SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I've been tossing this around in my head for a couple weeks now, and I can't parse out any logic from it. Maybe you guys can help...

Rationally, I know that infidelity is a choice, or rather, a series of choices. It is quite simply the truth that it wasn't an accident, a mistake, or something that just "happens" to WS. But emotionally, I am still experiencing a lot of fear of me "slipping up" and doing it again. I don't fully trust myself to make the right choices when faced with the same circumstances and opportunity I had with my most recent A. I guess that's probably for the best, because while The Work is actively in progress, it's far from being finished, and I think I should be hyper-vigilant of myself until it is.

I often describe the inner working of my thought processes as a board room of "committee members" that come and go, observe external proceedings, and make arguments for and against what "we" should do. Then there's a mini-me at the "control board" for the body who listens to and interacts with the committee members and makes decisions about what to think, feel, and do with my body. Typically the committee members will embody different emotions and each have only one perspective, sort of like Inside Out, except only the mini-me is permitted to touch the control board, and the CMs are relatively impermanent.

When my most most recent A was beginning, I felt so out of control. I felt like one of the CMs was sneaking around pressing buttons when the mini-me wasn't paying attention. It felt like this pervasive evil whispering in my ear constantly that I couldn't shake. I remember lying in my rack several nights, staring at the ceiling, feeling simultaneously giddy about the interactions with AP, missing my H, wishing our M was more like it was with AP, and wracked with guilt for these feelings. And I would get up the next day determined to shake myself out of it and not interact with him beyond what was necessary, but then he would come and find me before and after our shift, plop himself down at whatever table I was sitting, and draw me back into those first-date kind of conversations, and I felt like a fly in a spider's web again. The mini-me heard committee members screaming "Stop! Get up! Distance yourself!" and she/I agreed with them, but there was just that one sinister voice saying, "It's just a conversation. We deserve this. Doesn't it feel so good that someone seems actually interested in you? What if you're not imagining all of the little signs that he's into you? Remember when we used to get men eating out of the palm of our hand? And we felt so powerful... We could feel that again. Just a little thrill for now. We don't have to take it home with us..." and it was like mini-me was operating the board in a trance... I have binge eating disorder, and the A felt exactly like a massive binge: completely out of control and sickening, but I couldn't stop. And there were so many moments when I wanted to stop.

I'm not trying to make excuses for what I did. I know it was many choices. I just don't know how to reconcile that fact with feeling so out of control when I made those choices, and feeling scared that I'll make them again. It's not making sense to me.

Seems to me you struggle with low self-esteem and deep insecurity. Welcome to the club, sister. It's a big club, too, so I don't think you'll feel lonely. Research indicates that most of humanity, like 4 out of 5, struggles with the same shit to some degree or another.

Maybe you've got it a little worse than most but not as bad as others. Doesn't change the fact it's a part of being human. And just in case you haven't noticed, being human is fucking hardah!

Trained therapists can help guide us with unpacking all the baggage we tend to carry with us. Most folks are far more willing and able to accept the negative and reject the positive, which sucks! So, of course, we seek out external validation and ignore the simple possibility that loving ourselves, warts and all, is often good enough.

Easier said than done.

[This message edited by Unhinged at 4:44 AM, Monday, June 8th]

You still need to learn how to love yourself.

You might have begun the journey but you aren’t yet present in your full self, you still exist in part in your head where is the "comfort zone" of the fantasy, not in a positive way like a dream, is more a self sabotage sleep walking.

Our self is like an onion, sure there is a core, the real you, the source of the rest if you want, but then there are layers upon layers, emanations of emotions and experiences you had in life that created "personas" call it identities or what you prefer, they are masks that exist there to protect your core self from harm and hurt.

They are filters trying to take the hit instead of our inner self, the got them orbs in her work life is different from the daughter version, the partner, the mother, the sister, etc.

All are emanations, each layer created as a best guess to face the role, protect your emotions from the hits that could come from one specific environment, but the real you is always behind its coming out through the filters but only in the amount the filters allow.

