SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

It's unfortunate that many clueless non BS's often the blame the BS for "driving/pushing" the poor WS to cheat.

Now, I will turn the question around and ask my fellow BS's "before you were a BS did you blame the BS for the A ?".

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I'll start.

Unfortunately, I did believe the misconception that the BS is to blame for the A.

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Edit to add : If you blamed yourself after you caught your WS A or you did the pick me dance then you have to answer yes.

[This message edited by Dorothy123 at 2:34 AM, Sunday, September 18th]

I worked for a D attorney for many years. In my younger days I blamed the BS in the beginning.

Then my Boyfriends started cheating. Real jerks - the whole lot.

That was a game changer.

Then I dated a serial cheater. Another game changer.

So from my early 20s I no longer blamed the BS.

But I still believed I would D a cheater lol.

I would've said 'no' and not thought anything about it before my fWH's Craigslist binge, but blaming the BS can be so much more insidious than overt accusations of wrongdoing. Ten years before he went live and in person, I had caught him out in a bunch of online shenanigans; porn, cyber sex, EA's, phone contact, and even a little bit of financial abuse. At that point, we did what people do, ran straight into the arms of the nearest MC and bought into the "unmet needs" fallacy. And THAT is where we find the secret blame-shifting. It's between the lines of best sellers like The Five Love Languages and still in use by a great many practicing therapists.

So yeah, I'd like to think I never blamed a BS, but I have an inarguable history of blaming myself based on a bunch of pop-psy drivel that doesn't even make rational sense when you really start questioning it.

No but I did use to judge people that stayed with a cheater.

I would say I that I didn't necessarily "blame" the BS, but I did think that infidelity only happened in unhappy marriages so a BS was likely a contributor to the infidelity. I also believed I would leave a cheater immediately.

I was wrong on both fronts.

[This message edited by hurtbs at 1:01 AM, Sunday, September 18th]

Having had cheating boyfriends, I never blamed the BS. However I never understood the true depth of pain that infidelity causes. I wish I had been more aware and sympathetic of that to people I knew who were affected by infidelity before I was.

I had never really thought about it before becomin a BS myself, as I'd never really been exposed to adultery. In my case I 100% blame my WW. On DDay she claimed "she'd been unhappy for a long time". I never saw our marriage that way, and she never once expressed displeasure and seemed just fine to me. I'm not a mind reader. Even if there were issues, countless couples have imperfect marriages, and the sposues don't commit adultery. Cheaters are great at rewriting history to justify their actions and lessen the guilt that they carry around.

Even if something was amiss, if she had expended just 1/10 of the energy required to lie and cheat for so long on our marrigae instead, we just might be in a whole different place. It's so incredibly frustrating to think about.

"Even if something was amiss, if she had expended just 1/10 of the energy required to lie and cheat for so long on our marrigae instead, we just might be in a whole different place."

So true!

I did not blame bs but I bought a truckload of blame shifting from (get this) unmarried men in "the church" who said that it was partly a woman's fault if a man cheated because she just didn't give him enough (whatever) attention, sex??¿?

Now I like candy and I don't think I get enough Godiva chocolate since they closed the stores in the malls.. but does that mean I can boost it from the Target store just because I think I have a deficit?

The "men" that I let groom me to be a compliant victim can officially kiss off. What a steaming pile of horse 🐴🐎 💩 they indoctrinated me with. I was an absolute doormate who blamed myself and forgave him after dd1 which happened decades ago and which led to him continuing to justify cheating which led to dday ground zero (the divorce).

My first close-up brush with infidelity was my parent's marriage when I was a married adult and my kids were young.

My Dad had, at minimum, an EA. He minimized and blame-shifted like a MFer. My mom bought into a very traditional view of marriage and divorce and felt like she needed proof (or an admission...which she was NEVER going to get) of a PA in order to justify a divorce.

