SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Hello all, and thank you to everyone who has shared their insights and wisdom here. It’s been enormously helpful to my spouse and me so far.

Summary of why I’m here – Married 12+ years. I found out a couple of months ago about my husband’s ONS with an old friend from high school. They continued it for 1-2weeks via chat, and he later reached out to her hoping to rekindle things, which didn’t end up happening.

He also conducted what I’d consider a "light" but ongoing EA with a previous lover for multiple years off and on, basically since we were married (no longer happening). And there are more "minor" incidents (with other people) that have become huge deals in light of the above.

I am experiencing a lot of confusion about one aspect of this situation and would really appreciate insights. I’m an extremely insecure person and have struggled with depression for my entire life, which has obviously greatly impacted our relationship.

Where I get confused is in feeling like maybe our situation is "unique" – that despite everything you read about cheating being a choice unaffected by the BS’s behavior, perhaps it is in fact my fault for being basically a freeloader for the first 6-7 years of marriage, and not giving him the affection and attention he desired. Like him, I can be a black hole w/r/t validation and attention, although I obviously act it out differently.

I could write a lot here defending myself and explaining my contributions to the relationship, but I don’t think it’s necessary. If he were to argue that I have not done nearly enough to truly address my depression and negativity over the years, I think that is fair. (I am in IC now, and it is very helpful, but I am not putting in as much work as I should.)

He is extremely defensive and very good at turning the situation onto me, convincing me it was my fault. I truly believe he does this unconsciously/reflexively. He says, in so many words, he feels so exhausted by being the "bad guy" that he doesn’t feel it’s fair in this case, and that if I wasn’t sad about this, I would be about something else anyway.

There is truth to this; in the first years of our marriage, we were both quite dysfunctional and I did blame him for much of it.

SO, I guess my question is – are there instances where the BS should be held accountable in this way? And regardless, how can we approach this productively – I do not want him to feel like he is the only one who needs to change; but still, I feel so betrayed and like this is such an extreme overstepping. Part of me does think, if you were so unhappy before, why didn’t we divorce? Why did you choose instead to crush me like this?

THANK YOU if you read my novel, which I didn’t mean to go on so long. Happy to be told to go do my research and then come back 😊 I have definitely been reading around the site, but just am having such a hard time believing that I deserve for someone to put in the full effort to win back my trust.

MSP,

You could have been the coldest, most frigid wife ever, and that would STILL not justify his choice to cheat. He should have divorced you rather than cheat. THAT would have been the honorable course of action your adulterous H should have taken.

That said, if you desire R, you should absolutely keep going to IC and work on yourself. That will pay dividends in this relationship, should you choose to continue it, or better equip your next relationship for success.

Welcome to SI.

Please keep reading and check out the healing library and the posts in this forum w the bullseyes (may have to scroll back a page or two).

Around here we tend to say that each of you is 50% responsible for the marriage. The WS is 100% responsible for cheating. Maybe you were a freeloader (your words, not mine) but he had many other options: confront, counseling, separation, divorce. Cheating is the one he CHOSE.

So no - he chose to cheat instead of another option. Also, it sounds like he’s been testing the waters for your whole marriage.
So this is not out of character for him actually. So how can it be your fault?

Depression is a beast and can be difficult for the M - all true. And maybe you could have sought more treatment. Or maybe you were doing the best you could at the time with a really hard condition. Neither causes cheating.

Please focus HEAVILY on your mental health right now. Don’t worry about your M - just focus on you.

Welcome to SI.

Please read in the healing library and pinned posts. Most importantly take care of you and your mental health. To echo the others: nothing you did or didn’t do in your M, caused him to cheat. He cheated because of his own issues and brokenness. Absolutely accept no blame. You are not a perfect spouse. Neither is your WH. No one is. But you have the right to expect that regardless of the status of your M, happy, good, bad or indifferent, that your WH would remain faithful. That’s the whole purpose of your wedding vows. Take care of you. Good luck.

No time to reply individually now but thank you so much to all, a lot to think about. Much appreciated <3

I completely understand this feeling. Some days I find myself thinking ‘if only I’d’ but I know that it is not my fault. I think us as WS want a reason for the affair other than our partners are just shitty people with issues 😂.

Our marriage issues were both of our faults. But him cheating, that’s on him. He could have chose to deal with problems in so many other ways but he chose to cheat. And TBH he may have cheated regardless of whether our marriage was in a good place or not. I’ll never know!

I think acknowledging your issues or depression is important for your own health and moving forward but don’t do it because of the affair. Work on it for you 💚

I’m sorry you are facing this.

Here’s my two cents.

According to the cheater, the BS is too thin, too tall, not athletic, too athletic, too heavy, too pretty, not pretty enough, too boring, too much a party person, dull, too social, not a good cook, not a good swimmer, not funny, not serious, etc.

