Well, it seems that the WAS/adulterer often has a support system in place to justify and coddle their actions. Very few people can carry on an affair long-term without secrecy or tacit/overt supporters. Loyalties often blind people to injustice.
Onc of the great traumas in many affairs for the hurt spouse is the sense that moral/ethical "gravity" has been suspended and that the obvious injustice of the whole thing is being supported by people you thought were friends. Not only does your world fall apart, but it begins to lose meaning, as people you love betray you. A great term for this is de-narration -- a feeling that we have lost our story, that everything we live for and love has been swept out from under us. It's a very lonely feeling. I, for one, have felt that the last 15 years of my life have been wasted.
This is often the case with men, when they face the significant loss of their childrenin addition to the loss of their marriage and, perhaps, the betrayal of a friend, who might be the OM.
It's compounded when one's religious community is either uninterested in your spouse's affair or ends up treating you like a pariah.
I think exposure, to some small extent, aside from it's strategic value of causing the affair to sour, it a way of reaching for help, gaining allies and trying to re-narrate one's world. It's a desperate attempt to try to restore law and order -- to bring accountability to bear upon the WAS. It's a way of creating a small community that says, "You are not insane, the WAS is wrong."
The real question is its effectiveness.
We want to attract our spouses, not shame them.
An interesting essay would be how to determine when/if it's best to expose or not, to whom, and under what circumstances.
--Theoden
I know exactly how this feels... people who I devoted a lot of time and emotional energy into helping through a difficult period (in-laws) are circling the wagons to 'protect' my WAW because they don't want her reputation sullied, and they believe whatever story she tells them.
"You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into."
