties can not deny that the "switch" is noticeable and cognitive:

 

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"What many don’t realize is that simply working together on a project, communicating about things that the two people share a common passion about and without it even being personal information that is being shared, they are allowing a relationship to form that at some level deep inside that part of the brain that does not deal with logic but purely with emotion. As the situation continues, unless prevented by one or both from going beyond the strictly business phase, the two people start to GET something from each other that triggers a pleasure response in the brain that feeds them a reward on a level they can’t even put a name to."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Going back to my single days in college and early twenties, I still remember the ability to put out those feelers to attractive women and gauge the responses. I remember the courting stage where I would eventually know if I had a shot or not (sex/dating/relationship). Whether it be a girl in my class, a friend of a friend, someone I meet at a party... any kind of reciprocation was felt and recognized. As far as it "triggers a pleasure response" I would call it "Oh, yeah! I have a good chance of getting laid." This happens even for the ONS affair, so that can't be labeled an "accidental affair" either.

 

Like the article states my wife would keep saying that it was all emotional, there was little logical thought process in the Slow Fade of her affair. After many discussions about this subject matter I got her to realize that there was a "logical" side to her decision making. She knew enough to cover her tracks (cognitive thought). She knew before the PA that she wanted to have sex with him (cognitive thought). She knew that I would not approve of her inappropriate relationship (cognitive thought). She knew that there were red flags, but minimized them. She also knew that she was risking our marriage and her reputation.

Edited September 10, 2012 by Betrayed&Stayed
typo

[Benedictatu]

I think my husband's affair was accidental. We had a happy marriage, why would he cheat? Until that tramp came along and seduced him he had no intention of doing such a thing. She just waved it at him and he could not resist. Even now.

[beenburned]

Spark,

 

I think you are completely right about the WS, and the AP, lack of good boundaries!

 

There are many steps taken that are inappropriate before the slow slide into the actual sexual act of committing adultery.

 

For the people that have good boundaries, they know how to stop the advances of another person before it turns into an affair.

[Spark1111]

Spark,

 

I think you are completely right about the WS, and the AP, lack of good boundaries!

 

There are many steps taken that are inappropriate before the slow slide into the actual sexual act of committing adultery.

 

For the people that have good boundaries, they know how to stop the advances of another person before it turns into an affair.

 

Yes! Definitely!

 

My H, so typically after dday, said the usual "It just happened," and the cliched, "I never meant to hurt you."

 

In MC, we dissected the million small acts and decisions that led to it happening. Nothing accidental about it. Every call, text, meeting, cup of coffee....was a choice to fuel it.

 

The bottom line: Once you begin to keep secrets and omissions from your spouse, you KNOW, on some level, it is wrong!

 

For the people who have good boundaries, a moment of uncomfortable happens, and it is shut down. We STOP fueling the attraction. We stop justifying how good it feels. Or, we make every attempt to have our new friend a friend of our spouse's too.

[beenburned]

Spark,

 

Unfortunately I heard the exact same things from my H soon after d-day!

 

Later on he realized that he made it happen with his actions and bad boundaries.

 

B&S,

 

I like the part you bolded! My H also said he didn't think about what he was doing at that moment with OW, he just went with the feelings that the affair was providing.

[hardlybreathing]

There are many steps taken that are inappropriate before the slow slide into the actual sexual act of committing adultery.

 

For the people that have good boundaries, they know how to stop the advances of another person before it turns into an affair.

 

Per my counselor - there is absolutely no reason for a married person to have private conversations with someone of the opposite sex (i.e. telephone calls, e-mail, texts) This is the very first line crossed.

 

I am divorced because of my ex husband's affair. FYI - we tried to work through it but in the end, it didn't work. He said so many bad things about the OW yet when we were divorced, he was right back in her bed.

 

No accidents - began as emotional and ended physical. Each of them knew where it was headed and didn't care.

[Radagast]

The bottom line: Once you begin to keep secrets and omissions from your spouse, you KNOW, on some level, it is wrong!

 

Apologies if this is off-topic, but I did want to comment on this. Not all marriages are based on full and free information sharing. Many are governed by strict codes about what can and can't be discussed, when and where discussions can take place, and why. While my own previous marriage was an extreme case of this I have observed similar but less extreme cases many times.

 

For example, a husband comes home from work frustrated and bothered, but the wife is listening to a soap on the radio and has no wish to hear about his day so hushes him. Sure, she may remember later that he wanted to talk, but by then he will have sublimated the issue or added to it the frustration of being hushed and may no longer see the wife as the person with whom he wants to share his frustrations, since she is now a contributor to them. Or the wife may be watching a film that reminds her of the occasion years ago when her husband hurt her unintentionally, and may feel upset by that and want to resolve her emotional unease, and the husband's response lets her know that he has no desire to rehash what he considered a minor incident that took place years back that was sorted out at the time. Or they're having a great time, guests over for dinner, when she notices that he left his dirty socks lying on the bathroom floor yet again - which he claims he never does. She knows if she points it out to him it will wreck the mood of their dinner. She knows if she leaves the socks there the guests will look askance on their housekeeping standards. She knows if she tidies them away and speaks to him later he will deny that he left them on the floor. So she simply files it away with other unspoken grievances. And so on.

 

Couples learn what can and can't be spoken about. And in some marriages, the "what can be spoken about" gets smaller over time, leaving a finite range of safe topics (often related to the home, or children, or logistical arrangements) and the important stuff, the hopes and dreams and fears and frustrations, are often filed in the "what can't be spoken about" as over time real and perceived slights and wounds lace important topics with raw emotions linked to the spouse and render such topics "unsafe" because of the turmoil they threaten to unleash if broached.

 

So, often, the "secrets and omissions" are kept from the spouse not because the other spouse knows or thinks it's wrong, but because they know or think it will be too traumatic to discuss, based on history.

 

And when that dynamic is so entrenched, it's well-nigh impossible to start a serious conversation about as important and life-changing a topic as a potential or actual affair, until there really is no other way to deal with it.

[Owl]

So, often, the "secrets and omissions" are kept from the spouse not because the other spouse knows or thinks it's wrong, but because they know or think it will be too traumatic to discuss, based on history.

 

And when that dynamic is so entrenched, it's well-nigh impossible to start a serious conversation about as important and life-changing a topic as a potential or actual affair, until there really is no other way to deal with it.

 

There is a world of difference between not talking about day to day mundane things...and deliberately and intentionally LYING BY OMISSION in order to start/maintain an affair.

 

I think the comparison is completely irrelevent.

 

One is done with the sole and full intention of DENYING that information to their spouse for their own personal gain at the expense of that spouse...and THAT is the key difference.