>>"revenge affair" wasn't as much about revenge as it was about me just trying to find myself <<
H2C said something similar on the other thread. After d-day, I imagined doing all kinds of things to try and fix everything, including having an affair. At times, those imaginings were driven by anger, revenge, vindictiveness pure and simple. At other times they were driven by a vague sense that if I had an affair, then a balance in my marriage would be restored. I imagined that restoring that balance would help my marriage because it would help me. Or was it that it would help me because it would help my marriage?. I'm not sure.
Anyway, I sometimes convinced myself that a revenge affair might not be a Bad Idea(tm). Sometimes it almost looked like the unselfish thing to do. As it turned out, there were times my X was thinking along the same lines. A few days after d-day she wondered aloud about asking another woman to join us in bed (although a week later she explained that she had only been joking). The whole thing was weird, entirely out of character, and very confusing because she also insisted that her affair had never been physical.
I'd like to say that I had noble reasons for not testing my theory that an affair might "restore the balance in my marriage". It's probably closer to the truth to say that I didn't have the opportunity. For a couple of years I couldn't get myself out of the house (except to go to work and to WalMart). I couldn't talk to family or friends let alone hussle a babe. In my experience, stuttering and blubbering won't get your average babe into the sack.
A marriage counselor once said to me "I believe that an affair is an attempt to heal a marriage". I suppose that's as good an explanation of an affair as any, generally speaking. It's certainly a "let's look on the bright side" sort of view but it's still probably pretty accurate in alot of cases. Still, I wonder what that MC would have said if I had had a revenge affair. A person could also look at a revenge affair as "an attempt to heal a marriage". But what about an affair that is a revenge for a revenge affair? You see where I'm heading with this? When you are six or seven revenge-layers deep, it gets difficult to imagine alot of healing going on.
I read somewhere that there are three types of long-term marriage - one with no affairs, one in which both partners have had an affair, and one in which only one partner has had an affair - the last kind of marriage is the saddest kind. At one time, I almost believed that. I don't anymore. Not by a long shot.