SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Just wait till perimenopause comes along, and then actual menopause. Aging, graying, grandchildren, illness. Each of these is just another potential hall pass you are ready to self deal.

This all shows the moral fiber of single ply gas station toilet paper.

Us betrayed males are real pieces of work suggesting that an adult had an ability to align their principles with their actions.

Wow! I didn't get to read all the posts because they are deleted. As a woman of a certain age, I'm kind of hurt by this. I haven't done anything that should group me in here. There are plenty of middle-aged men who have affairs. It's a popular stereotype. I haven't leaned into those.

I understand the hurt I guess. But reaching out to lash at all women is not very nice.

[This message edited by KitchenDepth5551 at 9:55 PM, Monday, June 22nd]

KD,

Wow! I didn't get to read all the posts because they are deleted. As a woman of a certain age, I'm kind of hurt by this. I haven't done anything that should group me in here. There are plenty of middle-aged men who have affairs. It's a popular stereotype. I haven't leaned into those.

I understand the hurt I guess. But reaching out to lash at all women is not very nice.

I could be off base here speaking for someone else, but I think I can confidently say that was not directed at all women or meant to lump all women together. I saw it as being specifically and sarcastically directed at Brew, saying that when she experiences those things she can have ready made excuses for further infidelity based solely on her logic and reasoning. I don't think it was meant to suggest anything about all women in general.

I know a lot of the generalizations and stereotypes I've heard or read about menopause don't apply to my wife. She doesn't feel bad about going through it at all, and it's turbo-charged her sex drive. She's actually really enjoying menopause. I think she feels better and sexier than ever, and I'm inclined to agree...

Kitchen my English is far from perfect so I may misunderstand, but I think what it says there is a different thing:

"If you are going to excuse your cheating going forward you will find many excuses to do it again such as…. List"
Nothing grounded, but excuses don’t need it, they can grasp at straws.

I understood it this way.

Betrayed Husbands are the one who cause me the most triggers. It still pisses me off that they don't attempt to understand what lifelong hormonal fluctuations, pregnancy and child bearing does to women to make them weak and vulnerable. They just don't get. Very very few women cheat because they are morally inferior any such bull. Most are exhausted and looking for any kind of relief and don't have the ability to resist it when it's presented to them. Many of those ones who don't respond by connecting to someone else (ie cheat) in these situations of serious loneliness and exhaustion are too scared to do so, or they have the insight to know it's not in their long term interest. I didn't have that insight in the moment of crisis.

This is what the comment was referring to, not stating it was acceptable.

I intended no general statements toward women in my comment. I was pointing out that this particular poster has other life changing events in her future that are sure to cause waves in her life, exactly the kinds of events that she wants to be considered as somehow excusing her multiple infidelities.

Thank you all for the clarification. I understand. Again, most of these comments are deleted in the post. It sounds like they were inflammatory.

Thanks InkHulk. Obviously, there are about 50% of us have no choice but to go through perimenopause and menopause. We don't all use it as an excuse as a hall pass. And not all men using aging as a hall pass. I appreciate your response.

Just popping by to add that the longest period of fidelity I had in my relationship was from when I found out I was pregnant to around my child's 4th birthday. The hormones didn't make me do it. The extremely unpleasant physical effects of carrying and birthing a child didn't make me do it. The long, lonely nights sitting up with the baby because I was the only one lactating didn't make me do it. Staying at home doing the majority of the childcare didn't make me do it... Not having adults to talk to the majority of the time? Probably a factor, but not a cause. still could have tried harder to make other mom friends to talk with so that I wouldn't have been susceptible to an "opportunistic male" who could yap for hours at a time.

And when I did do it, it wasn't because I lacked "insight' that infidelity was wrong-- my conscience was screaming at me the whole time that it was wrong. I would go as far as to say that the vast majority of unfaithful people know that they are supposed to be faithful, that there are negative consequences if they aren't, and therefore they know infidelity is morally wrong. We just push the conscience away and start performing mental gymnastics for why we should do it anyway (often why our psychological/emotional needs are more important than our spouse's well-being.) And sure, it "makes sense" to us when we're in the affair fog... If we completely erase all meaning of the phrase "make sense." When we're making those justifications and rationalizations, we're completely disconnected from reality, and the only way for us to make the non-sensical action of betraying both ourselves and our partners "make sense" is to construct a completely false version of reality... that doesn't make any objective sense.

And it's not the betrayed spouses' fault when we do that. It's not anyone else's fault but our own, and no amount of psychobabble, generalizations, pity-partying, or distancing-language is going to change that fact. Full acceptance and accountability without any blame-shifting is the only pathway through which we can steel ourselves against those conditions-- internal and external-- in which we committed infidelity, which we may or may not experience again. It's possible to examine and understand those conditions without denying responsibility for your choices and actions. Make them into signs to be extra vigilant, and to engage in extra protective measures until you have fully resolved those internal issues that allowed you to cheat. Make plans and protocols and back-up protocols to help you maintain moral behavior until you get done with that internal work. That's how you become someone who, while I wouldn't say is necessarily "incapable" of cheating (because I think everyone is), but is unwilling to cheat. (Thanks, Unhinged.)

