Elin's interview on Tiger Woods

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Old 08-26-2010, 02:28 PM
  # 21 (permalink)  
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I have no idea where or how anyone would get suicide out of PieRats comment.

And yeah PieRat, I totally agree that if you can't commit, then just stay single and spread your love around as you see fit. Unfortunately, Tiger wanted the his cake and eat it too.
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Old 08-26-2010, 02:32 PM
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My mind filled in the blank with blow his brains out.

I didn't misread it intentionally.
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Old 08-26-2010, 07:40 PM
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Well I could have worded it differently as well. When I was typing it out I wasn't thinking any of it could maybe sound like something else.

Anyway ((hugs)) to you Live. I did not mean to make you feel bad or anything.

:ghug3
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Old 08-26-2010, 07:49 PM
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Whoa.

I immediately put the f word in there. LOL. Guess my mind is in the gutter :P

I suppose it could be the s word too. I mean we're talking about a case where a man was busy...not using his brains.
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Old 08-27-2010, 03:02 AM
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I just read this on a board for infidelity survivors. They ask, is cheating abuse

Infidelity: Not a Pretty Picture
________________________________________
Kay Rutherford, PhD, LPC, NCC, RN
[email protected]
Kay Rutherford has a PhD in Counselor Education and teaches Racial Ethnics and Abnormal Psychology at Viterbo University. She also counsels at a private agency. Dr. Rutherford's special areas of research and consultation are in infidelity, holistic therapies, wellness, humor, and the healing emotions.
________________________________________
Women are often controlled by men and very few societies exhibit an equalitarian relationship. One paramount way in which men control women is through sex and sexual power. Physician Bleier, a professor of neurophysiology and Women Studies (1984) emphasized, "It is precisely because sexuality is so charged for women with psychic and emotional significance…that it is so powerful a weapon for the social control of women."
As slaves, concubines, and one of multiple wives, women are viewed as less than. This practice of viewing females as flawed or diseased is seen in childbirth, birth control, hormone replacement, abortion, or menopause. Often medicine (including the crooning brunette advertising Cialis on TV) is about women living and medicating to satisfy men's needs. It is much about control. Our courts and legal system place men at the head of the family and it is often the women’s job to stay within the family as the man sees fit, regardless of what he does. Bassoff (1991) tells us that “sexual exploitation of girls is a longstanding tradition” and so it is with infidelity…in American and in SubSaharan Africa…

Infidelity is a patriarchal way of controlling women. My work with infideled clients is very sad and thus, I share what I have professionally and personally learned: the basic premises of infidelity, the resultant trauma symptoms, infidelity’s abusive patterns, the societal acceptance of infidelity, and suggestions for counselors who work with infideled clients. My research is substantiated with interviews, an extensive bibliography selection, a trip to SubSaharan Africa and the results of a recent Women Studies class. In each section I compare the patriarchal control of women in America with that of SubSaharan Africa and the growing AIDS problems. As I tell my clients…there is almost always more to the story and it is usually not a pretty picture.

I first list the basic premises of infidelity, its unexpectedness, non-simplicity, and its seduction, deception and trauma. I speak as a woman, and in the female voice.

Premises of Infidelity

Most people who are in a mental and physical relationship expect their partner to be in love with them, meaning faithful in spirit and in body. Infidelity is not expected.

There is nothing simple about infidelity. It is a planned experience entailing a mindset of patterns. The unfaithful knows what he is doing and allows it to happen. Often the infidel wants a simple life-to have sex easily and without responsibility-and though this may be viewed as simple for him-"It just happened"-it is not simple for those he has involved.

Seduction is an active plan with massive deception, including the infidelity and the subsequent lying. "Sex is the most seductive possessing way to exert power and control and the most effective and abusive way to control women psychologically, physically, with degradation and humiliation, and her subjection to a man," says Bleier.

"Our body feels deception," author Harriet Lerner (1993) shares. The infideled feels that something is not right, something has gone astray. Often the betrayer and the betrayed will get physically sick as their bodies seek the truth. The infidel cannot relate to his partner in a sincere way at this time and the infideled often can do no right. The betrayed’s body will signal her if she lets it, e.g., it responds in unusual ways, by not wanting to make love, not being able to orgasm, or being unable to fall asleep next to him, etc. Infidelity creates a traumatic situation and I define it as follows…

PTSD-Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

PTSD trauma symptoms often result for the victim of infidelity and Glass and Wright agree in their work Reconstructing Marriages after the Trauma of Infidelity (1997). The victim is often in shock with incessant, recurring thoughts of her partner with another. She will often lose weight, become a detective sleuthing for details, suffer from insomnia, and experience extreme loss of self-esteem. She may become manic and disorganized since she cannot face her terror or pain.

One seventy-six year-old client of mine told her ex-husband, when he finally apologized for his philandering twenty-five years previously, "I still have nightmares." Yes, this is PTSD. Her symptoms parallel those of other types of abuse…

I call this post-infidelity time Bloody Sundays and Hillary Rodham Clinton describes her bloody August when she and the world found out about Bill’s betrayals.

