I’m a man who recently started seeing a wonderful woman. Like me, she’s divorced. While my ex-wife left me for another man, my girlfriend’s ex-husband was controlling and abusive. Our relationship is the opposite—emotionally, psychologically, and sexually.
Here’s the thing: His abusive behavior is my kink—spanking. In all my past relationships, spanking was light, playful, and consensual; with her ex, it was about pain and humiliation to the point of tears and bruising. She understands that my motivations around spanking are completely different from her ex’s, but she has zero interest in anything approaching fetish play—and that’s fine, because I feel so connected to her that I don’t need my kink indulged to feel fulfilled. But I find myself feeling guilty for having the kink in the first place. The thought of her enduring what she did brings me to tears. How do I get past this?
Lacking A Clever Acronym
If your girlfriend’s ex-husband had manipulated or bullied her into vaginal intercourse—if he had repeatedly and brutally raped her vaginally during their terrible, awful, no good, very bad marriage—would you feel guilty about an interest in consensual, vanilla, missionary, penis-in-vagina intercourse? No. You would hopefully have reacted in a similarly compassionate manner, LACA. You would have been willing to stick to oral, mutual masturbation, and whatever else your new girlfriend was comfortable exploring and capable of enjoying. And you would have looked forward to the day when she felt ready to enjoy sensuous, consensual, and mutually pleasurable vaginal intercourse again. And if that day never arrived, well, then perhaps you would have been willing to forgo vaginal intercourse for the rest of your life to be with her.
But you wouldn’t be sitting there feeling like some sort of monster for being aroused by—and for having enjoyed—consensual, vanilla, missionary, penis-in-vagina intercourse with other women.
Your willingness to drop your harmless kink is evidence that your priorities are in order, LACA, your heart is in the right place, your cowboy hat is white, etc. Any time you start feeling bad about your kink, just remind yourself that consensual kink isn’t abuse for the same reason consensual vaginal intercourse isn’t rape: Because it’s consensual. You can love this woman, LACA, and make this relatively small sacrifice for this woman (spanking ain’t vaginal), without having to shame yourself or retroactively define all your past spanking experiences as abusive.
My boyfriend of five years had a one-night stand with a much younger woman. In some ways, it’s a good thing—we’re having conversations we should have had a long time ago, he’s seeing a therapist to deal with his issues (his idea, not mine), and somehow I know more than ever that I want to be with him (I’ve always been the one in every relationship with one foot out the door). Two questions:
1. I’ve started to worry about looking older, and it’s been devastating to know that not only did he cheat on me, but that he did so with a much younger woman. He assures me he’s attracted to me, but how can I believe that now?
2. The younger woman sent me—and other people in our lives—an explicit, lengthy e-mail detailing everything they did. (I hate to paint this as “bitchez be crazy,” but sometimes bitchez be crazy.) It’s not how I found out, but it certainly hasn’t helped. Ironically, our sex life has only gotten better since I found out exactly what they did—it turns out that we are both far more GGG than the other ever knew. But sometimes we’re in bed, and I’ll flash on something she wrote and the vivid mental images her letter cooked up in my head, and it sears me. Dealing with that pain out of the bedroom has been hard enough. It’s devastating that it’s now with me in the bedroom as well. How can I deal with this?
Salve It, Please
1. LTRs are only possible if we’re willing take “yes” for an answer. He says yes, he loves you, and you will yourself to believe him; he says yes, he’s having sex with you because he’s attracted to you, and you will yourself to believe him; he says he strayed and is sorry and swears he won’t do it again… and you will yourself to believe him. And while the passage of time makes monsters of us all, SIP, it can strengthen a sexual connection even as sex itself becomes less important when weighed against everything else your LTR is or should be about. In the words of singer-songwriter Tim Minchin: “Love is made more powerful by the ongoing drama of shared experience and synergy and symbiotic empathy, or something like that.”
2. Angry cheated partner: “You did what with that person? I would’ve done that with you! And I have kinks and fantasies, too, you know!”
Contrite cheating partner: “I was afraid to ask you to do that! I was afraid you would hate me—wait, you have kinks and fantasies? What are they?”
Conversations like that one are why affairs—if the relationship survives the betrayal—sometimes kick-start a couple’s sex life. With all the kink-and-whatever-else cards on the table, the couple starts going at it like they have nothing to lose—because in that moment when breaking up is on the table, they actually don’t have anything to lose.
