Get over your hill and see what you find there

[Treasur]

Read something useful on another site, one that is a bit more bullish about infidelity.

Someone posted that why this is a perfect storm is that it is a situation where our strengths become weapons that are used against us...compassion, love, understanding, commitment, effort and courage. This means that we have to be careful not to let those fine human qualities hurt us, but it doesn't mean they are bad qualities and it doesn't make any of the post-BD craziness our fault or responsibility. We were 50/50 in our M, but post-BD, our spouses were 100% responsible for creating a whole new deal.

And combined with our lovely good qualities, the flip side of the pitch is that it brings lies, confusion, chaos, changing reality, rejection, abandonment, loss, grief, fear, control, manipulation, anger, anxiety, hatred, destruction, blame and extreme emotions that change frequently.

No wonder this stuff is so hard for us. But the lesson I took from reading this is we are good people trying to do the best we can in a virtually incomprehensible situation. We can use it to improve things WE want to improve about ourselves. We can use it to add some new coping skills that protect us and people we love. But I haven't read a single story here, no matter the previous imperfections of a M, where there were not other gentler, kinder, less destructive ways for our spouses to choose that would still have given them what they say they want. For their own 'reasons', our spouses chose this route...but it was never our choice so it really isn't our responsibility or fault. Our responsibility is to own our own responses and hold on to the normal truth about who we are and how normal healthy adults deal with tough times.