It'stuff of reasons, seasons and lifetimes.

This research SHOULD be the basis of raising the driving age IMO.

Malcolm Gladwell describes this phenomenon in The Tipping Point -- that there is a point at which human behavior tips. Everyone is going to have a different tipping point on pretty much everything. One person's tipping point on smoking may be one cigarette, another a pack, another a carton, but eventually everyone will become addicted if they just smoke enough.

I think the same holds true here. Everyone's tipping point for infidelity will be different. Trying to universalize the experience -- "it is an addiction", "no it isn't", is, I think pointless and divisive.

The best way to never become a smoker is to never touch a cigarette because you can't know what your tipping point will be. You may think you do, but you may be wrong. You make think you have it under control, but you may be wrong.

Just now catching up and reading this thread. So much of what is here I agree with. As my parents divorced due to my mother's infidelity, that is more of where my experience lays.

I grew up in a world shattered and torn apart by my mothers infidelity. I agree with JL - honesty was my rock. I came to depend and lean upon my father because he was the parent I could trust to be honest with me. He wasn't perfect. I saw him lose his temper, I saw him make mistakes, but I was always assured that HE was the one that was going to handle it. Unlike my mother, he never blamed me or my brother for ANYTHING that went on in his life.

I just wish someone had thought to actually TELL me how my mother ended her marriage with my father. I pieced it together as a young child, and since no one told me my childish mind figured I wasn't supposed to know. Thus I couldn't reveal to anyone that I knew. It was a terrible secret I had to keep, twisting inside me. I had to consistently monitor and check my behavior to be sure I wasn't going to make anyone suspicious about the fact that I knew. No 8 year old should have to bear that kind of weight. I had a right to know. I had a right to honesty.

One thing I appreciated was though my father was a BH and was forced to send me off each week to live with the man that had stolen his family and the woman who destroyed it, he constantly insisted that I respect my mother. I was never wrong in loving her, in fact he constantly reassured me it was ok to love her, and the children they had, my sisters. They and my brothers, who were born from my father's second marriage were just that: brothers and sisters. No halves, no steps. Just siblings who I should love and care for.

When I and my brother decided to leave my mother, when we decided to stop seeing her he protected that choice. He never forced us to be with her. He allowed us the space to make that decision for ourselves.

Quote:
When a parent speaks ill of the other parent (not their actions), children experience this as an attack on themselves because their identities are still evolving and tied up with their parents'.


I wish I could quote this a thousand times. It is so true. To this day I doubt my mother's love - because I grew up seeing her undisguised hatred of my father, who I am half of. I cannot describe how tormenting it is to experience this. To wish you could rip half of your soul out to make your mother happy. To wish you just didn't exist... at the age of 6.

The person who hurt you so terribly is the foundation of your children's world.

Finally, understand that if you do divorce, your children are growing up, literally, in two different worlds. Your values and those of your ex-spouse will diverge, and the conflict between the two will be fought in the heart of your children.

The simplest things caused me anxiety as a child: at my mother's you asked for food and if it was the last of something and you ate it, you got in trouble because the last was always reserved for my step-father. At my father's food was always readily available, if you asked for food you were derided because you shouldn't have to ask for food, it was a renewable resource.

So I was constantly anxious, over food. I took to stealing and hoarding food, as did my brother.

I experienced anxiety over so many things: the television, brushing my teeth, answering the phone. It was stressful to say the least.

So understand that if you do divorce (whether to infidelity or not) your children are being raised with conflicting sets of values and beliefs and to a young child, it DOES feel like picking sides. Go easy. Yes you have your values and beliefs, but so does your spouse and your child will have to find a way to negotiate between the two sets of values and some of those they settle on may be those of your spouse and that is ok. You may think that they've made a horrible choice, that they will find nothing but misery for choosing your spouse's values, but though you no longer share your life with them, your spouse has an equal right as you do to impart their values and beliefs onto their children.

Up until a few years ago I refused to engage in politics. My mother is staunch republican and my father staunch democrat. I remember voting in my first election and feeling overwhelming guilt: I'd chosen a side. I didn't tell anyone who I voted for so my parents couldn't figure out who's side I'd chosen, which parent had 'won'... silly and stupid I know, but the habit of seeing everything as mom's side and dad's side is so ingrained it me it has taken time to let go. It's getting easier now, to not feel so stuck between the two of them. To make my own choices and own them, for better or worse.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say something I think might often come at a different place in the conversation and get it out of the way right up front. I could analyze the attraction, the EN of intimate conversation being met by C and not J etc. I could point out the "nothing physical except" notion and climb all over that. I could commiserate with you over having a spouse who sometimes, even most of the time, just doesn't seem to give a flip about what I do. I could point out the age difference and show how any relationship with C will be at best a fling of the short term variety. I could jump on the morality bus and talk about how you are married and he is living with a woman with whom he has a child which is the model for the new marriage.

Yeah, I mentioned them by way of not talking about them. How very Cicero like of me, I think.

So what's the problem?

The problem is in part that YOU aren't getting what YOU need from J. Based on what has been shared at this point I can't say as to whether or not J is getting what he needs from you, but that's another discussion, I believe right now, though taking a look at that yourself might be a good thing.

So when we aren't getting what we want and need from a person, what do we do? More importantly, what SHOULD we do as opposed to what we actually do? One thing that never actually solves the problem is to ignore it or to stop trying to find a solution. Not working on the marriage by default is working on a divorce. We just don't always recognize it as such until something (or someone) intercedes and makes us go back and examine the marriage again.

When I was in QA I would get folks bringing me problems they had been trying to figure out and throw up their hands and say "I can't fix it. I've tried everything. I give up!" I eventually began asking right away if they had tried throwing bricks at the device or system they were having issues with. Of course the answer was always a negative with a puzzled or sometimes annoyed look. I would then say "So you haven't actually tried EVERYTHING, have you?" Now the issue is, what they had been trying wasn't actually working for them so clearly something else needed to be tried. The question is hat might that be...

So let me ask this, BS. What have you tried so far? What did you try most recently? What do you see your as your problem? What change could take place that you would suddenly not be even thinking about C or K or F, D & L, but be willing to actually make a connection again with J? What is missing that you keep looking to find and what have you tried in order to get that from J?

You are frustrated and have been working at this for a while. What have you done so far and how's that been workin' for ya?

Problem = ???
Solution = Depends on the actual problem.

Wholesale replacement of systems or even parts of systems always ends eliminating the faulty bits, but it doesn't actually fix anything. Getting a new one always lets us stop messing with trying to solve problems with the old one, but it never actually fixes the old one. We also find soon enough that even the new one has issues and now it too needs fixing.

If I have replaced all four tires on my truck and still get flats, clearly the problem wasn't in the tires themselves and might be in the wheels or valve stems or the fact that I drive past a construction site every morning and run over stuff. Buying a new car lets me start without flat tires and if the problem was the wheels it will surely stop the flat tires from being a problem but if it's that crap I run over every day, the new one is gonna have the same problem as the old one.

And if I never get another flat at all, the new one will one day be old and have other problems I either need to fix or move on to the next one and try again.

So even if you opt for divorced, you need to understand that you must identify the actual problem so that you know you have actually tried fixing it or that you choose not to fix it. Replacing it will only temporarily solve that problem and before long other problems will show up, some of which you already know how to fix on the old one but that now defy fixing on the new one.
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I Was Thinking...

The secret to having a good marriage is to understand that marriage must be total, it must be permanent, and it must be equal.-- Frank Pittman