SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I am seriously struggling with this and need help/perspective in addressing it.

According to MC and every book I read on A, I am supposed to examine how I (BS) contributed to the affair. It is variation of this:

affairs rarely happen in a vacuum — they are almost always in reaction to vast, unmet needs in the marriage...many BS have an impossible time accepting this very basic concept. A poor marriage is not an excuse for an affair — there is no excuse – but it is almost always the reason.

Every single time when I approach this, I get spitting mad. My marriage was not great the last 4-5 years and got downright bad during the last year. I didn't have any of my emotional or other needs met, I was in the same shitty place as WH. I don't want to sit here and compare who was in a worse place, bottom line is that it was bad for BOTH of us. He chose to have an A, I didn't. Same situation, different coping skills and outcome. I whiteknuckled, dealing with kids, house and everything else, while he frolicked with the OW for weekends away. I was looking for MCs, he was busy talking to the Rotten Apple and planning their next get together.

How exactly did I contribute to the A? What am I not seeing? I am not saying I was/am perfect, I just don't understand how it is that I have contributed to HIS choice to cheat on me.

I've read that same bullshit ! My WW also got me a book on how to affair proof my marriage, it pissed me off, I was in the same shitty marriage as her and I didn't cheat.

You didn’t. Nothing you did or didn’t do caused him to cheat. His shitty boundaries and coping mechanisms did. He could have divorced you, communicated, gone to IC/MC but he chose to cheat. That choice was his alone. That is why reading that crap makes you so angry.

itdoesntmatter

FWS here. I can honestly say now that there were unmet needs which contributed to my cheating. But they were unmet because I wasn’t putting any real effort into my marriage. I had been a physical and emotion train wreck in the 5-6 years before the A started. My wife was there every step of the way supporting me. By the time I started to get my feet under me again, my wife was spent and probably a little resentful that she had to carry everything for so long. Instead of me saying, wow look at everything my wife has done for me, she’s amazing; I choose to say she is not affectionate at all so she must not love me. Pure horseshit.

Unfortunately, this is a very commonly held misconception by therapists and counselors. There's a very good reason why a BS has "an impossible time accepting this very basic concept." It's a flawed concept.

A WS is 100% responsible for their decision to have an affair. Nothing you said or didn't say, nothing you did or didn't do, would have made the slightest difference. You did not force your WH to have an affair. You did not contribute to his vulnerability to an affair.

Wayward spouses cheat because they are broken people. They cheat because they want to. They cheat because they are extremely selfish people with a profound sense of entitlement. They may claim that their 'needs' were unmet, but the truth is that those 'needs' were unhealthy to begin with.

There is no justification for infidelity. That includes a shitty marriage.

There are two schools of thought I see espoused about infidelity:

1. The relationship causes the individual to cheat because of unmet needs.

2. The individual is broken and commits adultery because of their individual issues or problems.

I think the quote you list is rubbish put out because it sells. It absolves the wayward spouse by eliminating them of all culpability. It is also appealing to the betrayed spouse because it gives them a sense of control.

The issue with the wayward spouse many times is the cause of the marital difficulties. I do not see the two as mutually exclusive.

If the authors were to say the wayward spouse is weak willed, selfish, delusional, entitled and cannot face the truth very few books would be sold and MCs would lose a significant customer base.

Every individual has room for improvement. We are human. Every marriage has room for improvement because it is a union of imperfect individuals. It is fine to make a better marriage for all involved. To make the leap that my wife or anyone else could cause me to commit adultery is false. If I ever decide to cheat I will own it.

Anytime I have had sex or engaged in an emotional relationship it has been because of my thoughts and actions. Nobody else or another relationship is responsible.

Some men and women may agree with the phrase in a marriage counseling session. I do not know. I have no data. I have been around a lot of adulters in my lifetime and I have never heard anyone say in our marriage there were vast, unmet needs so I cheated and had sex with XYZ other man or woman. They cheat for internal reasons ... something extra.

If I am not getting what I need in my marriage then I need to address it. If my spouse is unresponsive or abusive, I need to address it. If I choose to address it by committing adultery, I own it. I own how I address marital problems. The marriage does not and cannot cause me to engage in sex with another human.

Just because we are having xyz marriage difficulty this month is no reason to drop my panties or underwear and commit adultery. To do so is asinine. It is like saying snap my car will not start. The battery is dead. I better steal someone else's car and blow my car up. Now it does make since to get a new battery or put the car in the shop for repair. To destroy it.... no.

Once the cheating is outed nearly every wayward says the adultery was not worth it and did not realize their actions would kill the marriage. Either a divorce results, the couple has to rebuild a new marriage, or one or both partners detaches and they function as roommates.

You did not cheat so how was the marriage causing people to have sex?

Remember at one time the vast majority of individuals thought the world was flat also.

The quote you just offered is for selling books and counciling to individuals that cannot do the work (IMHO).