The only thing we know for certain is the cheater chose to cheat. End of story.

I hope this helps you.

Unfortunately what you feel is common. I did it too at the beginning. It is a way our minds try to cling to a belief that we had any control over the situation and also the future. Because if it was our fault, then we could have prevented it. Which means if we just fix our flaw, we can insure it doesn’t happen again. We gain an incorrect sense of control or power over our lives that we are desperate for since this completely destroys any sense of stability in our lives. It is hard but we have to slowly recognize that we don’t have the power to control someone else. It is possible that betrayed spouses are in fact horrible in their own right (I definitely don’t believe you are). But it still does not justify cheating. And absolutely does not cause it. It would justify and be cause for divorce. I 1000% would rather have had my wife divorce me and be done with me than cheat like she did. I might have had to live with deserving that perhaps but it seems vastly better than the hell I was put through both while she was cheating and during the years after. And this is coming from someone now 2.5 years out still together and making progress. What you are feeling is absolutely normal but also not truth.

I 1000% would rather have had my wife divorce me and be done with me than cheat like she did. I might have had to live with deserving that perhaps but it seems vastly better than the hell I was put through both while she was cheating and during the years after.

^^^

This. Nothing I ever did, or did not do, deserved doing what was done to me. Nothing anyone has ever done to me would justify for me to do that to them either.

You are sadly far from unique.

ETA: I ended up posting that before I finished. The final thing that I wanted to add was that this was not your fault, there's nothing you could have done realistically to prevent your spouse from cheating on you. The only one who could have prevented it was them. That is some total of betrayal. The responsibility of betrayal lays with the betrayer.

[This message edited by standinghere at 8:56 AM, Friday, October 4th]

A few weeks after DDay, my WH declared that if I had been the perfect wife, he would not have cheated.
Luckily, he heard his own words and realised just how much at fault this thinking was.
I also heard it, and realised that stopping his infidelity was as impossible as being perfect. It was a helpful moment to gauge what we expect from ourselves and each other.

We are both working on bad ‘ruts’ and approaches which were not helpful in our marriage, but I felt as stuck as he did, and I never would have cheated. Never.

1stwife explanation is how I see it too .

‘You were a stay at home mom I felt like it was all on me and you were busy with the kids. I felt pressure as the only breadwinner’.

‘I was the stay at home dad and I felt lonely. You were busy with work and it affected my self esteem’.

All nonsense. All excuses. They cheated because they chose to cheat. No other reason. No-one can force a person to cheat. My spouse isn’t able to make me cheat. He can’t make me stay faithful.

I believe people like the idea of ‘unmet needs’ and being at fault because it helps them feel they can change their spouses behaviour. I see it as control. If I do your washing and pay all the bills you won’t cheat. But this isn’t true. Anyone can cheat if they want to. It really isn’t hard if you aren’t fussy. It’s a choice we make. I make that choice for me alone. I used consider my spouse but now some days I hate him. I do get hit on. But I haven’t revenge cheated. I could justify it easily. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about it. But I have chosen to remain faithful for ME. I am faithful each day for me.

None if his cheating was your fault. He had many other options than to destroy your M. One of the excuses the WS often through out is "We lost our connection", of course we did, one partner was giving that attention to someone else. The BS causes infidelity like flies cause garbage.

SO, I guess my question is – are there instances where the BS should be held accountable in this way? And regardless, how can we approach this productively – I do not want him to feel like he is the only one who needs to change; but still, I feel so betrayed and like this is such an extreme overstepping. Part of me does think, if you were so unhappy before, why didn’t we divorce? Why did you choose instead to crush me like this?

Cheating isn't about the marriage. It's about getting more. Having cake and eating it too.

You see, you think that maybe you are somehow at fault, or the marriage is at fault. That he was motivated to cheat because he was unhappy at home. That is not why people cheat (generally). This is a totally mistaken framing of cheating, and one that a lot of people have before they are impacted by it.

Where I get confused is in feeling like maybe our situation is "unique" – that despite everything you read about cheating being a choice unaffected by the BS’s behavior, perhaps it is in fact my fault for being basically a freeloader for the first 6-7 years of marriage, and not giving him the affection and attention he desired. Like him, I can be a black hole w/r/t validation and attention, although I obviously act it out differently.

We all like to think our marriage or relationship doesn't fit the mold of others. I think if you read "Not Just Friends" you'll find one of the cheating archetypes discussed *extremely* relatable. Maybe even beat for beat.

He is extremely defensive and very good at turning the situation onto me, convincing me it was my fault. I truly believe he does this unconsciously/reflexively. He says, in so many words, he feels so exhausted by being the "bad guy" that he doesn’t feel it’s fair in this case, and that if I wasn’t sad about this, I would be about something else anyway.

