DANGER: The POA I trusted

I think love addicts trust people who are untrustworthy because in childhood our trust has been broken. And love addicts are untrustworthy as well.

I didn't actually trust my POA at all, he showed himself to be untrustworthy the day he made his move, as he was married and knew I was (equally, I showed how untrustworthy I was by responding). All the same, I sought symbolically to heal my wounded child by "trusting"' my POA. I sought to turn my untrustworthy father into a trustworthy man by replaying that in adulthood with my POA. I went looking for an untrustworthy man to play out that old script with.

Being betrayed by a POA is why love addicts seek out a POA. Unconsciously we want to be hurt, betrayed, lied to, played. If someone who was really trustworthy turned up, they wouldn't make it to POA status. P.

I'm not just asking whether love addicts caught in triangles are trustworthy. Obviously, in order to maintain an affair you need to be a good liar. And the person you are seeing is a liar.

The other day I was talking about honesty with our spouses. Now I realize that I was making myself sound like I took that bold move on my own to confess my betrayal to my spouse. And there was a huge backlash because there are people that cannot tell their spouse, at least at this time, without causing more harm than good. I do understand the importance of STEP 9. And I apologize for coming off so one-sided.

But perhaps I failed to express what my real fear was. In reality, we might not HAVE a choice as to whether our spouse finds out about our affair. We might think, "well nobody knows so why say anything". Well there is one person that DOES know, and it is your POA.

The whole point of this thread is to get us to think about the danger we that we really are in. Our POA's aren't all going to be trustworthy and keep our confidences. In one of my affairs my POA was so angry when we broke up that she told my wife. We are living in a fantasy world if we think we can just walk away and no one will ever know about what we have done. STEP 9 is sort of undermined in a sense, because the process of making amends to parties where harm won't be done becomes upstaged by a POA that spews out the information anyway.

And if your spouse founds out from someone else rather than yourself, then it is much harder to rebuild trust. In other words, be careful. Each person's situation is different. Do what you have to do in YOUR situation. And if not saying anything is the best thing, then do that. I'm NOT judging anyone's situation. I am saying that you need to see reality and realize that you may not be the person who decides whether you spouse finds out. And that would be an even more awful situation.

Just be cautious. And hopefully, you will weigh out your situation properly and not get a false sense of security.



Rilly

I was guilt ridden from day one of my internet EMA. I wrote and sent things that will leave me open to blackmail from my POA(he could think the same about me but I never once intended to harm his family-this affirmation itself confirms my insane thinking) I have accepted I was powerless over my behaviour when addicted. I certainly have no power over the action of others. My choice not to tell my h. If my h finds out, on my own head be it. If that is God's will I'm ready to pay for my sins. Greta

Oops. Rilly, Sorry, didn't understand the question.

Winnie,

Thanks for you comments. I do agree with you. My problem, just like about everyone else here, is that when you are in a relationship with a POA you are in a fantasy world, and tend to only see what you want to see. I agree that trying to smear the memory of your POA is sort of a negative approach. It's not about that. It's about seeing reality. Not exaggerating it, or stretching the truth to come up with a better excuse for leaving your POA alone. It is about getting real, and NOT just seeing the wonderful fantasy and perfectness of that person you've waited your whole life to meet. You all know what I mean. We've all been there.

Part of the fantasy was this false sense of trust with our POA's. This is my whole point. ( Alright, by saying this to all of you it is like preaching to the choir...lol) The real sickness of love addiction is revealed by how we can actually believe that we can trust a POA when that POA is also cheating on their spouse. And it is unbelievable how we think that if we leave our spouse and the POA leaves his of her spouse as well that we will live happily ever after, and he or she will never cheat on us. We all know about relationships founded on deceit.

Winnie, you wrote:

I can only assume that if someone tells your spouse you have been having an affiar that this was a risk a person takes when they take the risk of having an affair. No poor you, no bad them, To demonise someone for telling is kettle pot black surely!!!

my poa let me down, broke promises etc etc etc etc etc etc But I put myself in the position were someone could, i allowed ALL of it. I had a choice I could have walked away waving.

