Me BS (59) FWW (59) DDay 3/10/2015 Married 36 years, together 40 2 kids, both grown.

How lying turns into infidelity

It has been over 10 years since D-Day. We are reconciled. I have been through all the stages at least a few times. I have backslid, moved forward, had bad days and terrible days as well as awesome days. We have made it through the worst of it. So I was surprised to hear an exchange on a podcast titled: Divorce Lawyer: Why Oral Sex and Granola Cause Divorce. I was amazed at the lawyer's insight and wisdom. I guess seeing the worst of marriage gives someone some clarity on the human condition and relationships. This is not word for word what he said, but it provided more insight on what happened in my marriage than any other piece of work.

"People early in relationships, for understandable reasons with no nefarious intentions, develop habits that in the long run are going to be bad for them. Like, "I don't want to disappoint this person, so I am going to tell them things that are not necessarily true, because an uncomfortable truth is worse for me than a comfortable lie." "Their mild discomfort is so uncomfortable for me that I am going to get in the habit of being untruthful about what I am feeling." Which is a perfectly understandable habit that may even be borne of love habit, but it is a bad habit, and don't get good at it. Because it will metastasize. There will be a line, a straight line from that people pleasing, good intentioned thing...and cheating on your partner."

"Like no one gets up one morning saying I am going to F up my life today. I think I am going to go out and I am going to ruin my relationship and ruin my partners trust in our relationship and other relationships. And I am going to take this other person's gig and screw that up. I am going to give others and myself trust and abandonment issues for the foreseeable future...Let's do it!"

"It's more like, Awe, its no big deal, its just a little flirting, c'mon we're human. Just 'cause your on a diet doesn't mean you can't look at the menu. We're just playing we're not...it's not a big thing...okay its a big thing, but only happened once, one little... c'mon life is short, it happened once, nobody even knew. That is how it happened. Next thing you know is you turn around and you ask, how did we get here? Like when did this happen?"

He goes on to say "It's a straight line, it can be a long line, and the longer it is the harder it is to see how it happened. It is a lot of little bad choices." He illustrated it like how you can get overweight. It would be easy to see if you made one bad choice and your pants no longer fit, but that is not how it works, you make a lot of little bad choices and then you realize your pants no longer fit.

I had not heard it put that way and so matter-a-fact. So I shared it with my fWW. It made her cry, not because I was angry (I was not) but this was simply so full of wisdom about how it happened, and she had never seen it that way before. That her people pleasing lies when compounded the way she did, lead her to infidelity. And if she had been more honest, not only would she not have been made a slut (her word) by her own actions, she could have had a relationship with me that was closer and met her needs more.

Anyway, I thought it was interesting. I have not listened to the rest of the podcast. I bet it has more insights. I would be interested in the reaction of both betrayed and waywards.

2 comments posted: Wednesday, September 30th, 2026

What I think I have learned 10 years+ past Dday

A few days ago, while waiting for the elevator to go to my car and pick up my fWW from work after a long day...(we carpool now.) I was thinking about some of the threads I have read on SI and some of the best advice I got here by reading and learning from others. Here is what I think I have learned.

1. It (the A's) were never about me or my shortcomings. Nothing I did or did not do lead to her bad decisions and her having a multiple A's. (luckily for me none were long term, some were physical, but not brutally physical)

2. At least in my case, the reasons for her A's were, for lack of a better term, behavioral illness. She was depressed and had huge issues that came from her FOO. As those issues were addressed, our relationship became more solid, and so did she.

3. I had to re-frame what forgiveness meant. It was not forgetting, it was not acting like it did not hurt, it was letting go of the debt for the most part. But it could not really work until she understood what she had done to her, to us, to our family. Then she had to really be sorry for her actions. And she had to do what it took to get healthy. That took time. I understand now that there is no way to right the wrong, no way for her to really make amends. But for us to make it, I had to let the debt go, but not rugsweep.

4. So here is the hardest one, and it relates to number 1. As personal as it felt, it was never personal. I wish I could explain that well. I will try. As a betrayed spouse, your first instinct is to wonder what is wrong with you that she would pick these other people. You look inward for a part of you that was broken and deserved this. (maybe deserved is too much) but what is wrong with me, that I am not enough for my spouse? Being the BS makes any insecurity fire on all cylinders. The engine of your own self-esteem or lack there of, is off to the races. When I understood that there were things I could have done better as a husband, I also understood that being a better man, spouse, friend, you name it, would not have made any difference. SHE was the one that was broken. It was her issues that lead to this, and she had to work on her issues in order for us to have a healthy marriage.

So to sum it up. It was never about me, it was about her, and in order to be successful in R, she had to find a way to fix what is broken. I had to stay strong and not blame myself, and when the time was right, I needed to forgive her, and move forward.

I would be interested in what others who have really reconciled have learned.

6 comments posted: Tuesday, August 19th, 2025