[kikki]

Hi Chump Lady
Wow - I love your blog. 
Have just read your 'spectrum of cheaters'.  Mid Life Crisis is mentioned in the visual, but not in the text. 
Just wondering if you have experienced MLC in your partner?  The affair is just one of the many weird changes that occur in your spouse.  It's pretty surreal.  So much for the red sports car and blonde bimbo.  Most of us wish it was 'just' this. 

There's scientific evidence that when a certain neurotransmitter (serotonin) gets especially low in the brain, people start thinking all sorts of strange things, leading to the out of character behaviours.
This is where we get confused.  We know something very enormous is happening to our spouses. 
It would be so much easier to deal with though, if cheating and lying wasn't part of the equation. 

[Chump Lady]

Kikki, I have to think more about MLC. My uninformed quick take on it is, nah. People who have $h!tety characters are usually like that. Maybe they didn't cheat before, but I bet dollars to donuts they were entitled takers. Self important. Valued themselves above their spouse or kids. Probably has an expensive hobby or two (sailboats, motorcycles, QVC). I don't think people just wig out and become horrible partners. The MLC aliens invade. I think you have to start off kind of $h!tety to *indulge* in a MLC.

As for my ex-husband, he was a serial cheater. No MLC for him. (Although I met him when he was in his 40s.) Three marriages and three divorces that I know of. Double life.

I think it is very possible that people attribute MLC to people who have been cheating for a long time, but only discover the deception years into it -- in mid-life.

I tend to think you should get more maturity and character with age. Not less. JMHO.

[Trustandlove]

My very quick read leads me to think that what you're dealing with and what most of us are dealing with here are two very, very different things. 

[Anjae]

Agree with Trusted, what you’re dealing with and what we here are dealing with are two very different things. A serial cheater is a serial cheater, a MLC affair/cheater another.

Anyway, we all have the capacity of cheat. Its part of being human. Given the right (wrong) conditions any have us could cheat. I’m not saying we will all cheat, just that we’re all capable of it. Many of us will never do it.

Plenty of cheaters do not have expensive hobbies, they are plain, ordinary working class people. Cheating does not come with expensive hobbies. And plenty of cheater were not takers, nor become after they cheated. For many cheating was a one off they regretted and that was it.

Does not sound fair to me to put everyone in the same boat as your husband. Not everyone is on their mid-40’s is a serial cheater and has 3 marriages and 3 divorces behind them.

[kikki]

Hi Chump Lady
Thanks for your thoughts on this.

[Chump Lady]

You wrote:

Given the right (wrong) conditions any have us could cheat. I’m not saying we will all cheat, just that we’re all capable of it. Many of us will never do it.

I totally agree with this. Kikki asked about my ex-husband (I'm not married to him any longer, and am happily remarried now.) In my blog, I have a post on a spectrum of cheaters and say, I do think the *majority* of cheaters are one-offs, or an exit affair. Serial cheaters are a different breed of cat.

My examples of toys are examples of selfishness, short hand for issues of character.

I think all cheating is about character. Yes, we are all capable, but some cross those lines and others do not. I believe cheating if it is a MLC or serial cheating is about selfishness and lack of character. Not everyone chooses to indulge in a MLC. IMO having an affair is a choice. Not something that hits you midlife like perimenopause.

I do not think all cheaters are serial cheaters.

[NoRegrets]

People who have $hitty characters are usually like that. Maybe they didn't cheat before, but I bet dollars to donuts they were entitled takers. Self important. Valued themselves above their spouse or kids. Probably has an expensive hobby or two (sailboats, motorcycles, QVC). I don't think people just wig out and become horrible partners. The MLC aliens invade. I think you have to start off kind of $hitty to *indulge* in a MLC.

Zing!

How have I not put two and two together before now? There they were sitting right next to each other!

Yes, Chump Lady, my xH felt entitled to spend THOUSANDS of dollars a month on a vacation home that I hated, one I worked my a$$ off to maintain, all the while begrudging me things like a pair of shoes, a used book, a vacation every year.... He spent time on bikes but would not help with yard work (except at his beloved beach house.) And now he's all about the sailing and the woman, all the while crying poor to me about how much the kids are costing him. HIS! KIDS!

And he has the balls to call ME entitled.

He felt entitled to tell me all about the women he was infatuated with over the years as his head was entertaining fantasies about the level of his own importance--but I'm the entitled one if you ask him.

You see, now that the law is involved, he finally has to hand support money over to me without making me grovel for it. And it makes him feel better to call me the entitled one.

What an a$$ I was married to!

 









That said, I do believe that serial cheaters are not able to be rehabbed. But I do believe that many of the men and women here were married to people who are suddenly acting out of character, perhaps due to chemical imbalances created by or resulting in depression. I do believe there are a few marriages that can be successfully restored, that some of the walk-away partners can eventually experience true remorse and make restitution. I do believe that.

But I also believe that too many of us give way too much real estate in our hearts and minds to our spouses--the ones who've treated us so poorly--when we should focus on a life without them, and live as if they aren't coming back, leave them to their own growth or deterioration and move on to focus on the life that deserves our attention.

