SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I arrived here a little over 2 months ago and have learned so much about my processes after D-day. Things I didn’t realize I was or was not doing. I want to thank everyone, both Betrayed’s and Wayward’s for your taking the risk of posting and commenting on posts. It takes trust to lay bare one’s hurt and anger, especially when it is trust that made us vulnerable in the 1st place. The combined wisdom displayed here is astounding.

There are two terms that thoroughly applied to me during the 1st year, post my wife’s disclosure.

Looking back there is no doubt I fell into these 2 desperate actions: the "pick me dance and "hysterical bonding". Of course, I didn’t recognize it at the time. How could I? I was alone, abandoned by my spouse, who I saw as my lover as well. And in full disclosure, I moved 1200 miles away abandoning, out of humiliation, friends and family. In this new place I didn't have to face anyone. No question that move was poorly conceived, but I was in full panic mode. And when one is there, in this uncharted, dangerous territory, blind to reality as a bat, knowing no longer who is a friend or foe, daily and nightly shadow boxing a haunting, distorted monstrosity and yet, clear headed enough to know that one wrong move, one poorly chosen word could further rupture the fracturing marriage, possibly bringing it to a final collapse.

It is important for me to say, these days those 2 terms no longer apply. It is nice for me to finally understand that I wasn’t crazy or stupid for falling into these types of knee-jerk, reactive behaviors. Though I would not wish this on anyone, it is reassuring to know I am not the only one who did.

Revisiting this time is simply a reminder that though I was sucked punched by the virtual fists of my wife and her affair partner and my friend, I wasn't knocked out.

Thanks for sharing.

It is nice for me to finally understand that I wasn’t crazy or stupid for falling into these types of knee-jerk, reactive behaviors.

I'm glad you understand that now. I hope others read your words and realize this quickly.

Though I would not wish this on anyone, it is reassuring to know I am not the only one who did.

Man, that paradox gets me! I wanted help but knew I could get it only from someone who had the experience of being betrayed. That apparently means I hoped someone had an experience I wouldn't wish on anybody ... and that. does. not. compute.

Seeking out people with like injuries is a conundrum that we all must wrestle with.

There is a mutual grace given when individuals have experienced a similar catastrophe. Infidelity is, often, devastating to a person’s self-view. It is in the reaching out, hopefully in the early stages that those who have gone through it before can give encouragement that makes sense rather than platitudes or black and white responses from those who "think" they know what they would do.

Sisoon, you, and others here, have help me to reevaluate some of my negative self-talk.

Thanks,
Asterisk

The pathetic Pick Me dance and hysterical bonding, I am guilty of both and in hindsight I am embarrassed, but I also understand that my brain was in total shock and I was not able to process anything rationally

Looking back, lol. Had I had my wits about me I would have handled things very very differently but we can't change the past, only learn from it, and move on.

Hysterical Bonding - that hit me HARD (pun not intended but funny). I was so confused and ashamed. Sadly, I realized via Google it a thing. I used it to my advantage and made sure it was gOOd for me. I made sure I enjOyed every secOnd of it. I legit f'd that LTAP out of my head. And if I got those mind movies during - I f'd them right Out.

I feel no shame for that.

Pick Me - I didn't realize I was doing it until I found SI many months after DDay. That is one of those things I've had to forgive myself for doing when I didn't realize I was doing it. Once I learned from SI what it was and realized that I was doing it, even though I'd have sworn I wasn't, I re-educated myself and changed course.

Hindsight is always 20/20.

WB1340

Had I had my wits about me I would have handled things very very differently but we can't change the past, only learn from it, and move on.

If you do not mind sharing, knowing what you know now, how would you do things differently? \

I know for myself, I believe I should have made it absolutely clear that divorce was in the drawing plans. My wife should have been told that if she wanted to rebuild, she 1st would have to pick up the hammer and nails. Once I could see she was completely committed to the sweaty, painful toil and I could see she had poured a good foundation, then I’d put on my tool belt and assist her in the reconstruction of a new marriage.

Asterisk

Chaos,

Once I learned from SI what it was and realized that I was doing it, even though I'd have sworn I wasn't, I re-educated myself and changed course.
Hindsight is always 20/20.

I’m finding SI to be eye-opening as well. If only the internet existed back when I entered the murky world of infidelity. Sigh. "Hindsight gets a bad rap. It is one of the best, all-be-it painful, ways of preventing or preparing for a repeat.

Asterisk

@Asterick. When I saw the sext messages on her tablet I wish I had the frame of mind to type "Please, by all means continue. I would love to read more sexts between the two of you. Sincerely, your faitfhful soon to be ex-husband." My wife and her AP would have received that message simultaneously.