As for those troubling mental images: The passage of time is your body’s enemy on the physical-perfection front—and his, too—but it’s your best friend on the searing-mental-images front, SIP. The more time you two spend doing, enjoying, and perfecting X, Y, and Z sex acts, the more X, Y, and Z becomes about you two and your connection. As you take ownership over X, Y, and Z, and over each other again, the mental images will come to you less often, they’ll be less vivid, and gradually they’ll cease. Give it time.
A letter in a recent column was from a guy who’s trying to figure out how to get into gay BDSM. You suggested some advice from a gay BDSM blogger—Ben In Leather Land (tinyurl.com/bensten)—and it was awesome. Do you have any suggestions of similar blogs for women into BDSM?
Looking Lady
Sex writer/blogger/thinker/haver Tristan Taormino, who is publishing a new book about BDSM and kinky sex (The Ultimate Guide to Kink: BDSM, Role Play and the Erotic Edge), recommends fetish icon Midori’s column in SexIs magazine (tinyurl.com/edenmidori) for women who are just beginning to explore kink.
HEY, EVERYBODY: We’re seeking sordid and tragic stories of holiday sex for an upcoming episode of the Savage Lovecast. Ever been caught having sex at Mom and Dad’s over the holidays? Ever put a “For Grandma, from Santa!” card on a wrapped box that contained a sex toy you bought for someone else? Did your older brothers stick your vibrator in the tree before a Christmas party, and you had to leave it there because reaching into the tree to remove it would only attract attention to it? Call and record your story at 206-201-2720! Please keep it under three minutes, if at all possible!
@fakedansavage on Twitter
@ 49, why would someone infer a meaning that’s different from the words you explicitly wrote?
Maybe, at some point in the future, people will have routine mental health screenings, like people today routinely go in for physical exams but did not in the past. But that’s not reality today, so I’m sorry to say that that makes your comparison a poor one.
lalalicious @35 I’m sorry to hear your sex life has been worse since the affair. When I first found out, I couldn’t imagine ever having sex with him again. But 24 hours later, after rehashing and rehashing all the details, I jumped his bones, maybe because we’d been talking about sex for 24 hours straight, or maybe as a way to change the dynamic, or maybe because he touched me the right way — I can’t explain how it worked. But it did. I’m probably not the right person to advise you here, but for me, it helped to realize that I’d been hurting him for much longer (I had a longstanding bitter joke about how he must be cheating on me because he worked such long hours…) We were able to come together and help each other with the pain, even though we had each caused some of it.
@52 – have you ever asked a friend to recommend a therapist, and then asked that therapist if they have a sliding scale, or can recommend someone who does? If you’re interested, except for cost concerns, then you might try that.
Abusive therapists are not unheard of.
The idea that most functional people should go to be assessed by a therapist as if it were a medical examination, where they could be pronounced “without baggage” or “in need of therapy” sounds like bunk to me. A medical doctor can at least show you test results to support their diagnosis, a dentist might be able to show you your cavities on the x-ray, though I’ve heard of dentists whose patients need more work when the dentist has a vacation to pay for.
It seems that some people put a whole lot of faith in therapy. Maybe it’s not such a good idea for everyone, especially someone who has been the victim of abuse, to put oneself at the mercy of another person so readily.
I have no doubt that therapists have helped many people in need, and I’m glad they’re out there. But just because a therapist helped you, it doesn’t mean therapy would be a good idea for everybody else.
A cheaper starting place might be reading self-help books.
@52 Matt,
Before you have experience with therapy there is no way you need it. After you have experience, it can be hard to live without it.
If you’ve had any 12 step type experience, the reality of not being alone with problems perceived and not yet perceived is profound. But if you haven’t had the experience it’s pretty easy to dismiss both the problem(s) and the relief. And if you don’t have any problems, you’re a better person than I.
Peace.
@ 55, thanks.
@ 57, your remark tends to underscore one of my concerns about therapy – that it can end up being a longterm crutch for those who enter it. I certainly hope the goal is that the patient can one day live without it.
I wasn’t dismissing anything, so I ask you not to put words in my mouth, and also to apologize for doing so.
