compulsivedancer Posted April 30, 2014 Posted April 30, 2014 (edited) I'm rereading Esther Perel, and came across this quote: And what I am going to really investigate in depth is why people are sometimes willing to lose everything, for a glimmer of what? Slate: And what’s your best guess from your research so far? Perel: I can tell you right away the most important sentence in the book, because I’ve lectured all over the world and this is the thing I say that turns heads most often: Very often we don’t go elsewhere because we are looking for another person. We go elsewhere because we are looking for another self. It isn’t so much that we want to leave the person we are with as we want to leave the person we have become. How accurate do you think this statement is? Very. I was depressed and hating myself. Because of our chosen careers, I had always intended to be the breadwinner. Being stuck underemployed for 2 years in a crappy job where I couldn't be promoted wrecked havoc with my self-esteem. I had lost my house a year before in a flood and had a devastating miscarriage two years before that. All I wanted was to be able to make enough money to start a family and be able to afford to take care of it. And I felt like a miserable failure because I couldn't manage it, even though much of my situation was caused by outside forces. H was busily pursuing his own career and passion and loving every second of it. I resented that he got to follow his dreams and didn't have much time for me (or interest in having kids yet), and my boss at my crappy retail job wouldn't promote me. H was pretty impatient with my attitude about my job situation and not particularly comforting. OM had just finished up college and was very sympathetic about retail jobs. He looked forward to our time together and made me feel sexy and coveted. He set aside an entire night a week for me and was almost constantly available by text. And we had all the chemical attraction and interest of a new relationship. Of course it felt amazing. I just wanted an escape. When I set aside my life to spend time with him, it felt like such a burden lifted off my shoulders. It was relaxing and lighthearted, something I had precious little of in my state of mind at that point. As far as risk, I knew intellectually that we'd be caught eventually, but I managed to compartmentalize it well enough. Because this all started with an open relationship discussion, OM and I were hoping that some day H would give us permission to pursue this and then we could take it into the open and have the best of both worlds. What I wanted was a polygamous scenario. I was planning a LTA, with OM as my secondary relationship. I honestly didn't see a problem with it and had no conception of the pain it would cause H. In fact, I never really felt guilty about the sex. It wasn't until I started having feelings for OM that I really thought of myself as cheating - and that's when I started to freak out. But by then, even though I felt like the A was winding down, I was attached enough to OM that I "wasn't ready" to give him up. Edited April 30, 2014 by compulsivedancer 1
gettingstronger Posted May 1, 2014 Posted May 1, 2014 I don't think the WS has any concept of how they look to other people. they are out of touch with reality! Totally-even with the stats on infidelity being what they are-being in an affair is not attractive or looked upon with any sort of good-most people, even those that have cheated, see it for what it truly is-
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