What’s wrong with fantasy?
Posting this as a member who cares for this site and not as a member of Staff, and maybe a more as a vent and contemplation rather than any expectation of change.
If we are talking about GOT-type fantasy, stories of dragons and hobbits, space-travel or time travel… then not much. You know it’s fantasy and imagination, and act within that boundary. Nobody has bought a Delorian and realistically expected to time-travel.
I guess even scenarios where you pretend you are the shy student about to get a spanking from the sexy teacher is OK – as long as you aren’t really an underage student about to get a spanking from a real teacher but rather as a part of some effort to spice up your sex-life…
Nothing wrong with fantasy…
If everyone knows it’s fantasy.
Every now and then we get fantasy on this site.
I even think most infidelity has fantasy. It’s the type of fantasy where the WS thinks rutting in the rear-seat of a Mazda is sexy and romantic, where meeting your "soulmate" in the office-supply room at work is "cute" and where the rent-by-the-hour room at the motel discreetly on the edge of town is "classy". Part of semi-standard advice offered here is precisely to BREAK the fantasy by making it reality. All of a sudden, when the Evil Black Knight or Ogre Queen is no longer preventing the WS from riding away into the sunset with their soulmate the fantasy becomes reality, and reality is what it is. That "soulmate" that always smells of roses – she also farts and gripes and doesn’t look too hot after a day of work, house chores and tending to the kids. That "soulmate" snores, leaves a skid-mark in his tired old cotton boxers, drinks beer and spends too much time watching sports.
But we also get another type of fantasy…
That’s the made-up stories that pop up here every now and then.
That’s when somebody signs on purely to share some story that sounds real but has no basis in reality.
That’s OK in itself… Except it really isn’t…
Let’s go through some of the reasons:
For one it takes resources. Time spent reading and suggesting a path forward to a fantasy-story is time that could have been offered to someone dealing with reality.
Then there is the way this site functions. Only a portion of those that register share or post. Many just read, and they learn about their situations and what to do from reading what others have experienced and done. This is where fantasy is possibly at its worst. Someone writing fantasy hasn’t done the work, hasn’t worn the t-shirt, paid the lawyers, gone to court, confronted a real person or any of the gazillion steps we that have gone through. Their story, the reactions and their steps… about as real as a fistfight in a Hollywood movie. Someone reading might decide that copying what’s in that thread might be a great idea.
I could list several dozen examples but will limit myself to one from a classic troll-post many old-timers will recognize. The poster who claimed to be a Navy SEAL. In his story he went from discovery to divorce in something like 30 days, and in the divorce a sympathetic judge signed the marital assets over to him, refused any alimony and basically cast the cheating wife to the curb.
If I was a freshly betrayed husband reading that… Wow! I would be off filing, expecting to have EVERYTHING within 30-40 days! Yet based on the location of the gallant SEAL (as shared by him) the law explicitly prohibited infidelity from being considered when dividing assets Anyone thinking this fine example of a patriot was worth following would be headed towards the edge of a cliff.
Then there is the moderation/staff part…
This is an all-volunteer site. We on the staff can flag a poster we find suspect, and I have no doubt that Mangled Heart the admin has his tools to stop known trolls at the gates. But it’s complex… Anybody that wants to get here can get here. Whatever technological gate system is installed, a technically semi-savvy person can bypass. Despite what might be shared on some other sites, relatively few posters are banned here, and then mainly those that spam. The afore-mentioned Popeye is one of very few that has been publicly banned. I think the line-of-thought is that it’s better to let some weirdo get his kicks through his fantasy, rather than maybe blocking someone that actually does have a very scripted and linear fantasy-sounding situation.
Often, it’s quite harmless, except for how resource-hungry these threads can be. Writing from imagination rather than reality allows the poster to create the most elaborate and enthralling plots that tend to pull more responders in. Some aren’t as harmless and can even cause pain and discord on this site. Some have endured and are regularly referred to as how to act, but fortunately most of them simply slip away into the digital black hole of page 50 and beyond.
I don’t really know what those that do this are seeking. What kick they get. My wife is an ER/ICU nurse, and she says that there are people that seek out going to ER with all sorts of fake ailments. I guess it might be a digital version of that mental disorder.
I think I need to end this post on a reminder of the Guidelines, in case someone wants to respond by naming a user they might think is a troll or sharing a fake story. Don’t publish their names, but if you feel so inclined PM a member of staff with your concerns.
NAMING, FLAMING & SHAMING: Please refrain from name calling, attacking or shaming, publicly or by using the SI.com Private Message feature. Do not bait or call out others. This includes members and non-members.
1 comment posted: Friday, July 3rd, 2026
Can finances be the infidelity-barometer?