Thank you for saying that. I can assure you that I'm not feeling sorry for myself. But I did have that great epiphany as I was going through recovery about how insanely naive I was for putting myself in that situation. I was a liar. And yes, over a thirty year period there were a lot of POA's, only two got really deep. And of those two serious POA's I never actually slept with them, but it was bad enough. And I thought at the time that I had met the perfect person for me. I was so blind. It wasn't until I found out about love addiction that I broke out of that cycle. I still have love addiction in my blood, but I haven't acted out for a long time.

Greta, I think you are doing the right thing not telling your husband. I need to confess that the fear of my last POA telling my wife forced my hand a little, or at least sped up the process. This is a very complicated subject. There is no one right answer to the multitudes of situations we read about on this board.

I really appreciate all of you. I love hearing all the different points of view.

Rilly

I like this thread. In it, there are once again important reminders that the bottom line is that having an affair, be it emotional or physical, is just wrong. The consequences ultimately hurt us which in turn hurts our spouses and our families because we are not present or authentic in our lives - when the spouse finds out, regardless of how, it adds an additional layer and exacerbates the hurt.

I will NEVER have an affair again. I will leave my husband before I do that but it won't be for someone else. MY POA has reached out to me - I still have obsessive thoughts and I am really having a hard time breaking the addiction. But, I have concluded that I am leaving for nobody other than myself. Then, when I'm free, if I want to be naive and spend time with my POA, the only person I will be hurting is myself.

I would rather be free to make my mistakes as a single woman, than do them at the expense of my husband and take for granted that he'll be there.

I'm leaving because he's an alcoholic and I don't want to short change myself any longer. I'm a good person (albeit with issues) and deserve a healthy relationship with someone I can trust.

My POA knows I'm married....he has a girlfriend. I think that says enough about what kind of person he is and what I could expect from him if we were both single. But, I have been no better. I can say however, that my days of living inauthentically are coming to a screeching halt. It doesn't work and it's not worth it.

Thanks for listening.

MBM

Mybestme,

Thanks for your post. You are right. I agree with you completely. I know you will do the right thing.




Rilly

Rilly, thanks for clarifying. Your second post makes more sense. In plain and simple terms you are warning people not to get involved in an EMA because whether anyone likes it or not, there simply is no trust or secrecy to be had based on the nature of affairs. EMA are dangerous. Period. Don't have one.

What's interesting is just recently, an old friend confessed that he is having an EMA after years of a bad marriage. He's married to a verbally abusive, angry woman with whom he doesn't seem to feel any love toward, except maybe friendship. When I asked him why not divorce, he said, "it would break his heart and he loves ___ too much (their one child)." Well...imagine what finding out about his affair will do to her? The way people justify their actions simply amazes me. And funnily enough, when I came right out and told him, "I love you as a friend, but I do not support or condone EMA" I never heard back from him. Hmm...

Went to a conference last week and one of the talks was given by a famous British linguist.

He was talking about the internet and how language is changing because of our use of emails, chatrooms etc.


He said something that I knew already but had put to the back of my mind until this thread was started...

'Never write anything in an email that you would not be prepared to defend in a court of law'

So, every single time we hit send, remember that everything, absolutely everything stays in cyberspace whether you delete it or not...and can all be traced back to us.

That fear of discovery( via spyware, interception at work, new local wireless provider) was what made me finally hit bottom way back in October.

I try to forget about it but the danger is there and very real. For all of us.

greta

Do you know why you trusted a man who was untrustworthy? It's strange isn't it to believe a person will be trustworthy when they are lying as they get involved with you.

Okay, am now going to do a "he said, she said" post, if you roll your eyes at them, you don't have to read on There is a recovery point to this one though, honest!