Then I would have grabbed a luggage bag, put it on our bed, and waited for her to come home. Then I would have said "You need to leave this house. I cannot make you leave but you need to leave so I can think without running into you but if you refuse to leave then I will not hold back on my words even in front of our children" The day after I confronted her she did come home from work and I did tell her I need time to think. I cannot make you leave but I need you to leave, and she did.

Then I would have researched divorce attorneys and had a consultation to see where I stand

When we met 3 days later to discuss the next steps I would have let her know that divorce was a strong option for me right now and that she needs to start IC to figure out what the hell is broken or missing inside her that allowed her to do this to me and our family.

Then I would have reached out to his wife within days.

I would have STRONGLY requested that my wife stay wherever she was (I didn't know and I didn't care. Turns out she was at her sister's) and we would work out a schedule for her to visit our house.

Then I would have sat back and waited to see if she did everything I requested.

I'm sure there are several other things but this is enough

I did the pick me dance for about the first week after d day, then realized what I was doing, and that it wasn't serving me at all so I changed tact and pulled a 180 before I knew what the 180 was.

What I'm a little confused about in our case is hysterical bonding. I think we may have been guilty of it at first, and maybe we still are, but it's been 5 months now and we're still going strong with no signs of slowing down. I've been reading that the time frame for HB is typically 8 to 10 weeks, and seems to fall more on the BS than the WS as far as who initiates it. My wife hates the term and wholly rejects it. She's calling it "making up for lost time" because we went through a lengthy dry spell, and have discovered that we're both still very attracted to each other.

In either case I'm not so sure it's necessarily a bad thing.

Thank you WB1340,

For taking the time to answer my question. At the time of discovery, I believe, most betrayeds’ minds are so overwhelmed that there is no way to react to the situation in the most effective way possible. As you stated earlier, hindsight is 20/20.

Asterisk

Porge,

My wife hates the term and wholly rejects it. She's calling it "making up for lost time" because we went through a lengthy dry spell, and have discovered that we're both still very attracted to each other.

I can imagine she does. I guess the question is, do you hang on to the concept that it is "hysterical bonding" or is it in the process of rediscovery and allow the attraction to increase?

In my mind, I would recognize that it probably was, in the beginning, hysterical bonding that is now morphed into "making up for lost time". Is there a risk for you in doing so? Sure, no question. Is your wife and relationship worth the risk, would be the next question. To me, from what I seen in your writing is that she and your it are worth it.

I know that it was a risk for me to allow for positivity to pull into the lead over negativity in the reconciliation marathon. It is a long-distance race to the finish line, and no one knows for sure which will cross the white stripe 1st braking the ribbon.

Warning though, negatively is a tricky bastard that cheats!

Astrisk

I think there is some basic and near-primal response to reclaim what we consider "ours".
We have all heard stories of people resisting armed thieves, when the sensible thing might be just to hand over your wallet and watch.
I think the pick-me dance is that response, and the hysterical bonding a form to get that message across – YOU ARE MINE!

Is it sensible?
Well... maybe. If we want to reconcile then yes, it can be partially sensible.
But maybe more in a "I am worth being picked" point of view rather than a "fling-yourself-at-him/her" point of view.
I actually think that tends to be one of the benefits of the stance I often present: Where you let the WS know they can continue with the affair, but at the cost of your relationship. I think that if you can make that statement and then just carry on with life without begging for a chance, and only commit to your relationship if the WS is doing what is required, then you also make yourself more appealing in the eyes of your spouse.
This is why I also suggest you avoid pointless arguments. The main goal of your spouse telling you that they HAD to cheat because you weren’t attentive or working all the time or whatever is not to resolve that issue, but to feed their justification for that action. When you reply with "sorry you feel that way and I might not agree on this. If we were working on our marriage we could address that issue but since you are committed to your affair there isn’t any need to" and then go make a sandwich... you no longer provide the justification fire with wood. Doesn’t feed the fire they need to make you less appealing.

What I have also noticed is that very often the betrayed spouse pauses 3-6 months after d-day and really contemplates if what they reclaimed was worth reclaiming... I put this to people misunderstanding what reconciliation requires and thinking it’s only that the affair ends. One of the risks of R is that if done correctly you might come to the realization that the marriage is over, and IMHO a successful reconciliation can lead to divorce. But then it tends to be on other grounds or reasons than the infidelity per se.

When you reply with "sorry you feel that way and I might not agree on this. If we were working on our marriage we could address that issue but since you are committed to your affair there isn’t any need to" and then go make a sandwich... you no longer provide the justification fire with wood. Doesn’t feed the fire they need to make you less appealing.