So many threads recently about sex-workers, secret lives, financial infidelity and grand escapes…
Some months ago we had a thread about marriage and it’s future. I got some heat for stating that at its base marriage is simply a financial and lifestyle contract and that this was overlooked by the Hollywood-impacted view that marriage is all romance and flowers and expensive destination marriages with twenty bridesmaids and grooms and practice-practice dinners for the practice-dinner and yadayadayada…
Not exactly the most romantic view on marriage, but one that anyone that has dealt with a divorce lawyer can confirm is true. They never ask what color the bridesmaids dresses; only for income and debt statements.
So why do we have so many threads where the affair is hidden in the numbers? In the books?
The paying of sex-workers, the hotel-charges, the pruning and preening before meeting the "soulmate", the expensive gifts, the nice dinners, the second family, the sports-betting, the bitcoin account… There is always a financial trail. The financial smoking gun that can direct you to the bullet fired.
Why do we have so many threads where the betrayed partner doesn’t seem to have a clue about the spouse’s finances or even the marital finances?
Or the threads where a BS feels trapped because they don’t have money? Why are finances so opaque in so many marriages?
I think it’s ingrown in our society to be secretive about money. We hold the info tight and don’t share with others. That’s fine. I know I want my finances to be my issue and nobody sticking their nose into them. But my wife – the partner I signed that business contract with – isn’t "nobody".
When I married my wife we made some serious commitments together. Some we were aware of; some we realized as our marriage progressed. We decided to share bodies, have children and raise them, buy a house together, prioritize our time so we could raise the kids and still earn enough money to live a good life…
We made all sorts of decisions that impacted on the other in both positive and negative ways. Like wife getting pregnant dropped her earnings, and in turn lowered her pension contributions that in turn might make her pension lower than mine. Our decision for her to stay home the first year enabled me to work, and financially I contributed more than half our income. Not MY income – OUR income.
Now imagine if we had kept our finances totally separate. Just split the utility bill in half, the mortgage in half, the groceries in half… If your partner doesn’t pay their half of the utilities, they don’t turn off the power on his side of bed – they turn it all off. If they come to collect, they don’t take half the dining-room table, and only 3 of the 6 chairs – they take it all.
So why might it be that I’m fine with my wife having the power of attorney to decide my medical treatment if I end up in a coma, but won’t let her see my credit-card statement? Why would she share with me that she has cancer, but not share her bank-statement? Why do I trust her to raise my kids, but not see my bank-account?
IMHO a marriage is most likely to succeed if the couple work together at some goal they can both agree to. That includes finances. It’s too integral to our lives to ignore. It’s true money can’t buy happiness, but lack of money can sure provide misery.
Plenty of ways to manage finances. Wife and I decided to work together so we have full access to all financial information to each other. We budget, we sit down and pay bills, we let each other know of impeding big outlays and all that. It’s extremely rare that we disagree simply because the transparency means we understand the need. What savings we set aside we generally split evenly so we both have savings in our separate names. This is more a practical issue – if one of us dies the other will inherit but after a process. For that time the money is tied in the estate. This is what works for us.
This does not mean she has to phone me for permission to get a pedicure. We do take our individual decisions, but we don’t hide them. The key is openness, not control.
I can share that the work it took us to reach this financial integration was possibly the best MC we could have done because it forced us to be open to each other and to communicate.
For some this integration might be too much. But at the VERY LEAST I think it reasonable that a spouse explains their income and where the money is going. At the VERY LEAST you should both be able to see each other’s bank-statements, wages, charges on credit cards and status of savings. If you want to have separate finances then that’s OK by me, but seeing as how they inevitably impact the marriage at least be open about them.
Have the courage to state "Here is my monthly bank-statement. This is my savings account where I have 10k, and these are the latest transactions from the account my wages hit. And you can’t touch a dime of it!"
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One reason I was contemplating this is a recent experience:
We were on vacation with two other couples and at a restaurant I noticed that the husband paid their share of the bill and then whispered something to his wife. She got out her phone and transferred her half of their bill to his account…
Next day we all went on an excursion except his wife. When I asked him about it he shared that they had separate finances, and she didn’t have the budget for the excursion. She basically had to choose between the excursion or dinner…
I was wondering… What’s it like being on vacation and your partner cant really afford to be there, while you have money to burn? Imagine when they retire, and she has to spend the winter back home while he goes to Florida or whatever… alone because she’s broke… Despite them – as a married couple – probably being very well off.
29 comments posted: Saturday, May 2nd, 2026
Public Service Announcement: Careful sharing digital content!
Rather than thread-jack the referred to thread, I decided to start a new thread on this issue.
It’s basically a Public Service Warning regarding sharing digital content.
On a recent thread in JFO the BH shares how his wife distributed a recording of OM, displaying his flaccid member at rest after a busy night to her four friends.