The true you is the child you were born as. You had no words but you had emotions, boundaries and a complete openness to the word.

Little traumas we go through in life change us and we start building that onion shell.

Why are you afraid of slipping back?

Because you built that emanation, the cheater, due to an inner pain that was never resolved. But you don’t like her, is probably a mask that has very little if anything of your inner self, a pure fantasy made up to extract validation from the outside.

But you could feel it was never enough, because it was validation for the mask, not for the real you and you could extract it only from someone who is offering you the same kind of mask. Fake performance for a fake identity. You can tell is transactional and fake, there’s no love there for you only the role playing of a fantasy that is poorly performed by both, and leaves you both empty.

I can feel from what you write that the game is "helping you to feel as", but you are sensitive enough to perceive the fantasy as not real, that is a two way’s deception where you use and are being used as a filler for someone else’s void.

It was just about you feeling as, and the AP was all about him feeling as.
You are being used (and using) and no matter how much the mask is trying to pretend it’s real, the true you behind the filters know the truth and feel sad.

Because it’s still not feeling loved as your full self, no matter how much the mask gets love bombed, you can tell your deception and his deception and that leaves you miserable when the role play is off.

And the idea the role play keeps you busy in the performance so your attention is fully focused on that, and not on your inner voices telling you what you need when is quiet, can be intoxicating, because those whispers are painful to hear alone.

You created that and that’s how it get into the button room back then. And left you miserable, worse than before its creation.

No wonder you’re afraid it can happen again.

But here is the thing.

It’s your creation not your self. You made it, you gave it energy. The same way you made it you can kill it.

Because you don’t need it, what you need to feel all that you crave is love, and you can have it if you understand that the lovable person is the one behind all the layers of the onion. The scared one, but also the only true one.

When you feel finally that she is worthy of love, all those layers decay and die, disappearing, because they are unnecessary.

You can give love to yourself and the world mirrors it.

Remember how you could spot another cheater or AP by instinct? Because you both mirrored each others. You both knew that the other person is willing to play in the dirt be used and disrespected and perform the role play because there is a mutual transactional validation extraction.

No respect or love, utility for selfish insecurity soothing that later you discover was just self sabotage.

Not the sabotage of the mask, she is perfectly fine, she can do that over and over if you allow her, that’s what she was created for, you created her this way.

The sabotage of you, forcing yourself to become the mask and feel what she feels, which you can’t because what she feels is an act, and you knowing it can always tell the difference.

You are in control, the creator of your armor, when you will learn to really love and respect your self, you will realize that armor is not needed.

Each person is a universe, they can fill your world when you love them. That is why we choose one, o e person is not little, is completely filling and fulfilling if there is love, in a way that just doesn’t leave space for another one. You choose which world, which universe you want to explore in your life.

You can be the best actor you like, but your mask can never equate your real complexity or being a fraction as lovable as you are, because you are a universe too, and even you haven’t yet fully explored yourself.
Every attempt to mimic that complexity is doomed to be just a pale, fake shadow.

The answer may be self-evident... because you know yourself.

Your fear arises because you now know exactly where you fall in the landscape of choices. You have people who are simply incapable of cheating due to their internal wiring, and those who are capable. Within that capable group, there are people who work hard to control their urges, and others who cannot or choose not to.

We often spend a lot of time looking at the reasons why people cheat, but we do not spend enough time considering why people do not cheat. Looked at simplistically, the reasons for restraint are straightforward and fall into four main camps: yourself, your partner, consequences, and practicalities.

"Yourself" includes overarching principles such as morality, integrity, and self-respect. People who do not cheat because of who they are understand that they would not be able to look in the mirror and respect the person they see. They apply the golden rule: they know that if it happened to them it would crush them, and their own character forbids them from doing it to another.

