I've noticed quite a few BS's here that have fallen into blaiming themselves for their WS's infidelity. This is such a foreign thing to me and I don't understand how someone could possibly think this way. Is this a common occurance? How does this happen? Am I not taking responsibility for my part in the events that led to the A if I don't blaim myself for any of what happened?

Any insight on this topic?

Intro,

Refresh my memory...did you read SAA???

For me I do not blame myself at ALL for WS CHOICE to have an affair. He made his OWN choices in that. He owns that. BUT, I would be remiss in saying that I hadn't played a part in the events that lead to an affair.

I saw it so CLEARLY after reading SAA....

Had I met my WS EN's??....no,,,,in fact, of WS top 3 needs I failed, miserably. For years.

Had I advoided love busters???...no...I worked all of them to a hilt....

And lastly, something I have only recently learned, I was too much of a giver. Meaning, I did not voice my own needs and let WS know HOW to meet them. Something that was very destructive to our M.....

Now, does that mean I am to blame for his affair??? NO.....yes I didn't do any of the things necessary in our Marriage, BUT he did not protect his boundaries (actually, we are finding out that there wasn't really any in place. No he never thought he could have an affair, but he didn't know how to interact with women....). After all, my EN's were not being met either, but I did not have an affair.......

So, it is not really such a black or white issue to me. To me it all sums up what DR. H says in SAA.....

I am not responsible for the affair, but I am responsible for my part in the condition of the marraige leading up to the affair.....

not2fun

I absolutely agree with what Not wrote.

I also think that when newly betrayed BS come here that is how they feel.....at first for me it was hard to see my WS as being capable of doing this. I mean, he said he never would, and that he would D me if I did....all those things married couples say BEFORE they find themselves facing this issue......you can't imagine them doing it, so it must be because of me.....I'm not young enough, I am not pretty enough, I worked too much.....you are seeing the low self-esteem talking there.

The fact of the matter is no matter what they did or didn't do, doesn't excuse or give the WS the "right" to have an affair. But I do believe that the BS taking the blame is part of the cycle......which, they will eventually wake up and come out of.....

I also think women take the blame more often than men.....gender difference maybe, I don't know. Just seems to be the consensous.

not2fun

I think for me it was easy to look at myself and blame because I felt like somehow I must've fallen short or H wouldn't have gone elsewhere for love. I think that I attribute it to my emotional side. I have a hard time thinking that my H would be able to have an A without loving OW and not loving me. It becomes a competition in my head where I fell short of his expectations or needs.

I know rationally that the A happened for a variety of reasons, some were things that I could control, some were things that I couldn't control. My H even told me that I could have been the "perfect wife" and the A would still have happened. BTW, that didn't really make me feel better.

Emotionally, I feel like I failed as a wife and partner. Maybe I don't believe that H would have had an A if I were "perfect." Somewhere inside, I feel like if I had just been a little less of a nag, a little prettier, a little nicer, a little better cook, a little sexier...then H would have been satisfied at home and would never have felt the desire to look at another woman. Ever.

Wish I could always live in the rational side... :RollieEyes:

Mogi

It's funny you wrote this and posted it as I was writing my response. I am not as far along in the recovery process and STILL have a hard time reminding myself that the emotional reasons I listed above are NOT the reasons that H had the A. It's a tough feeling to let go of.

BTW...Not...I'm posting on a new thread/new username so H can't sneak a peek anymore. And no, introvert, I'm not tipping him off with an announcement on the board...just trying to let some of the regulars to my thread know where I went.

MogiSola

Not all of us yet.

I blame myself for not intervening sooner when I knew in my gut that something was wrong. I knew what the scumbag was up to and did not do what I should have at the time. Mind you my darling wife was lying her [censored] off to me, assuring me that they were just friends, etc. All the same bullsh!t "they all" say. I knew something was wrong. I just didn't know HOW wrong it truly was. I never in a million years would have believed she could be so mean, irresponsible and spiteful. Boy was I a fool...

Anyway, I don't blame myself for her doing what she did. It was her own weakness, her failure to communicate with me, and her callous disregard for the sanctity of our child, our home and our love.