Maybe the content was made with his knowledge, maybe distributed with his acceptance. Or maybe not.
But what if it was recorded without his knowledge and/or acceptance?
What if one of the five digital accounts is hacked? Or one of the five phones lost? What if that content gets distributed online? What if OM is recognizable and this costs him financially and/or emotionally?
Not that I care about OM or the WW...
But imagine this scenario:
Mrs. Jones has an affair and sends her AP a recording of them having sex. The AP does as the wife in the referred thread and shares his conquest with some friends. Somehow that recording ends up on one of the gazillion sites that thrive on this sort of voyeur/amateur/MILF genre of porn. A week later, Jones Jr. comes home crying from school because everyone is laughing about how they have seen his mom moaning while getting pounded. Or everyone at church looks funny at the Jones, or Mr. Jones friends stop laughing and turn silent when he enters the room.
It doesn’t have to be that AP shares content. Can also be a stolen phone, hacked account, careless data management... Doesn’t have to be intentional, but it can happen.
I guess if you are divorcing and don’t have kids then this is a "them" issue. But if you are trying to reconcile and/or have kids... I think action is required.
Content can’t be unsent. What’s been distributed has been distributed.
What can be done is to make it clear IN WRITING that whatever content was created and/or shared was for personal use and there is no acceptance of any form of use other than that. Any breach of that could and will lead to legal action and prosecution under revenge-porn laws and that it is advised to delete the content.
I would suggest this letter sent from an attorney’s office, and in a traceable way. That way the receiver is made clear that if something happens, they will be in the noose. Will AP comply? That’s not in our power. What becomes clear though is that IF content is distributed the track to limit the damage is known.
Of course, these are steps that the WS must take. We – the BS – can only suggest or require this step. Personally – I like to think I would make this a requirement to even consider reconciling, and if divorcing then be clear of the risk to the kids.
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Just over a decade ago I helped a friend get a recording of his daughter having sex removed off some of the (then) major sex-sites. She had allowed her BF to record them having sex, and some years later – long after they broke up – the recording found it’s way into all sorts of forums and sites. This was early-days of revenge-porn laws.
He was fortunate to get a good attorney who went directly to one of the major porn-sites. What could be shown was that the date of the recording was some months BEFORE her 18th birthday. Thereby making this content illegal and sharing it illegal.
That site pulled the recording off its platform and it seems like there is some universal classification that these sites adhere to. If site A (a major porn-site) removes a recording and classifies it as illegal, the other sites do so also. This resulted in the recording more-or-less disappearing off the internet in the next months. Not for moral reasons, but rather that they face criminal prosecution for distributing content with under-age participants.
The attorney shared that the ONLY way he got results was through the underage clause. That if it would have been a question of mutual consent and the girl 18 years and one day then this recording would still be up there. Might be different now with reccent law-changes.
That recording? Can still be found... Last time her dad and I talked about it (about 6 years ago) he shared that there seems to be a spike in searches for it each time she starts a new job or makes some life-change. She’s in her early thirties now and this is still haunting her.
1 comment posted: Tuesday, August 19th, 2025
Preparing for the inevitable goodbye to my best furry friend.
Just got a call from my vet. My best friend, my 13-year-old Labrador, has fast-spreading cancer. The vet evaluates him as too old for any aggressive treatment and we are going along with strong steroids and pain management. This won’t cure him but might give him quality-of-life and give the family maybe 2-3 weeks to reinforce to the dog how important, how loved and how central he is to us.
This really hurts, but I was thinking last evening as we walked a very shortened version of his favorite route that this might be our last walk along here. When he lay down a couple of times and gave me that look "I want to go further dad, just give me some time to rest...".
My sons – who both lived here when he came as a puppy but are now grown up and moved out – suggested we get the vet to visit Friday a week from now so we can put him to sleep at home, surrounded by his family.
I don’t feel bad about making that decision – I have always known that one day I would have to do so. I know with total purity that our decision will be based on his best interest. I keep in mind a quote I heard once about no animal dying of old age in nature, but that they either starve because they can’t get food due to age, or are too old to escape being eaten.
My Labrador will depart with minimal pain, surounded with love, having known nothing but love, respect and care for all his +13 dog-years.
We have a spot seleced in the yard for him, between two trees and a shrub he loved to lie at. A bit like Sheldon Cooper becasue that spot had the right amount of shade, the best breeze, and a veiw on all the people walking by.
Doesn’t change that this really hurts.
