Should You Be Their "Best Friend"?

[Puppy Dog Tails]

I guess it comes down to whether you view adultery as an illness, or a moral weakness, doesn't it.

[Puppy Dog Tails]

Someone who'd had it laid on their heart to do all that was humanly possible to save their marriage and then some, Puppy.

If one felt they were led, spiritually, to do this, and they could handle it emotionally, then I would agree with you, Amy.

[AmyC]

I recognize and respect that not everyone feels that leading, Puppy. But some of us that do, and have tried like hell to get away from it, only to return...well, we eventually settle and only then is there peace. Yes, even on this rollercoaster there can be peace.

If a person doesn't feel that strongly - doesn't feel led - who could fault them for getting off the ride?
I sure couldn't. Hell, I've at times envied those people that were able to do so...but that's just never been in the cards for me.

[Imageer]

I guess it comes down to whether you view adultery as an illness, or a moral weakness, doesn't it.

I don't think it is that simple.

5 years ago, my W was expressing her never ending love for me. Telling me that she would never leave etc. etc.

4.5 years ago, I went through a business failure, lost our house and in a lot of ways lost myself. It was a very traumatic experience for both of us.

4 years ago, while still sorting out and recovering from our financial mess W went to work for a company that put huge demands on her. This office was also staffed by younger single people including an open lesbian and a party girl who was D'd and had "experimented" and liked to brag about it.

3.5 years ago the party girl spent a lot of time trying to convince W that her life was better than family life.

3 years ago W has a one time affair with a woman and then tells me that she thinks she is bi-sexual. The woman was a friend of party girl and I'm sure that party girl influenced this. W also had a business trip with the lesbian the weekend before this happened. We got through it.

2.5 years ago W is telling me that she is telling her friends including party girl how happy she is.

2 years W has a business trip with party girl and then drops the bomb over breakfast a week later. A week after that she tells me that she is not sure. But she is living with party girl now who reinforces this lifestyle. A month later she is in an R with OW full time that is still going on roughly 20 months later.

So is she Morally Weak, Ill, Not over the financial meltdown, under a lot of stress or Under the influence of some very questionable people. Probably a bit of all of the above.

My very long point is that it is not simple at all. Certainly not black and white.

[Puppy Dog Tails]

It is to me.

It's understandable -- but never morally right -- to go outside of your marriage. And while not condoning it, I can understand the one-night-stand thing... maybe one has too much to drink, is feeling neglected and lonely, etc. But for a spouse to wake up daily, and make the conscious choice to continue to lie to their spouse and cheat on them, day after day . . .

I'm sorry, I just don't think it's right. And I cannot be "best friends" with such a person, who would do that to me.

Puppy

[Imageer]

I'm sorry, I just don't think it's right.

Don't get me wrong. It's 180 degrees from right and I don't condone it. I'm just trying to understand it and get past it so that my children can grow up in a proper family.

With that goal in mind I figure that being her friend is a good start. To me, friendship is the basis of marriage. I would think that most of us here were friends with our spouses before we were married. We have to rebuild that friendship as part of rebuilding our M.

[AmyC]

Puppy, it's NOT "right" for a person to do that to you.

But there IS a lot of gray area when it comes to relationships.

Because for one, there are levels of "betrayal".
Before the Great Betrayal (your wife's adultery) in what ways might you have betrayed the fundamental trust she had in you?

I don't ask that in order to try to get you to blame yourself for her cheating. That's not your fault. It IS her decision to do it and she has to carry the blame for that. However, so-called "little" betrayals had to have existed prior to her jumping headlong into adultery. There had to be some. And they, over time, did their damage, opening her up to an adulterous relationship. When you TRULY accept your role in where your marriage is at today, you will see that this is not a system of points, where she got more demerits because her indiscretion was WORSE. They are ALL bad. ALL of our failures in ALL of our relationships are ALL bad and they added up to what brought us here. No one got here by their spouse's hand alone. We ALL helped steer our respective "ships" into the rocks.

You do not have to be her friend right now.
You don't even HAVE to formulate a plan to be her friend LATER.
But to hang onto the bitterness - though justified - only hurts you. I know you know this is true.

Change your perception and everything else will follow suit but FIRST you have to have a clear picture of your marriage - to include your role in it's apparent failure.

[hoosiermama]

I know I can not be H's friend--let alone best friend--now or in the future. It has nothing to do with hanging on to bitterness, and everything to do with setting a boundary and declining to be used or to condone very narcissistic and hurtful behavior. These are long-standing patterns in our relationship, and it's not good for my emotional or spiritual health. Being a friend now--even if he was interested in me as a person vs. me as an inconvenient babysitter--would be saying I can accept his behavior even though it has been destructive to D and to me. I cannot do that. Whether it's an illness (and I tend to believe it is a form of mental illness) or a moral failing, I choose not to subject myself to it for the sake of my stability and ability to function.

