I guess for me, I had more clarity in that regard. It only felt like "cake-eating" to me when my wife was cheating on me and I didn't know about it. Once I knew, and she KNEW that I knew, and she knew that I wasn't willing to live in an open marriage and although I didn't want a divorce I was starting to move on and I told her "I won't wait forever" . . . it changed the dynamic. I would even reinforce that with "Look, I know all about where you went last nite, and this is all incredibly disrespectful to our marriage and to our family," etc.
So it was all kinda like "look, let's both kut the krap. We both know what's going on right now, and this doesn't work for me. Looks like we've both got some decisions to make."
Did she have contact -- even sex -- with OM dozens of times after that? Yes, I'm sad to say. And while I felt at various times angry, confused, sad, p*ssed, sad, disappointed, disgusted, sad, angry . . . I never felt like it was "cake-eating" anymore, because *I* knew I had a plan, and I knew that plan had everything up to and including divorce on the table, I had separated our finances and put basic boundaries in place.
It was infidelity, for sure -- even adultery. But it was no longer "cake-eating." Because we both knew what the truth was, and what the stakes were, even if we didn't yet know where we would ultimately land.