I feel it is very important for the infidelity victim to know that she can "be real” at this point, to "hurt so good" as a sobbing frump (my personal terms as to how I felt when it happened to me). Grief is necessary. She may feel as though her soul has been stolen, stopped dead, and frozen in its tracks. Bloomfield, et. al. (1976), list the following to express these feelings in their book How to Survive the Loss of a Love:

This longing may shorten my life.

He asked if seeing him was a drain.

Seeing him is not a drain.
It's a sewer.

"The pain center of the brain responds to the shock and distress of a rejected lover's broken heart like it does with physical pain. Our body becomes physically distressed when abandoned at the loss of a love affair. Personal rejection, especially one with a connotation of shame, inferiority, or failure in the eyes of others is especially potent and an unwilling separation initiated by another doubles the chance of developing depression (Eisenberger, 2003).

One of my clients put his right hand over his heart and lamented, “I was so lonely I could feel physical pain from my hurting heart.” I believe him.

Starting over seems too big a task and often the victim feels as though she cannot live without her once-true other. Infidelity shatters her assumptions of what her life once held true. The one who was her security is now her source of danger. When safety is threatened, we have abuse…

Infidelity Is Abuse

Infidelity is abuse because the characteristics of the unfaithful are like those of a batterer and the symptoms of the victim are like those of the battered. Sitting in on battered women’s groups, I heard the same things-women wanting to go back, full of anger and rage, saying they'd rather be beaten than wonder where their partner was sleeping at night.

The infidel has a sense of narcissistic entitlement exhibiting a pattern of behaviors that encompass more than just "the incident." The damage he causes-to partner/s, children, family-never seems to hit home for him. He continues to blame her, something, or someone. He feels his actions are not his fault. He uses phrases that absolve him of responsibility and portrays innocence, "I'm holding her but loving you," "She came on to me," or "I need to have my needs met." In actuality, it is all about him. He can only go to his own hurt, not others’. Some feel that infidelity is caused by sexual compulsion…

I recently heard a police psychologist refer to a client's sexual addiction as self-soothing behaviors-a definite euphemism for dangerous acts which expose victims to much physical, psychological, emotional, verbal and spiritual abuse. "Chronic infidelity is abuse," therapist Bancroft (2002) reminds us (I say any infidelity is abuse), and “twenty-five percent of abusive men cheat on their partners."

Jennifer and Burt Schneider (1991) say the sexually addicted person numbs out with sex, blames his partner when she is not sexually satisfied, and his bedroom is usually "a nightmare" for he will not let her sleep until his needs are satisfied. Bancroft disagrees with the label sexual addiction and tells us, "Infidelity is not sexual addiction or compulsion, it is sexual abuse.”

The Shunning and Societal Acceptance
Society treats the woman victim as she is/was not enough and they blame her as well. Patriarchy reigns, as he was not "getting enough." Glass and Wright (1997) say he was most likely not investing enough. She is ostracized, shunned, disregarded and viewed as gone before she leaves. She becomes a detective because no one will tell her the truth and heaven help her if she does (like Linda, Monica, Kay or Hillary) she becomes the brunt of many jokes, brought to her knees in atonement for being a strong, self-made woman. Then, why do women want to go back to their abusive partners? Because society does not often support them enough to help her stay away. The family clan rallies for the infidel, their brother because she mistreated him, she's so angry (hell hath no fury like a woman scorned), and what else could he do? He, whom they have protected from harm and responsibility? So, he chooses others…the best way to work on a relationship is to have another one?

Suggestions for Counselors

1. Listen to her story-for the 1,000 times she will need to tell it.
2. Believe her story. Patriarchy and society rarely support her; her self-esteem will be all but gone and shame takes its place.
3. Tell her not to sleep with him-very directive but necessary- for safety. She will want to sleep with him to keep him; he will have convinced her it was lack of sex that made him do it.
4. Suggest a Clarissa Pinkola Estes’s wolf pack of solid supporters who know and understand-those cunning, wary, feral, observant.
5. Respect her grief-she cannot make it smaller than what it is to her.
6. Encourage unforgiveness to keep her safe at first. Wade and Washington (2003) say forgiveness is not always the answer-dignity and self-respect come first.
7. Let her anger be her strength, for it says, “Stay away from me."
8. Remind her that infidelity is not simple; it is dangerous and it is abusive.

Infidelity is complex, traumatic, dangerous, patriarchal and contributes to the spread of AIDS in America and in Africa. We must deal with it as such, with the infidel and the infideled. When safety is threatened, abuse must be considered.

References
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Old 08-27-2010, 03:03 AM
  # 26 (permalink)  
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Here is what one of the posters replied to this.

"Yes it is abusive behavior.
I am a survivor of child molestation, and raped.

The pain of infidelity is similar to the above-mentioned.

