This thread has me thinking today. I notice so many LBS have similar feeling and so many MLCers say and do the same thing when it comes to affairs. I wonder if the reason is the replay idea.
For some people their self imagine as attractive is low or lacking. During MLC, I think those people have affairs because it is their most unresolved issue. It is an issue that has probably alway been there. It feels like the suddenness of my H's actions is more of a slow build to an explosion. Kind of like heating popcorn, nothing happens for a long time and then all of a sudden corn is flying everywhere.
It is not so much that our marriage was no good, but that he was unhappy about himself and THAT unhappiness grew and finally effected our marriage. I felt that unhappiness and rather than see it as his problem, I took it as something wrong with me. As a result, I began to feel less attractive also. Then, feeling less attractive myself, found it harder to let him know he was attractive to me, as I was walking around trying to get him to tell me I was still attractive. He was walking around trying to get me to tell him he was still attractive. What a mess and none of it spoken. Then comes some OP who fills the gap. The OP pours on the "you are everything" bit, and next thing you know, affair.
So, in the spirit of DB, I need to affirm myself as an attractive, worthy person and act it. My H has to get to a place where he can also do that for himself. I am getting there. Will he? Who knows. At that point the OP will have no hold on him and the relationship will stand or fall on its own merits. The LBS has to get there with no help. As hard as it is, it is deeper and longer lasting. We have to feel good about ourselves on our own, without anyone to tell us it true. It is why so often LBS go on to have better lives in the end, they do the work. It is no always so for the WA.