I knew my Dad had strong narcissistic tendencies...since I grew up in that house. I definitely blamed him. I understood well that his overblown "ego" was a poorly camouflaged lack of self confidence and self love. So it made total sense that he sought out attention from an OW to feed his ego. But people can't fix what they won't admit...especially what they won't admit to themselves. He's really so weak emotionally.

My mom played detective for quite a while. I think she really did want to divorce him and hoped to find proof to justify what she she really wanted to do.

Unfortunately, they ultimately sought out a Christian MC and that laid the groundwork for "shared responsibility" and not holding my Dad's feet to the fire at all.

My mom bent over backwards for a while trying to make sure she didn't share any more responsibility. Then she finally had to own he wasn't doing the same.

So, she read books on boundaries and I think also on narcissistic personalities and drew some big boundaries with him. There were fireworks for a while in the marriage, but they are still "together."

From my point of view, they exist as roommates in the same house or sometimes as combatants who have a tacit agreement to not shoot each other...so the warfare isn't lethal just painful and ongoing emotionally. I don't know if they really "fight" verbally in private or it's more of a passive aggressive cold war.

Hmmm...something I should ask my mom.

It has been enough for me to watch from the outside to be certain that:

-BS aren't to blame

-I won't accept a marriage outcome like the one my parents exist in. Either we find a way to safety and happiness again or we go our separate ways.

**Sorry for the expansion that was a bit off-topic, but damn that was therapeutic. I've never written about my parents dysfunctional marriage before.

[This message edited by BreakingBad at 9:51 AM, Sunday, September 18th]

No, I can honestly say I didn’t. I had two friends whose husbands cheated, and I didn’t blame those friends; I just thought their husbands were asshole self absorbed cake eaters.

But I sure wasn’t sympathetic enough or aware of how devastatingly painful infidelity is.

No but I did use to judge people that stayed with a cheater.

X2.

But I still do judge people who stay with a cheater....in particular myself. Not saying that I regret staying, but I really thought one of my core beliefs was to not accept infidelity. So what other of my 'core' beliefs are flexible?

I’m also in the camp of judging the male BS that stayed. It wasn’t just judgement, it was pity. For me that is one of the worst things that could ever happen to me, and was a big part of me keeping what she did a secret for so long. Bottom lined I pitied myself which was awful.

I hope this doesn’t come off as sexist, but I didn’t view a female BS in the same light. I felt badly for her, but in most cases where the female BS stayed, I viewed it as strength trying to keep the marriage together.

Male BS weak, female BS strong. I will say this has softened over the years as I have followed some of the male BS here and have seen the strength they have shown in also trying to keep their families together.

Even before my Dday, I saw cheaters with contempt. There was a guy at the church I attended who cheated on his W. Because of that I shunned any contact with him and he lost all credibility with me.

I think the tendency to blame the BS stems from a desire to keep ourselves safe from infidelity. If the BS is to blame, then we can somehow "affair proof' our own relationship. You don't need to spend much time reading here to see the bullshit in that idea.

I didn’t blame them, but I sure got tired of their whining and lamenting. I wasn’t sympathetic. Thought that Jerry Springer shit happens only to "other people" or "those people".

Then it happened to ME!

Now, ironically, I hang out on SI listening to BSs lamenting and crying, paying it forward after all the good people here listened to all my lamentations and whining.

Mmmmmm… whilst I believed a cheater to be scum even prior to my own DDay, I did have an attitude of "what was he/she not getting at home" type of thinking. As in "what a jerk, he/she could have been honest about what was missing in his marriage and what the spouse isn’t providing".

I also believed there was a type of "fun" cheating that wouldn’t really hurt that much, ie. I had a best friend that prior to her wedding cheated on her fiancé and I thought that it wasn’t such a big deal, she loves her fiancé, she just wanted to have a last "crazy" adventure before she got married. To be clear my own morals were strong, I saw my friend’s cheating as something she "needed" to do, not something I myself would have done. To my excuse, I was only 21 when this was happening and friendship loyalty meant more than the integrity of my friends.

And I definitely did judge people staying with cheaters.

Obviously experience taught me better…