In my case, everything that I have been through brought back that pain. While saying this, I rather have been raped again then to go through the pain of recovering from infidelity! At least the person who raped me is long gone and I never have to see him each and everyday. At leased the person who molested me (my older sister) is in a different state and state of mind. I don't have to see her everyday. Eat with her everyday. Nor raise children by them.

To me, infidelity is the most destructive emotional, mental, and physical abuse that a spouse can endure.

There are many men and women who not only suffer through infidelity by their spouse but also physical harm"





I can attest to this fact since I'm now going through my 3rd time with the 3rd different ex cheating on me.
I'm torn into a million pcs. And oddly, his ex wife of 20 yrs cheated on him, you would think he recalled that pain,

I feel Elin's pain DEEPLY!
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Old 08-27-2010, 04:34 AM
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Originally Posted by Summerpeach View Post
IThe Shunning and Societal Acceptance
Society treats the woman victim as she is/was not enough and they blame her as well. Patriarchy reigns, as he was not "getting enough." Glass and Wright (1997) say he was most likely not investing enough. She is ostracized, shunned, disregarded and viewed as gone before she leaves. She becomes a detective because no one will tell her the truth and heaven help her if she does (like Linda, Monica, Kay or Hillary) she becomes the brunt of many jokes, brought to her knees in atonement for being a strong, self-made woman. Then, why do women want to go back to their abusive partners? Because society does not often support them enough to help her stay away. The family clan rallies for the infidel, their brother because she mistreated him, she's so angry (hell hath no fury like a woman scorned), and what else could he do? He, whom they have protected from harm and responsibility? So, he chooses others…the best way to work on a relationship is to have another one?
When I spoke to my ex's Mother once I caught him cheating, she said to me "Maybe had you moved in with him and he wasn't so lonely at night, he would not have had to get on the computer to look for attention"
She said a few other things as well, which shocked me since her exH cheated on her many times.
She just could not think her son was at fault. She sympathized with me, but placed some blame

I also don't agree with the woman not being supported and that's why they go back. Men who are cheated on go back as well.
I think people go back because they want to believe the person was human and made a mistake and things can get back to normal.
I would hate to think I was not lovable once I cheated
Now for a serial cheater, yes, there should be no going back EVER!
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Old 08-27-2010, 08:55 AM
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When I spoke to my ex's Mother once I caught him cheating, she said to me "Maybe had you moved in with him and he wasn't so lonely at night, he would not have had to get on the computer to look for attention"
She said a few other things as well, which shocked me since her exH cheated on her many times.
She just could not think her son was at fault. She sympathized with me, but placed some blame
I'm sorry she treated you this way. Unfortunatly her reaction is common. This is what we do in society Summer; we protect the abuser and blame the victim. It's called secondary wounding. I've spent years raging against it, at times here. I don't know what the answer is, except to continue on our paths, keep trying to be compassionate with ourselves and each other.

Look what happened to Live. She's suffered a horrible, unimaginable trauma, one that can be re-triggered if even a shadow of that event presents itself. I've been dropped to the ground by triggers like this, triggers that no one else sees or hears. It's takes days to recover. My prayer are with you Live, I lift you up.

We suffer, every one of us.

Yet Live is one of the more consistently loving voices on these boards. Always looking to cheer others when they're feeling down. I never knew that about your son Girl. My heart breaks for your loss. I wish I could take your hand.
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Old 08-27-2010, 10:05 AM
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Originally Posted by Summerpeach View Post
Men who are cheated on go back as well.
I think it's a little bit different for we men with kids.

I left for 1 month, but went back when a lawyer I'd consulted said I had no chance in hell to get custody of my daughter. This was before the alcoholism took over our lives.

He said infidelity was not grounds for child custody. He said if I wanted to wake up under the same roof as my kid I'd have to drop it and go home. I couldn't believe it.

I decided that LMC and I hadn't done anything wrong, and I couldn't leave her just because her mom was a liar and a cheat.

It sucked for a few more years till, ironically, alcoholism delivered me from that untenable marriage, with my daughter in tow.

Funny how HP works things out.

Seems to me infidelity SHOULD be considered in custody cases. Seems to me any one, man or woman, who would be willing to break up the home of a minor child just to cheat, is not person who places any value on their child's welfare.

I believe if you are married, have children, and cheat, you should walk away with nothing from that union, man or woman.

But that's just me.

Thanks and God bless us all,
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Old 08-27-2010, 10:21 AM
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WOW! So many different ways to see things!

I did not want to break up my children's homes in order to get my needs met...so I quietly went about doing that on my own when my husband wasn't interested in doing anything to improve the marriage.
My needs were more mental and emotional than sexual...but they do coincide. And I was incredibly vulnerable to loving attention.
Much later I found out he had been doing plenty of cheating.

In a later realtionship an XABF cheated because he was basically a cheater..always had been always would be.

There are so many reasons and so many outcomes....it will never fit under "one size fits all"
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Old 08-27-2010, 10:23 AM
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I also want to publicly apologize to PieRat for having gone off the reservation yesterday.

My triggers are about me..not anyone else.
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