SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

GotTheMorbs -

I think it’s important that I clarify for anyone who has just read the last handful of posts that I am not defending infidelity as a goal or as a routine, but as a last recourse.

I think there’s a tremendous and morally significant difference between holding that ocean-worthy ships should have lifeboats that people might rarely need to use and advocating that lifeboats are ocean-worthy vessels for ordinary use.

Sisoon -

All you know about her [my OW] is that she's words on the Internet, words that move you, words that touch you - just as I am, just as hikingout, Unhinged, Inkhulk, Pogre, Morbs, you, et al. are.

And you're feeling as if you've slit your belly now that you're NC with the image you've created, an image that has an unknown and unknowable relation to reality.

You created the image. You're in charge of it. You can do anything you want with it.

My OW and I have spoken a couple of times and I have had a couple of videoconference meetings with my OW. So… she’s not a fiction or a figment. Some AI mockup. She’s an actual person. So, I can’t actually do anything I want with my concept of her.

The person behind the image has made her desires known to you, but your posts say you relate to/with the image, not the person.

My posts note that she habitually used to post smile icons to hide experiences she found painful. When I asked her privately about her tendency to do just that, she would admit to me her selfless duplicity. Also, one of our teleconference chats was held as a means of saying goodbye to each other. She was stoic throughout the parting until I was about to click the button to terminate my connection. Half a second before I clicked it, when I think she thought I was no longer online, I heard a sob on the other end of the line.

Those experiences taught me to recognize a disconnect between what she said and felt at times.

I can’t reasonably expect you to take on my say-so what I genuinely know to be true because I knew my OW so well, but I am 98% sure she declared our friendship "over" because she felt that was best for my W and me, and not because it’s the outcome she wanted for herself. If I am wrong about that, I will find that out when I make one last attempt to contact my OW.

Another potential topic for your therapy: what does this 'relationship' do for you, and can you get those desires met in real life?

Don't tell yourself and us you can't. The most you can say is that you haven't yet.

I reject completely the spirit of that question. It is asked in a way that treats an actual whole person—one I still platonically love, BTW—as set of fungible qualities. Completely without justification, your question shamefully reduces my dear sweet innocent OW into a whore—and disrespects me as a john; as someone who interacted with my OW purely for need fulfillment (i.e. transactional gain) and not because I actually cared about her.

However, I am in a more tolerant mood today than on some days. Not because your question was morally acceptable (it wasn’t), but simply because I coincidentally have the emotional bandwidth today to reframe your question into morally neutral language, the question that I will respond to is: Can you find relational satisfaction in deepening other relationships of yours?

My answer to that question is both a yes and a no.

I hope I can deepen my marital relationship. I’m a little pessimistic on that front today, but time will tell. But if my W holds a place in my heart that no friend may ever again fill, my OW holds a place in my heart that no stranger ever again can fill.

[This message edited by Unconventional at 7:08 PM, Friday, October 16th]

I think it's important that I clarify for anyone who had just read the last handful of posts that I am not defending chucking newborns off a cliff as a goal or as a routine, but as a last recourse.

I think there’s a tremendous and morally significant difference between holding that perfectly safe nurseries should have cliffs that people might rarely need to use and advocating that chucking those babies off 'em is for ordinary use.

Ok, Morbs…

Here’s a sentence I never expected to hafta write:

Infidelity is not infanticide.

[This message edited by Unconventional at 8:04 PM, Friday, October 16th]

No shit. It's also not a lifeboat.

A lifeboat would be civil divorce, or, at the very least for cherry picking religious folks who neither believe in divorce nor upholding their vows, ending the mutual expectation of monogamy and only being nominally and legally married, while one or both of you pursue other people.

Lifeboats are good because they are lifesaving safeguards. Having lifeboats on a ship is good practice. Willingness to engage in things like infidelity and infanticide is bad. Keeping cliffs in nurseries or using infidelity as a threat in order to make your spouse behave the way you want them to iare bad practices.

That is what we are condemning... After explaining why it is immoral and bad practice so many times, it's human nature to stop questioning one's understanding of the moral principle, and start questioning the willingness to behave according to it. Which is why people are now judging your character.

Morbs,

A lifeboat would be… ending the mutual expectation of monogamy and only being nominally and legally married, while one or both of you pursue other people.

That’s fair. Note, though, that I already said I would do essentially that before pursuing infidelity.

I said I would seek first to achieve fulfillment in my M. I said I would recruit my spouse first. I said there would be no secrecy. Then you went all ChatGPT on me and told me I was triggering
for you.

That is not what you said