What do people who get cheated on tell themselves?

[Anonymous]

Inspired by the other thread, I'm wondering what people tell themselves when their spouse cheats on them. Do they reflect on their own behaviors and patterns and consider what role they played in creating the circumstances that led to the affair? Do they care whether their spouse wants to leave them for the AP? Is it less devastating if the spouse wants to stay married?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Inspired by the other thread, I'm wondering what people tell themselves when their spouse cheats on them. Do they reflect on their own behaviors and patterns and consider what role they played in creating the circumstances that led to the affair? Do they care whether their spouse wants to leave them for the AP? Is it less devastating if the spouse wants to stay married?

Nah, I'm only responsible for the things I can control. I don't control someone else's behavior. If "my" partner has low enough integrity that they're willing to cheat, that's about them.

If I get dumped, I'll look into the reasons. If I get cheated on, it's because my ex was a cheater.

[Anonymous]

They feel stupid and regretful about being forgiving the first time.

[Anonymous]

They feel grateful that they took Chump Lady’s advice.

[Anonymous]

I felt absolutely shocked, blindsided, traumatized, angry. I literally couldnt believe he threw a perfectly good family and great life out the window.

He will still tell people to this day that I was an amazing wife and he was happy in our marriage. Its insane.

[Anonymous]

It sounds like the PPs would rather their spouse just dump & divorce them rather than have an affair, as if that's morally superior. My exH left me and we had a young child at the time. He stopped wanting to do things together, didn't want to share his thoughts/hopes/dreams, and would come up with excuses to not have sex. We went years without him be willing to have sex with me. Nobody, not his family, friends, colleagues could believe he wasn't happy with his life and our marriage. (FTR- I'm younger than him and didn't gain weight or lose my looks. I was always way better looking than him and considered out of his league.) I seriously believed he might have a brain tumor or some sort of chemical imbalance but he wouldn't get checked by a doctor. As far as I know to this day, he wasn't cheating. But I don't believe he had more integrity than a husband who cheated. Either way, he flaked on his marriage and he flaked on the children he brought into this world. That's not what someone with integrity does.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It sounds like the PPs would rather their spouse just dump & divorce them rather than have an affair, as if that's morally superior. My exH left me and we had a young child at the time. He stopped wanting to do things together, didn't want to share his thoughts/hopes/dreams, and would come up with excuses to not have sex. We went years without him be willing to have sex with me. Nobody, not his family, friends, colleagues could believe he wasn't happy with his life and our marriage. (FTR- I'm younger than him and didn't gain weight or lose my looks. I was always way better looking than him and considered out of his league.) I seriously believed he might have a brain tumor or some sort of chemical imbalance but he wouldn't get checked by a doctor. As far as I know to this day, he wasn't cheating. But I don't believe he had more integrity than a husband who cheated. Either way, he flaked on his marriage and he flaked on the children he brought into this world. That's not what someone with integrity does.

You haven’t gone through the pain of infidelity. Everything your ex did would have been 1000x worse.

[Anonymous]

I knew he was going to do it before we got married. He just liked the little bit attention he could get. I just wanted out.
He had the nerve to say that he didn't want to get a divorce when the judge asked.
I have never dated a person who would have blindsided me. Some would have left before cheating or I knew they would.

[Anonymous]

I told myself that 1. I should have trusted my intuition all along and that 2. I had to come to terms with the fact that I stayed in a $hitty marriage because I was afraid of downgrading my lifestyle. It turns out that I am so, so much happier without him and that I spent money like water to fill in the hole where a loving relationship should have been. 3. I took a long hard look at why I refused to take steps to get out of the marriage early on when it was clear it wasn't working.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It sounds like the PPs would rather their spouse just dump & divorce them rather than have an affair, as if that's morally superior. My exH left me and we had a young child at the time. He stopped wanting to do things together, didn't want to share his thoughts/hopes/dreams, and would come up with excuses to not have sex. We went years without him be willing to have sex with me. Nobody, not his family, friends, colleagues could believe he wasn't happy with his life and our marriage. (FTR- I'm younger than him and didn't gain weight or lose my looks. I was always way better looking than him and considered out of his league.) I seriously believed he might have a brain tumor or some sort of chemical imbalance but he wouldn't get checked by a doctor. As far as I know to this day, he wasn't cheating. But I don't believe he had more integrity than a husband who cheated. Either way, he flaked on his marriage and he flaked on the children he brought into this world. That's not what someone with integrity does.

You haven’t gone through the pain of infidelity. Everything your ex did would have been 1000x worse.

Perfect response!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Inspired by the other thread, I'm wondering what people tell themselves when their spouse cheats on them. Do they reflect on their own behaviors and patterns and consider what role they played in creating the circumstances that led to the affair? Do they care whether their spouse wants to leave them for the AP? Is it less devastating if the spouse wants to stay married?