[This message edited by Ripped62 at 3:36 PM, July 21st (Saturday)]

My issue is that I didn't kick my WH's butt into MC before the A happened.

I was communicating, doing all kinds of things, but had basically given up for the last while.

While he's now in IC, he will start bringing stuff up that I tried to bring up YEARS ago. (Communication, openness, etc.) Last night, he even said that he wished he'd understood how important some of this stuff was a long time ago. He didn't listen to me for such a long time, that I'd pretty much given up in a lot of areas.

If we get to the point where we're in MC and this concept is brought up, I'm going to own that I should have insisted on MC sooner.

There is a difference between explaining a thing and excusing it. As an explanation, the "unmet needs" theme is likely a very common (possibly the most common) vector leading to an A.

However, as others note, usually if a marriage is not meeting the needs of the WS, it is also not meeting the needs of the BS. But the BS remains faithful. The WS chooses to break her or his marital vows rather than try to fix the marriage.

Itdoesntmatter,

According to MC and every book I read on A, I am supposed to examine how I (BS) contributed to the affair.

I'm a ww. I think you've been given the wrong reading list. I'd like to recommend Not Just

Friends by Shirley Glass and How to Help Your Spouse Heal from Your Affair by Linda McDonald as two excellent books that can help you and your WH to understand your situation.

I saw three different ICs after my affair. They all, in various ways encouraged me to blame the marriage and move on. I think your best sources of information are these two books and SI. I've given up on IC and never tried MC.

No matter what, don't blame yourself. This was all your husband's doing.

That's still my WWs 'why'. That I was treating her 'like shit'. Truth is, I couldn't bear to be physically close to her because she was denying me sex. All messed up and probably could have been sorted out as we were at a stand off. I was in huge pain too. Just one difference. I didn't cheat. I even had clear offers at work. But I didn't.

So, my needs were not being met either. So that's all bullshit and she still pulls it every time we talk about it.

I had a man, during my Retrouvaille weekend, tell me my WS only cheated because he was unhappy in our marriage. Hello? I wasn’t happy either, but I didn’t cheat, and his cheating certainly didn’t make us happier!

BS here. This pisses me off SO MUCH. We had two kids -- one was only eight months old when my fWS started his affair.

Our LO was a super high needs kid. Always crying, super clingy, STILL doesn't sleep through the night consistently (she's almost two now), terrible napper, never took a bottle, had colic...

My fWS (and his AP the one time she got me on the phone) both had made comments that I was too focused on the kids. I never wanted to go out and have fun anymore.

Bull. Shit.

I was sleep deprived and exhausted. I had PPA. I was a wreck, crying all the time, worried she would stop breathing. I forgot school stuff for put older kid all the time and felt like a shit mom for forgetting to give him money for the bake sale, or missed signing permission slips for trips.

I begged my fWS to step up to the plate and take on a little bit more around the house because I was struggling. I understood that he worked M-F, but begged him to do night time diaper changes on the weekend, pass her to me to nurse and put back on the crib so I could maybe almost get a full nights sleep every once in awhile. Take just ONE night a week to do bathtime with the kids.

Instead he would go out 2x a week or constantly be working "OT" (aka spending time in a hotel room with AP). So... he felt "neglected"? So. Did. I. But I didn't cheat. I put one foot in front of the other, made sure the kids were fed/dressed/clean/etc., and he was off in LALA land with his dumbass AP who fed into his "poor you, your wife doesn't want to have fun with you anymore" delusions.

The only thing I take responsibility for is for not holding my WH accountable to be the husband he could have been. I never asked anything of him - so he didn’t invest anything into our marriage. He was a pretty good dad until he threatened our children’s lifestyle by cheating.

My codependency was not good for our marriage. It did not make him cheat. I will never take the blame for that. But my inaction did contribute to the decline of our marriage. I was just too blind and in love with my husband to see it. I accepted the bare minimum from him because I felt that was all I deserved - I didn’t even realize I could get more from anyone! Over 2 years of MC has opened up my eyes a lot.

Our M was toxic, on life support, should have been allowed to die years before he chose to cheat. But as others have noted, I was in the same crappy M and did not cheat. Didn't even cross my mind. I just got busy with a life that didn't much include him. HIM, well he had very poor coping skills as I was about to discover.

There is a part of me that believes that my H and his very poor coping skills + our crappy M = his decision to cheat. Only when he started to recognize how poor his coping skills were, how bad of a decision he made to go outside the M to find his happy place, and to learn new ways of coping and communicating, did he start to become a more safe partner for me.

I had to make a few changes, too, and together we are building a (hopefully) better marriage that combined with his better coping skills will = a M less likely to be rocked again by infidelity.

But for an IC to blame the poor M without also acknowledging the people in the M, and the CHOICES we each have about how to deal with a poor M, that IC is incompetent and should not be working in this area. A little knowledge is a BAD thing in these cases.