@ Matt from Denver, I can tell already you have issues and would benefit from some therapy if you ever let go of your ego enough to see one.
But more generally, I don’t believe there is anyone in the world who is completely mentally healthy and would not benefit from some skilled therapy.
@ My:
Unfortunately, I don’t have time to respond to your comment as thoroughly as I’d like to, but let me be clear about one thing: when I described Eria’s comment as “adding insult to injury,” the “insult” was not the implication that LACA’s girlfriend would benefit from therapy, but rather the implication that she was somehow complicit in her own abuse. Yes, I acknowledge that some people are more vulnerable to abuse than others. But no matter how you try to spin it, saying that a woman coming out of an abusive relationship needs therapy “to help her figure out why she stayed so long” absolutely reeks of blaming the victim. (A straightforward reading of Erica’s comment seems to suggest that this is the central reason that LACA’s girlfriend should seek therapy — not so she can work through her trauma and put it behind her, but so she can discover why she “let” herself be traumatized in the first place.) Would this question come up in the course of therapy? Yes, probably, although not necessarily in quite those words. But I maintain that it’s a cruel and counterproductive way to frame whatever psychological issues an abuse victim may have.
@56 – it’s you, not the therapist, who decides if you need more therapy. But your point is valid that if you’re susceptible to doing what you’re told by authority figures, then therapy might be a bad idea.
David Burns’ book Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy provides a good introduction to cognitive behavioral therapy, and taught me that it wasn’t all bunk (even though it’s hard at first to understand the difference between CBT and The Secret). Only then did I understand what I might be able to get out of talking to someone with some CBT training.
@58 I ended mine after six months, but some people thrive with ongoing therapy. Therapy can be a crutch, or it can be like exercise for the mind.
@60 I apologize for phrasing it badly. okay?
“But more generally, I don’t believe there is anyone in the world who is completely mentally healthy and would not benefit from some skilled therapy.
Amazingly, most of the world cannot afford such things, and historically most could not do so, yet they all seemed to manage just fine. As if…as if, humans were designed to live their lives without therapists. Wow, what a concept.
Ms Erica – I would like to think we could coexist. You do remind me a bit of Brand with his ALL OR NOTHING. There’s more to this post, but it keeps insiting on not coming out properly, and I’ve decided to stop trying to force it.
@58 Matt,
I apologize most freely, but ask that you reread @57 not as a challenge, but rather as a sadder but wiser lament. In my case I am working my way up to a crutch from being completely disabled. As it happens I have done so completely by therapy since all the medications I tried in conjunction with a neuropharmacologist did nothing to help. The 12 step reference is in part a legacy of self medication from when I was younger, but is still a valid expression of the power of shared experience and honesty (or therapy by other means). I would even recommend pastoral counseling under some circumstances, if it weren’t so unpopular around here. As far as I am concerned there is one overriding truth: in my case therapy has and is worked. If it is taking a long time, it took longer to create the situation in the first place.
Peace.
@ Matt
I thought it was a pretty logical implication of what I was saying, maybe it wasn’t clear for other people, but I don’t really feel like dissecting it any further than that.
Full dislosure, I’m Canadian. We have the free healthcare so going to a psychiatrist is free also. I’m assuming you’re American, then?
Other kinds of therapists are not free in Canada but they frequently offer their first (and sometimes second) meetings for free.
Finally, the long term crutch thing may be true, but as someone mentioned above, not all therapy is the same. CBT has a limited timeframe and the patient is not encouraged to continue past it.
@65: has worked and is working…
Sigh.
@63,
There are many things in the modern world that are radical changes from the past. In my case, had sulfa drugs not been available for my father during WWII, I wouldn’t be here. In addition, without glasses I am legally blind, with them I have slightly better than normal eyesight. Even the rising incidence of Alzheimer’s disease (and other chronic diseases of the elderly) is an indicator of our “changing the world” by successfully decreasing the risk of death from other means long enough for the disease(s) to occur.
If you have a problem with the concept of mental health care, then ignore it. If you have a problem with the cost, then get a health plan that covers it, or move to Canada. In my opinion they have the right of it; quality and quantity of life as a priority.
Peace.
@62:
I appreciate that. I know your comment @5 wasn’t intended maliciously, but it was just one of those things that got under my skin and rankled, you know? But now that I’ve said my piece, I feel better.
