Quote:
Originally Posted by jenkins09
Long story short my wife is a serial cheater. She has had multiple emotional affairs, shared nude pics of herself, phone sex, etc. The last one I found out about was two years ago and I forgave her.
She has been in counseling and was saying all the right things. I then find out a week ago that she is doing the same crap all over again. I am devastated right now and I am so angry.
She acts like its no big deal and that I should forgive and forget. I believe that she has some serious N traits that dont allow her to fully see and understand how much she has hurt me.
I am at the point where enough is enough. I love my kids but I can no longer accept this abuse from her. I believe she is a love addict but she is in denial of this. She likes the attention she receives from these men but wont seek a qualified T to help in this area.
I just needed to vent! Life is crazy sometimes...
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1st- I just want to say I have been in your shoes. But you have me beat by 4 years, whereas I was with my partner for almost 3. Our relationship ended very, very badly.
2nd- Discovering the compulsion takes a long time to discern. I didn't discover my partner had this compulsion until post-breakup. I look back now and I can count in cycles how many times he did the same thing. He was "fine" for two months, then in the third month he too was a serial cheater. He would engage in behaviors for the entire third month and then by the fourth month it started all over again. (It was like this the entire time.) When I look back on that relationship and look at his behaviors and align them with other aspects of our relationship that we were also having difficulty in, I saw a pattern. Whenever money was tight or I was in between work, he would stray. Whenever we had too many fights about money, jobs and individuality in relationships, he would stray. While I was in this relationship, I thought I was the cause of it. I wasn't. He would deliberately withold affection from me (most of the time) especially during periods of planned infidelity, but he would engage in behaviors where pornographic material seemed to be the center of his activity (nude pictures, sexting, cyber sex, viewing porn online, etc.) The day we broke up was because he went so far as to actually hook up with someone after he quit his job and I became the provider. This was a HUGE problem for me, especially because I'm a female. (Obviously I have some beliefs about who provides and to what extent etc.)
Point is, you're NOT the reason for her behavior. Even if your income decreases, you have problems at home, you're fighting, etc. you're still not the CAUSE of why she is engaging in these behaviors.
I recently picked up a book, Relationship Sabotage: Unconscious Factors that Destroy Couples, Marriages and Family (Matta, 2006) and it dives into the heart of problems like this one. Matta would say that not only are you NOT the reason for your wife's behavior, but that your wife is acting on unconscious feelings that have been repressed from other periods of her lifetime. In other words, she is cheating because of something that most likely happened in her childhood and something that is occuring in your relationship is triggering the same feelings and so she is acting out on it; unfortunately it's directed at you and hurting you, even thought IT'S NOT YOU.
More specifically the author address the "negative imprints" that lay just below our consciousness that destroy relationships and is the driving force behind why children act out, causes for marital games and extra-marital affairs, addictions, and emotional detachment disorders.
[Matta is a licensed marriage and family therapist and psychotherapist who has been in private practice for over 15 years and has also been a professor in psychology for more than 20.]