Thanks for the insight, Chump Lady!

[Thundarr]

Excellent posts from all you ladies!! 

Chump Lady, I'm chiming in to add a little perspective to this discussion and from a different viewpoint than my W's.  Since you are new here you probably haven't read through my threads so I'll give you a bit of an update on myself and some events from several years ago.  W and I have been together since I was 18 and she was my first time.  We married when I was 21, but several months into our marriage we were hit by several stressors at once and rather than focusing on those stressors I put the blame on my marriage and started focusing on the fact that I had married young and had not been with any other girls.  Coincidentally, I was carpooling with my best friend's W and she had begun to flirt and talk about sexual subjects during our commute.  I had a long talk with W and told her that I wanted to break up and "sow my wild oats" and she agreed that it may be for the best.  I went through with it and slept with my best friend's W several times over the course of a week or two (she had told me they were separated and divorcing and I used that to justify what I was doing.  It was all a lie, btw).  W was deeply hurt, of course, but it wasn't until I woke up (literally) in the middle of the night in a hotel room that I realized that she and our baby daughter were the most important things in the world to me.  I called her from the hotel room (not bright) and apologized profusely.  I cut off contact with the OW the next day but W stayed at her parents' house for a few weeks after that.  We got back together but it was probably several months to a year before she finally forgave me.  For my part, I never justified my actions after that and talked to her about it whenever she brought it up.  I did have to go through a penance but found forgiving myself was the hardest part.  Since then I have not even been tempted to touch another woman and that was over 20 years ago.  I went through grad school an hour away from home and could have had many opportunities to engage in extramarital relations had I been looking for them, but instead I went straight to class and came straight back home and usually talked to W during the drive back. 

So, my point is that those who say "once a cheater always a cheater" are incorrect in many cases.  20 years after the biggest mistake of my life I am standing for my marriage and have now gone over a year without being with a woman (sadly).  Truly, I have no desire to take this opportunity to sleep around or "see what's out there" and will be fine if W and I R and I end up spending the rest of my life with her.  I'm not a fan of making the same mistake more than once.

[Chump Lady]

Hi TD,

I don't believe in once a cheater, always a cheater. And you're a text book case of a successful reconciliation, it sounds like. You were honest, remorseful, and did the hard work. I do think, however, that stand up guys like you who do the hard work (on yourself, on the marriage) to reconcile are the minority. That is JMHO. My blog is really addressing people who stay with "cake eaters" -- those cheaters who "can't decide," or say one thing and do another, who hold out hope for the betrayed spouse, but don't do the real work, and want to maintain a situation in which they can have both. It's also for people who are living with the mindfiretruck that a unremorseful cheater puts on a spouse that the cheating is somehow their fault.

You didn't do any of those things. But those tactics, blame shifting, gas lighting, cake eating... are sadly very common. And IMO, abusive. 

Many things put stresses on a marriage. Again, I think reacting to those stresses with an affair is a choice. A destructive one. And how a person deals with that is a matter of character. It sounds like you had a one-off experience that you regret and fortunately for you, it did not end your marriage.

[TrustingMyHP]

This is an interesting discussion.  It brings up something we don't talk much about here:  character.

Chump Lady I took a look at your blog and my first reaction to it was what some others here have said, I don't think my husband is the kind of person you're talking about.

My H is having a MLC.  My H is suffering from covert depression.  My H has chosen to become involved with (take your pick) an affair down OW/a borderline personality disorder OW/ an OW who is in MLC herself/ an uber needy OW who is propping up his ego/ etc., etc. My H is struggling unconsciously (isn't that convenient!) with unresolved FOO/trauma/childhood/adolescent (fill in the blank) issues.  A phrase we use a lot here is our spouse has been "abducted by aliens"!  Hey, I  say and believe it!

It all works for me.  But I do struggle at times with asking myself, "Is this MLC construct simply an easier, softer way for me to process what's happened to me?  A way to slowly absorb the ghastly realities of my new life?"   The biggest ghastly reality being that my H is, as another LBS here has said, "a liar, a coward and a cheat"?

If I can obsess over the idea that my H has been "struck" with this disorder then I don't have to really "let in" the stark horror of the fact that my H is in a 3.5 year affair with a woman who was married when their affair began and has since divorced her H to live with mine, making my H an instrument in the destruction of two families; that my H has altered forever his D's trust in men; and that my H shows no remorse for what he's done and tells my D and me he did the right thing and that our feelings about the loss of our family are "collateral damage."

If I can believe my H is in a MLC then I can soften somewhat the pain of his abandonment of our 38 year marriage and his seeming overnight personality change.

Seriously, who can process that?  I've had 18 months since BD and I still can't bear to unflinchingly look at the situation.  I can only handle small bites of the horror at a time.  I think that's one of the reasons "MLC takes time" is a favorite maxim here!

So, perhaps, believing in MLC "prettys up" the mess, makes it easier to take, gives us a structure to work with, and, perhaps biggest of all, gives us a ray of hope.

I don't know.  I truly don't know. 

For now, I'm staying with MLC.  But I can't say I'm 100% certain my H isn't simply and primarily a selfish creep.

TMHP