I had gone through a very difficult time the past 2 years (mom died suddenly from cancer, rear ended in a car accident from which it took me several months to recover.)

During this time I was physically and sexually closed off from my husband. Then this past May my husband told me he had been seeing another woman for the past 8 months. (Sort of like a friend with benefits).

I was shocked, but wanted to work things out.

But since then, he keeps blaming me for why he had the infedility (because I was withdrawn from him like I said above) and was "not meeting his needs".

And also (this next bit is from another website on infidelity and I think it fits what he's been doing):

The Blame Game:

The [cheater's] feelings of guilt motivate them to demonize the faithful spouse in an attempt to justify their affair. They will accuse their spouse of many negative and unforgivable traits and behaviors. The faithful spouse is portrayed as an inadequate partner, which left the cheating spouse no choice but to find an adequate replacement.

Not only will the faithful spouse be demonized, history is rewritten to make it appear that he/she has been inadequate for the entire duration of the marriage. The cheating spouse will recreate the marriage and what happened during the marriage to make it appear that they have suffered much pain and unhappiness throughout the entire marriage.

They may say things such as, "I was forced into marrying you" or, "You've never loved me the way I needed to be loved" or, "I have lived in hell for 20 years." He/She will say anything as long as it will enable him/her to appear to have been the victim of the marriage and fully justified in abandoning their spouse.



At this point even our marriage counselor is getting frustrated with him.

My husband has normally been a loving and empathic guy, which is another reason I am so caught of guard here.

any advice about what I can do with this?

Thanks
JenC

Hi, Jen, welcome to Marriage Builders. I am sorry for what brings you here.

It is very common for adulterers to blame their spouse for their adultery. But of course you are not to blame - many, many people exist in unhappy marriages and still manage to avoid infidelity, by taking precautions to avoid it (such as not having a secret second life, not having opposite sex friends, etc.) In fact, for every wayward spouse - there is usually a faithful spouse back home who was EQUALLY unhappy with the marriage.

Your marriage counselor is not likely to make much headway with your husband until contact with the affair partner is cut off, because an affair is like a heroin addiction. So the most important thing to do right now is to combat the affair.

Have all the important people in your life been told about the affair? Your children, yours and your husbands' parents and family, friends, clergy, etc.? Has the other woman's husband been told of her affair? In Dr. Harley's experience, exposure is usually the number one factor that ends the affair and makes true recovery possible.

Hi Jen - Sorry you find your self here. My Husband too is a loving, caring and empathic guy but he was unable to see thru his own fog babble in the beginning. Once you start following the MB program and the fog lifts hopefully he will able to take better responsibility for his screw up.
Contributing to the unhappiness in the marriage was probably both your faults, the affair ENTIRELY HIS ! Don't let his fog babble convince you otherwise.

He will stop blaming when the fog wears off. The fog wears off when ALL contact with his affair partner ends. Has all contact ended?