What I do blame myself for is not doing more to break it up sooner. For not confronting the piece of [censored] OM, for not shipping her back across the country to her mother alone, and for not exposing to her mother prior to that. I truly believe that had I done these things I could have prevented this unspeakable horror.

Maybe I'm wrong, but that's how I feel.

I think one of the stages we go through as a BS is the blame one...

if we take the blame, we have the power to fix. If we caused the A, then we can end it, repair it, make it not what it was...

Like grieving, the first stage is denial...so maybe what you're hearing is that, Intro...our grief is so great, all at once, we reach to make it not so...

Because when we move past denial, we have to see our spouses as the truly independent and separate beings they always were...and that's terrifying (if we did this, that wouldn't have happened thinking)...and necessary, to truly see they chose the A and we had no power to stop them.

I think the anger phase changes this quite a bit...and working through that, including the bargaining stage of grief, means we are working our way to mourn the loss of what we thought was our marriage...and to accept they chose, and it truly wasn't about us.

Somewhere in there, we reach our half of the marriage (none of the A, like N2F and the others have expressed really well)...and we see our pre-A marriage differently...where we did and didn't do...and how much our half matters...without causing, controlling or curing the other half at all.

LA

I guess, after reading your post, that I do blame myself for some things. Exactly the same things that you do. I even had friends tell me "why don't you just call OM to see what the f#ck he's doing hanging around with your wife?" I said "no, she'd never do anything that you guys are eluding to...she'd never do it". I belive one of them said "BH...if it looks like paint and smells like paint...it's f#cking paint". I still let her d!ck me around after that.

I guess I do blame myself for one thing....well, that and not driving to the hotel that I knew they were shacked up in for the night and surprising them. But that would have ended up with me "walking in on the act" more or less...and there would have been a double homicide that night, I'm afraid...so, I guess I'm glad that didn't happen.

MS,

The thing is, you can't be perfect...plain and simple. No one can meet 100% of their spouses needs 100% of the time. Just isn't possible.

Now I would believe your WS when he says that. Because it all comes down to him not protecting his boundaries and your M. Plain and simple. I think its Mel who's H had an affair and even said and even Steve H says she WAS meeting his needs. But he still had an A anyway. We are all wired for it.....

To me, it reminds of what my WS said many times during the A.

"YOu should be making me love and want you so bad, I would never look at another woman"....

uh noooooooooo.....while there is some truth to that, HE was still the one responsible for keeping his you-know-what in his pants and out of the sewer.......

That would be like the rapist telling his victim..."you shouldn't have dressed in short shorts and a skimpy top".....

blameshifting.....

While as spouses we should all aspire to be the source of our spouses happiness and not a source of their un-happiness....we are just not perfect and sometimes, life gets in the way.....

Now, for TTH and Intro.....your wives would have found a way to have their Affairs no matter what road you would have taken. TTH, I was told on DDay that it was only EA, I did do all the exposing and all the things you REGRET....guess what it didn't stop my WS.....true, the lines had already been crossed, but I didn't know that.....you are not in control of her actions...you are not God....she is still responsible.....

not2fun

The real dilemma is that you can't prevent your spouse from having an affair...

Only your spouse can do that.

And that is what makes all this crap so hard for a BS. Even if everything is done right, even if love busters are done away with entirely, even if every EN and whim of your spouse is accomplished with skill, precision and immediacy, it is still up to each person to not have an affair.

And sometimes life does intervene along with the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps (Hoo Rah!) and jobs, sick family members that live out of state and unplanned hospital stays.

The purpose of meeting each other's ENs and doing away with Love Busters is to fill your spouse's Love Bank to the point that they are happy and in love with you so nothing is missing that might increase the vulnerability to allowing another to intrude.

But since no one is perfect and not every EN can be met perfectly every single time and Love Busters are hard to control, especially those pertaining to long standing habits like IB and DJs, there is really nothing a betrayed spouse can do to guarantee fidelity.

So the question becomes why do some cheat and others not? That is a game of probabilities. If I do everything right, maybe there will be no affair, but if I slip up, at what point do I become the reason for someone else making a choice to break their vows?

A Marriage Builders marriage, with both Love Banks full most of the time is less likely to be broken by an affair than one that is full of neglect, self-centeredness and constant angry shouting at each other, but those are all issues that need to be addressed separately from an affair.