“As if…as if, humans were designed to live their lives without therapists. Wow, what a concept”
Humans weren’t designed. That’s stupid.
There’s three other things that are stupid about your statement.
1. People lived before toilet paper, before running water, before birth control, before electricity. That doesn’t mean that saying most people could benefit from these things isn’t true.
2. I don’t have interst in debating this fact in depth with you, but sometimes new problems exist that didn’t exist before. Did you know that? There’s this virus for example, you may have heard of it. It’s called HIV and it’s killed millions of people? Yeah, a lot of the world can’t afford medication for that. That probably means that we shouldn’t bother to try to stop it. What about obesity? Ever heard of it? Sometimes the circumstances of modern life create problems that modern life may also need to fix.
3. Finally, your “they all seemed to get by just fine” statement is also… hideously ignorant. If you do even a cursory look into the long history of mental health and mental health treatment you’ll see that’s…. so… ugh my brain is bleeding that’s so stupid.
@70 like 🙂
@10 Please don’t compare being abused to having a mental illness. It is a dangerous comparison because it suggests that there is something wrong with a woman, not the abusive asshole that hurts her.
@32 If you truly believe what you are saying about your sister who was in many abusive relationships, then you are also saying that eventually, it IS okay to blame the victim. That eventually, if someone gets hit enough and stays, the next time they get hit, it is their fault. If we are truly to believe in a non-violent basis for relationships (and our society) it must always be unacceptable to use violence against another individual. I’m shocked here that we can’t agree that nobody deserves to be hurt in a relationship, ever, period.
@39 You sound like an abuser. If not, you certainly have a lot of sympathy for them and spent most of your comment trying to build up a false basis for why abuse happens. While it is true that many abusers have been abused, that doesn’t make their abusiveness OK. Lots of people who have been abused choose to have healthy relationships. Abuse is a choice, and being abused DOES NOT force one to abuse another. After working for 2 years with both abusers counseling groups and victims groups, I understand that the hallmark of abusers is their ability to stay calm and collected and make the victim feel crazy/out of control/isolated. An abuser wants the power and control in a relationship. In order to maintain it, he has to keep himself very much under control at all times. It is a mistake to think of abusers as people who simply “flew off the handle” or “got to the boiling point.” Research is very clear that people who abuse do not just do it once. There is no such thing as a one-time abuser. Abuse is a pattern of behavior over time where one person systematically takes power and control away from another person. I have known so many victims who are amazingly strong people–if they weren’t strong, they wouldn’t have survived. I challenge those of you who want to agree with 39 to read accounts from victims and those who do therapy with abusers.
@everyone stop making excuses for abuse, its never ok. and don’t blame the victim. period.
@Matkoff.
So… everything I wrote went over your head eh?
@10 Are you really comparing being abused to having a mental illness or an eating disorder? That’s wrong on so many levels. Being abused is not a mentality or a mental illness, its a crappy, and sometimes deadly, situation that some one in every four women in the US ends up in at some point.
@32 Just admit you are saying abuse is OK. It’s just that for you, it’s only OK after a while, when victims should have “learned their lesson.” I’ve worked with hundreds of abused women, and none of them wanted to be in abusive relationships or sought out abusive partners. This is just a facade for victim blaming and it’s shameful.
@44 In section 2 you say that women need to understand the bad choices they made that put them at risk for abuse. This is just another way of saying that its women’s fault that they are abused–if they had just not put themselves at risk! Yes, we all put ourselves at risk when we start a new relationship and from 2 years of experience working with abusers counseling groups and victims groups, I know that you can’t spot an abuser by the way they dress, their age, or how they treat you (in the beginning). And you certainly can’t spot abuse in public–any abuser knows that to continue the abuse they need to masquerade as a healthy, loving partner. Abusers often maintain excellent standing in their communities as a way to hide their domestic behavior. An abuser is smart and knows how to rope someone in before starting to use extremely strategic tactics of power and control in order to make the victim so afraid of leaving that she stays in the relationship. It is true that therapy is helpful for abused women, to start to understand the tactics of power and control that abusers used and how the dynamics of abuse have affected them. Therapy is NOT for abused women to sit around and try to “figure out” what is wrong with them to have chosen abusers. This is why victims rights groups DO NOT suggest therapy for an abused individual–it places the responsibility and blame for the abuse on them, not where it belongs–on the person who perpetrates the abuse.
