SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Farm from me to make you lose sleep over this Asterisk.

The thing is different for different relationships.

Philia, the love for friends (and background for any closeness and connection) is very solid, constant, consistent.

Loyalty stems from love but its roots are different in different relationships.

Eros is not lust (lust is an impuls that Eros may awake but isn’t driven by it), it’s passion, attraction, gravity.

And is the most powerful one as for intensity. When Eros is I. Place you are almost obsessed with the other person and there is just no space to introduce others in this frame.

Lust is self absorbed, Eros is two ways.

Unfortunately it’s also the one who needs nourishment to keep burning, it doesn’t fade, though we often may allow for it to fade.

Just the chemistry that awakens keeps you bound to the person that awoken Eros, you will be faithful as long as the flame is lit because it’s in everyone’s nature. If there is Eros there is an "object" who reciprocates and feeds that flame.

Very often when relationship break or there’s betrayal, is because the flame is no longer burning, other forms of love might still survive, but the craving of that energy might be desperately searched elsewhere.

Instead of rekindling it, someone allows lust to take over, the lust to feel that warmth again, and then you have the end or disasters.

Due to our human flaws we risk to leave the fire become embers by complacency, which they aren’t dead, just neglected we could nourish again.

But if we seek another fire, then the risk of killing the spark for good is high.

You need that alive to have the love being a gatekeeper of fidelity. The other faces may very well survive, but it’s not enough to gatekeeper a partner to partner relationship.

With friends or family, kids, you don’t need that, the love is complete without Eros because it was never present to begin with. You will not betray, philia agape and Storge are gatekeeper enough for those.

[This message edited by BackfromtheStorm at 12:21 AM, Saturday, November 7th]

LittleMonk,

I found mindfulness before I ever met my wife.
My username here, LittleMonk, is a riff on "Little Buddha" from the movie Peaceful Warrior. That movie was one of the things that helped shape how I think about control, awareness, and being present.

These concepts were introduced to me a few months after I arrived here, which was not quite a year and a half ago. I’ve investigated them from both the Stoic position and the Buddhist angle and have spent a great deal of energy attempting to retrain my brain. That is not an easy task, especially for a man in his 7th decade. I by no means have a deep awareness of these new concepts, especially the "being present" idea, but it is growing in strength.

Asterisk

Sisoon,

more than just one face of the gatekeeper.

I am beginning to see exactly that which is why I asked the question. What is so amazing is all of the new perspectives that people are giving me neatly summed up by your quote above. Though I have read some who do disagree, but I do not believe it is as simply as love is the gatekeeper therefor if one cheats they did not love their spouse.

From the outside, fear + empathy + selfishness look a lot like integrity, and I think that, in the sense of wholeness, is not inaccurate.

Sisoon, the combination laid out above caused me to pause and reread numerous times. There is an honest, self-examination here that I missed seeing in me. Thank you for enlightening a shadowed corner cleverly hidden from my awareness. I will spend time with this line you have presented me. I would like to ask you to consider creating a post with this theme. It is a thought that I believe should be seen outside of this thread.

But gatekeeping requires being vigilant when ones needs to be.

Great point. Vigilance over oneself is a much better, more reliable gatekeeper than love.

This0is0fine,

Thank you for adding to your original post on this thread. You point is well stated and I do agree that love can be misused to justify and I think it wise to recognize it. I do find I disagree with your statement below;

in short, love is far more frequently an anchor holding someone down to a bad decision, than a force propelling them in the direction of improvement.

I would go as far as that love is used to justify far too often but my experience is that love is by far a driver for people desiring to be a better version of themselves. It is not a point I can prove just my experience in life.

Love is just an arbitrary word for an arbitrary set of feelings around attachment to another person.

Well that’s not going to make for good, romantic poetry. 😊 Would you care to expand?

It's that the faithful partner doesn't want to violate their own character and ethics. It's not "I wouldn't do that to the person I love" it's "I wouldn't do that to anyone" or "I wouldn't break my promise"

Absolutely agree!

Unhinged,

I know there are cheaters out there who are simply shitty people, for all sorts of fucked-up reasons. I also know there are cheaters out there who are generally good people who simply break. It happens.

Thank you for saying this, unhinged. My wife falls into the "simply broke" category. As she has stated, she felt trapped by a belief system that did not fit her personality which left her feeling desperate and broken, then she rebelled. Not against me as much as against the prescribed way she was taught to live. In many ways, I was a bystander that was injured by friendly fire.

DrSoolers

Clearly, you are an extremely intelligent, articulate man. A man who is not here seeking understanding but to dispense your version of a black and white truth that has needs no new information. Sense you have falsely predetermined the mind of my wife and all wayward spouses for that matter exacted from your experience, then stamped on the chest of every wayward, I see no more reason to engage with your well-articulated, but overly-simplistic reasoning.

Asterisk

LittleMonk and DrSoolers,

An affair lasting eighteen months isn't a lapse in judgment; it is thousands of conscious, sequential decisions to lie, cover tracks, simulate intimacy, and gamble with a partner's mental health.
One night stands ALSO require hundreds if not 1000s of decisions. You don't magically transport from the bar to someone's bed. Its a series of decisions, actions, steps, and negotiations.

I do not disagree with either of you on this and I do not challenge the importance of it, however, it is off topic. I am not seeking to blame but to reframe my understandings.

Asterisk

BackFromTheStorm,

I really appreciate your expansion in the concept of the "faces of love" and their impact on gatekeeping. There is far more there for me to agree with than not to agree with but I will admit it does hit a tender spot. My wife had zero Eros love for me from the very beginning. As I mentioned our biblical teachings as teenagers beginning to desire sex we were taught that eros love was lust and not to be given room to exist in reality or imagination. In my 19 year old brain, I thought that once one was married then lust towards one’s wife was free to be expressed. But in my wife’s 18 year old brain, she sacrificed her purity on our wedding night and grieved the loss until her affair. (Yes, is see the irony and it hurt like hell!) So your point that eros love needs to be present to assist in gatekeeping does give me pause. However, I think you might agree with me, that there are millions of marriages that have allowed the eros aspect of their marriage to grow pale but neither choose to cheat. There is something more at play.

Asterisk

Most people have no idea how hard it hits.

Ain't that the truth.

I grew up as the sexual revolution was brewing. We came back to the US after 21 months in a Viet Nam war R & R site (lots of prostitutes and found fellow grad students talking about Open Marriage (the book). I read some of The Canterbury Tales. Infidelity was part and parcel of books and movies. I had learned to live with a normal amount of loss and disappoint. I KNEW infidelity was about the cheater, not the cheated.

I thought an emotionally healthy BS should get over the betrayal in 6-12 weeks. Recovery should be easy.

Yeaaaaah ... no.

*****

I think we need to distinguish between giving and receiving love, in addition to distinguishing between the femotion and the action.

I can believe my W thought she loved me during her A. As I wrote, I can believe she loved me, based on reasoning that I know made sense but which I've forgotten. But her love didn't get across to me.

Giving love is an action. So is receiving it.

The love language paradigm is one hypothesis about that. The theory certainly helps some people (it helped W & I), but it apparently hasn't been supported by experiments. Even so, I know that gifts don't move me much. Physical touch does, though. Pre-A, touch both moved my W (she liked my touch) and terrified her, because it triggered feelings she knew from CSA.

She, OTOH, showed love by cooking for me. I didn't value that much at all, since I knew I wouldn't starve if I were on my own.

IOW, I could give love, but it terrified my W. She could give love, but I didn't experience it as such.

Before the A and after recovering, we could sit next to each other silently and feel loved.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 4:32 PM, Saturday, November 7th]