"Partner" relies entirely on empathy. True empathy prevents you from inflicting that kind of agony on someone you truly love. This is not loving someone as a utility, or loving someone the way you love pizza. If you love someone deeply and wholly, you do not want to cause them pain. The absolute opposite should be true.

"Consequences" often seems to be the most effective deterrent against infidelity. To be stopped by consequences, you do not need morality, you do not need empathy, and you do not even need to be a good person. You just need the sheer fear of the fallout. The loss of respect from friends and family. Splitting up a home, losing daily time with your children, and causing them deep psychological trauma. The financial ruin, the public shame, and the wreckage left behind.

Imposing consequences is a standard recommendation for betrayed spouses because consequences are universal; they can keep even a bad person from acting out. It is the exact basis of our justice system. At the point of discovery, a betrayed spouse has no way of knowing if their partner is a fundamentally good person who made a catastrophic choice, or a bad person who is just sorry they got caught. In fact, discovering an affair naturally forces them to default to the latter conclusion. Consequences bridge that gap when trust is gone.

Then, there are the more shallow, practical reasons: a simple lack of opportunity.

To illustrate how these four camps work, consider a completely different context: drinking. I love to drink. I have never had a problem with alcohol, but in an alternative reality, I could absolutely see it happening. I do not have a moral or principled view against drinking, so internal "morality" is not what stops me from doing it every day. My partner has no issue with it and drinks the same way I do, so "partner empathy" does not deter me. What stops me are the consequences. If I drink heavily on a work night, it will destroy my performance at my job and my progress at the gym. The fear of those outcomes keeps me disciplined. You do not need all four pillars to stand upright; sometimes, the fear of the fallout is the only anchor you need.

Your description of a "trance" or a binge-eating episode is simply a description of a failure of discipline. Your "mini-me" did not get hijacked; you actively chose to hand over the controls because the validation felt good. If you treat this sinister voice as an external force, you will remain terrified of your own shadow. It is not an entity possessing you; it is a part of your own ego that you chose to indulge.

If you never want to cheat again, you need to review yourself ruthlessly against these four camps. If you currently lack the internal principles or morality to stop yourself, you must look next at your love for your partner. Remember the pain in their eyes upon discovery and the agony they are in right now. If that does not quell the temptation, force yourself to look at the third camp and count everything you have to lose. If fear of consequences is still not enough to override your urges, then you must resort to the final camp: strictly removing the opportunity. The fly cannot reason with the spider's web once it is stuck; you must physically remove yourself from the room the moment a threat presents itself.

If you do not believe any of these mechanisms will work, you need to consider whether you are fit to be in a relationship at all.

[This message edited by DRSOOLERS at 10:52 AM, Monday, June 8th]

Personally, I think you deep down don’t really believe it’s wrong. It’s along the lines of you getting honest because you had to not because you see the value in it. I also think this is why you struggle with remorse.

Now whether it’s that you have a lot of toxic shame you have carried through life that makes you sort of deflect the wrong doing. Or if it’s an addiction where you seek other people to help you feel the way you need to in order to escape yourself. I think I am an addict in this way- that I use different forms of escapism to avoid myself. I just don’t have the specific flavor preference for how it happens. It doesn’t have to be through romantic connections. But I get the needing a "fix".

Or you simply are not one who values fidelity. Could you have an open marriage and allow your husband the same ability to have polyamorous experiences? If the answer is yes maybe it’s that monogamy isn’t for you.

I also think that maybe it’s because the feelings were big but the situation was much simpler than a complex long term relationship you may still crave that, crave the ap, not for him but for the affair feelings. He could just see you the way you want to be seen rather than the shame you feel inside your marriage for not measuring up to your husbands expectations. Limerance is a weird thing, and I found it to be uncontrollable for a period of time.

It’s very difficult for a longterm relationship to compare to limerance. And generally I am not sure you are happy with your husband based on the kinds of things that escalate into fights.

