Shaya
New member
My situation is a messed up casserole involving trying to legitimise a brief emotional affair of my wife's into polyamory. It didn't work. The result is me scrambling on affair recovery resources to work through the broken trust and hurt, whilst simultaneously looking at polyamory to see if we can have a future together with non monogamy.
I wanted to whinge about affair recovery forums.
They're so... mopey and shit. The posts are all the same. We've been together <double digit> years with <single digit> kids. It's <months/years> since the D-Day (discovery of affair day) and it's still awful. It's now the anniversary of D-Day. He still has C/NC (contact / no contact) with his AP (affair partner). The COW (another affectionate term for affair partner) did some grievous crime. My H (husband) is repentant and tries but I can't trust him. How can I be expected to forgive this? We are working towards R/D (reconciliation / divorce).
The responses are not much better. Plenty of support and encouragement, but sometimes also so negative. There is no proof but she's probably still gaslighting you. Your situation sounds like mine and I was still being tricked so you're probably still being tricked. He needs to snap out of it and focus on your pain. You should totally force your partner to do a poly (polygraph). God will help you through your pain.
The names they choose are all so depressing. Lostandalone, Burn, Dazed, SoConfused, caterpillar, mindnumb, frostedsoul . There's so much activity on that forum. A whole page of threads in any 24 hour period. So many people that in fact, their names are Lostandalone7, Burn44 and Dazed62.
Their use of abbreviations is confusing. Is W that much easier to write than wife? Does affair have to be abbreviated to A? I'm sure COW has a name. The flavour of the website is blame. The cheating spouse has to bend over backwards to accomodate the hurt spouse, with examples including sharing all passwords, open access to all current and future SMSes, GPS tracking on your partner, rules on alcohol consumption when not together, rules on avoidance of all company of the opposite sex when alone. Everything seems to be about control and blame. Even the terminology is flavoured - Cheating Spouse, Betrayed Spouse, Hurting Spouse, Cheating Other Wife. Aren't both spouses hurting? Aren't guilt, remorse and shame, not to mention public shunning difficult things to live through for the Betrayer?
And while it is acknowledged that both sides need to work towards reconciliation, by far the cheating spouse is expected to work the hardest.
Gah.
Just my vent. I just feel polyamory.com has much more intelligent conversation, much less biased, much less hurtful. Does it help to pile all this blame and hurt onto your partner? I mean, I get the hurt and anger. I'm feeling those emotions myself. But is it helpful nurture those emotions? Do affair websites need a culture that encourages this? I get that the betrayed spouse has their world destroyed. Maybe my hurt is less than theirs and that's the difference. Their hurt may be magnitudes bigger and so to recover trust and security they recommend obscene levels of control and blame. But that doesn't sound healthy to me. Forgiveness and love should be the recipe of the day, not control and blame. I can't control my wife for the rest of my life. She's going to get resentful and leave. I don't want my wife acting guilty forever. I don't want to control my wife forever. What kind of monogamy is that? I reject it. I want a recipe for my case - affair turned polyamory and failing because of the pain that my partner's unchecked NRE did to our relationship in those early days. I want a recipe to go forward. Affair recovery websites should be giving me this but the culture of advice there is too controlling for me to want to adopt.
Just my rant. And maybe my casserole of hurt that is a mixture of polyamory and affair recovery and yet neither at the same time, ending with me processing things all on my lonesome with no road map for the future.
Just a rant. Hence the fireplace.
I wanted to whinge about affair recovery forums.
They're so... mopey and shit. The posts are all the same. We've been together <double digit> years with <single digit> kids. It's <months/years> since the D-Day (discovery of affair day) and it's still awful. It's now the anniversary of D-Day. He still has C/NC (contact / no contact) with his AP (affair partner). The COW (another affectionate term for affair partner) did some grievous crime. My H (husband) is repentant and tries but I can't trust him. How can I be expected to forgive this? We are working towards R/D (reconciliation / divorce).
The responses are not much better. Plenty of support and encouragement, but sometimes also so negative. There is no proof but she's probably still gaslighting you. Your situation sounds like mine and I was still being tricked so you're probably still being tricked. He needs to snap out of it and focus on your pain. You should totally force your partner to do a poly (polygraph). God will help you through your pain.
The names they choose are all so depressing. Lostandalone, Burn, Dazed, SoConfused, caterpillar, mindnumb, frostedsoul . There's so much activity on that forum. A whole page of threads in any 24 hour period. So many people that in fact, their names are Lostandalone7, Burn44 and Dazed62.
Their use of abbreviations is confusing. Is W that much easier to write than wife? Does affair have to be abbreviated to A? I'm sure COW has a name. The flavour of the website is blame. The cheating spouse has to bend over backwards to accomodate the hurt spouse, with examples including sharing all passwords, open access to all current and future SMSes, GPS tracking on your partner, rules on alcohol consumption when not together, rules on avoidance of all company of the opposite sex when alone. Everything seems to be about control and blame. Even the terminology is flavoured - Cheating Spouse, Betrayed Spouse, Hurting Spouse, Cheating Other Wife. Aren't both spouses hurting? Aren't guilt, remorse and shame, not to mention public shunning difficult things to live through for the Betrayer?
And while it is acknowledged that both sides need to work towards reconciliation, by far the cheating spouse is expected to work the hardest.
Gah.
Just my vent. I just feel polyamory.com has much more intelligent conversation, much less biased, much less hurtful. Does it help to pile all this blame and hurt onto your partner? I mean, I get the hurt and anger. I'm feeling those emotions myself. But is it helpful nurture those emotions? Do affair websites need a culture that encourages this? I get that the betrayed spouse has their world destroyed. Maybe my hurt is less than theirs and that's the difference. Their hurt may be magnitudes bigger and so to recover trust and security they recommend obscene levels of control and blame. But that doesn't sound healthy to me. Forgiveness and love should be the recipe of the day, not control and blame. I can't control my wife for the rest of my life. She's going to get resentful and leave. I don't want my wife acting guilty forever. I don't want to control my wife forever. What kind of monogamy is that? I reject it. I want a recipe for my case - affair turned polyamory and failing because of the pain that my partner's unchecked NRE did to our relationship in those early days. I want a recipe to go forward. Affair recovery websites should be giving me this but the culture of advice there is too controlling for me to want to adopt.
Just my rant. And maybe my casserole of hurt that is a mixture of polyamory and affair recovery and yet neither at the same time, ending with me processing things all on my lonesome with no road map for the future.
Just a rant. Hence the fireplace.
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