SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

How common is it that a WS completely flips a switch on or very quickly(Days) after Dday? I mean flip a switch in that they go from one day being fully involved in the year long A to the next day (Dday)seeing the A and AP for the horrible fantasy/sham that they were and realize the monumental bad decisions they made. Almost immediately(Day) make the decision and act to end it all completely, re-engage, re-enter and do everything to save the M. Do the right things, be truthful and show regret and remorse very quickly and continue these from then on. By appearances like a blanket was thrown off and the light hits them and clears their mind. It seems from reading here that it is not the norm and may be unbelievable.

Common as unicorns.

Well, in my case, my WW was over her AP incredibly fast. Visibly, it took days; perhaps in truth it took a week or two behind the curtain. However, five months out and she's still incapable of processing the events through a remorseful eye.

I don't know how rare that is, but I would imagine it's relatively common for WSs who are cheating purely for the sex and have no allusions of an exit from the marriage.

That's the same question I kept asking my WH. How do you go from sneaking around, having sex behind my back, total and complete betrayal and basically being checked out of the marriage for two years to suddenly saying "I only want you and I want to become a better person and I'm totally committed to fixing our marriage"? I also described it as "flipping a switch" and I questioned it immediately.

After talking to him (a lot!), I think I understand it a bit better. It wasn't so much "a switch" or a sudden, complete change in his thinking. Rather, it was a gradual process that had been building during the A. He says the A shined a light on his worst characteristics and biggest personality flaws. AP would say things like, "You're always so defensive." He would think, "Wow. That's what my wife has been saying. Maybe there's some truth to it." AP would say, "You're very difficult to communicate with. You always seems to have a wall up." Again he would think, "Hmmm...my wife has been saying the same thing." He said he realized that perhaps he is a very difficult, defensive, walled-off person and that perhaps my many frustrations were valid. He said he tried to wind down the A several times (which I know is true because I read their emails). She would whine and cry and accuse him of using her for only for sex. He tends to avoid conflict at all costs and would cave in and back off. He says he was looking for a way out but she had figured out his weaknesses and would use them to keep him. (And of course, it was free sex so he kept going back for more. I'm not certainly not blind to that fact!)

When I confronted him on D-Day, he was he was actually relieved to have a firm reason to end the A. He said he told her many times that he was never going to leave me and that if I ever found out, it would be over. This was his way out. He already knew he wanted IC and MC and that he was ready to recommit to our marriage. Again, I don't think it was a switch, but rather a lot of things that had been building. It did seem very sudden and confusing at the time.

A complete flipping of the switch seems impossible to me, or at least very, very unlikely. You can’t instantly clear your head of the thought patterns or eliminate the character defects that make an affair possible.

My husband has desired and been committed to reconciliation since D-Day two years ago, but it took at least two months before his emotional attachment to his former AP wasn’t glaringly obvious to me, and I’m guessing it was at least another four to six months before it fully dissipated. It took another year for him to fully reject the lies/rationales/minimizations he fed himself and to have a clearer perspective on things. The length of the process has been frustrating in some ways, but it’s taken me this long to reach clarity on some issues too and to fully understand how to view sone of these things and how to heal. So I can’t really blame him for taking a while. It’s a process; the most important thing I feel like I can gauge is whether we’re both committed to it and whether we’re taking concrete steps forward.

To be honest, I don’t know how much stock I would put in any kind of switch flipping early on. A betrayed spouse may realize in a moment that their AP is a sham or a fantasy or an asshole, or they may know instantaneously that they want to recommit to their primary relationship, but that is just the tiny beginning choice of a long process of change, healing, and reconciliation. The proof is in the pudding, and that pudding has a hell of a cook time.

A betrayed spouse (WS?) may realize in a moment that their AP is a sham or a fantasy or an asshole, or they may know instantaneously that they want to recommit to their primary relationship, but that is just the tiny beginning choice of a long process of change, healing, and reconciliation. The proof is in the pudding, and that pudding has a hell of a cook time.

Well said. Rush through this process at your peril.

(You can probably guess how I know.)

Epiphanies happen. I can't even believe it's all that uncommon. Any WS who is worthy of R is eventually going to come to the point of seeing their rationalizations for the fantasies and lies they were. Why would we ever bother to R with a WS who hadn't made that leap to remorse??

It took about a month for my fWH, but yeah, an epiphany is sudden and profound.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 10:40 PM, Monday, August 15th]

Mine did. I don't know exactly how common it is but I don't think of my H's affair as being a unicorn. On the contrary, it was depressingly cliche.

In fairness, he was never "in love" with OW. Sure, he enjoyed her company (or at least liked how she made him feel about herself), but they never discussed being together. There were no ILYs. He never wanted to be with her - he just liked the elicit, exciting part of it all and how it fed his ego. It was definitely a cake-eating affair and not an exit affair. I imagine the switch flip takes place less in exit/love affairs.

When I confronted him on D-day he 'fessed up right away and started apologizing. No excuses, minimal minimization. He offered to quit his job almost immediately. He was adamant he would never see her again and desperate to convince me to stay. He seemed to have no problem kicking her to the curb. That afternoon, I notified OBS of what was going on and by that evening when it became clear that there was no loyalty between the two of them (and that OBS and I would be exchanging information) - he was throwing details out so fast that you'd think there was a prize for it (in a way, there kind of was - OW had apparently denied sex so it was a whole thing. My husband very quickly saw the benefit of disclosing vs. being caught).