[Silent Chrleader]

I think everything depends on the situation, and the people involved. For myself I agree with Puppy that it is just plain wrong and there is absolutely no excuse......but I also see that there are reasons!

If we are talking about a "serial adulterer" that just doesn't have the moral values to be monogamous, and doesn't have the courage to say so and try to find someone who shares that view and is OK with an "open" relationship, so they just live their lives deceiving their spouse, I think that is just inexcusable and the LBS should consider themselves lucky to be rid of the WAS (I know that's much easier said than done!)

But if we are talking about someone who historically has had good values and ethics, and this is an apparent real departure from the norm, then I think the situation deserves more care in dealing with it. These things don't happen in a vacuum. The truth always lies in the middle! So, one needs to look in the mirror and try to see where they may have contributed to the problem. This is especially true if there are children involved!

I have seen people on these boards who stood even when their S went off with OP. These are not doormat people, but stong caring people who had the courage to forgive and build anew. That is not weakness, I think, but true strength of heart!

I am not a religeous person at all, but I believe there is a verse in the Bible that when Jesus was asked "How many times should I forgive my brother? 7?", the answer was "Seventy times 7."

And let's not forget the verse "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."

Having said that, if my H was having an ongoing affair, I don't think I would have the fortitude to try to be his "best friend". I could try to be "friendly" or at least "cordial" when in contact with him (again easier said than done), but "best friend"....???? No, I don't think so.

[SirPrizeMe]

AmyC, I generally think you have good insight.

I don't know if I disagree with you or not.
No one got here by their spouse's hand alone. We ALL helped steer our respective "ships" into the rocks.
This feels liek a platitude to me. This is like saying, "We are all human."

Of course we are. We all have failings. We all have bad days. We all have flaws and weak points. If you want to call that a "betrayal" go ahead.

But I do not subscribe to the theory that it is always the case that one spouse pushes out the other. I have seen it happen - I know of a couple where it was obvious. The passive-aggressive behavior on the part of one person was apparent to everyone, and it was little surprise then that the other spouse eventually was unfaithful. In this case both partners obviously did not want to be married. They both bore strong responsibility, even though one of them was "unfaithful". The infidelity was just a ceremony, if you know what I mean. The marriage was really dead much much before then. Anyway I see that this happens - where there is more or less equal responsibility.

But I do not agree that this is the only way.
If I show up late coming home from work, you can call that a "betrayal" if you like. An alternative view is - we'll gee, he's working hard, he's trying to balance lots of things. Coming home late is something he doesn't do very often. I know where his heart really is. So I won't take offense.

It is not a matter of "forgiveness" at that point. Even "forbearance" is too strong a word - it is just not sweating the small stuff.

I don't know whether it's a personal thing for me, or what. I just don't like to hear this "it takes two to destroy a marriage." I'm sorry I don't subscribe to that.

It takes TWO to MAKE a marriage. It takes just one to destroy it. It takes a team of people to build something beautiful - a skyscraper or a bridge or a church. It takes one maniac to destroy it. One guy with a truck bomb can, in 10 seconds, tear down what it took 300 people 9 months to build.

When a building gets blown up, should we blame the night watchman for not seeing the truck bomb? Should we blame the farm supply store for selling the fertilizer? Should we blame the rent-a-car company for renting the truck?

It takes one nutcase to make a big mess. And I think the same is true in a marriage.

NOT ALWAYS! I am not saying, that every strained marriage is the result of a single actor. I think mostly (though I am no expert and this is based only on my very limited experience) troubles in marriage are the result of both people. If you subtract the affair and its aftermath from my marriage, then YES, I would say to the extent we were not as close as we could have been, there was shared responsibility. But I will not accept responsiblity for her affair. I will not agree that the marriage was "the sum of all the mutual betrayals." That is a unnecessarily negative and pessimistic perspective, to my mind.

I choose to look at a marriage as "the sum of all joys". Why, why o why would we look back at the history of a marriage and characterize it as a sum of hurts? The only reason I can think of: to retrospectively excuse some major crime.

Infidelity is not justifiable, it is not the "result" of any of the actions of the left-behind spouse. If you want to remember some misdemeanor from 20 years ago, and let it compound interest for all that time, and then aggregate it with all the other misdemeanors, and then construe that as "a great betrayal",... I guess you can choose to do that.

But that just seems like a trap, a inescapable trap of negative thinking. There are always opportunities to take offense and to feel slighted. Storing them up and remembering them and keeping the ledger - that seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Doing this in a relationship, you are asking to fail.

This is how adult "kids" learn to hate their parents. Save up all the little hurts and then use that ball of slime to justify dishonoring their own parents.

Sheesh, that was too long. do I never shut up?