@39 “In other words, there are some pretty normal (even good) people who get trapped into abusive behavior because there is something they are not dealing well with”
You sound like an abuser. If not, you certainly have a lot of sympathy for those poor abusers, because really, its not your fault if you hit someone if someone else hit you first, right?
The way you describe how someone might abuse the first time, its like you are trying to build an understandable rational, so we can sympathize with abusers and say to ourselves yeah, i guess if my wife/husband did that and i just got madder and madder i would have hit him/her too! don’t make us join in on your quest to normalize abuse and make it sound like a reasonable outlet to those deal with daily annoyances.
@61, Thanks for the book recommendation, EricaP. It sounds like a great idea to learn more about therapy, and what the different styles are, before getting into it. Seems like that would help people get the most out of it, if they’re going to go down that road.
I just wanted to say that, with all this discussion about “CBT” here on Savage Love, the first place my mind went to was not “cognitive-behavioral therapy”.
It’s a cavalcade of misinterpretation!
LACA – no guarrentees, but you may find in time your girlfriend deals with her past by developing a related kink.. My first boyfriend was physically and sexually abusive, not admittedly in the systematic beating/spanking to tears way, but he would slap or kick me for minor transgressions (not changing channels on the tv quickly enough or if i dropped something he would kick or slap me for it whilst i was trying to clear it up) and force me to have sex or do things I wasn;t comfortable with.. as a result I became very emotionally sensitive about any kind of violence or anything that made me feel vulnerable, going apeshit if someone did something like grab my wrist and was quite inhibited sexually, couldn’t abide anything where I was not in control, to the extent that I couldn;t even do it doggy style.. but over the years this has kind of morphed,and I now have sexual fantasies about being tied up, or put over my boyfriends knee and, relatively gently, spanked which we have started to explore and love being taken from behind and fucked in the ass.. I don’t quite know how this flip happened, my very perceptive, understanding and damned sexy lover was a big part of it as I felt safe to explore knowing he wouldn’t abuse the situation, but I also suspect maybe it’s because the relationship between fear and excitement is so close, and I may always have had this inclination and not really acknowledged it, but it has definitely helped me deal with my past to open up about this and explore it with a partner I totally trust.. So short answer, it may not be ruled out, eventually, with alot of patience and understanding and good, trusting sex :0)
@75 I think @39 was trying to say something like this:
We are not born with a fate to be an abuser or non-abuser. At some point some people will transition from simply having the potential to be an abuser to actually having a history of being an abuser. We obviously want to minimize the number of people that do this, so maybe we should look for more ways to treat the potential abuser before abuse occurs.
I understand poorly stating this can sound like blaming the victim or sympathizing with the abuser, but there are simply too many potential abusers to ignore the possible benefits of preventative treatment. (Milgram and Zimbardo both demonstrated the normality of potential for conformist/institutional evil, and it isn’t much of a stretch to think that this extends to individual evil.)
@78: I second that!
74-Matkoff– “Being abused … is a crappy, and sometimes deadly, situation that some one in every four women in the US ends up in at some point.”
Are you saying that 1:4 women are beaten up, bloodied, getting their bones broken and landing in emergency rooms at the hands of their boyfriends or husbands? If that’s your assertion, could you site some statistics? A glance around you will let you know that you are incorrect.
Or are you saying that 1:4 women are in relationships where their boyfriends or husbands sometimes do things that they don’t like or that could lead to the bloody situation if things went differently? This could be the boyfriend getting mad, yelling at her, storming off in a bad mood, insulting her, saying something he regrets, apologizing later, and eventually, if things don’t go differently, building a strong relationship based on mutual disagreement, communication, compromise, apology, and the woman sometimes being the one who gets mad, yells, storms off, insults, does the regretting, and apologizing. If this is your assertion, your 1:4 statistic is low.
If that is your assertion, if scenario 2 is what’s being given as the definition of “abuse,” then you’re in danger of trying to get attention (and public sympathy, and money) for a problem by saying it’s more widespread than it is while the public is coming to the conclusion that it’s not as bad as it’s portrayed.