As for his "defensiveness" and turning it back on you. That's manipulation/abuse. It's DARVO and is a classic behavior of cheaters and their ilk.

It's not your fault. Even if you were the biggest freeloader of all time (5 years ago?) and building up resentment/regret him choosing to cheat is on him. 100%.

[This message edited by This0is0Fine at 5:10 PM, Wednesday, October 2nd]

He had options besides cheat, he chose cheat. His fault 100%. He could have suggested marital counseling, he chose to cheat. It's typical to initially wonder if you caused the affair, you didn't, he chose to have an affair.

Focus on your mental well-being for the time being

Again, thank you everyone for taking the time to reply and offer insight.

Because if it was our fault, then we could have prevented it. Which means if we just fix our flaw, we can insure it doesn’t happen again.

-- This really resonates with me. I feel so deeply flawed that I can't really imagine anything that doesn't have the potential to be my fault.. Which in its way, feels like a form of narcissism - depression-induced narcissism? Lol.

Right now, I am thinking about all of this, and everything I talk about in therapy, and it's swirling through my head in a great confusion. A large part of me doesn't believe I deserve to be treated well because of the way I am, and it's extraordinarily intrusive as I'm trying to heal, work through everything, and believe I deserve to be treated with respect.

I was so weak for so long that I fully depended on my spouse as the source my value and self-esteem (probably another thing that drove him away from me). Now, I need to see if I can develop it internally -- which feels a little absurd at my age, but there's no other option, is there?

I have always depended on external things/people to let me know I was worthwhile, or was making the right decision about something. Trying to change that feels like climbing out of a 200-foot hole where you can't even see the light at the surface. But I'm trying.

Friend – there is only one way your situation is "unique". The uniqueness is that it involves Mr. and Mrs. mysocalledpants. That’s it. I have been on this site for a number of years, and if your situation is "unique" as in other than who is involved in it, I will eat both my digital hat and my real-world socks.
What you describe – we have seen this all before, each and every instance in what the person sharing thought was unique.

You might find some guidance/solace in reading about guilt in rape-victims.
One thing the terrible crime of rape and the experience of infidelity have in common is that the victim – the rape-victim on one hand and the betrayed spouse on the other – is that:
1)Society still seems to allocate (at least partial) blame on the victim. We can still find people that insist you can only rape someone that wants to be raped, what did the person expect being dressed like that, walking in that part of town or whatever. The infidelity/marital equivalents being that he/she wouldn’t cheat in a good marriage, had you given BJ’s or been willing to splurge money on a holiday rather than pay utilities or whatever then he/she wouldn’t have had to seek elsewhere...
2)The VICTIMS tend to allocate a lot of self-blame: Why did I go to THAT club, why did I accept a ride, why didn’t I just invite him in rather than turn him down, why did I wear that dress, why did I accept that drink... Why didn’t I work less and spend more time at home, why didn’t I initiate sex, why didn’t I join his/her jogging/angling/bowling/bridge club?

A lot of how rape-victims, abuse victims, violent-crime victims... are helped is based on realizing that some of your actions might have been dumb or might even have increased your risk. Yes – walking through that park at night isn’t sensible, leaving your drink unattended wasn’t smart and so on. BUT that doesn’t excuse, justify or minimize the DECISION from whomever intruded on you from doing it. Like... a judge won’t base the sentence for a rapist based on the length of the mini-skirt or the depth of the cleavage.

You might find some help or solace in applying that line-of-thought to your situation:
Yes – I could have been a better spouse. You could have spent more time cleaning the house, cooking dinner, offering sex, praising his masculinity... whatever. But at the end of the day NO MATTER WHAT then he could have asked or even demanded change. You could have taken that demand to heart or countered it with your demands. The two of you would find a joint path to resolve whatever issues you have. That joint path could have been to talk more, spend time together, do a budget, decide to buy a red car instead of a blue one... whatever couples need to resolve. Or it could have been that you can’t work things out and simply decide to part ways.

Deciding that an affair is the appropriate reply to some dysfunctionality... that’s like treating his bad breath with a shotgun round to his face.

Wow, well said @Bigger.

The Helping Couples Heal podcast has some episodes with Omar Minwalla, in which he describes infidelity as having a sexual component and an ethical component. The ethical behavior by the wayward spouse can include lying, defensiveness, and gaslighting. One consequence of this ethical abuse over time can be the betrayed spouse’s losing confidence in their gut feelings and instincts.

Consider the possibility that your husband’s behavior for the whole of your relationship has contributed to your mental health issues.

@aprilfool1985 I have definitely considered that.

I've always had pretty severe depression/anxiety since the time I was very young, so I can't in good conscience pin all or even a large part of it on him.. but it certainly didn't help lol.

Thank you so much for the insight and for the podcast rec! I am a huge podcast junkie :)