Why do I blame myself when my spouse is the one who cheated on me?

Sometimes I hear of wives who struggle to blame their husband for the affair. Sure, they are 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 cheated on them means that somehow, somehow, the fault must be theirs.

Here is an example of something a wife in this situation might say: “Why am I not surprised that my husband cheated on me? I have been preparing for this all the time. I gained some weight when I had my children and my husband did. It was very clear that he was not happy with this, but I did not lose weight. I kept putting it off and told myself that eventually I would get it, but I never did. So my husband has repeatedly told me that I am too absorbed in the kids and I never seem to have time for him. I heard what he was saying, but that’s another thing I thought he would address in the future. This makes me quite mad at 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 mad at myself. I feel like a fat woman prioritizing her children. Jos instead of her husband. “

Please don’t feel like this. Nobody is perfect. Nobody has the perfect marriage. No one anticipates and meets all of their spouse’s needs all the time. Well-adjusted adults don’t have these unrealistic expectations of their spouse anyway. Hasn’t your husband 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 every whim, but not all of us cheat.

It may be biased, but I think marital dissatisfaction is not a legitimate reason to cheat. A person with integrity and a commitment to their marriage will continue to approach their spouse with solutions to fix the problem and repair the marriage rather than simply running away to find the next available person. I say this because I want you to realize that you do not have to take responsibility for your husband’s decisions.

Are your observations of your marriage valuable? Of course they are. And whether you choose to save your marriage or not, you can certainly address them. But there is 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 cheating atmosphere, but it is the person who cheated who made the decision. We all have stress in our lives and the things we wish were different. But the choice is ours whether we are going to help make those things right or whether we are going to recklessly choose to tear them down. You didn’t choose to shoot anything down. You can choose to start doing 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 a fair amount of mistakes. We all make mistakes. You shouldn’t beat yourself up for being a good, typical mother. I’m sure he was doing the best he could for everyone involved.

You cannot change what has happened. You cannot rewrite the past. What is 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 are feeling to move on. But this is your decision based on what you want. It should not be based on the feeling of having done 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 is not. Hell, sometimes I feel responsible if my kids or my spouse have 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 (although I know this is silly) and I don’t think I’m alone.

But, the experience of my children and my spouse is sometimes based on random events and not on a choice that 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 the way you set family priorities going forward, that is perfectly valid. But none of these are valid reasons for the matter. The matter was someone else’s choice.