Maybe you seek the love you should have had growing up and there is no amount of attention that can heal that for you. I can relate to that, I had to start picturing myself as a child and start loving her, looking after her, healing her trauma, making myself a safe harbor for her. It sounds a little trippy but I still do that and it slowly changes my relationship to myself.

All just guess that could be completely baseless.

I don’t remember when your last affair was, but I didn’t have a firm grip on myself a year out. I wasn’t thinking of cheating, but I still had this feeling of being batshit crazy. I am not saying YOU are that way, that’s just how I felt.

I simply think it’s not just about fixing something or making changes, it’s about healing. Seek that above everything else.

[This message edited by hikingout at 1:58 PM, Monday, June 8th]

Thanks for your input, everyone.

I know I'm supposed to be loving myself, but I'm completely lost as to how to do that. I'm trying to be mindful about when I'm measuring myself according to what other people think, but even when I put that external validation aside, there's still always at least half of the committee members with a critical opinion. Some of it is constructive criticism, which we use to do better next time, but some of it is just negative judgement. I can't really listen to the positive half if the other half is negative. That would be a bad polling practice. Abuse of the data.

I'm thinking that the committee is a way of separating myself (the mini-me) from my emotions, impulses, and self-talk, as a means of sort of buffering my actions from emotional reactivity/impulsivity (though you guys know as much as anyone that it often fails and I become reactive anyway.) This also makes it so the immorally-inclined parts of me that I don't like-- those evil whispering CMs-- are separate from "myself," even if they're not, which could be a way of my brain protecting itself with mental gymnastics that deny accountability: "Yeah, I did these awful things. But that's not really me." At the same time, I think that this separation might be helpful when trying to excise those parts of me.

I know it all sounds convoluted and silly. But this is what I'm working with.

Hikingout,

Personally, I think you deep down don’t really believe it’s wrong.

Or you simply are not one who values fidelity. Could you have an open marriage and allow your husband the same ability to have polyamorous experiences? If the answer is yes maybe it’s that monogamy isn’t for you.

I think for a lot of my life, I operated with the mentality that if no one finds out I did something wrong, and there's little to no harm compared to the benefit I receive, then the action wasn't actually wrong. A lot of times I would blame the people who set the rules and failed to enforce them, as if I was some kind of narcissistic, self-appointed, IRL ethical cyber security hacker-- if I can find a way around the rules and successfully break them without consequences, then that's not my fault. It's the rule setters' responsibility to make sure people don't take advantage of their systems. But after DDay and coming face-to-face with the most awful of consequences, the extent of my BH's pain and trauma resulting from my actions, and after undertaking radical honesty (doing things the "right" way, according to whatever rules were in place, and operating truthfully and without deceit, even when there's opportunity and when deceiving would be easier), I think I've successfully moved away from that mindset. I have a social responsibility to cooperate with others, and to not take advantage of their systems' weaknesses. I think this is as close to valuing honesty as I'm capable of becoming.

But I value my husband as a person more than anything, and the last thing I want to do is cause him any kind of pain. Therefore infidelity as a course of action is wrong. I personally don't have strict monogamy as a value; as long as I'm getting enough love, attention, validation, quality time, resources, sex, conversation, etc. from my partner, I don't really care if said partner has relationships with other people. Like my husband has gone to massage parlors a couple times, and I was just curious about his experience and if there was something the masseuse did that he liked which I could learn and incorporate into my own repertoire; I wasn't hurt or jealous, by any means. That's just the way I've always been. We have been talking about having more experiences with other couples and single women, and that doesn't spark the same sort of feelings in me that I understand most other people experience when thinking about their partners with other people.

My H is okay with us doing sexual things with other people as long as we're doing it together, not alone or in secret... I think the lack of "normal" feelings surrounding non-monogamy made it really hard for me to empathize with my H when I was engaging in infidelity. I was predicting he would be "hurt" if he found out, but I didn't have a grasp on the fact that the "hurt" would be like, having a grenade explode in your face and dealing with the consequences for the rest of your life, rather than like, a punch to the kidney, for example. But I understand that he needs a certain amount of monogamy from me, and now I understand the consequences of violating the agreement we have about what's allowed and what's not, and so therefore behaving according to what he needs from me is important to me. I don't really want or need anyone else to be happy; I just want my H. Therefore his level of monogamy is necessary/priority SOP for me.