An interesting thing happened to me with my POA when I met his mistress. He told me some things about her. When I met her it was obvious that they weren't true.

She said a few things to me about him. He'd said to her "No talking. She knows nothing. I've told her nothing." That was instructive.

She said to me "Well he's always honest with me, he's got no reason to lie, I know everything". But she didn't. He'd lied to her about me.

He said to me "She'd never talk to anyone about me, never". But she had, she'd talked to me.

What a mess. Lies lies lies. All of it. Only good thing for me to do there was walk, and spend a good amount of time working out why I would try and trust the untrustworthy.

My POA and his mistress were convinced the other was trustworthy, they were obsessed with the truth and loyalty. I'm not saying I didn't have a part there, I did, I had plenty of my own stuff, but it was very interesting to see that they both placed their trust in each other, and both of them were lying to each other.

Those who have been lied to in childhood (I was) trust the untrustworthy. And sadly, often don't trust people who are deserving of trust. P.

I never lied once to him. I stripped myself bare and held nothing back. Told him absolutely evrything.

Feeling very vulnerable today and a bit panicky. Mid cycle so I suppose my hormones are partlyto blame but my mind is racing. Not just thinking about my POA either. Oh God help me. Glad I'm going to work now.

Did the same G, was honest with one and lied to the other. But actually, was never completely honest. I stripped myself bare emotionally in one way, but was also equally very manipulative to get my own way with my POA. How could I be honest, I had sex with a man I didn't find attractive. Nothing honest in that.

I wasn't honest with myself, so even when I revealed everything I possibly could to my POA about myself emotionally, I was still dishonest about myself. I was out of touch with reality. I was so high or so low, I couldn't have boundaries or stick to things, I just needed a fix.

Odd to think about it and see I was emotionally at my most open in one way, but in another I was the most out of touch id ever been. I felt like I was floating in unreality. I remember distinctly the feeling of the split in my head that happened when I first got involved with my POA. I got a migraine and I've never had one in my life. I went blind and then I saw flickering coloured lights and then the pain started. The beginning of lying. Clearly my body was rather nervous about it...

When I was a child my mother lied to me a lot, she just couldn't help it, it was what she did. But naive lies, like not telling me that my grandmother was my grandfather's second wife, so wasn't related to me. I didn't know that until I was 12 and found out by accident. I wasn't told my aunt was adopted. The house I knew as the family home wasn't really my family's at all, so all the history wasn't ours. So lots of lies and of course all the lies around my father's alcoholism. As a child my brother used to say to me that our mother could have been a spy. Interestingly, when we did find out the story about her real mother (who died when my mother was a baby) she had been a spy of sorts in WWII. Lies were just in the air for me as a child. So I've always had a complex relationship with the truth, want it, crave it, but lied myself. I hadn't lied for years thanks to therapy, but when I met my POA it just opened it all up and I did it easily.

Think I was drawn to the liar in my POA because it mirrored so much early stuff for me. It's like a lamb giving its throat to a wolf. I trusted a man who was never going to be able to resist betraying me. A wolf is a wolf is a wolf. So if I can learn from it, I can learn not to blame the wolf for just being a predator, and not to blame myself for being a lamb (and really at 35 was FAR to old to think like a little lamb, ie not much thinking at all) but just learn to grow up and stop trusting wolves. Guess that makes me a sheep now. Sigh... Another animal not known for its intelligence, oh well, at least it runs away when it senses trouble, that's good P.

It was drummed into me at school, at church and at home that good girls don't lie. Good girls do not have sex outside marriage.

I had obviously decided I was sick of being a good girl when I saw everything was going to slip away anyway because of my h's illness and his loss of interest in me.

Hooking up with my POA again was a bit like 'Sliding Doors'.

What if I had stayed with him first time round? Well I got a taste of the nightmare outcome.

My voice is the same. I 'squeak' when I talk normally but sound very grown up when my addict is around. Doctor Jekyll and Mrs Hyde again