Amen, Kel.  Your description of the process is spot on.  No one wants to be the one to "quit" on a marriage.  Even when I found the proof I needed (regarding affairs with women), I kept forgiving but also monitoring and marriage policing to see if he had really quit lying and cheating.  The answer was always No yet I kept collecting information and waffling around in limbo-land.  Similar to jkpeace's efforts to prove it wouldn't work in the future.  How in the world does one prove THAT?!! 

The one thing I would add to Kel's excellent post is that learning you are being lied to should be a complete deal breaker right from the start.  The mistake I made was to keep minimizing the importance of the content of the lies rather than understanding that a spouse lying to another spouse, particularly repeatedly, means your marriage is just flat out broken.  Add in TGT, and it is just broken-er!!

Dixie -

YES - you get it!!!  It's not really about the specifics of the  betrayal as much as what the betrayal means. It doesn't matter if your husband is a serial cheater with women, men or chipmunks - he's not free to do that, and going behind your back to do so is a very serious matter.  We sometimes get SO lost trying to figure out if the clues mean that he's gay when what we SHOULD be trying to figure out is if the clues lead us to believe that we no longer have faith in this person.  I think that despite how difficult it may be, a spouse should come to you and say that they're experiencing sexual confusion or strife.  They shouldn't be cheating before you find out, and then use the sexual confusion as a reason for stepping out on the marriage.  That is NOT an reason.  That's an excuse.

My husband and I do a Q.O.T.D. (Question of the Day) each day with each other via email, and then sometimes discuss them that night.  They're fodder for great communication.  We make the questions up, by the way - or go find new ones online by Googling "Questions to ask on date nite" and that sort of thing.  Anyway, yesterday's question was "What constitute's cheating?"  It occurred to me that although I was fairly certain that our answers would be very similar if not matching, we'd never actually discussed the topic.  And our answers were the same - in a nutshell, it's "Anything you do with someone else that you don't want to tell your spouse about".  My husband used "members of the opposite sex", but of course I know that's not a limitation.  Lol.  Anyway, if you're both of that definition, then YES - talking sexy online with someone falls under the category of cheating, as does ANY physical contact except for maybe a hug or a kiss on the cheek when you greet.  If we went further into the question (as many of us here need to ask ourselves), we'd ask what is forgivable and what isn't.  Most people would say that the line separates at the word habitual.  For some, it doesn't even take that much.  But yeah - you can feel that at habitual, there's a bigger problem than just a slip-up or a heat-of-the-moment type of thing.  And most of us would say that we'd be willing to walk away in that rhetorical situation.  Except that when you put us in that situation and our spouse is saying "but I love you!" out of one side of their mouth, it SOMEhow trumps what they've DONE.  And it shouldn't.  Words are not bigger than actions.  Actions speak louder than words.

Kel

Last edited by Kel (August 18, 2016 3:53 pm)

Spot on, Kel! The truest words - it NEVER ends, until WE give OURSELVES permission to leave. This must also accompany the understanding that things will be better. ANYTHING is better than living in those abusive relationships with those toxic people.

Last edited by selfrenewal (August 18, 2016 6:53 pm)

Retired&Lost,

I'm an executive assistant to a large finance department at the corporate headquarters at a Fortune 500.  In other words, I'm a secretary. Lol. I have only a H.S. education.

My role includes the traditional administrative duties of meeting arranging, as well as travel and event coordination.  But it also includes having my finger on the pulse of the group and assisting with employee engagement. I am essentially a professional helper, knowledge keeper and problem solver, and get much joy and satisfaction from it.

Kel

My marriage was my one and only (so far), and also my one and only divorce (so far). I still have time for another go at it, I think. :-)

While reading your list, Kel, I was wondering about break-ups and divorces for non-mixed orientation marriages, and what cycles they go through, before one or the other of them finally says "Enough."  And what they have to tell themselves in order to break away. I have friends who have been divorced, but I didn't live their marriages, so really, I don't know their process or how or if it compares to ours. I know my brother put up with his first wife for a lot longer than I would have, but he finally called it quits (she was / is alcoholic, doesn't see it, and is on her fifth husband now, in her early 50s.) But he hung in there a lot longer than I could have. Whether that was noble or stupid of him, I can't say. He hung on thinking he could see her through it, until he was ready to admit that he didn't really understand alcoholism and addiction, and if she didn't want to get sober, there was nothing he could do about it.

It's not exactly parallel to us, but there are similarities. Waiting for too long, hoping things will somehow magically get better. Not wanting to feel like a failure at marriage. Not wanting to face the questions and embarrassment from others. Thinking there is something we can do - as if we had the power to change another person. We don't have that power; we can only change ourselves and how we react to what's going on around us in our lives.

But one thing struck me, this idea of needing to get "proof" - or a confession, or for someone to admit something and waiting for something that might never come. There's a saying, something about the pain has to be heavier than the fear before folks are able to make their move. I think it comes down to that for a lot of us, especially when there is no proof. So, what's our tolerance level for pain? My brother seemed to have it in buckets with his ex. Or is it the fear of the unknown worse than the pain; so we prefer the demon we do know to the one we haven't met yet.

The other thought I had was not only why do we need proof, why aren't pain and misery enough, but why do we always phrase it like we want a confession, or we want them to admit to being gay. Nobody has ever asked me to "admit" or "confess" to being straight, as far as I know. I've been asked to admit and confess to other things, but never my sexuality. Yet that's the language we use -- why is that?

I'm not saying I know a better word, but that language is so accusatory - it's one thing to use it find out about cheating, and works well that way for both straights and gays alike, but to try to force a "confession" to being gay... or straight.... sounds so... medieval. I'm rambling, but those words stuck in my craw...  maybe because of reading that Archbishop's missive earlier today.   
 

Last edited by BryonM (August 19, 2016 1:51 am)