But if you blame shift, you never get there, BrewBrew. I am trying to actively encourage my BH to reject blame for the poor treatment he's received, and I have watched him grow and become stronger and better able to stand up for himself over time, and that is a beautiful, beautiful thing. I highly encourage you to do the same.

being specifically and sarcastically directed at Brew, saying that when she experiences those things she can have ready made excuses for further infidelity based solely on her logic and reasoning.

And again I was convince it was a guy

I think I am broken if I confuse girl with boys.

Agreed with all the comments regarding gender.

My comments were specific to BrewBrew's lame, anti-feminist view that women are somehow incapable of resisting affairs due to the trials of child-rearing and hormones. Honestly, her views are highly sexist against her own gender. My partner, an actual feminist, would have exploded at that nonsense. BrewBrew’s argument essentially boils down to a disgusting premise: that women lack basic moral agency.

I subsequently found her on other support forums peddling this exact brand of toxic relationship advice under a different username, frequently posting in communities like r/surrendered_wife.

Having looked through her extensive post history across multiple infidelity and marriage subreddits, her underlying philosophy is as fascinating as it is deeply manipulative.

To summarize her worldview: She is a serial cheater turned self-appointed relationship guru who uses extreme "therapy-speak" to completely escape accountability. By rewriting her infidelity as a mere lack of "skills" rather than a moral failing, she has managed to flatten the severity of her actions, effectively claiming that her years of cheating were just a "delayed reaction" to her husband's bad communication. She views intimacy as a mechanical transaction, treating reconciliation like a 3-to-5-year self-improvement sentence she is serving just to reclaim the moral high ground. Ultimately, her entire philosophy is a clinical absolution engine—a way to turn her guilt into a specialized expertise so she can smugly teach others from a position of unearned superiority, all while stripping both herself and her husband of genuine human emotion.

I'm not a fan but I don't think she's a troll. Just misguided.

[This message edited by DRSOOLERS at 8:27 AM, Tuesday, June 23rd]

To summarize her worldview: She is a serial cheater turned self-appointed relationship guru who uses extreme "therapy-speak" to completely escape accountability.

Classic confirmation bias "research" by Brew.

I really think this comment should be in the Hall of Fame of wayward thinking:

Would you say a starving person stealing food is immoral? Then you have no compassion. I thought I was starving and HE was starving me! I was incorrect of course, because I was starving myself, and needed better coping strategies, but that's not a moral dilemma. You can call that narcissism if it makes you feel better.

It’s like fractally wayward. Every small detail is as wayward as the whole of it.

Starvation is life-threatening. Being "exhausted" and "looking for relief" and being unable to resist temptation is not. We make this moral distinction all the time. If I shoot you because you’re pissing me off, I go to jail for the rest of my life. If I shoot you because you’re about to kill me, I don’t even get prosecuted.

Stealing food is a petty crime. I used to work in a cop-bar. That is to say, it was a pub that was owned by a retired police officer. The regular clientele was other retired and off-duty policemen and their friends and family. One time, a couple of kids ate and dashed off without paying the bill. By the time anyone realized what had happened they were gone. A room full of cops and everyone just grumbled and shrugged. Affairs destroyed people’s hearts, their emotional health, they rip apart families, etc.

If we criticize people for cheating we have no compassion???

Ah, well, it wasn’t a moral failing on her part…she just misread the situation, it wasn’t his fault she was unhappy. But if it had been his fault, then her cheating would have been imperative, as opposed to, oh I don’t know, divorce.

Runner up:

I don't think I'm in the right place as I don't think I'm going to get much understanding here from a bunch of Betrayed Males. So I'll leave you here with that. Pay attention to your wives, especially see if they might be OverFunctioning or Burning Out, or someone else might well notice it and that person will sometimes be an opportunistic male. It's a fact of life.

I especially like the use of capitalized terms. I guess we have a good sense of what her BH did to earn her three affairs.

I especially like this one....

It still pisses me off that they don't attempt to understand what lifelong hormonal fluctuations, pregnancy and child bearing does to women to make them weak and vulnerable. They just don't get it and they don't attempt to. Very, very few women cheat because they are morally inferior, sociopathic or any such bull. Most are exhausted and looking for any kind of relief and don't have the ability to resist it when it's presented to them.

I showed this to my WW and she got very angry at this misogynistic view. It dresses itself up as compassion for women, but what it really does is reduce women to hormones, pregnancy, exhaustion, weakness, and lack of self-control. That is not empathy. That is infantilizing adult women. Women are not children. Women are not helpless creatures blown around by hormones and male attention. Women are fully capable adults. They deserve compassion for what they endure, but compassion without accountability is not respect. It is condescension.

I think it's especially insidious for someone to put so much time and effort into studying and learning about a subject only to cherry pick and twist facts to suit a presupposition and then weaponize that knowledge to justify atrocities and shift blame to the innocent party.