I also think that maybe it’s because the feelings were big but the situation was much simpler than a complex long term relationship you may still crave that, crave the ap, not for him but for the affair feelings. He could just see you the way you want to be seen rather than the shame you feel inside your marriage for not measuring up to your husbands expectations. Limerance is a weird thing, and I found it to be uncontrollable for a period of time.

For sure. He was an escape from real life with a child and other responsibilitie, and he made me feel interesting and desirable. I know a real life, long term marriage is far from that simple fantasy, and that it's ultimately worth it. I learned that I'm supposed to make myself feel the things he made me feel, for those time when my husband doesn't or can't make me feel that way; I just don't know how to get there... Measuring up to H's expectations is a whole other can of worms.

I don’t remember when your last affair was, but I didn’t have a firm grip on myself a year out. I wasn’t thinking of cheating, but I still had this feeling of being batshit crazy. I am not saying YOU are that way, that’s just how I felt.

Yeah, that's how I feel too, at this point.

I'm trying to be mindful about when I'm measuring myself according to what other people think,

Great! That's awesome. Seriously. I've said it before and I'll say it again: recognizing our own unhealthy tendencies is half the battle.

Your quote, btw, is text book codependency. My exww has the same tendencies. She is very empathetic. She can pick up on the slightest nuances of other people's emotional and mental states. In some ways, it's a gift and a great tool, professionally. At the same time, it's a curse, especially when her perception of how other people think or feel about her defines her self-worth.

How do you think her perception of how I thought and felt about her influenced her self-worth?

Better question: how do you think your perception of how your husband thinks and feels about you influences your influences your self-worth?

Really hard version of the same question: how do you think your perception of how your step-father thought and felt about you influences your self-worth?

We often spend a lot of time looking at the reasons why people cheat, but we do not spend enough time considering why people do not cheat.

Well... maybe there's a website called survivingfidelity.

So we have in common that my husband would be open to other sexual experiences as long as it’s together.

I think that specifically made it not feel as wrong to me when I did it. Like he has seen me with other people, and it didn’t bother him- it made justifications much easier to make. He has also been to a massage parlor. I also do not have the same reaction other people do in relationships about sexual exclusivity.

However, those transactions were not what I was seeking. I wanted the attention/validation/romantic thing. It wasn’t about having more or better sexual experiences.

I am not sure that not being tempted for me really has anything to do with the work I have done. At least not directly. What it did was change my coping and not need the outside stuff.

I actually asked for monogamy before we got married because it was me who wanted it. I didn’t really like sharing my body with these people anymore. It made me feel a lot of shame that probably relates somehow with the SA as a child. It’s funny but the being a cool wife thing and doing those things in the first place could also be traced back to that.

I think that I had those feelings you re talking about in not getting what I needed from my relationship. It wasn’t quite the same because I think maybe you were "cake eating" and I was really ready to just leave at the point I took up with AP. I had a lot of backlash from my family during my first divorce for "getting rid of a perfectly good husband", and so in many ways I was being avoidant and didn’t care about blowing up shit. I don’t think one is worse than the other I am just explaining where I have been in relation to what you are trying to figure out.

In the end I think what made cheating stop being tempting is probably a mixture of factors:

-there would be no going back to save our marriage, the decision to cheat forces the decision to divorce and I think that takes ambiguity out of it for me. I know there are zero more chances.

-it was the most damaging thing I have done to myself outside of as a teen trying to commit suicide.

-it was the most damaging thing I have done to another person

-I learned peace of mind was way more valuable never I achieved it and no longer find chaos appealing.

