Letters to the Editor
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"LW--please get honest with yourself about what you want and THEN get honest with your husband"
But Katymurta, she can't do that. It's not her nature.
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@ calie64
I'm not talking about people who just disapprove of others being unfaithful. I'm talking about people who display rabid hatred on the subject, like so many writers here. Why is the prospect of a marriage breaking up, or of one's feelings being hurt, so terrifying and forbidding? Around 50% of marriages break up in this country. Almost all of the people in these marriages feel sad and disappointed, yet go on with their lives. Why is anyone "entitled" to a happy marriage, and to have no one do anything which makes them unhappy or disappoints them?
Blah blah blah.
It's the LYING people have a problem with.
Serial cheaters are inherently selfish child-people. They want and want and WANT and WANT and everyone else's needs be damned.
See, this right here is sociopathy. I should know. I'm related to one. He's a great guy - you would LOVE him! He has no problem sleeping around - with underage girls, with mentally challenged women, with 3 or 4 different girlfriends while his wife works her fingers to the bone to keep the roof over their head. I bet he really loves his 3 children with 3 different women, too. Of course, he never sees them, all 3 are in foster care, but that's not HIS problem now, is it?
You are floating through mental hoops trying to justify shitty behavior. Justify it all you want, that doesn't NOT make it shitty.
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Methinks the LW. . .
Wrote this letter in thinking we'd all crowd around her and go, "Ooooooh, you POOR BABY! Come, sit down over here by the fire, let me get you a cup of cocoa! Tell me your woes! So, you were just walking along and that man's penis just FELL into your vagina?! No, it was no fault of your own, not at all! And the pain you don't feel about lying to a person you made many promises to? Awwww. . .you POOR THING!"
She's not getting that so now she's getting pissy.
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No, it's the sex
Anonymous:
"It's the LYING people have a problem with."
Oh yeah? Well then name any other lie that would anger a spouse the way lying about not being monogamous would. The only possibilities I can think of are serious lies about money or about any children the couple has.
And if it's just lying, then tell me how someone's spouse is likely to react if they come to them and say, "You know, we promised to be monogamous, but I feel like I have to have affairs with other people now. It's not you, it's me. I'm telling you this because I didn't want to be dishonest or go behind your back."
How would someone react to that? Not very well, I think. They might be a little less upset than if they found out their spouse was lying about it, but they would still feel very upset and betrayed.
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Love and respect
The LW repeatedly says that she loves her husband. I don't think love is the issue in this case. Instead it's respect. If the LW has any respect for her husband, she should tell him the truth. If she is not bothered by her own behavior and responses, then why keep them secret? Like another commenter, I don't think it's appropriate for all of us to make moral decisions about promiscuity for the LW. However, I think everyone would agree that continual and continuous deceit are signs of disrespect at best. At worst it's contempt.
I suspect that by "I love my husband" the LW means that she loves the way her husband makes her feel. That's not really relevant to their relationship in this context.
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To Katymurta
"You say that you never betrayed anyone or told a lie when you were involved with married women. I beg to differ. Their husbands were being betrayed...and you lied by ommission."
Actually I agree with you entirely, but I see what I did more as indirectly betraying someone. My actions were a betrayal to someone, but not to someone that had ever given me his trust. And I do agree that by keeping secrets I was lying by omission, but as keeping secrets is my job, you could say I am a professional liar-by-omission (but the secrets I keep, keep people safe).
However when I was dating married women, I told them that if their husbands ever confronted me, then I would tell them the full truth.
I will not deny that I was culpable in something that was wrong, but what I did certainly was not illegal. But looking back on it all, it is hard to say that I didn't do some good (the women I was with both said they felt empowered by me), and to the best of my knowledge no one ever got hurt (to the best of my knowledge both women are still married, but I have not talked to either of them in over a decade).
To the real LW
Thank you for giving us more insight, but my question now is; it sounds like you want to be in an open marriage, am I wrong in my conclusion?
If I am not wrong, and an open marriage is what you desire, can you tell your husband that an open marriage is what you desire?
The only other conclusion I can make is that you love secrecy (I have to admit I love secrecy as well), but you have to understand that secrets are often uncovered, and when they are, huge consequences are going to have to be paid.
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Sociopathy
I was married to one. That's how I got my sociopathy recognition creds. When you get to study one up close, you learn to spot them a little better. However, I am always aware of how good that they are. The smarter ones are very, very good at what they do. I am always aware that even I can be fooled.
That said, I want to be clear:
All sociopaths are cheaters of some type or another. They operate outside of normal sexual mores not because they pay much attention to the mores but because NO MATTER WHAT THE SEXUAL MORES OF ANY PARTICULAR CULTURE, THEY ARE STILL GOING TO DO WHATEVER THEY WANT TO DO. YOU CANNOT CHANGE THEM.
Not all cheaters are sociopaths. People cheat for a variety of reasons. Sometimes they simply fall in love with someone they are not married to. Note that the LW does not say she is in love with any of these guys she cheats with. Instead, she tries to shift the blame to them. It is not that they do not have some culpability but that sociopaths always try to blame others and make such rationalizations. When you meet someone who can rationalize or excuse any behavior, that's a red flag.
When these people use words like love and soulmate, these words and concepts truly do not mean the same and cannot evoke the same feelings as they do in the rest of us. It is as if you learned to speak Greek phoenetically but had no idea what you were saying.
Trying to construct a moral argument with a sociopath is pointless. They are capable of logic but they are not capable of morals.
When, in threads on Broadsheet, I have tried to argue that pedophiles should not be walking among us, it is because pedophiles have strong sociopathic/narcissitic characteristics. You can't make a sociopath well because a sociopath will not recognize him/herself as either sick, wrong, or immoral. And even if sociopaths could recognize this, they wouldn't care. They don't have that gear inside that can turn on that switch that arouses conscience. It is missing.