SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I notice a lot of posts with an enormous amount of attention devoted to betrayal, injustice, uncertainty, the meaning of the past, and the BS's or WS's psychological shortcomings.

This may sound a little trite, but there's often comparatively little about enjoying one's partner, being curious about them, having fun together, laughing, or creating pleasurable experiences.

Of course, this is an infidelity support forum, so it's entirely understandable that people come here to discuss their pain.

But I wonder whether we sometimes overlook something fundamental: what is it actually like to be in a relationship with us?

Do we make our partners feel liked, enjoyed, understood and appreciated? Do we take an active interest in their inner world? Do we contribute to making everyday life together pleasurable?

And how often do we ask ourselves these questions, rather than concentrating on what our partners are or aren't doing?

And how often did we do this before the betrayal(s)?

One partner's happiness doesn't establish that the relationship was mutually satisfying.

I'm not asking why someone cheated. I'm not saying every betrayed spouse or even wayward spouse shares responsibility for an unsatisfying pre-affair marriage.

I'm asking what it was like to be married to each of us, before and after the betrayal.

That's a different question, and I think it's worth exploring independently of who was responsible for the affair.

Look, there is a very fine line between healthy self awareness and enthusiastic, unprompted masochism. Plenty of unfaithful partners will happily hold their hands up and admit their spouse was kind, attentive, and thoroughly lovely, yet they cheated anyway simply because they were selfish, lacked basic moral fibre, or fancied a bit of illicit novelty on a grim Tuesday afternoon. In those circumstances, sitting around wondering whether you should have injected more whimsical banter into the breakfast routine is just inventing fresh ways to beat yourself with your own stick.

If I hold that mirror up to my own seven year relationship that ended in betrayal, what was it actually like to be with me? Well, I can be rather argumentative, to the absolute astonishment of nobody, and living with me back then was almost certainly much the same as living with me today. But the great, blinding epiphany I dragged out of the wreckage was not that I had failed to be a sufficiently delightful companion. The real issue was that my partner picker was utterly knackered.

I chose someone who had monkey branched straight into my life from her previous relationship the second she grew bored. Naturally, with clockwork reliability, she eventually pulled the exact same trick on me. If you welcome someone in knowing they treat people as convenient stepping stones, you cannot act utterly bewildered when they hop to the next lily pad. We simply coasted on great fun and physical chemistry until it congealed into a serious commitment, without ever having a proper adult conversation about boundaries or checking whether our moral compasses were pointing in remotely the same hemisphere. That was where my real mistake lay.

The lesson was never about turning myself into an entertaining one man circus just to keep a partner faithful. You cannot charm, amuse, or cajole someone into possessing basic human decency. You can learn what is important to you in relationship and find someone who shares those values moving forward though.

So by all means, self examine away. It is good for the soul. But I would wager that in an astonishing number of cases, the only thing a betrayed spouse actually needs to adjust about themselves is what they will tolerate, and who they deem worthy of sharing their life in the first place. It sounds terribly simple on the surface, but looking at the frankly staggering pile of wreckage in places like this, getting our vetting right is clearly the hardest lesson of all to master.

I did not have an unsatisfying pre affair marriage.

@DRSOOLERS

I'm not suggesting that anyone should become a more entertaining companion to prevent infidelity, or that being insufficiently delightful explains why someone cheated.

You mention that you can be argumentative. That's an interesting example. One might decide that this is simply part of one's temperament, or one might become curious about how it affects the experience of living together. Neither has anything to do with responsibility for infidelity.

I agree that choosing a compatible partner matters enormously. I just don't think choosing a good partner and becoming a good partner are competing endeavours.

I think compatibility comes down to 3 main characteristics

1. Mutual physical attraction
2. Compatible lifestyle choices
3. Relationship skills (possibly already acquired), OR crucially a Willingness to Learn Relationship skills (including curiosity, emotional regulation, communication, mirroring, repair and collaboration.)

I think I chose a compatible partner and I think my partner equally chose a compatible partner in me. We are both awesome people, if I dare say so myself. Infidelity has not changed my view on that.

But, being married to me used to be exhausting. It's much less so now.
There were many skills I have since had to learn. Some of them I am still working on daily A lot of them overlap.
Mirroring, Validation (other & self), Self Soothing / managing my fight/flight responses, building safety mainly through embodiment/touch, developing curiosity - really observing myself and others, insisting on satisfying levels of repair.

I think staying married is the most complex task I've ever had to manage.

One thing I've come to appreciate is the difference between introspection and actually developing relationship skills.
I see a great deal of introspection on these boards. But introspection can sometimes become an endless exercise in analysing the past, our partners and ourselves, without necessarily changing how we relate to other people.

For me, the really transformative work has been learning and practising different behaviours, often long before they felt natural.

Learning to repair myself to either be able to participate more fully in a marriage (or end it! but without cheating), and do the same in a world of complex human relationships is a deep and awe-inspiring experience.

@LittleMonk

My question isn't based on the assumption that pre-affair marriages were unsatisfying, though. I'm interested in what it was like to BE MARRIED to each of us, whether the marriage was satisfying or not.