-finding out about his affair and specifically some of those details was actually devastating

and I don’t think I believed it would be due to our history and the fact I had done it too. But it was the secret being held between them, the lies, the utter disrespect of doing it in my home, the fact that she knew me and had known about my affair when we didn’t tell people I would consider to be way more in the right to know. The way he was making me feel safer than I had in a long time. And honestly, I always assumed he was a better person than me and i looked back across our time together with this feeling that I may have never known him at all.

So probably mine is a combo of consequences, and not wanting to be a person who would do such a thing.

I simply have lost so much I once cherished from that behavior to find it appealing.

Learning to love yourself is hard. I think for me an actions based approach helped. As I said I was mindful of the inner child I needed to protect. She had enough abuse, neglect, chaos. I could find love for her to get it started. I observed her innocence and who she wanted to be before the world knocked it out of her.

I started aligning myself with what stability would look like for her. And then I started acknowledging other parts of me I have been. The girl in my teens, twenties, etc.

So I just took an interest in where my passions lie using all these versions for context. I started new hobbies that fulfilled me, I started taking better care of my body and mind, I started giving myself the care, space, and time I gave others. And I stopped worrying so much about being perceived. The whole being perceived, wanting to control that perception, all of that I worked on until my mind would let that go.

Loving yourself is recognizing what’s best for you and aligning your actions towards it. Spirituality also helped. I am not religious in the traditional sense, but I have come to believe that when I cleared out the noise that I kept creating in my own brain that I get direction and wisdom from something more divine than me. That I am divinely loved and inherently worthy,and part of something greater than myself. As Rumi wrote- I am not a drop in the ocean I am the ocean in a drop.

And I have learned our relationship with ourself is reflected in every relationship we have. If I know how to respect myself I can respect others, if I can love myself, I can love others. If I feel shame then I may perceive I am judged by others.

In essence when you put these things together, it forms a barrier towards destructive behaviors.

I can’t respect myself if I am not exercising integrity. I cant love myself if I can’t respect myself. I can’t be trusted if I don’t trust myself. It’s all connected.

Loving yourself is an action the same as it is when you love someone else. You can’t tell yourself you love yourself and expect it to stick, you have to show yourself over a period of time.

A couple of books- The mountain is You by Brianna West I also liked her book 101 essays that will change how you think.

I relate totally to the committee in your head. I am a 360 degree thinker too, but you have to realize our thoughts lie to us. To stop using this as avoidance technique, you must start spending tome in your body. Breathing exercises, yoga, or just spending some time in flow state in your hobbies.

The healing you are seeking comes from getting closer to yourself, figuring out healthy outlets to get those dopamine hits you seek. If you haven’t checked out the power of now by Eckhardt Tolle, I can’t think of a better guide to coping mechanisms that help you find greater peace.

A lot of my journey after reading his book was to be more observant of my thoughts and start changing some of the recurring negative self talk that was undermining everything. In many ways once I stopped having all those hateful thoughts towards myself and replacing them it helped me be more generous with others. I give people way more leeway to be human than I once did.

[This message edited by hikingout at 4:58 PM, Monday, June 8th]

I know I'm supposed to be loving myself, but I'm completely lost as to how to do that.

I can’t tell how the intermediate steps to get there are, however when you get there it’s astonishing simple. Natural.

You look in the mirror and tell yourself "I am who I am, I can’t be anyone else. I am done performing. I can only be the real me. Take it or leave it. I don’t care".

It’s not just words, it’s a level of respect you likely have never experienced for anyone in your life.

Is acceptance, and with that love blooms.

And you find your acceptance and respect for others raises too.

You don’t judge (as in trying to change) or criticize others anymore. You see. You accept. You are in tune.

And choosing what to take or leave becomes natural as well.

We all had this since infancy, we unlearned it. But you can remember it.

[This message edited by BackfromtheStorm at 4:49 PM, Monday, June 8th]

Well, I can tell you that I wasn't expecting to cry in my car outside of a gas station convenience store today, but I sure did!

