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How do People Recover from Marital Betrayal?

Brickjectivity

Turned to Stone. Now I stretch daily.
Staff member
Premium Member
Recovering from feelings of marital betrayal must be difficult, but some people have gotten past it. How did they do it? Does anyone have a 1st person experience or else some experience they can share? What about the experience of friends and family?

By the way I have never been married, and I am not asking for personal advice.
 

Valjean

Veteran Member
Premium Member
The concept of betrayal varies. Infidelity might be shrugged off in some cultures and seen as a grievous injury in others.

Even within cultures I think individual reactions vary considerably.
 

columbus

yawn <ignore> yawn
Recovering from feelings of marital betrayal must be difficult, but some people have gotten past it.
Depends on what you mean by marital betrayal.

When my partner and I first got together, I'd been out for several years. And it didn't start out as a forever thing, more like "friends with benefits".

I'd had a lot of fun. He was coming out of an unhappy straight marriage he'd been in since he was a teenager. (We were both in our 30s, this was in the 90s)
We both wanted to be married. But I was done with "all that". I've never cheated on him once. He wasn't done with "all that". Once he was sure we were married, he started cheating and lying about it. I wasn't happy about that.

Especially that one time he came home wearing nothing but jeans. He was drunk. The jeans were on backwards and the zipper was down. He was supposed to be at work. And he drove himself.
I was really angry that time.

But I understood it. I wasn't married when I did stuff like that, but still...

Bottom line was, I wanted to be married. And you can't start over every time your spouse exhibits a flaw.

Closest I ever came to dumping his butt was the time he bought a car that cost more than our house. Then quit the big bucks job paying for the damn thing. I was stuck with a 600hp Corvette that cost $1000 month, during the Indiana winter. Those stupid things can't handle an inch of snow. We had to keep driving my 12 year old Mitsubishi Expo most of the time. Until spring, when we could get out from under the payments. About the time serious top out cruising weather arrived we got rid of it.

Now, that's the kind of marital betrayal that really got to me. I had to pay for a monster muscle car I never wanted. Eff buddies I can deal with. But how much is that goddam car payment?
Tom
 

Brickjectivity

Turned to Stone. Now I stretch daily.
Staff member
Premium Member
I'd had a lot of fun. He was coming out of an unhappy straight marriage he'd been in since he was a teenager. (We were both in our 30s, this was in the 90s)
We both wanted to be married. But I was done with "all that". I've never cheated on him once. He wasn't done with "all that". Once he was sure we were married, he started cheating and lying about it. I wasn't happy about that.
If it were me I'd probably feel jealous of your fun past and possibly would have held some anger towards you that you didn't deserve. I really hate that some people have had so much fun. Its not fair.

Anyways if he ever resented your fun past it he apparently lost that resentment. I guess you melted it?
 

Brickjectivity

Turned to Stone. Now I stretch daily.
Staff member
Premium Member
Marriage used to be just an economic alliance and, sometimes, a political one. Spouses weren't assumed to meet all one's social and sexual needs. Modern expectations may be impossibly restrictive.

The Trouble With Modern Marriage
There is a lot of history that we don't think about. People used to get with 1st cousins. Polygamy and harems were common sense, too. We also used to have harems. It would probably be great if the harem was mine, but I shouldn't daydream. We've never had a really good system. I agree modern marriage is more stressful than it should be.

I'm sure we could have something better than marriage which would be good for helping to rear balanced and happy children and which helped to combat problems associated with jealousy and mental issues. What would that be? Would it be an upgraded form of marriage?
 

Etritonakin

Well-Known Member
Modern societies as a whole don't actually condition/prepare people to be married/teach them how to be happily married.
People are taught by many examples to do anything but have a healthy, committed relationship -to wait to have sex, etc.
They are conditioned to boink anything that moves, but then expected to suddenly change and know what to do when married.
Marriage itself is not the problem.

As for getting over betrayal. Some can -some can't. I suppose it might depend on the circumstances -whether a person had any regard for the marriage in the first place, etc.-whether there is truly something to be understood and forgiven -but I'd imagine it's got to be the most difficult thing to be able to do.
 
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