Hi All,

I don’t normally post on here but here goes.After reading “understanding the emotions” thread I felt I wanted to add my opinion but as it is no longer a debate I felt a new thread was best.

First of all I would like to say that I for one don’t believe that I need the experience of cheating on my partner to understand the emotions involved in having an affair.After all whether it be an affair,drug addiction or alcoholism as people we end up in these situations with one common factor in play and that is we are unhappy in an area of our lives and rather than face it head on for whatever reason we look for other things to make us feel better.I understand the reasons why my h cheated but at the end of the day its not the situation affair,drug addiction that is the issue its about the emotions involved and we as adults are intelligent enough to be able to understand and advise on it.

Now lets put the shoe on the other foot.When a bs is looking for advice on her situation eg;humiliation,betrayal and despair do you believe that only another bs understands and therefore can be the only person who can offer advice?.

Or do you believe that any adult no matter what their circumstances would have the understanding and knowledge of human emotions to be able to help a bs’s?.

When h first cheated I was of the opinion that no one could possibly understand the debts of pain I was in unless they had it happen to them.But that was then.I know this to be untrue.At the time if someone offered their opinion and it seemed very blunt I would naturally put it down to them not possibly understanding the emotions involved.This again is untrue.At the time I wanted people who would agree with me as I was in a fragile state and defensive and I wanted people who thought just like me to feel safe.I now know that I just was not ready to hear the plain truth about my situation.

So can a person who has had an affair help someone betrayed and can someone who has been betrayed help someone in an affair.

I believe they can because its not about the situation its about the individual themselves.

Hi Freckles and welcome to the board. I can't believe you haven't posted here before! (Not suggesting you're lying by the way, lol! Just one of those expressions.)

I'd be happy to debate your post but I agree with the gist of it so unless I put my "devil's advocate" hat on (which would of course all be in the spirit of a good debate), I'd be posting counter-arguments that didn't reflect my own opinion. Whilst this might further the debate, I'm not sure that I have the energy.

I could go on forever about why personal experience of something isn't necessary and certainly isn't always helpful when assessing a situation and offering advice on it but I think we've got as far as we're going to get on this. We live in a Parliamentary Democracy that disagrees with the idea of personal experience being a prerequisite for debating issues and creating policy. Otherwise we'd have to start stipulating that only black people can pass laws that affect black people and only people over 65 can assess the requirements of the elderly (for example). The proponents of the "you have to have been in the situation to understand" theory ignore those wider world issues as though a particular message board exists in isolation from the "real" world. They also fall silent when challenged on just how identical two situations have to be before one can "understand and offer advice", given that no two situations are actually ever identical.

As Pill said on the other thread, there were some stimulating and interesting posts and the purpose of any debate is to explore the issues so it's a shame when people post that they don't want to have their opinions debated, i.e. challenged.

My apologies to Pill for not replying to your question to me on the other thread; let's save it for another day.

Hi ME,

You're right I have posted here a couple of times but usually I lurk(lol).I learn a lot from reading this board.Thanks for replying.I knew the debate was over but I just felt the need to say my little bit.

The part of the debate we haven't heard yet is WHY anyone would think it's so hard to understand. If you've experienced love and lust - and let's face it, who hasn't - then surely you have a pretty sure grasp of how that would feel when you're officially in a relationship with someone else?

We're all designed to feel empathy anyway...and with something as basic as sexual temptation it hardly seems like it can be that big of a mystery.

Maybe there's a debate to be had as to why some people are able to resist the temptation to cheat when others can't. But I can't see why you'd have to be on the cheating side to have any worthwhile input.

If I was having an affair I think I'd value the advice of someone who'd managed to get out, or to resist the temptation in the first place, more than someone as weak-willed as I was.

I guess people who've cheated would probably be more sympathetic... but anyone who feels sympathy is the big missing ingredient when you're doing something that can wreck lives has a weird perspective on the issue, I'd have thought.