Unhinged,

Your quote, btw, is text book codependency.

It is definitely codependency. I have been working on that... The other day I was struggling mentally and checked out for most of the day, and of course if I'm not constantly present and cleaning up after myself and my 5yo, the house can go from pretty clean to trashed in a matter of hours. And it did. My H came home and as usual he was upset by the state of things, especially because he spent a lot of time helping to catch me up while I was away most recently, and we both spent much of Memorial Day weekend on housework and had gotten it to a pretty good place. But I also know that while it only takes a couple hours for the house to get trashed, it also only takes me an hour or so to return it to the state it was in before. And so I was telling myself it was okay for it to be like that because I definitely could catch back up, and it was okay for my H to have his feelings about it and that they were valid, and that my feelings needn't be the same as his feelings. In fact I was walking around repeating "my feelings don't need to be his feelings" under my breath to the point where he commented on it lol. And while we both expressed disappointment in the missed opportunity to be home and connect with one another because he was in the wrong headspace for it, it didn't escalate into resentment or arguments. I was pretty proud of that; it felt like good progress. There were other examples this past weekend, too, as we were navigating the stress of hosting our daughter's birthday party, and we managed to avoid fighting entirely through conscious effort and changes from the usual patterns on both our parts. I really appreciated his effort; I have to remember to tell him so later. I'm proud of us, and I love him so much!

Better question: how do you think your perception of how your husband thinks and feels about you influences your influences your self-worth?

Really hard version of the same question: how do you think your perception of how your step-father thought and felt about you influences your self-worth?

I will journal about these questions tonight and go over the answers with my IC tomorrow 👍

Hikingout,

I'm going to print out your last response and read it each morning until it sinks in.

Again, thank you guys all so much for your direction and support! I'd be so far deep in the mud still without it. 💙

[This message edited by GotTheMorbs at 6:18 PM, Monday, June 8th]

**My 2 cents, take what you want leave the rest. If it doesn't resonate with you, it will resonate for someone else. When I say "you," that is any WS reading here. I'm not here to tell you how you feel, JMHO.**

​You can claim to understand that cheating is a choice, but when the entire rest of your post lacks accountability, one cannot help but question if you truly get it.

From my standpoint, you are right not to trust yourself, because you have built a framework where you can be hijacked by your own impulses at any moment.

​You have to completely dislodge this idea of committee members sneaking around or operating in a trance. I understand that is how it feels, but in order to rewire your brain, you have to use new language and new thought processes. Otherwise, the analogy just allows you to view the affair as something that happened to you, rather than something you actively drove. It’s not just a harmless metaphor, it’s a mental alibi.

​This kind of thing matters when doing the work. Rewiring takes meticulous accuracy. You cannot do "The Work" on a purely intellectual level, analyzing it like a scientist observing a lab rat, instead of doing the brutal, painful emotional work of owning your autonomy.

​Something that really stood out to me is how you compared your affair to your binge eating. It seems you use high-dopamine behaviors, food, romantic validation, secret thrills, to escape reality or numb out. You used the AP like a drug, and an affair is a MASSIVE hit of validation. Just like an addict, there is a void inside you that you want to fill by any means necessary.

​Fixing a deep seated void is a brutal, uncomfortable reconstruction project. It’s the difference between slapping a coat of paint over dry rot and tearing the wall down to replace the studs. The reason why so many fail to do the work is because it’s incredibly hard and harrowingly uncomfortable. You have to completely change how you operate, and that is never easy.

​Take custody over your own mind. Stop treating the "sinister voice" like an uninvited guest and admit that the voice is yours. No more "it felt like" Stop saying "I felt like a fly in a spider's web" and start saying "I liked the attention, so I chose to stay at the table. I chose to flirt back because my ego mattered more than my husband's safety."

​You have to take the "mini-me" off the control board metaphor and realize you are the entire machine. These little hypotheticals and metaphors are harmful when you are trying to do the work. Until you own ALL the parts of your character, you can't manage them.