My husband is muddling through this with his new IC right now and it’s incredibly painful to be back to this place. I honestly can’t have these conversations with him right now without my blood boiling. I don’t need to hear the phrase “unmet need” uttered ever again.

He doesn’t blame me at all, but when your spouse talks about unmet needs, it’s hard to not internalize that (edit to add that internalize isn’t quite the right word.. it’s just hard not to get defensive). It’s hard, for me anyways, to not go zero to 100 and throw all the SI wisdom at him, ha. But I don’t think his IC (or that he) means it in an “and it’s your fault” way. He talks about his failure to communicate his needs, and how could I meet his needs (or be aware of them) if he didn’t share them? But his IC is talking about his unhappiness and unmet needs being the root of cheating. I don’t know, maybe it’s a matter of semantics, but this is as far as I can go:

His unmet needs ‘caused’ his unhappiness.

His selfishness and poor coping skills ‘caused’ him to cheat.

Edit: And the “root” is a massive character gap. Sometimes I think ICs working with cheating spouses make it more palatable so they don’t swim in shame. So long as he’s not blaming me, I guess it is semantics in a way. Or somewhat unimportant?

And I also agree with the above person who said often these needs are unhealthy. My husband felt unsupported, but when we wade through why, it’s not because it’s true per se, but that his idea of support and mine are totally different (i.e. his is to stuff down any conflict or negatives or concerns until you are full of resentment, and mine is to be vocal about what I don’t like or am worried about).

Unmet needs alone never explains the choice one makes to step outside your marriage, discard your spouse, and betray your integrity. My husbands failure to communicate his needs led to unhappiness and resentment. But I’m an unhappy and resentful person right now and I’m not making that choice.

I think one of the reasons I go zero to one hundred on it is that I do know there is some truth in what he’s saying, and it’s hard to hear your spouse was in fact unhappy (whether justified or not). Never in a million years will I let it “explain” an affair though.

[This message edited by gtflng at 7:26 PM, July 21st (Saturday)]

Given all the responses, and all the ones to come, we can all agree no ones marriage was all popcorn and puppies. Also, there's not one side having a blast while the other struggles.

As I read similar articles, it's obvious most that write about infidelity have not been through it, they do case studies, maybe a relative or neighbor had been a BS or WS, but not themselves.

I also think that *most* try to attack the pre-A issues, which for a BS is like a smack in the face. We want to talk about why they fucked up!

Eventually, we have to talk about and own up to the issues we contributed and the WS have to own up to the affair and all the shitty side-effects.

I think most therapists and councilors are simply incapable of understanding the depth of pain so they talk to what they feel like they can relate to, a mutually shitty relayionship. But after an affair, every BS knows that it's no longer a "fair" relationship.

Every M is different and so is individual.

I quit asking why to my WH as he really didn't know after my various version of investigations.

Our M could have been "perfect" if there was no A. WH admitted that we had a great M BUT he considered a steal when AP approached him and kind of agreed to have A WITHOUT any impact on each's own M. How sick AP turned out to be a serial cheater and her husband should have known all the time, but AP was the bread maker of the house and her husband stayed silent (what a sick family to begin with).

WH confessed that he thought I would never found out so A would never hurt me nor our family.

A gave WH runners high effect and became addictive; I was unfairly judged against AP as all WH dealt with AP was pure romance and flattery comments; AP was an experienced whore and simply knew how to make a mid-aged men feel great again.

There is NO justice for A and two selfish individuals (WS and AP) simply hurt their partners for their own indulgence.

If we have to ask why, it's the greedy of disgusting individuals.

So here are my H’s “reasons” for having an A.

I didn’t support him.

I only married him to route my parents (who initially did not like him - cultural differences - but now love him)

He accused ME of having an Affair (never happened)

We were disconnected - actually he was disconnected

He was unhappy - for about 2 years - due to his career mai it but put it all on me

I called him on his crap and refused to accept any blame. Because I always told my H that if he ever was to come to the point where he was no longer in love with me - I told him please do not cheat. Just come home and tell me. I will be sad but at least I will still respect you.

He just chose to cheat and be a coward.

It’s on him. All of it.

I contributed to our strained marriage but zero to his affairs. The wayward mindset started BEFORE he even met me...please!!

Thank you all for responding. Both of our MC ( the new one has been a BS) have raised that issue, so I felt it merits further evaluation. I guess I am in a similar place as gtflng...as soon as I hear "unmet needs", I get angry and defensive and that is not what they mean. It is possible that it is not directed at me and it is more for the WH to be explore how he articulates his needs and whether they are healthy or not...

I thought that bc it brings such a strong reaction in me, I ought to dig in it more and explore what is behind it. This whole thing has seriously stretched my capacity for dealing with unfair and I am having hard time looking past anything that remotely resembles bullshit.