Matkoff– Your posts can be summed up as follows: All abusers are evil men who want to beat up women (or one woman) for some unknown reason. To do so, they must plot, from the beginning, to engage on a campaign to weaken their target’s self esteem to the point of thinking she deserves it and to isolate her from friends, family, and support so she has nowhere to turn when things get worse. Any attempt to examine or explain the abuser’s emotions or motives (other than he wants to be mean) is equivalent of excusing his behavior, and anyone who does so must be an abuser himself.
Is that right, or did I get it wrong somewhere?
@74 Yes I was drawing a comparison.
And I repeat:
Nor is it negative or insulting to imply that a woman may be psychologically vulnerable and could use help. I dislike that implication and I think it helps perpetuate these kinds of cycles, to be honest. The stigma around mental health is so ingrained that people take it as an insult or an affront (insult to injury, you say!) when someone even suggests it.
A person can have psychological issues without having a mental illness, by the way.
Haven’t gotten to read the whole thread, but, per the “Should everyone get therapy?” Disccussion:
I do think it’s possible that everyone COULD benefit from therapy. Not will, could. Most people do go to therapy only when they have problems. And it can be difficult to make yourself vulnerable to a stranger when you’re already feeling vulnerable in every day life. This is actually an argument for seeing a therapist when everything is “fine”. If you’re able to build up a trust relationship when you aren’t feeling vulnerable, it will be easier to open up when you are.
Personally, I am going through a pretty stressful time in my life. I, luckily, found a therapist I clicked with, and see once a week. Once I’m over this bump in the road, I plan to continue with her, though probably less often. Sometimes you don’t even realize something is bothering you until you talk it out with someone. Also, I’d rather continue speaking to her on a regular basis so I don’t have to “start over” the next time something comes up.
It is never okay to abuse anyone. Both sexes can be abuse: with woman, they are usually emotionally abusive. With men, they are usually both emotionally and physically abusive. Either way, there is never an excuse. I have known quite of few of both sexes unfortunately. I do agree that sometimes the abusers don’t realize what how horrible they are being because they tend to be narcasisstic assholes who don’t actually care about anyone but themselves.
There is never an excuse for abuse, period. Defender of abusers can go fuck themselves because it sounds like you are excusing their actions. What the hell is wrong with you? I’m guessing you’re both guys who have abusive tendencies.
82- Cite statistics! Mixing up sight, site, and cite is one of my pet peeves, and I went and did it.
Years ago I was one of those feminists who thought that asking why a victim stayed so long with her abuser was taboo. Now I’m realizing that neglecting to do so gives more even more power to the abuser. Not asking is saying that her motivations and emotions don’t matter, that they don’t deserve examination. It makes her even more at the mercy of the abuser. Helping her get to that place where she can wonder about her own actions and inactions is empowering. It can help her get past her fears, help her see that there is a great deal she can do to be in control of her own life.
@88 sexual urges are normal, and so is seeing a therapist. But it’s also possible that the affair led him to notice some stuff going on in his head around “is this what life is for?” “how do I know if I’m ready to settle down?” or “Is it okay for me not to tell her that I also had an affair with a guy?” He may enjoy having someone he can talk to honestly about his situation.
Wow, I just gave a strong recommendation to the book “Healing Sex” by Staci Haines just yesterday! To anyone who has been, or is intimate with, a person who has been abused sexually, this book can be very helpful. I work in the sex industry, and help keep couples intimately connected – this is an excellent resource. (so much so that I don’t care where anyone buys it, even though I do sell it.)
I agree with the idea that the woman in LACA’s letter should explore why she stayed as long as she did – but a GOOD therapist will make her get to the reason(s) why on her own terms. Gently nudging someone to get the help they could use is not wrong, but must be offered as neutrally as possible. “Honey, I found some resources for people who went through what you did, and I hear they do great work. Here’s a couple of numbers and brochures,” and leave it at that. It’s like anything else – if she’s not ready now, it won’t work. And if when (if) she’s ready to explore it, that would be great, but I think it’s not crucial if she’s in a good relationship now. As long as she maintains her boundaries in other relationships as well. (i.e., she’s not letting her boss, her mom, her pastor walk all over her)
I hope that is a helpful comment!
@90: Thanks! I’ll check it out.
Does such a story have to be phoned in? What about us deafies? Email somewhere?