Speak like you are the master over yourself.

​When you aren't the master over yourself, you use people as mirrors. If the mirror says "you are beautiful and powerful," you feel good. If the mirror is quiet (like a husband who is just tired or busy with life), you feel empty and invisible. You have to learn to generate your own self-worth without using people as a dopamine dispenser. It's a toxic tool used to escape uncomfortable feelings like boredom, loneliness, stress, or insignificance.

​This means building a life based on intrinsic values like integrity, hard work, discipline, and genuine self-respect, rather than waiting for a charming coworker to tell you you're special.

​You have to learn to sit in the fire. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable. When you feel that empty itch that says "I need a thrill right now," learn to breathe through it, trace it to its root, and let it pass without feeding it. Learn to tolerate emotional discomfort without reaching for a drug.

​Ultimately, you have to pivot from needing instant gratification to valuing long-term gratification.

​Think about the textbook language of a dopamine addict demanding a quick hit,

​"Just a little thrill for now..." ​
​"Doesn't it feel so good that someone is actually interested in you?" ​
​"We don't have to take it home with us..."

​Instant gratification convinces you that the future doesn't exist, or that you can escape the consequences. For someone addicted to instant validation, choosing the hard path feels like starvation. It feels like dying. (Ask me how I know.)

​If we want the long-term gratification of becoming a safe, whole, and integrated human being, we have to pay for it upfront in currency we absolutely hate spending.

​The currency of boredom and emotional discomfort. You have to sit in the emptiness and the quiet until your brain actually rewires and learns to survive without a quick fix. The currency of ego. You have to dismantle the alibis. Stop hiding behind the Inside Out boardroom analogy and give up the harmful narratives that "protect" you. The currency of unseen consistency. You have to commit to the unrewarded daily grind. Be a person of good character even when no one is looking, doing what you should have been doing all along without bravado or expecting a round of applause.

​Here’s the truth about long-term gratification, it doesn’t offer the cheap, explosive high of an affair. It offers something infinitely better, peace.

​Instant gratification makes you feel "powerful" for a fleeting moment, but it actually leaves you a slave to your next impulse, completely untrustworthy to your partner and to yourself.

Long-term gratification is where your real power lies. It’s the quiet, unbreakable confidence that comes from knowing exactly who you are when the room is empty. It’s building a soul with actual integrity, so that the next time temptation sits down at your table, you don't look for a committee to save you. You just stand up and walk away, because you finally value your own character more than a temporary thrill.

All of the committee members are me, too. I know that. I just think my brain has engaged in a bit of dissociation and fracturing, and now there's the mini-me who's controlling the body, and the CMs, and that's just how it works now. Consciously I know everyone in the board room is me, but I don't think I can just decide to re-integrate everyone into one me again.

With regard to the evil whispering CM... I had a good talk with ChatGPT last night about the subject. It didn't think I could excise that one. We decided we were going to treat it like a child who is acting out in order to get needs met, where the mini-me and the rest of the committee members will approach it with compassion and curiosity in order to figure out what psychological need it's actually seeking, even if we are rejecting the unacceptable, immoral behavior it's encouraging us to engage in. This feels much more manageable and safe than trying to lock it in a cage in the dark recesses of my mind and be constantly wary of its escape again.

I think about how serial killers and sociopaths are often abused in their childhood and how that influences their development into adults who are capable of monstrous actions. If I see this "evil" CM as a child, locking it away to never see the sun is akin to the child abuse that turns people into serial killers/sociopaths. I've got to nurture and rehabilitate it with love and compassion instead. (I keep calling it "it." I feel bad about that but I cannot for the life of me pin down its gender.)

[This message edited by GotTheMorbs at 5:31 PM, Tuesday, June 9th]

I just think my brain has engaged in a bit of dissociation and fracturing,

Have you shared this with your therapist?

Yeah, she's tracking