22 comments posted: Friday, June 6th, 2025
You don’t HaVe to post…
I’m not 100% sure what my title as Attache really allows me… At the time I was asked to join staff I voiced a concern over maybe not being as free to post my outspoken views and MH stuck the Attache moniker on me. I guess I’m sort of a SI James Bond – a secret and deniable agent in SI service with a license to kill…
Not that I’m going to kill anyone with this post. Maybe a bit more like twist a few arms and tweak a few ears… It’s definitely using the authority I think I have with my title, but at the same time this whole post is probably – like 007 actions – deniable to the Staff…
This is a site that is based on peer contributions…
The advice offered is only as good (or bad) as we are. Its often based on experience, and many of us have some expertise in some specific area, be that therapy, law, technology or whatever. I have received advice here on topics ranging from marriage-advice to car electronics…
However…
There is no obligation to post…
You are perfectly free to have a stance or view on any or all subjects and threads…
But ALWAYS post with the site guidelines in mind…
Upon entering this site you will find this text:
Surviving Infidelity is your safe place to come and share your pain and feeling of isolation upon discovery of betrayal. All who have been impacted by infidelity are welcome here, even the betraying partner, provided they are remorseful and committed to healing. Please use this site to network with others who are feeling a loss of hope and shattered dreams and trying to survive the most painful type of betrayal we all have unfortunately come to know.
We ask all members to please follow our code of showing respect, patience and compassion through this very difficult time you all are facing.
respect, patience and compassion…
Those are the key terms, and they are reflected in the relatively few guidelines contributors are asked to keep in mind.
There are plenty of threads – many of them pages long – that I don’t agree with, or think are going astray. If I think a contribution might change that I contribute, but once I realize my voice isn’t heard I chose to stay off that thread. I might still read it and feel frustrated about how the OP might be heading the wrong way IMHO, but I keep in mind that I don’t HAVE to post, least of all in anger or frustration.
There are also sometimes threads here – especially in JFO – that scream out fiction to me. But… Its not my place to call that out in that thread, as is outlined in the Guidelines. I keep in mind that I don’t HAVE to post, least of all in anger or frustration.
Then there are threads in specific forums. Like in Reconciliation the goal of the OP is to reconcile. Yes – sometimes a very clear and firm post might be required to let that person know they aren’t in reconciliation or off-course. But it’s not the correct forum to question reconciliation as a concept, as something that is attainable. I keep in mind that I don’t HAVE to post, least of all in anger or frustration.
Same applies to Divorce, although I see less of that there. If someone is divorcing, then it’s not our role to push them off that path. I keep in mind that I don’t HAVE to post, least of all in anger or frustration.
But… this applies EXTRA for the Wayward Forum…
The minefield of SI… Where too many betrayed posters tread into and feel a need to contribute from a stance of anger and indignance.
Keep in mind that just because a WS doesn’t have a stop-sign on a thread its not open-season with a no-limit kill on them. We always post with the basic guideline of respect, patience and compassion, keeping in mind that WS are welcomed here. If you think they aren’t already at the place where they are remorseful and committed to healing then let the mods know, or let the OP know using words and phrases that comply with respect, patience and compassion.
Maybe we all should take a short break to go to the Main Page and read what’s stated about each forum, and then keep that in mind when contributing. Different forum might require different hats…
A very good and simple rule:
Only post if you can help, and if you can’t then remember: You don’t HAVE to post.
20 comments posted: Sunday, February 18th, 2024
Would you want to go 13000 feet underwater or into space as a "holiday"?
I don’t get it…
I do an occasional "adventure" holiday where I might go to some extremely remote location, mainly to fish. Just a couple of weeks ago I spent a weekend in a cabin with an outhouse, no running water and no electricity. Took 8 hours of rough track to get there. But that’s it… Other than the extremely low risk of bears I wasn’t really placing myself in unusual or extreme danger.
My idea of a holiday usually involves sun-benches, beach-towels and my daily intake of fruits through varying Margaritas.
I don’t get these "adventure" holidays. The people that want to get blasted into space in some experimental made-by-lowest-contractor rocket or sink 13000 feet under the surface of the ocean to see some rusty remains in total dark. Spending 24 hours locked in a metal tube – being descending or ascending – holds no appeal to me.
31 comments posted: Saturday, June 24th, 2023
R.I.P Tina Turner
I’m into punk, rock, 80’s new-wave and a dash of prog-rock…
Yet Tina Turner was my Queen.
Maybe because she was a punk – in the way she rose up from the abuse and misuse she experienced from Ike and made her own musical experience.
Rest in peace Tina:
Through your blessing, grace, and guidance, through the power of the light that streams from you:
May all my negative karma, destructive emotions, obscurations, and blockages be purified and removed,
May I know myself forgiven for all the harm I may have thought and done,
May I accomplish this profound practice of phowa, and die a good and peaceful death,
And through the triumph of my death, may I be able to benefit all other beings, living or dead.
5 comments posted: Wednesday, May 24th, 2023