I stayed for the kids. Unfortunately, cheating doesn’t feel like we have issues that need to be fixed. Both spouses have culpability for the marital problems pre affair, but cheating takes the past, present and future from the BP. Communication of issues did not happen, but there was some complaints that were more important to her than I believed they were. It’s been years and we will never be the same, I have been changed for the worse and that is just the way it is. The excuses I made for her behavior like it’s good she is meeting friends, I am happy for her are dead. I just need to endure for a couple more years, so I can put her behind me and begin living my life with self respect again. I never understood hate until betrayal trauma joined my life. The only thing that I felt was hate for myself, my WW, the AP, God, her “friends” that knew and then shame for not being lovable, not being worthy of honesty, not seeing what was happening when I was at work and for believing the love story I told myself. It has been the worst experience of my life- 0 stars, do not recommend.

[Anonymous]

Around DCUM

Let’s stay together for the kids
Cheating can be forgiven
I can change him/her
I can move past cheating

🙄

[Anonymous]

I've seen a lot internalize their partner's actions and feel bad about themselves.

How we respond to cheating is largely survival-based. If we feel dependent on our spouse then we are more likely to blame the third party rather than the spouse. Or blame ourselves. Anything that means our spouse won't leave us. It's natural to seek control in situations when we don't have any.

Thankfully we live in a society that allows divorce. The healthy response is to understand that cheating is abusive and unhealthy behavior, and to put up with as little crap from that point on as possible. If you decide to stay together, do so without blinders on. Be ready to leave if unhealthy behaviors continue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Inspired by the other thread, I'm wondering what people tell themselves when their spouse cheats on them. Do they reflect on their own behaviors and patterns and consider what role they played in creating the circumstances that led to the affair? Do they care whether their spouse wants to leave them for the AP? Is it less devastating if the spouse wants to stay married?

I was heartbroken when I found out that my husband cheated on me. I loved him very much. Our marriage had very much been his idea, and, I thought, a happy one. I confronted him about cheating. Much to my surprise he responded by begging me to stay together. I insisted we do therapy; he agreed. I thought a lot about whether I had contributed to his cheating or if there was something wrong in our relationship. In therapy, he told me that he had cheated with someone at work…….except, that didn’t line up with the evidence I had.

To make a long story short, over the course of about 8 months in marital therapy, he answered my questions about his affair. His answers turned out to be an increasingly elaborate cover story about an affair that he thought would be more acceptable to me than the real story of his infidelities. He did this in order to get me to stay with him. Outside of therapy, due to inconsistencies in his story, I snooped thoroughly and found hard evidence of multiple affairs and other kinds of problems, although I never tipped my hand about the evidence I had. It was shocking, disorienting and traumatizing. One day in therapy, I told him I was done and he needed to move out by the weekend.

After our split, he saw a psychiatrist, and I was invited once or twice early on - with my ex’s consent - to meet with the new psychiatrist to offer some background and history to help make a “differential diagnosis.” (I think he thought if he was diagnosed with an illness like depression, I would take him back.) Much to my surprise, the Dr. informed me, in all seriousness, that he was trying to decide whether my ex was a sociopath or a psychopath, and proceeded to ask me a series of questions to differentiate between the two.

I know, OP, you will find some way to blame me for his affairs or to say that I should have known. He was an adult responsible for his own behavior. If he had a problem in our relationship, he could have voiced it or asked for an open relationship or a divorce. That is what adults do: they use their words to negotiate problems. He did none of that. Instead, he chose to lie and manipulate. He was a very good liar. Not only did he fool me, but he fooled many of his peers and coworkers, who told me when I met them how lucky I was and what a great guy he was. He fooled his affair partners. He fooled a second wife into marrying him, and, within 6 months of that divorce, he fooled a serious girlfriend.

In retrospect, if I did anything wrong, it was to give him far more grace and spend far more energy helping him get help than he deserved, but I did so in the interest of our children, who were both under 5 at the time. Believe me when I say that our children and I paid for that mistake for years.

OP, questions like yours are designed to blame the victim of abuse. That’s what cheating is - a cruel form of abuse and manipulation. People who ask what the victims did to cause the infidelity abuse are allying themselves with the Epsteins, the Weinsteins and the Monsieur Pelicots of the world - men who use their power to deceive and/or coerce someone into a sexual relationship they would not otherwise accept. It’s long past time for men to be responsible for their own actions. Men who cheat choose to cheat - not because anyone made them - and they know they will largely not be held to account for it in any serious way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It sounds like the PPs would rather their spouse just dump & divorce them rather than have an affair, as if that's morally superior. My exH left me and we had a young child at the time. He stopped wanting to do things together, didn't want to share his thoughts/hopes/dreams, and would come up with excuses to not have sex. We went years without him be willing to have sex with me. Nobody, not his family, friends, colleagues could believe he wasn't happy with his life and our marriage. (FTR- I'm younger than him and didn't gain weight or lose my looks. I was always way better looking than him and considered out of his league.) I seriously believed he might have a brain tumor or some sort of chemical imbalance but he wouldn't get checked by a doctor. As far as I know to this day, he wasn't cheating. But I don't believe he had more integrity than a husband who cheated. Either way, he flaked on his marriage and he flaked on the children he brought into this world. That's not what someone with integrity does.

You haven’t gone through the pain of infidelity. Everything your ex did would have been 1000x worse.

I went through this plus infidelity-it has rattled me completely.