This is close to what I did. I realized that, while I didn't have a name for it at the time, playing "pick me" wasn't working, and it felt degrading. I felt like I was humiliating myself in an effort to win her over, and it wasn't working. She'd "ended it," in a very lukewarm fashion, but was still trying to cling to the "just friends" angle. I knew I couldn't live with that. With her. Not under those circumstances. So I had to do something different. That's when I resigned myself to the fact that our marriage was likely over and I told her "If you want him, you can have him, but I'm not going to be here if that's your choice." I wasn't going to keep playing this game. Then I started calling lawyers and real estate agents.

She broke down and blew a gasket. She cried harder than I'd ever seen her cry in 28 years and begged me, literally begged me, to stay. She sent a very definitive "it's over" message to AP, blocked him on everything, and suddenly she's all in on being only with me, me alone, and can't get enough. She swears she never lost her attraction to me, and this is what she's wanted all along. Now we're getting intimate every single day, often twice a day. To be fair, I'm enthusiastically along for the ride, and do a lot of initiating of my own, but I know she'd be upset if we were to skip even a day. Again, I'm all for it, so it's not like I'm being pressured into it or anything, but in our situation it seems like she's the one doing the reclaiming. That's what's been happening for the last 5 months. She's also lost a fair amount of weight during this period, too, and she's really been flaunting it for me. She normally dresses very modestly and wears baggy clothes, but lately she's been spending a lot of time at home wearing nothing at all. If we have time together and don't plan on going anywhere she won't even bother getting dressed for the whole day.

Asterisk, apologies if I'm hijacking your thread. I can start my own on this if you want me to, but you brought up something that I've been wondering about for a while now, and I saw a segue. This hysterical bonding thing. I think, or would like to think, what we have going on in my situation goes beyond that. It's been over 5 months now, and it's not getting old, stale, mechanical, or "let's get this over with" at all for either of us. We both very much look forward to going to bed early every night with a lot of spontaneous morning and afternoon activities generously sprinkled throughout the week.

[This message edited by Pogre at 5:30 PM, Saturday, September 20th]

These are very good points Bigger,

I would like to add though, the "pick me dance", at least in my case, was long after the affair had ended. On disclosure day, which was 1 1/2 years after my wife ended the affair, I felt replaced, shoved to the outer margins of importance. Without recognizing it for what it was, I fell into the trap of wanting to be seen and chosen again. Thank goodness, those days are long passed.

Asterisk

I’m going to have to ask.

What is the pick me dance?

A wide spectrum of behaviors that attempt to cater to, curry favor from, appease and entice the wayward spouse to "come home", at the expense of the betrayed’s self respect and dignity. People who get cheated on blame themselves, conduct rescue operations to "fix" it, trying harder and harder, hoping to be chosen.

Mike Tyson, the boxer, had a great line about crises and the unexpected: "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face." Ain't that the truth. So we don't really know how any of us will react until something happens. I think it's good to consider a lot of possibilities before hand, and I'm a compulsive planner. I probably would plan for the End of the World...but when something unexpected really does happen, you react on instinct or gut or fear or whatever pops up, and as long as it's not some irrevocable action, like violence, you'll probably be okay (because I have known people who would respond with violence). Always give yourself a mulligan during a crisis because none of us know what we're gonna do until it happens. And then once you calm down and stabilize, you can plan something, hopefully rationally. But we all get punched in the face at some point in life and most of us just kind of stagger around for a while. There's no wrong answer as long as you come out of it at some point and start planning.

[This message edited by BondJaneBond at 6:54 PM, Saturday, September 20th]

I’m going to have to ask.

What is the pick me dance?

An often knee-jerk desperate attempt to convince a WS through words and actions that they should pick you over their AP. While some BS's in the position of just finding out about an affair feel like it's a good strategy to win their spouse back, it generally backfires. A WS will tend to see it as a weakness and can actually make you even less desirable.

We are about 18 months out from D-day and still having sex far more often than before. We definitely did the hysterical bonding thing for a while but we're past that and now we're just enjoying sex with each other.

If her desire stalls or takes a nose dive without explanation that will be a red flag.

Examples of pick me:

You try to become fun and exciting to your lying cheating spouse. You suggest date nights that are new or different, try new restaurants or dinners at home, try to communicate more/better, become more attentive, etc.

So that when you look back at that period you can add HUMILIATION to your list of regrets lol.

My H basically had me auditioning to remain his wife. I was constantly feeling compared to the much younger single no kids OW.

After about 6 months I came to my senses (b/c I didn’t know about SI then and was operating on my gut instinct) and I decided that I wasn’t going to change to be what HE wanted. Because I was just fine as is.

And even though he kept wanting a D during his typical midlife crisis affair, at dday2 I was the one who kicked him to the curb.

Game changer!