I hate that Dan only focuses on the sex stuff with affairs. I actually agree that sexual fidelity should not be the be all end all of the definition of a good marriage, and if it was just purely a sex issue, then I’d agree that people need to just get over affairs and be satisfied with good long-term relationships. But – and he says this briefly – all affairs, even if they really are just one night stand sex – are also a betrayal and a breaking of trust. Especially when they involve lying, putting their spouses health at risk, breaking the “contract” of marital fidelity that the spouses agreed to, etc, they can be devestating. I’m afraid people who have cheated are going to read Dan’s flippant “give yourself some time and you’ll just forget about it” Responses and feel like their spouses are being ridiculous for caring about being cheated on. Or that cheated on spouses are going to feel guilty for not being forgiving and cool and progressive enough because they are devestated by their partner’s affair. It’s not just reconciling sexual fidelity, it’s also dealing with someone who has lied to you, showed that they are selfish enough to not really care that they are doing something that might cause them to lose you and might cause you public embarrassment and putting your health at risk if they continue to sleep with you too. Cheating is so much bigger a deal than just getting used to the fact that sexual fidelity is not so important. I wish Dan would clarify that better in his cheating responses.
@93 – The rest of the world broadcasts the message that cheaters are terrible and those cheated upon should feel devastated and should leave the relationship. Dan is a lone voice saying, “Everyone is human, everyone has flaws. Now you know that your spouse has lied to you. What are you going to do with that information?” He doesn’t tell people they have to stay, but he says they should at least consider staying (even though the rest of our culture says the only way to get back your self-respect is to leave.)
@43 (aunt grizelda), sure. Not all victims (or abusers) have to follow the exact same pattern, since humans, being humans, always have other things going on (other problems, other contexts, other desires/wishes, other people in their lives, other boundaries, other personalities, etc.).
It’s just an oft-repeated observation that many an abuser has a past as an abuse victim. My own personal observations of this phenomenon lead me to believe that this is involved with the abuser-to-be’s emotions concerning his/her own victimhood, either via projection (anger at past abusers is transferred to others) or via the sense that one’s victimhood is being ignored (by someone important in our lives, or by everybody) — the latter leading from feelings of injustice to desires for revenge.
I’m glad that’s not your case; being able to escape the evil influence of this baggage is a reason for happiness indeed. I was also ‘shell-shocked’ in my childhood and youth, and I also managed to move on to a more normal life. Yet I almost didn’t. There’s this other path I could have followed, which would have led to me being one of those angry, frustrated abusers who torment those naive enough to come close. At some points I almost did follow this path. Almost. Why I didn’t is one of the big questions of my life.
@93, I was going to say mostly what EricaP has already said above. I’ll add only one more issue: lying is lying. Lying about sex with others, aka cheating, is not as such different from lying about other things (say, about the secret use you’ve been making of your joint savings account, or about having abandoned some addiction, or about having wholeheartedly and sincerely converted to your spouse’s religion, or…).
Yet many of the lies in the above list are not treated by our culture as automatic deal-breakers, for which only permanent separation would be an appropriate solution. Note that many of them have the same problems as cheating (depending on what you are addicted to, you may be putting your spouse’s health at risk; if you’ve been gambling with your joint savings account, you’re putting your spouse’s future solvency at risk; if your conversion to your spouse’s religion is not sincere, you are breaking some very solemn promises; etc.).
Only cheating is apparently supposed to be this immediate deal-breaker. I don’t think that this is fair. Also, even though Dan did give the advice you mentioned to this particular LW, how often has he also recommended LWs to DTMFA their CPOS of a spouse? I’m sure some CPOS could use Dan’s advice to manipulate their spouses; but then again, any of Dan’s concepts (say, GGG) can also be manipulated in this way.
The sad truth is that it’s not the words and soundbites coming out of a person’s mouth that guarantee s/he is a good person (or an evil manipulator), but the use this person puts these words to. You have to look at what this person is doing with these words, what consequences s/he is aiming at. You have to know the person. That right words (‘cheating isn’t always the end’, ‘be GGG’) can be used for evil manipulative ends is one of life’s unfairest and saddest features. This doesn’t mean, however, that said words aren’t right.
Sex (PIV, at least) creates new human beings.
