Sometimes I hear of wives struggling to blame their husband for the affair. Sure, they’re furious with their husbands. And they are extremely angry with the other woman. But they keep some of the anger to themselves. Because they realize that the fact that their husband has cheated on them means that somehow the blame must lie with them.
Here’s an example of something a wife in this situation might say: “Why am I not surprised my husband is cheating on me? I’ve been preparing for this all along. I gained some weight when I had my kids and my husband did “It’s very clear that he wasn’t happy about this, but I didn’t lose weight. I kept putting it off and told myself that he would eventually make it, but I never did. So my husband has told me repeatedly that I am too wrapped up in the kids and never seem to have time for him. I heard what he was saying, but that’s another thing I thought I’d address in the future. This makes me very angry with myself. He was basically telling me that there were some things that were making him unhappy. He was giving me warning signs. But I ignored them. So now I realize that one of the people I have to blame is myself. I’m downright angry. to myself. I feel like a fat bum who prioritized her kids over her husband.”
Please don’t feel like that. Nobody is perfect. No one has the perfect marriage. No one anticipates and meets all of their spouse’s needs all of the time. Still, well-adjusted adults don’t have these unrealistic expectations of their spouse. Has your husband not disappointed you at some point during the course of your marriage? Have you responded by cheating? My point is that none of us have the perfect marriage or a spouse who responds to our every whim, but not all of us are unfaithful.
I may be biased, but I think marital dissatisfaction is not a legitimate reason to cheat. A person with integrity and commitment to her marriage will continue to approach her spouse with solutions to fix the problem and repair the marriage rather than simply running off to find the next available person. I say this because I want her to realize that she does not have to take responsibility for her husband’s decisions.
Are your observations of your marriage valuable? Of course they are. And whether or not she chooses to save her marriage, she can certainly address them. But there’s a big difference between choosing to address valid points and choosing to take the blame. It’s not your fault. You did not choose to cheat. Conditions in a marriage sometimes contribute to the atmosphere of cheating, but it is the person who cheated who makes the decision. We all have stress in our lives and things we wish were different. But the choice is ours whether we are going to help correct those things or whether we are going to recklessly choose to tear them down. You didn’t choose to tear anything down. You can choose to start making things right, but that choice should not be based on guilt, because you did nothing wrong.
I do not mean to minimize the contributions of marital problems to an affair. I do not deny that they contribute. But in general, both spouses make their fair share of mistakes. We all make mistakes. You shouldn’t beat yourself up for being a good, typical mother. I’m sure you were doing the best you could for everyone involved.
You cannot change what has happened. You can’t rewrite the past. What’s left to do now is decide where you want to go from here. You may not be able to make that decision right away. You may still need to gather information and see how you and your spouse feel about moving forward. But this is your decision based on what you want. It should not be based on your feeling that you did something wrong. You did not do it.
It is very common to feel that you are to blame for all kinds of things. Women tend to want everyone to be happy and feel responsible when someone isn’t. Heck, sometimes I feel responsible if my kids or spouse has a bad experience when I had nothing to do with it. I am the person in my family who tries to handle the details and experiences of those I love. So when something affects my loved ones or makes them unhappy, I do feel responsible (even though I know this is silly) and I don’t think I’m alone.
However, my children’s and spouse’s experience is sometimes based on random occurrences and not a choice they (or I) made. That is the difference. An adventure is a choice. Someone else made the decision. For someone to take responsibility. If you want to address your weight and how you set family priorities going forward, that’s perfectly fine. But none of these are valid reasons for the case. The matter was someone else’s choice.