With a few months, my husband claimed to hate her. I recall struggling to believe that he (apparently) thought she was worth risking our marriage one day and was willing and able to cut her from his life entirely the next. He maintained that he had convinced himself I would never find out and therefore there was never any risk to our marriage. He was an expert compartmentalizer. Once the the boundaries of the boxes were blurred on D-day - the answers were VERY clear.

[This message edited by emergent8 at 11:05 PM, Monday, August 15th]

If the AP is married, I’d say it’s to keep you from calling the OBS. Just my opinion.

It’s hard for me to know for sure, I didn’t learn of the affair until it had been over for five years.

I think my wife wanted out of her affair long before she managed to end it. She had some real entanglement there, he was my best friend and part of our daily lives. She wanted him to go back in the "friend box" and he wanted her to leave me and be with him openly. She got to where she resented and detested him for his selfishness and manipulative ways and she once again saw me for the man I always was and am.

I don’t know it was a "switch" flipping, but it happened that in rather short order she flipped the villain/hero roles in her heart and mind and never looked back. For five years before I learned of the affair, I had a model wife (minus that part about fucking my friend for a few years and not telling me about for five).

I don't think it's that uncommon for cake eaters to have an epiphany close to D-day. They never wanted to leave the marriage, just wanted some extra . Even when they catch 'feelings' as my WH thought he did, it didn't take much to open his eyes to how manipulative his AP was (which he bought into eagerly of course, see 'extra' above, so he's no innocent victim). He begged me not to leave him post D-day, though it took him awhile to see the AP objectively, in large part because he didn't want to face how terribly he'd behaved and realized, rightfully, that he was no better than her.

Ugh, I hate to base my response on gender since everyone is an individual. However, we tend to be more similar along gender lines, so I speak in most likely and not absolute.

I believe it's more likely that men will have a much quicker turnaround based on several factors. 1) Men tend to (but not always) not get as emotionally vested in extramarital affairs 2) men don't tend to feel the need to justify their affairs to themselves. Not everyone will agree, but if we are truly honest, I believe that women more often than not are the primary caregiver of romantic relationships as such they tend to have a need to justify why they are having the affair to themselves, this process is very damaging to the husband and marriage, making it much more difficult to re-engage back into the marriage.

I do however think most will agree that one should take a quick turnaround with a great deal of caution. Many times its simply the WS trying to manage the BS. A manipulation tactic used to drive the affair deeper underground and throw the BS off the trail.

Please keep in mind, most of this is just my opinion, since the only situation I have first hand knowledge of is my own.

Hard knocks, thanks for catching my mistake. I did mean to say WS, not BS.

D3 … FWIW … I tend to agree.

Many will vehemently disagree, but I clearly see gender specific motives, responses, misjudgments, etc. Not all, but a significant amount to show patterns.

I'd hate to have enough first hand experience to tell you. In my case, no flipping of switches to be had by my fWW. I think in that sense it did make me believe her more quickly since it wasn't really the damage control thing to do. But I think most WS's pick and choose how they will do damage control.

The more self aware cake eaters can flip the switch. People that rationalize their A to themselves as somehow not bad, are going to have a much harder time of it.

I think the first type is more likely to repeat after R though.

Did she confess ? how did you find out ? but to answer your question, not very often, rare IMHO, but sometimes the "flipped switch" is reaction to them being thrown under the bus by AP (I'm not saying this is necessarily the case with your WW), especially after an LTA where they typically dream of leaving their BSs and ride into the sunset together, that is of course until Dday which is when they both have to make a decision and in the overwhelming majority of cases one of them does not want to follow through because of many reasons (lifestyle,finances, kids, family and friends, etc.,). How intense was the A ? were they in close proximity ? co-worker? neighbor? common friend ? have you told OBS (Other Betrayed Spouse/partner) if any?

It took my wife over 5 years for her switch to "flip".

My W went to bed on 12/21/10 planning to give gifts to ow and celebrate her birthday the next day. By 7:30 AM on 12/22, she had decided to get out of the relationship. She couldn't sleep (much) that night, and her thinking led her to the correct conclusion that the relationship existed only because of her and ow's individual sicknesses.

SO that was a lot like flipping a switch. OTOH, her realization grew from a seed of doubt over a period of a few weeks. Also, she says it took 5 months before she saw it as just another A; until then, she saw some nobility in it, because ow kept telling her, in essence, that she'd kill herself if not for my W's 'love'.

On the 3rd hand (there's a bike tool called the '3rd hand'), although W continued to see some nobility in her A, her last lie was before d-day, and she has worked for R with total consistency since then. There were definitely rough spots when issues surfaced, but those were opportunities to resolve issues, not backsliding.

There was definitely a switch flip but over about 2 months. On Dday she cut contact with AP (a stranger) he messaged me and apologized, said there would be not further contact between them. That is true, but my WW was confiding in bff (the affair cheerleader) that she missed him, was going to play nice in R until she could leave me, not for the AP, some new fantasy.

The switch flipped when I saw this, I was done, headed for divorce. She came begging, pleading so I laid out the demands. She wrote a timeline of many things I didn’t know, but from everything I checked out, it’s accurate.

Of course I didn’t believe the switch had flipped, so I held her feet to the fire for about 6 weeks before offering R. This might sound crazy but her eyes came back, I’ve known those eyes for 33 years and I knew when I saw them. She has been solid in R ever since.