And that is where a cheater falls into the trap. Their own spouse might be acting selfishly and not showing extraordinary care for the marriage, but neither are they, because if my ENs are not being met, then it is up to me to see to them getting met short of an affair. And if neither is meeting the other's ENs both are in the same boat but choosing to go outside of marriage to get the ENs met is NOT a sign of maturity nor of extraordinary care.

A marriage is the same for both parties. Assuming it is a whole entity in and of itself, a marriage is the responsibility of both spouses to maintain. When it is being neglected, it is BOTH spouses that are at fault, not just one or the other. And if it gets so bad it is worth abandoning, then it should be dissolved.

Either spouse can make that choice at any time. Cheating requires a choice to NOT dissolve the marriage, but to get ENs met outside of marriage. It has nothing to do with the state of the marriage any more than it does for the betrayed spouse.

If you examine almost every case on these forums right now, there was almost no decision to leave the marriage because of unmet ENs or unhappiness or any of that sort of thing. Rather nearly every affair begins when one person allows another into that part of their life that rightfully belongs to their spouse alone. It is a decision based on feelings of the wayward spouse and their sense of selfish entitlement to something they are not entitled to at all outside of marriage.

You can't MAKE someone remain faithful by any action or inaction.

So now we come to the part we all agonize over. Do you want to forgive and rebuild the marriage, making less of the mistakes you made before and trying to put protections into place that did not exist before the affair? Or do you just want to move on with your life and hope that the next person you marry makes different choices under the same conditions?

Statistically speaking, a marriage in which both spouse's Love Banks are filled to overflowing is less likely to suffer from an affair. But what on Earth would anyone have done differently that would have prevented the affair from happening unless you are talking about different choices made by the waywards?

Did I let problems go unsolved for too long? Yep. Did I let anger over unresolved issues deplete my wife's Love Bank? You betchya! Did I work too many hours, make too little money, fail to show her the proper amount of affection and care? Yes to all of those things! But did she do the same things to me as well? Without a doubt. I made a decision to accept my wife for who she was and not allow any other women into that part of my life I had promised to her and her only. She made another choice.

It wasn't always that way. When I was young and stupid (as opposed to older and more stupid) I allowed myself to have a ONS with a young girl that did everything she could to make it happen. I did not prevent it from happening so it did. My wife allowed herself to be swept away by emotions and allowed herself to have a ONS with a guy she met while coming home from being with her sister while she gave birth since she had just left her husband because she caught him with another woman.

I learned to make different choices, my wife, it seems did not. I was tempted many times and recognized the beginnings of an EA at least once after that and made a conscious decision to not let it happen. I changed the place I ate lunch at every day for three years because of it and never looked back. That is how you avoid an affair, not by having your ENs met at every turn in every way. You decide to be faithful.

If you make it to your late 50s and don't question whether or not you might have done something differently along the way, you've probably been in a coma since you were 16.

If "ifs" and "buts" were candy and nuts, we'd all have a marvelous Christmas...

To be honest, if I had known then what I know now, I might have married someone else...

But what could I do three years ago that would have stopped my wife from having an affair? I could have killed her rather than let her go to Kentucky every weekend. I could have tied her up in the closet and not let her go out of the house. I could have gotten her drunk every night and fed her fattening foods so that she gained weight instead of getting into shape and looking better than any time in her life so that no other man would take notice of her...

Somehow I don't think even those were viable options, since it wasn't me that made her have an affair.

Mark

Ditto.

I have read everything and educated myself on the whole process, but deep down inside, this is how I feel and all the knowledge in the world doesn't change it. I'm hoping that time will.

I think BS's usually blame themselves for a variety of reasons. I never really struggled with this myself, but occassionally I sunk into blaming myself for the A.

At first, I blamed myself purely for the control element. Meaning, pretty much I had just found out my life was not going to go in the direction I had planned. Which basically made me feel out of control. For those that felt they were pretty much in control of their "destiny" this rattles you a little bit. You came face to face with deciding if you really have as much control as you thought or is there a truck load of stuff you have no control over. It is unpleasant to conclude the later, so you attempt to define what happened as something you could have controlled and thus blame your self.