I would say it’s quite unique in this sense.
Ms Maria (or do you prefer Ms Goddess?) @90 –
That seems a most helpful comment. Of those commenters whose first response concerned therapy for her, you may be the first one to frame it in terms of how he should approach the possibility (and this is, after all, his letter). I salute you.
94 and 96 – I’m 93. I guess I wasn’t clear. I didn’t say that Dan should tell people to immediately leave anyone who cheats on them like the rest of the world would say to. Or that no one should give cheaters a chance. But I still feel like his response to SIP was very flippant.
Essentially, he said “just believe him whenyour bf says he loves you and wants to be with you when he says he does” and “don’t worry about the images, they will go away in time.”. That’s it. I guess he was just responding to her two questions directly and assuming the rest is being taken care of. But the message at the end is that she should get over his mistake because we’re all shown to be “monsters” in time and sex becomes less important than long-term sharing, so who cares about a little cheating. I feel like that is lessening the impact of cheating – its not just someone getting a little sex on the side that doesn’t affect the spouse at all. Just like with other gambling and addictions and whatever your other examples were, do you really want to trust this person again with your health and your future and your feelings? It’s more than just “whatever fidelity isn’t that big of a deal.”. That’s all I’m trying to say.
@99 I think Dan’s saying that he doesn’t know if SIP’s boyfriend is going to be faithful in the future (and neither does SIP, or the boyfriend); Dan also can’t promise SIP’s boyfriend will always be attracted to her. But those questions are ones that no one can ever answer for sure. If you can’t accept that and move forward, then you can’t be in a relationship. Take ‘yes’ for an answer, says Dan, because the alternative means being suspicious and alone.
As someone who has had to go through all this, I find Dan’s advice heartfelt and practical, not flippant.
As for the “monsters” remark, I think Dan meant that by age 80, we’ll all look like monsters (to our younger selves, anyway), but we can grow to love each other regardless of our looks, by shared decades of experiences (both sexual and otherwise). I don’t think he meant that we will necessarily treat each other brutally. (Though that’s probably a little bit true too. Doesn’t Dan say elsewhere that marriage is all about accepting each other’s apologies and sharing orgasms?)
Thanks EricaP. That makes sense. I’m going through it right now so maybe it’s a little too fresh. I don’t want to be made to feel like I’m not being progressive and cool enough about sexual fidelity since my husband’s affair (just found out two months ago) was and continues to be devastating to me. Yeah it was only sex (no emotional attachment – he had just met the woman). But the sex isn’t the reason I was so upset by it and the sex isn’t the reason I will probably leave him even though he’s trying hard to win me back.
@74,I resent the implication that all abusers are evil masterminds, brilliant and purposeful deceivers who trap their helpless victims with magnificently-planned schemes. Christ, how much power do you want to give abusers? Are you willing to grant any power or choice to those who were abused?
Personally, my abuser was a bit of an idiot. I’ve no doubt she occasionally thought out her power plays, but all in all, most of her behavior seemed to be learned by trial and error. And no, she didn’t wear a neon sign stating she was an abuser when we started dating, but at a certain point it became apparent…and I chose to stay. I wasn’t some hapless damsel in distress, wilting in her evil clutches. I could’ve left earlier than I did, but I decided to stay because I hadn’t yet figured out that I could have what I want out of a relationship without having to endure psycho bullshit. I needed to figure out that I not only deserved better, but that there were plenty of people out there who are willing and able to commit to loving relationships.
I didn’t reach that conclusion until after she finally took it one step too far. I left, then spent quite a bit of time pondering why I put up with so much for so long. Since then, I’ve learned to avoid anyone who shows abusive tendencies. Is it 100% foolproof? No. But I’ve saved myself a lot of additional pain by realizing there are things I can do to increase my chances of continuing to live a happy, healthy life surrounded by people who love me.
This doesn’t mean my past abuser is in any way innocent or that her behavior was justified. I wasn’t to blame for her violence and I’m not letting her off the hook. But I refuse to consider her some sort of diabolical genius when she was no more than a fucked up asshole. And I absolutely refuse to be painted as a swooning victim, stripped of all choice and independent thought.
@101 I’m so sorry for the pain you’re going through. Part of me wants to ask about your situation, but I understand one might not want to go into details while still processing…