Later, I realized that was silly and the reality is that I don't have as much control over things as I thought.

After getting through that, it really came down to one thing. I was blaming myself based on what I know now as opposed to what I knew then. I realized that was silly as well. Because only one person, the WS, knew then, what I know now. If that sounds a little to philosophical, all I mean is that the WS, anywhere along in the process before committing the A, could have popped up and said "I'm unhappy, if these things don't change, I'm going to leave." I know some WS's would say, "but I did do that." But they couldn't have. If they had done that, they would be ex's, not waywards.

I generally think "waywardness" starts long before the A. Some may not see the dinstinction, but I think the marital environment plays a role in "waywardness", but not in the A.

*Bump*

There's got to be more insight around here than just this...

I think a lot of BS initially blame themselves because they are so wounded and buy into the bullchit rationalizations of the WS. It is only after the BS gets their head on straight that they realize the ONLY reason an affair occurred is a lack of morals and integrity on the part of the WS.

Thanks rprynne, that's something I proposed weeks ago only to be met with a lot of flak from those who had been wayward. This was not an original thought on my part, but was actually a supposition by Dr. Frank Pittman who has stated that "the decision to be unfaithful, acutally occurs long before the act of unfaithfulness."

I believe this to be very true, in spite of numerous protests from WS's. No one, IMHO, simply falls into an affair.

It's actually a choice that is finally made long before the act itself. It becomes a matter of "well if this occurs, I will not stop it this time." That leaves the wayward wiggle room afterwards to say, "I never intended for that to happen." But what they leave out, is, I also had made a decision that I would not stop it, if the sitch presented itself.

I think it's the last bastion of deniability that a wayward deperately clings to, in order to absolve themselves of their guilt and shame.

JMHO

All Blessings,
Jerry

Agree 100%




Yep!

Nice to see you posting Jerry. You thoughts are very insightful and spot on!

Thanks, Jerry and MEDC.

Steve Harley in our counseling sessions contends that for recovery to even begin, before any attempt by the WS to re-fill the love bank of the BS CAN fill it, that the BS must come to terms with WHY the WS cheated. It seems as though the "reason" is narrowly and specifically defined as "letting your guard down", and "failing to protect ones weaknesses".

I can see how this allows a WS who decides that their marriage is once again more important than their philandering [censored] [censored] buddy, to rationalize and get to a point of attempting recovery (I believe first from themselves and their guilt) of their marriage.

Unfortunately, in my case, this simplistic rationale doesn't completely fit. I believe what you said, Jerry about the WS deciding to be unfaithful precedes the unfaithfulness. Though it could be argued that deciding TO, is in of itself unfaithfulness.

Once one has decided to become unfaithful, for whatever reason each wayward spouse rationalizes, it's simply a matter of creating an environment that is conducive to that end. There is no shortage of scumbags out there who will gladly F up another person's marriage at the drop of a hat. What WS's don't seem to realize (or maybe care about) is that anyone who willingly attempts to bed another person's spouse (or SO), has not one shred of respect for that person. That the bullsh!t they feed into the little brains of the willing recipient is merely whatever they think they need to tell them to get their panties off. They do not care.

Sorry, bit of a rant there, but I've seen it time and again. To get back to the topic at hand, I guess I also blame myself for believing that love is true and pure. That we were immune to this dreadful circumstance.

It's hard to swallow, but clearly was a shortsight on my part.

So yes, I DO blame myself in some ways. The MB contention is that both spouses contributed to the state of the marriage that allowed the adultery to happen. I guess this IS true if not expecting adultery to affect my marriage, was something I could have done something about.

Thanks for chiming in.

I'm still trying to process all of this [censored]..

I find this much too simplistic. To me, the ONLY reason this is even part of the program is that it allows the WS off the hook a bit for being a low down dirty___________insert appropriate word...
and it gives the BS a sense that "hey, this is a somewhat normal thing and doesn't speak to the type of person their spouse truly is/was"

I understand WHY the Harley's use this logic...and it works for those that need to see things that way....but IMHO, it doesn't come close to getting to the root of the problem....it promotes accepting the horror occurred for an understandable reason(that supposedly could have happened to anyone).

It's not a matter of letting one's guard down...it is a matter of letting their pants down.